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Pound: The American Strain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Benjamin T. Spencer
Benjamin T. Spencer*
Affiliation:
Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio
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Extract

Whatever might have been the court's verdict on Pound as an American, had he come to trial in the late 1940's in Washington, his biographers and literary contemporaries have consistently affirmed not only the propriety of the epithet, but also its ineluctable pertinence. To his long-time friend and literary associate, Wyndham Lewis, his Americanism seemed to be of “primary significance.” “Pound is—was always—is, must always remain, violently American,” Lewis wrote in 1949, seeing in him a composite of the gait of Tom Sawyer, the “manly candour” of Whitman, the “tough guy” of Hemingway, and the “strenuousness” of Theodore Roosevelt. “The universality in his work is conscious but it overlies an ineradicable Americanism,” a friend and biographer, Patricia Hutchins, has recently written—a view akin to Donald Davie's conclusion a year earlier that Pound was “thoroughly aware … of himself as indelibly American.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 7 , December 1966 , pp. 457 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 Wyndham Lewis, Quarterly Review of Literature, v (1949–50), 137 ff.; Patricia Hutchins, Ezra Pound's Kensington (London, 1965), p. 13; Donald Davie, Ezra Pound: Poet as Sculptor (New York, 1964), p. 21.

2 Cf. W. C. Williams, Selected Essays (New York, 1954), p. 8; E. Pound, Letters 1907–1941, ed. D. D. Paige (New York, 1950), pp. 123,124, 158.

3 E. Pound, Patria Mia (Chicago, 1950), pp. 64-65.

4 E. Pound, Letters, pp. 256, 322, 346; Noel Stock, Poet in Exile: Ezra Pound (New York, 1964), p. 210; Charles Norman, Eira Pound (New York, 1960), p. 230.

5 Cf. E. Mullins, This Difficult Individual, Ezra Pound (New York, 1961), pp. 39, 61, 72-73, 89-90.

6 E. Pound, Personae (New York, 1926), pp. 20-21,235,238, 243.

7 E. Pound, Literary Essays, ed. T. S. Eliot (London, 1954), p. 372; Margaret C. Anderson, My Thirty Years' War (New York, 1930), p. 168; E. Pound, Imaginary Letters (Paris, 1930), pp. 4-5; Letters, pp. 128, 144, 148.

8 E. Pound, Impact (Chicago, 1938), p. 221; Exile, No. 1 (Spring 1927), p. 92; No. 2 (Autumn 1927), p. 35.

9 E. Pound, Exile, No. 4 (Autumn 1928), p. 51; Impact, pp. 4, 7-8, 151, 167, 169, 173-174.

10 E. Pound, Patria Mia, pp. 21-22, 55-56, 73. Clark Emery in Ideas into Action (Coral Gables, Fla., 1958), p. 112, notes that Artemis is both “cruel and kind” and suggests the “dual nature of change.”

11 E. Pound, Patria Mia, pp. 26-27, 32, 33, 55.

12 E. Pound, Patria Mia, pp. 24, 42-43; Harriet Monroe, A Poet's Life (New York, 1938), p. 260.

13 Cf. Poetry, xlviii (Sept. 1946), 327; or W. Sutton, ed., Ezra Pound (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1963), p. 18.

14 Cf. B. T. Spencer, The Quest for Nationality (Syracuse, 1957), pp. 16-17, 22; E. Pound, Letters, p. 48.

15 E. Pound, Hound and Horn, iv (Fall 1930), 115, 116; Impact, pp. 175-176, 179-183; Letters, p. 319.

16 Cf. W. Wasserstrom, The Time of the Dial (Syracuse, 1963), Ch. i, passim; E. Pound, Impact, pp. 222, 227, 238, 240; Paris Renew, No. 28 (1962), p. 21.

17 H. Monroe, A Poet's Life, p. 259; E. Pound, Letters, pp. 40, 123.

18 E. Pound, Letters, pp. 9-10, 24; Poetry, v (Feb. 1915), 227-233.

19 The Little Review Anthology, ed. Margaret C. Anderson (New York, 1953), pp. 187-189.

20 E. Pound, Dial, lxxii (Feb. 1922), 192; lxxiii (Sept. 1922), 336; Hound and Horn, iv (Summer 1931), 571–572; Letters, pp. 231, 232, 234.

21 E. Pound, Letters, p. 138; Literary Essays, p. 302; Patria Mia, p. 48; Pavannes and Divisions (New York, 1918), p. 244.

22 E. Pound, Literary Essays, pp. 296-298, 302; Little Review Anthology, pp. 226-228; Paris Review, No. 28 (1962), pp. 26, 43.

23 E. Pound, “A Pact,” Personae, p. 89; C. B. Willard, “Ezra Pound's Appraisal of Walt Whitman,” MLN, lxxii (Jan. 1957), 19-26; H. Bergman, “Ezra Pound and Walt Whitman,” American Literature, xxvii (March 1955), 56-61; G. T. Tanselle, “Two Early Letters of Ezra Pound,” American Literature, xxxiv (March 1962), 114-119; Patria Mia, p. 38.

24 H. Bergman, pp. 60-61; E. Pound, Personae, p. 89; C. B. Willard, pp. 19-26; E. Pound, Patria Mia, pp. 62-64.

25 Cf. C. B. Willard, “Ezra Pound's Debt to Walt Whitman,” SP, liv (Oct. 1957), 573–581; R. H. Pearce, “Ezra Pound's Appraisal of Walt Whitman: Addendum,” MLN, lxxiv (Jan. 1959), 24-27; The Continuity of American Poetry, (Princeton, 1961), pp. 85-91.

26 E. Pound, Personae, pp. 88-89; W. C. Williams, Selected Essays, pp. 8, 9, 106, 237-238.

27 E. Pound, Polite Essays (Norfolk, Conn., n.d.), pp. 69, 72; The New Freewoman, i (1 Sept. 1913), 113; Dial, lxxiii (Sept. 1922), 336; (Nov. 1922), [549], 554; lxxiv (March 1923), 279.

28 E. Pound, Impact, p. 238; Letters, p. 325; E. Mullins This Difficult Individual, Ezra Pound, pp. 209-211.

29 Cf. T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” The Sacred Wood (London, 1928), pp. 53-57; cf. D. Davie, Ezra Pound, pp. 74 ff.; E. Pound, Pavannes and Divisions, p. 103.

30 E. Pound, The New Freewoman, i (1 Sept. 1913), 113; H. Monroe, A Poet's Life, p. 299.

31 Cf. E. Pound, Letters Nos. 240, 257, Letters, pp. 226, 242-243; Pisan cantos, in The Cantos, pp. 77, 83, 84, 88; Thrones (New York, 1959), p. 57; cf. Noel Stock, Ezra Pound …, pp. 3-4; L. S. Dembo, The Confucian Odes of Ezra Pound (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), pp. 3, 32-34, 90.

32 W. C. Williams, The Pound Newsletter, No. 8 (Oct. 1955), pp. 8-9; D. Davie, Ezra Pound, pp. 56-59; E. Pound, Pavannes and Divisions, pp. 95-97, 99.

33 T. Tanner, The Reign of Wonder (Cambridge, Eng., 1965), pp. 87-93; J. Kennedy, Pound Newsletter, No. 10 (April 1956), pp. 11-12.

34 E. Pound, Guide to Kulchur (Norfolk, Conn., n.d.), p. 152; cf. Hugh Kenner, “The Rose in the Steel Dust,” Hudson Review, iii (Spring 1950), 66 ff., 76, 77, 80–81; T. Tanner, pp. 11, 12, 30, 79, 194, 197; D. Davie, pp. 219-220, 239-240.

35 Cf. Peter Russell, ed. An Examination of Ezra Pound (New York [1950]), pp. 21, 67, 150; N. Frye, Hudson Review, iv (Winter 1951–52), 627-631; E. Pound, Literary Essays, p. 46; New Freewoman, i (15 Oct. 1913), 161-163; Dial, lxxiv (March 1923), 279.

36 E. Pound, Hound and Horn, iii (July-Sept. 1930), 576; W. C. Williams, Selected Essays, pp. 237, 238.

37 Cf. Noel Stock, pp. 180-193, 212, 219; E. Pound, Polite Essays, p. 101; Impact, pp. 15 ff., 20-22, 26, 190.

38 Cf. D. Davie, Ezra Pound, pp. 135-137, 164-166, 170-173; E. Pound, Impact, 169, 177; A. Tate, in An Evaluation of Ezra Pound, pp. 70-71.

39 E. Pound, Exile, No. 1 (Spring 1927), p. 88.

40 The New Freewoman, i (15 Oct. 1913), 166; E. Pound, Paris Review, No. 28 (1962), pp. 45, 50; C. Norman, Ezra Pound, pp. 273, 444.