Introduction

Pound the Personality

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) led a life of such variety, which covered so many important places and events of the twentieth century, it is impossible to summarize his achievement in this brief space. Pound was probably the most original poet since Walt Whitman. His intercultural epic, the Cantos, is－like its author－a mixture of fragments of various cultures. In the pages which follow, we have prepared a"Table of Important Dates, Events, and Anecdotes"which divides his life into six major chronological and geographical periods; these pages list some of the important political, social, and literary crises that surrounded his tormented life.

     One point in Pound's poetry, however, requires special consideration; the historical and linguistic inaccuracy of his poetry vs. its very obvious literary excellence. This point is particularly relevant to Pound's use of China in his poems and requires some elaboration to avoid misunderstanding.

     Having all your facts straight is not always a high priority among authors. Shakespeare himself made some obvious mistakes, but who would correct those lines of lyric beauty for the sake of historical accuracy. In Pound's case, it is difficult to know how much knowledge of China he had before 1913. When he was given the Fenollosa manuscript in 1915, he began a serious study of the language and culture. In this"sea of strangeness"that was ancient china, Pound discovered the island of Confucianism from which vantage point he re-examined all civilization. He looked again at life through the Four Books（四書）and declared: "Had it not been [for] this book, from which I draw my strength [during imprisonment], I would have gone insane….read it constantly, [for] if you have grasped the import of this volume nothing can really hurt you, or corrupt you-not even the America[n] civilization or uncivilization."Although his vision of China was not through physical contact of personal experience, but through the spectacles provided for him by Fenollosa, etc., he communicated its essential cultural content. On the other hand, Pound worked hard on translating from classical Chinese and found it more challenging than Homeric Greek. As he himself said,"Looking eastward even my own scant knowledge of ideogram has been enough to teach me that a few hours' work on it is more enlivening, goes further to jog a man out of fixations than a month's work on a great Greek author."

     Our annotations indicate that Pound frequently "mistranslated" or "misinterpreted" the original Chinese texts from which he was working. Whether this was deliberate or not is not so important as the fact that even linguistic accuracy was sacrificed to literary excellence. He does not always follow the literal meaning of the original text if he can achieve a literary triumph through imagery or an ironic twist. (e.g., see explanation of 習 on Canto LXXIV, line 448-452) As one critic has observed. "it is true Pound occasionally wanders off the main road when he is side-tracked by the pictorial effects of the ideogram and even gets lost at times but in his quandary he finds sometimes new paths much more interesting and scenic than the well trod."In short, Pound's knowledge of the Chinese language was limited, in spite of his long application, but he worked wonders within those limitations. While he may have failed in sinological accuracy of detail and scholarly precision of expression, Pound succeeded as the inspired master of words and rhythms. He often hit on the exact artistic combination that is great art, and great art is always a kind of distortion through interpretation. [top]

I. Residence in U.S.A. and Travels Abroad (23 years)

1885	Ezra Weston Loomis Pound born on October 30th in Hailey, Idaho, U.S.A. Certainly one of the most controversial literary figures of the 20th century, possessing an extraordinary gift for discovering geniuses and, according to T. S. Eliot, more responsible for the 20th-century revolution in poetry than any other individual as well as the"invention"of Chinese poetry for our time.
1901-5	Undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania where he was admitted as a special student (aged 15) in order to study "eight or nine" languages and to avoid "irrelevant subjects." He meets the then medical student, William Carlos Williams, and they begin poetic experiments together. After two years, he retransferred to Hamilton College where he received his Ph.B.
1904	First intimations of the Cantos.
1906	M.A. in Romance Languages from the University of Pennsylvania. Awarded a Harrison Fellowship in Romanics, and travels in Europe working on Lope de Vega.
1907	Appointed lecturer in French and Spanish at Wabash college, Crawfordsville, Indiana. Dismissed after four months for being too European and unconventional as well as for befriending and entertaining a stranded burlesque artiste (he kept her in his room for one night).
1908	Travels via Gibraltar, Spain and southern France to Venice, where his first book of poems, A Lume Spento, is published at his own expense.

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II. Expatriate in England (12 years)

1908	Pound proclaims his contempt for America's "booby" culture and government and, the first of the modern American expatriates, goes to London, where he teaches Medieval Romance Literature for a time at the Regent Street Polytechnic. He challenged a critic of the London Times to a duel for holding "too high an opinion of Milton."
1909	Personae of Ezra Pound; Exultations of Ezra Pound. "Virginal." Meets the philosopher-poet, T. E. Hulme, later killed in the First World War; the famous novelist, Ford Madox Ford; W.B. Yeats with whom he lived for 3 years.
1911	Canzoni of Ezra Pound.
1912	The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti; Ripostes. "Portrait d'une Femme." Pound becomes foreign poetry editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, edited by Harriet Monroe. School of Imagism defined in Ripostes, which contained the first so-called Imagist poems by T.E. Hulme, "H. D." (Hilda Doolittle), and Amy Lowell. At a later date, Lowell took over the movement because of certain poet's dissatisfaction with Pound's despotism.
1913	Pound serves as W. B. Yeats' secretary.
1914	Edits Des Imagistes: An Anthology. 'Vorticism' (the release of intellectual energy through art) published in the Fortnightly Review. Contributes to Wyndham Lewis' Blast (1914-15). Literary editor of the Egoist, in which James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published. In April, marries an English girl, Dorothy Shakespear. Meets T.S. Eliot.
1915	Works on Fenollosa's MSS, from which he publishes Cathay. Edits Catholic Anthology, which includes poems ("Prufrock"and "Portrait of a Lady") by T. S. Eliot, Begins work on The Cantos of Ezra Pound.
1916	Edits (from Ernest Fenollosa's notes) 'Noh'or Accomplishment and Certain Noble Plays of Japan. He used to sign his letters with a seal in the Chinese manner.
1917	First three Cantos published in Poetry, later withdrawn. Collaborates with Little Review, in which parts of James Joyce's Ulysses appear in installments.
1918	World War I ends.
1919	Completes Homage to Sextus Properties.
1920	Hugh Selwyn Mauberley; Umbra; Instigations (including Ernest Fenollosa's essay, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry.)

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III. Sojourn in France (15 years)

1920	Disillusioned with England, he takes up residence in Paris until 1924, where he becomes acquainted with Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Ernest Hemingway, ("I play tennis with Hem two or three times a week," he wrote his father, Homer), and James Joyce. Several of these celebrities he aided with his criticism or helped to publish their controversial works.
1912	Poems 1918-1921, which includes Cantos IV-VII.

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IV. Settles in Italy (20 years)

1922	Correspondence with Eliot and 'editing' of The Waste Land. Essays on Ulysses.
1925	A Draft of XVI Cantos for the Beginning of a Poem of Some Length. Paris wore even less well than London and so Pound departed for Mussolini's "reawakening" Italy; he settled permanently in the Mediterranean town of Rapallo near Genoa, where his daughter Mary was born.
1926	Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra pound; Testament of Francois Villon, Pound's opera, for which he wrote the libretto and the music, performed in Paris. His next child, a girl, he named Omar Shakespear Pound; she was born in Paris on September 10th.
1927-8	Edits and publishes Exile.
1928	A Draft of cantos XVII-XXVIII; Selected Poems of Ezra Pound, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot; Ta Hio 〔大學〕, the Great Learning.
1929	Great Depression begins (ends c. 1935) and causes worldwide financial disaster and unemployment.
1930	A Draft of XXX Cantos; Imaginary Letters.
1931	How to Read. Lectures at the Universita Bocconi, Milan, on Jefferson and Van Buren.
1933	ABC of Economics. Edits Active Anthology.
1934	Eleven New Cantos: XXXI-XLI; ABC of Reading; Make it New (a title from the Confucian maxim日日新, which he had emblazoned on a scarf he frequently wore).
1937	The Fifth Decade of The Cantos [XLII-LI]; Polite Essays; Confucius Digest of the Analects.
1938	Revisits America for the first time since 1910 in hopes of averting the war, but World War II breaks out in the next year. Honorary D. Lit. conferred by Hamilton College, despite the fact that he had described American university presidents as "potbellied, toadying presidents of fat beaneries." The Intellectual Autobiography of a Poet (published in England under the title, Guide to Kulchur).
1940	Cantos LII-LXXI. Begins radio addresses on a wide variety of topics from Rome in support, he claims, of the U.S. constitution; others called some of them Fascist propaganda. He advised America to stay out of Europe, announcing that bankers and munitions interests were entirely to blame for the unsettled situation.
1941	In December, America declares war on the Axis powers and Pound temporarily discontinues his broadcasts.
1942	His father dies in Rapallo. He is refused permission to join a diplomatic train of Americans being evacuated from Italy to Lisbon and the U.S. Political broadcasts resumed in January, criticizing American intervention.
1943	In July, indicted in absentia for treason by a Grand Jury in Washington, D.C. on thirteen counts.
1945	In May, handed over by Italian partisans to U.S. Army authorities in Rapallo; formally arrested in Genoa, then sent to U.S. Army Disciplinary Training Center (D. T. C.) near Pisa, where he is confined in a six by six and a half feet steel pen. The 60-year-old poet-prisoner characterized this period by saying: "Birds do not sing in cages." Later he was removed to a more humane but still crude makeshift shelter. His lawyer, Julien Cornell, describes this solitary confinement in a roofless barbed wire cage as follows: It was now full summer, and the Italian sun beat down on the prison yard with unbearable intensity. A military highway ran nearby, and having no shelter he could not escape the ceaseless noise and dust. Although all the other prisoners were supplied with tents to keep out the heat and glare of the sun, Pound was given no such protection, probably so that guards could watch him at all times. Whereas other prisoners were let out of the cages for meals and exercise, Pound was always confined. While others were penned up in groups, he was alone in his cage. After enduring the tropical sun all day, neither sleep nor rest came with the night-electric lights glared into the poet's cage and burned into his blood-shot eyes. The cage was devoid of all furniture. Pound lay on the cement floor in his blankets, broiled by the sun and wet by the rain. Works on his translation of Confucius After six weeks of this barbarous treatment he had a serious mental breakdown, characterized by claustrophobia and hysterical panic. First draft of The Pisan Cantos.

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V. Imprisoned in America (13 years)

1945	In November, flown to Washington, where he is reindicted for treason. Found mentally unfit to defend himself and, at age 60, he is committed to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Washington, D.C. He spent fifteen months in a large concrete dormitory without furniture or windows, in which every second occupant was confined in a sort of straitjacket.
1947	The Unwobbling Pivot〔中庸〕 and the Great Digest of Confucius 〔孟子〕(dated D.T.C., Pisa, 5 October-5 November 1945).
1948	The Pisan Cantos (LXXIV-LXXXIV); The Cantos of Ezra Pound, collected edition including The Pisan Cantos.
1950	The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941 (edited by D.D. Paige).
1951	The Confucian Analects 〔論語〕.
1952	Resumes work on the Cantos.
1953	The Translations of Ezra Pound (edited by Hugh Kenner).
1954	Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (edited with an introduction by T. S. Eliot); The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius〔詩經〕.
1955	Section Rock Drill: 85-95 de los Cantares.
1956	Sophokles: Women of Trachis: A Version by Ezra Pound.

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VI. Return to Italy (14 years)

1958	In April, after almost 13 years of virtual imprisonment, released by the District Court of Washington, D.C., from St. Elizabeth's Hospital, and all charges against him dropped largely through the intervention of Archibald Macleish, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway and T. S. Eliot. When asked about Frost's efforts on his behalf, Pound replied, "He ain't been in much of a hurry." Return to Italy where he greeted reporters in Naples with a Fascist salute. "All America,"he announced, "is an insane asylum."
1959	Thrones: 96-109 de los Cantares.
1960	Impact: Essays on the Ignorance and the Decline of American Civilization (edited by Noel Stock).
1962	The Love Poem of Ancient Egypt. Trans. By Pound and Noel Stock.
1963	Plagued by long months of illness from a circulatory disease, he appeared introspective and unsure of himself. He claimed he had reached 'the age of doubt' and that perhaps his whole life had been wrong. "I have erred always . . . and spoiled whatever came in contact with me," he said in an interview. "I know now that I no longer know anything. I have become an illiterate literary man . . . I am unable to think. I am aware only of my disconcerting uncertainty."
1964	Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry (edited by Pound and Marcella Spann). The Cantos of Ezra Pound (1-109).
1965	In January, attends the funeral service of T. S. Eliot in Westminster Cathedral and visits the widow of W. B. Yeats in Dublin.
1967	Edits with an introduction Selected Cantos of Ezra Pound.
1969	Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX to CXVII (including some fragments for insertion in earlier Cantos). These were all apparently written before 1962. In June, returns to U.S. on brief private visit. Attends graduation ceremonies at Hamilton College.
1970	Pound became increasingly silent and unsociable in the last years of his life, possibly applying to himself what he said of E. E. Cummings in 1937: "a bloke who keeps silent until he has something to say."
1972	A kind of "lost leader," he died at the age of 87 in Venice on November 3rd.

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