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Ezra Pound's John Adams: An American Odyssey
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Extract
In 1939, Pound wrote to a student of his in defense of the Cantos, and his own status as an American poet:
I don't have to try to be American. Merrymount, Braintree, Quincy, all I believe in or by. …
… Am I American? Yes, and buggar, the present state of the country, the utter betrayal of the American Constitution, the filth of the Universities, and the — system of publication whereby you can buy Lenin, Trotsky (the messiest mutt of the lot), Stalin for 10 cents and 25 cents, and it takes seven years to get a set of John Adams at about 30 dollars.
… And as to “am I American”: wait for Cantos 62/71 now here in rough typescript.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977
References
NOTES
1. The Letters od Ezra Pound, ed. Paige, D. D. (London: Faber and Faber, 1951), p. 417.Google Scholar
2. The Life and Works of John Adams, ed. Adams, Charles Francis, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856).Google Scholar
3. For a discussion of this earlier examination of American history see “The City of Dioce, U.S.A.: Pound and America,” by this writer, in Bucknell Review, 20 (Fall 1972), 13–34.Google Scholar
4. The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New York: New Directions, 1948), p. 137Google Scholar. All subsequent reference to the Cantos will be to this edition. Since pagination is not continuous both canto and page number will be indicated.
5. Pound's use of the Works of Adams is best described as a redaction. He quotes verbatim, but will frequently bring together widely separated passages, and commonly ignores the context of the comments he cites. Although such a technique is liable to produce serious misrepresentation of Adams' intention, on the whole Pound can be said to have been faithful to the spirit of Adams' thinking. The principal motive for bringing together widely separated remarks is to achieve pointedness and compression. At the same time, the technique of citing in pastiche creates an appearance of historical faithfulness greater than the reality.
6. Much of the information about Adams' career and movements is either missing from the Adams Cantos or so cryptically conveyed as to be almost impossible to reconstruct. Accordingly I have used as a compendious gloss on these cantos Page Smith's biography, John Adams, 2 vols. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1962)Google Scholar. Smith bases his biography on microfilm of the complete Adams papers, and therefore has knowledge of many documents not included in the Works on which Pound relied.
7. He does append the Provencal phrase, de lonh (“far off”) from a song by Jaufre Rudel, perhaps suggesting that Adams is far from home and in the land of the Troubadours. Or, since in Rudel's poem the poet hears bird songs “far off,” perhaps these beauties are a seductive siren song.
8. Pound is in error here. Adams could have seen a play in America. There had been a professional company in New York since 1749, and a permanent theater in that city since 1732. The first American theater had been built more than sixty years before Adams' European visit, in Williamsburg, Virginia.
9. Page Smith, Adams, cites this very comment (1, 542).
10. The Works of John Adams, X, 53Google Scholar. The letter is dated July 13, 1813.