User:Victoriaearle/Ezra Pound Sandbox

To do

 * fix the scholar credentials
 * Canto numbering
 * Literary present tense

Misc links

 * Old versions
 * FAC w/ style etc
 * August 9 2010 sandbox
 * September 28 2010 version for reference checking (with templates)
 * October 4 2010
 * October 13 2010 w/o templates)
 * October 5, 2010 sandbox
 * April 2012 sandbox
 * most current sandbox at beginning of reassembly, Jan. 2014
 * January 18, 2014 restart
 * before rewrite
 * Sources, etc.
 * 1918 review in NYT - Idaho
 * 1922 review of Pound in NYT
 * Olga's obituary
 * P-G story about Bollingen and Mellon
 * Journalist's story of the day Pound was released
 * Conover, Anne. Pound and Olga Rudge
 * Start for finding trimmed bits
 * Roland, Végső. The Mother Tongues of Modernity: Modernism, Transnationalism, Translation. Journal of Modern Literature; Winter2010, Vol. 33 Issue 2, p24-46, 23p
 * Bonfante, Jordan. (27 March 1964). "An Aging Genius in Exile", Life magazine.
 * Boyle, Kay. (7 May 1987). "Pound in Rapallo", The New York Review of Books.

Stock
1912 1914
 * Description: "twenty-six, a tall figure with a shock of yellow gold hair and small red beard, his green eyes slightly apprehensive." 111-112
 * Meets Henry James 112
 * Riposte published in October 124
 * Des Imagistes published Feb 1914 147
 * Attempts to convince Amy Lowell to hire him as permanent editor for The Egoist 152
 * St. Elizabeths
 * Admitted to Wash hospital and examined by 4 drs; bail denied; committed to St. Elizabeth's a week later & placed in a lunatic ward 418-419
 * Pisan Cantos generally well received; Bollingen Prize 426
 * Nobel academy considered Pound in 1954 - Hem said this "would be a good year to release poets" 437
 * Drafting cantos 96-109 in St. E 451
 * Isabel Pound died in 1948 with Mary while Pound was at St. Elizabeths. p. 425

O'Connor

 * Pre-War I poetry subtle and well crafted. Good lyricist most notable in the early Cantos, not sustained in the later Cantos. Later Cantos = "cryptic and gnomic utterances, dirty jokes, obscenities of various sorts". O'Connor p. 7
 * Cantos difficult to decipher. Classical and medieval literature. Economics. Politics. "Literary recollections". p. 7
 * By May is seeing Yeats daily. 9
 * Pound looked after Yeats, organized dinner parties, read to him, made suggestions about his poetry 9
 * Considers Whitman not a craftsman but important as an American symbol 15
 * 1908 -1920 apex of his poetry and influence on other poets 16
 * Pound does not translate but "presents and English equivalent" > rewrites the work 17
 * Gifted lyricist 18
 * The River Merchant's Wife is subtle and lyrical p. 19
 * First Imagist group lasted for a year in 1909 - second group for another year in 1910 19
 * Pound didn't establish Imagism - he promoted it 20
 * Pound himself was studying the troubadours and began to study music art 20
 * Focused on the function of rhythm - rhythm determines pitch & melody; pitch depends on the frequency with which sound strikes the ear; variations in pitch control melody" 21
 * "From Whistler he took the ideas of poetry as picture" O'Connor p. 23
 * Music: Pound listed as poet and composer in British Who's Who p. 25

Parini

 * Pound and Williams (but more so Pound) influenced entire schools of American poetry based on his theory of Imagism. Examples = Beats, Black Mountain poets, Language poets . 13
 * Pound believed Walt Whitman represented America: "He is an exceedingly nauseating pill, but accomplishes his mission." 13
 * Like Whitman's Leaves of Grass, the Cantos are an attempt at an epic- 13
 * Has "perfect ear" and the poetry is "grainy, angular, odd, and fresh" 13
 * Imagism was a movement that approached poetic design in the elliptical manner of dream-sequences; traditional narrative (or even logical) connections were dropped in favor of juxtaposition and suggestion" 13

Dennis

 * Find this: "Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era characterizes Ezra Pound as the driving force, the dynamo, the vortex, which propelled, vitalized the era of high modernism".page 264 Dennis, p. 264

Nadel

 * Understanding Pound is not easy p. 1
 * EP's style was to draw on "medieval, Italian, American, English, Chinese, French, and contemporary traditions". 1
 * Even before the Cantos he was "undeniably modern". p. 1
 * "Imagism evolved as a reaction against abstraction...replacing Victorian generalities with the clarity in Japanes haiku and ancient Greek lyrics." p. 2
 * "he sought the objective presentation of material which he believed could stand on its own" without using symbolism or romanticism. Pound discovered in the Chinese system of writing what he called the ideogram - the ideogram reflects/represents "the thing it pictures". 2
 * In Noh theatre he discovered that unity and image eclipsed plot 3
 * Cantos: "An epic is a poem including history" and "historical figures lend referentiality to the text" 5
 * Pisan Cantos: "narrative, personal history, lyrical retrospection mingle" 5
 * Cantos overlay genres: satire, diaries, hymns, elegies, essays, etc. 6
 * "polyphonic in theme and serial in form, with recurrence rather than linearity" 6
 * Instructional work: Abc of reading, Guide to Kulchur > teach economics and value of art in society 10 [note: re-read these pages]
 * Kenner - "there is no great contemporary writer who is less read than Ezra Pound" qtd in Nadel 13
 * Pound retrospect began in 1970 13
 * Mixed reception - "confused and anxious" readers of his "twisted forms" also re Eliot and Zukofsky 8
 * Cantos required explanatory essays/criticism/reference guides 9
 * Of Cantos critics say either it's a "shifting heap of splinters" or that the first half of 20th century is the Pound era 9
 * Cantos are a (take your pick): collage/cubism/modern art or a textual mess Nadel 9
 * Eliot's Literary Essays (1954) "one might argue, initiated the recuperation of Ezra Pound" along w/ Kenner's work. Kenner visited EP in St. Elizabeths 12
 * Donald Gallup published an "essential" bibliography in 1963 - revised 2 decades later 12
 * Kenner's The Pound Era published post-New Criticism presented Pound as "pillar of modernism" 12
 * 1970s > Eric Homberger's Ezra Pound: The Critical Heritage the first of Pound studies for that decade, which included literary journal dedicated to Pound studies 12
 * Ronald Bush published first dedicated critical study of Cantos in The Genesis of Ezra Pound's Cantos >> followed in that decade by a number of research editions of the cantos 12-13
 * 1985 Mary de Rachelwitz published first dual lang. edition that included previously unpublished Cantos LXXII & LXXIII as well as some her fathers previously unpublished revisions 13
 * 1991 facsimile edition of complete prose & poetry published in periodicals that Nadel says is "a fundamental research tool" 13

Bornstein

 * Pound learned from Yeats to structure with a volume in mind 27

Witemeyer

 * Ripostes shows first signs of modern style p. 47

Bacigalupo

 * EP's lit. crit = 7 books: Pavannes and Divisions (1918); Instigations (1920); Make it New 1934; Polite Essays 1937 >> none in print. Eliot collected in 1954 Literary Essays 188
 * Lit crit pamphlets = Spirit of Romance (1910); "How to Read" (1931); "ABC of Reading" (1934); "Guide to Kulchur" (1938) 188
 * These were a form of "intellectual journal kept by Pound" 188
 * In The Spirit of Romance he covered Ovid, Apuleius, Ren poets, but is mostly devoted to troubadours, Dante, Francois Villon 188
 * EP liked Arnaut's technique; identified w/ Villon the outcast; SoR'' laid out theory that "was to remain constant in Pound's prose and poetry
 * Spirit of Romance was to remain one of Pound's principal sourcebooks for his poetry."189
 * Reprinted in 1932 w/ new chapter re Troubadours: "Psychology and Troubadours: A Divagation from Questions of Technique" > first published in 1912 in spiritualist magazine Quest 189
 * He examines troubadours, religion, spiritualism etc. 189
 * 1911-12 > published articles re Arnaut in New Age; published "I Gather the Limbs of Osiris" where "luminous details" first mentioned. Spiritualism 189
 * "Luminous details" became basic to his criticism and poetry" 189
 * "Luminous details" = hidden symbols found in art from every era that = truth. Difficult to access, find, understand, yet noteworthy and crucial. He came to believe in a specific set of recurring symbols he could unveil >> cantos 191
 * "Osiris" (Fall - Winter 1911-12, New Age) troubadours, spiritualism, disguised symbolism, iconography, repetition, each historical era hides its own truth, dig, write, repeat, juxtapose 189
 * His leitmotifs = historical events are recurrent & always juxtaposed against other (similar? disparate?) to illuminate. The small details = truth. Endless repetition will uncover, illuminate. 189
 * "I Gather the Limbs of Osiris" is a seminal text for Pound, "brilliantly written" where he defines a major work of art "as an encompassing, total, experience" 189
 * About 50% of lit crit witten during the war years when he shifted focus to middle ages (Seafarer) and Italian Ren. 197
 * Lit crit. = direct though "sometimes repetitive and reductionist" 203
 * He brought attention to "lost" cultures and writers 203
 * NOTE: this all very rough >> will return to it!

Nichols

 * "Pound's work has suggested different paths to different poets" Nichols 264

Redman

 * Redman on politics and economics
 * [re-read notes]

Flory on antisemitism

 * [re-read essay]

Coats

 * Coats, Jason M. ""Part of the War Waste": Pound, Imagism, and Rhetorical Excess". Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 55, No. 1 (spring 2009), pp. 80-113
 * EP failed to make a coherent claim i.e, in Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935) > relied on repetition and odd juxtapositions and "idiosyncratic mode of argumentation", conflations, "strident impatience" 80
 * His rhetoric is minimalist, "avoids excess which he found anathematic" 81
 * Recent scholarship focuses on horror of antisemitism and Rome years, love of facism, i.e, Redman and Rainey write about Italy and Facism, Mussoline; Surrette on his economic theories, Morrison and others on how Pound the poet >>> Pound the fascist 81
 * He consistently used anaphora in poetry and rhetoric 82
 * He rejected idioms/language/rhetoric used in England as justification for WWI 82
 * He created his own rhetoric; rejected traditional rhetoric and not very successfully. Coats writes this was done almost entirely in reaction against pre-WWI rhetoric, can be seen in Gaudier-Brzeska in which Pound claims the imagists and vorticists were against the war, writing in the opening lines about his friend, "It is part of the war waste" 83
 * Anaphora in Gaudier-Brzeska, prose, Cantos, all his writing was rejection of Edwardian prose style [this is important and EH caught on to it!!] 83
 * His juxtapositions are confusing and multilayered and intentional. He wrote: "Let us suppose a man, ignorant of painting, taken into a room containing a picture by Fra Angélico, a picture by Rembrandt, one by Valesquez, Memling, Rafael, Monet, Beardsley, Hokusai, Whistler, and a fine example of the art of some forgotten Egyptian. He is told that this is painting and that every one of these is a masterwork. He is, if a thoughtful man, filled with confusion. These things obey no common apparent law." 87
 * He assumes the "thoughtful man" can figure out the structure, symbolism, etc., just as he assumes the thoughful person will make his or her way through his Cantos and apply their own sense of organization. Room full of paintings = cantos full of references which a thoughtful person can understand''' 88
 * Parataxis and Hermeneutics 89
 * No verbs 89
 * Stripped down rhetoric still = equals. Pound leads to the reader to the conclusion he want the reader to reach. Only a single conclusion for "In a Station of the Metro" 89

Oliver

 * Oliver, Elisabeth. "Redecorating Vorticism: Marianne Moore's 'Ezra Pound' and the Geometric Style". Journal of Modern Literature. Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2011), pp. 84-113
 * Like Wyndham Lewis, Pound reacted against Edwardian writing, against decorative flourishes & "verbal ornament" 87
 * He argued a poet had to use "precision and economy" in language, use the exact word vs a decorative word 87
 * In the 1910, during the Vorticist stage, goal was to simplify to the "barest essence" 87

Beasley

 * Beasley, Rebecca. (2010). "Pound's New Criticism". Textual Practice. Volume 24, No. 4. 649-668
 * New Criticism, which separated author from text, ensured Pound's reputation as poet survived. 651
 * After the treason charge, in an effort to push that readers "look at the poetry not the poet, James Laughlin re-edited Pound's work to ensure it would survive.  651
 * Modernism = globalism. 651
 * Modernism = comparative lit. Good quote on p. 653
 * In 1911 EP announced a "New Method" - "the method of Luminous Detail" - to compare lit across periods and cultures [note: ie room full of painters above] - another quote p. 654
 *  "New Method" is comparative lit and sprang out of, reaction against 19th cent. philology & nationalism in literature [note: ie. Brothers Grimm] - a movement not pervasive in US b/c no national literature 657
 * Pound wanted to resurrect "lost" poets and traditions - i.e, troubadours - but changed direction in 1915 b/c war & Fenollosa. 659 [check this]
 * Fenollosa: "The complete man must have more interest in things which are in seed and dynamic than in things which are dead, dying, static ..." 659
 * Pound believed 2nd renaissance would spring from investigation of Chinese/Japanese culture 660
 * Spring 1915 EP edited F's unfinished essay "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" 660
 * F thought Chinese lang. intrinsically poetic and comparative. EP agreed & began to shape new outlook [which was? Cantos?] 661
 * The Cantos were his attempt at transnationalism/globalization/early-20th-cent. comparative lit >>>many example 662
 * In the Cantos he "assembles" from history/culture: Homer, Ovid, Dante, Jefferson and Adams with "themes and history across periods and culture". He tracked across time etymologies, and meant it all to be an argument against nationalism w/ "protaganists who ... are travellers between nations" 622
 * The nature of the cantos is comparison and measuring & to measure against "a Poundian standard" of modernity/modernism 662

Stark

 * Stark, Robert. "Pound Among the Nightingales - From the Troubadours to a Cantible Modernism". Journal of Modern Literature. Vol. 32, No. 2, 2001. 1-19
 * EP influenced by music; by troubadours. In "Vorticism" tacked onto the end of Gaudier-Bzreska he writes: "there is a sort of poetry where music, sheer melody, seems if it were just bursting into speech." 1
 * In Guido Cavalcanti he found another poet who articulated the inability to articulate; words are not enough; music isn't enough. 1
 * Arnaut Daniel was aural & Pound copied. 2
 * The troubadours poetry had elements of secrecy and music, was imbued with mythology and symbolism 4
 * He finished his Arnaut translations in 1911 but ms not published until 1920. During those years he wrote a lot and used techniques learned from studying/translating Arnaut 6
 * Stark says the Arnaut's work was crucial to what came after during the rest of the decade; set the foundation "with his redoubled critical efforts to establish a truly modern literature." Also Arnaut was technically important for what was to follow. 6
 * The translations are lyrical and representative of his early work. 7
 * Medieval poetry = polyglot 8
 * Medieval poetry = international & EP strove to revive lit w/out borders 9
 * To emulate musicality/lyricism of medieval poetry EP learned to ignore Victorian/Edwardian strictures, to ignore grammar/structure, and so created unique form of poesy/speech 10
 * Arnaut was difficult to read and unconventional > EP admired him 11
 * "For Pound, poetry involves language that subtly hinders and therefore enriches comprehension" > hindering causes reader to stop and think 12
 * He liked jargon (hinders), he liked odd and strange words, he believed a poet should eschew common discourse 13
 * To combine prose (words) & sound/acoustics is what "prevail on the reader" 17
 * Look up melopoeia

Nadel (2010)
[Note: includes info for SoR]
 * Nadel, Ira. (2010). "Introduction", Ira B. Nadel (editor), in Ezra Pound in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-51507-8
 * SoR based on 6 lectures EP gave in 1909 about southern European romantic lit. He revised and then had the notes published. xix
 * Nadel says it's necessary to place Pound in context, within "the social, political, historical, and literary developments of his period" that spanned decades from Georgian Revival to postmodern. 1
 * "make it new" 3
 * Pound said "Seafarer" and "Homage" "were and were not translations" > critics disagreed with his methods. 4
 * Contextual studies/criticism = frame work & subject beyond the text and according the Nadel is [now] "the grid for reading Pound's poetry." 6
 * His work is evaluated, investigated, etc., against his "varying geographic and intellectual worlds." 7
 * Nadel [again] - "Context remains essential to understand Pound the artist and the critic." 9
 * Nadel, Ira. (2010). "The Lives of Pound", Ira B. Nadel (editor), in Ezra Pound in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-51507-8
 * Pound biographies > first from St Elizabeths = Mullins "This Difficult Individual Ezra Pound" >> Nadel says is melodramatic and polemic (much more on this) 161-162
 * Stock (1970) Life of Ezra Pound = "sober, factual, and, to some, dull." Dorothy had approve it. 162
 * Tytell (1987) = neutral 164
 * Carpenter at 1005 pages the longest. Tried for the complete life w/out Dorothy's intervention. 164
 * Moody (2007) The Young Genius = excellent narrative & links bio w/ lit crit. 165
 * Yao, Steven G. (2010). "Translation", Ira B. Nadel (editor), in Ezra Pound in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-51507-8
 * Pound "redefined" translations in the modernist period and after 33
 * Translations are a substantial part of his body of work, from Calvacanti's Ballads translated in (???) to Egyptian poetry in the 1960s. 33
 * He was the first since Dryden to give primacy to translations in Eng. lit 33
 * Translations by modernists = some the most "significant modernist achievements in English" 34-35
 * In "Homage" he openly, freely rearranged & made the translation an "independent textual construction" 36
 * Translations >> interest in multilingualism and multiculturalism >> b/c translation in modernist lit = original work it came to be seen as cultural renewal 36
 * Pound discovered that formal knowledge of source lang. not necessary (well maybe only for him, my words) >> long quote for tomorrow maybe 36
 * Yao says "Cathay" was major feat: Pound proved it wasn't necessary to know the language or in this case even the faulty interpretation of the lang. (he hadn't yet read F's notes) and yet still produced results 39
 * He thought his ignorance of Chinese didn't present an obstacle >> Yao says he managed to dig through to a "genuine, poetic understanding of Confucian political wisdom."
 * Sicari, Stephen
 * Pound's work cannot be separated from politics per New crit. Perhaps no other poet except Dante was as interwined with politics. 460
 * Ten Eyck, David. (2010). Romance Languages. Ira B. Nadel (editor), in  Ezra Pound in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-51507-8
 * In 1928 EP wrote in "Medievalism" essay about Cavalcanti that medieval poets "brought into poetry something which has not been in any so marked developed degree in the poetry of the troubadours. It is still more important for anyone wishing to have well-balanced critical appreciation of poetry in general to understand that this quality, or this assertion of value, has not been in poetry since." 43
 * He believed the quality found in medieval Italian poetry occurred with the troubadours who shifted from the concept of "immediate satisfaction" to the "dogma that there is some proportion between the fine thing held in the mind and the inferior thing ready for instant consumption." 43
 * The shift is most apparent in Tuscan poetry of the 1300s (trecento) which "gave central importance between the intellect and the senses." Cavalcanti, he believed, excelled at this type of poetry 43
 * EP read Cavalcanti at Hamilton College in 1903-05; in 1910 he discusses Cavalcanti in SoR; in 1912 he translated 50 Cavalcanti poems; he picked up the work again in the 1920s, publishing a translation and critical analysis of Cavalcanti's "Donna mi prega". 43
 * He began this work as a student, looking for qualities lacking in English verse, trying to formulate an understanding of a transnational European tradition, using Romance languages & in particular Cavalcanti as a template/guide. 44
 * At UPenn and at Hamilton EP resisted current academic conventions and studied Romance languages. He wrote (when?) that at 15 he entered UPenn
 * Because his chosen field of study wasn't supported at UPenn he transferred to Hamilton where he had more freedom. [Note - quote here from Carpenter, will wait to get that back] At Hamilton he got credit for studying French, Italian and Spanish. 44
 * At Hamilton under the guidance of William P Shepard Romance languages and lit became his speciality and from Shepard he learned about troubadour poetry 44
 * From Shepard he took private lessons in Provencal and learned Old French. He learned about Dante, was greatly excited by Shepard's teaching who presented material and cultural history of the lit. in transnational terms. 44
 * By 1905 EP was trying to translate from Provencal to English 45
 * In 1905 he went back to UPenn to get an MA in Romance languages under Hugo Rennert - EP took all of Rennert's classes, and started the Lope de Vega research under Rennert's supervision, which earned him the $500 fellowship to go to Spain for research 45
 * However EP wasn't much interested in Lope de Vega; Rennert was a specialist in Spanish lit, and Pound more interested Tuscan troubadour poetry 45
 * He didn't take his thesis seriously, his relationship with UPenn "soured" and "He began to take courses with professors other than Rennert and did poorly, clashing with both Felix Schelling, the head of the English department … His fellowship was not renewed … and he stopped work on his thesis soon after, thus ending his formal education." 45-46
 * Pound's distaste of philology (taught at UPenn) can be found in SoR > he saw academics "pondering over some utterly unanswerable question of textual criticism" while ignoring the essence of the works they studied. 46
 * He made clear in SoR that it wasn't a "philological work" but instead an attempt to study "certain forces, elements or qualities which were potent in the medieval literature of the Latin tongues, and are, I believe, still potent in our own." 46

Snips
Reacting to the magazine, the poet Lascelles Abercrombie called for the rejection of Imagism and a return to the traditionalism of William Wordsworth; Pound challenged him to a duel on the basis that "Stupidity carried beyond a certain point becomes a public menace". Abercrombie suggested their choice of weapon be unsold copies of their own books.