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Ezra Pound (1885-1972). Biography Reception Poetics Canto 1. Biography. Pound and Friends. Pound in Pisa. Pound, late in life. Reception. Eliot on Pound, 1917.
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Biography Reception Poetics Canto 1
Eliot on Pound, 1917 Few readers were prepared to accept or follow the amount of erudition which entered into Personae and its close successor, Exultations, or to devote the care to reading them which they demand. It is here that many have been led astray. Pound is not one of those poets who make no demands of the reader; and the casual reader of verse, disconcerted by the difference between Pound's poetry and that on which his taste has been trained, attributes his own difficulties to excessive scholarship on the part of the author. 'This', he will say of some of the poems in Provençal form or on Provençal subjects, 'is archaeology; it requires knowledge on the part of its reader, and true poetry does not require such knowledge.' But to display knowledge is not the same thing as to expect it on the part of the reader; and of this sort of pedantry Pound is quite free. He is, it is true, one of the most learned of poets.
Louis Untermeyer, 1919 Pound's poems "remain for the delight of the cognoscenti, the delicately attuned, the nuance-worshippers. It is a false erudition that has misled Pound; he mistakes 'the flicker for the flame.” "The gross total of his erudition seems staggering, the net result infinitesimal."
Robert Nichols, 1920 But our author is inclined to confuse the profound and the obscure. The reader feels he has passed no mild literary examination if he can instantly catch every literary allusion in these 'Three Cantos,' including, as they do, references to or quotations from Joics, the Tolosan, 'The Late Girl's Song,' of Po-Chuin (or was it Li-Po?--I forget), Catullus, Mallarmé, 'The Chronicles of the Cid,' Lope’s 'Inez de Castro,' Doughty's 'Titans,' and Pierre Cardinal. And when all is over, what has been precipitated--of what have we become aware? Story? soul? wit? psychology? No, only of Mr. Pound's potential erudition, of an emotion chopped off short whenever he began, and, alas, ceased so finickly but so pertinently to render choice scraps of other poets.
Max Bodenheim, 1922 Coolly immersed in the meanings, deeds, designs, lustres, and peoples of past ages, he regards the present civilization only for moments, and then with a dryly satirical chuckle. His poetry is equally separated from the understanding and appreciation of his generation. The Dadaists dislike his mental coherence. and the conservatives feebly attack him, a little frightened at his erudition and vicious sneer.
Credo “No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.”
Pound on Imagism, 1913 1. Direct treatment of the ‘thing’ whether subjective or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
Spirit of Romance, 1910 'The apt use of metaphor, arising, as it does, from a swift perception of relations, is the hall-mark of genius': thus says Aristotle. I use the term 'comparison' to include metaphor, simile (which is a more leisurely expression of a kindred variety of thought), and the 'language beyond metaphor,' that is, the more compressed or elliptical expression of metaphorical perception, such as antithesis suggested or implied in verbs and adjectives; for we find adjectives of two sorts, thus, adjectives of pure quality, as: white, cold, ancient; and adjectives which are comparative, as: lordly.
Review of Poesies, by Jean Cocteau1921 The life of a village is narrative; you have not been there three weeks before you know that in the revolution et cetera, and when M le Comte et cetera, and so forth. In a city the visual impressions succeed each other, overlap, overcross, they are “cinematographic,” but they are not a simple linear sequence. They are often a flood of nouns without verbal relations.
Canto I "But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied, "Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed: "A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.” And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows." And he strong with the blood, said then: "Odysseus "Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas, "Lose all companions." And then Anticlea came. Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus, In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer. And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away And unto Circe.
