Antigonish Review
#123
Louis Dudek
Ezra and Dorothy Pound,
Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946
edited by Omar Pound & Robert Spoo. Oxford University Press, New York,
1999.
Most literary writing is either more or less than it appears to be. This
book, edited by Omar Pound and Robert Spoo, with its hefty Introduction
and many detailed annotations is entitled Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946,
but the scope and meaning of the book reach far beyond the two years given
and throw much light on the nature of genius, its psychology, sociology,
and tragic destiny.
At the same time my review of this book may define and evaluate it, but
I know it will also be my last statement on a writer to whom I have been
devoted for sixty years, sometimes very critically, and this final statement
will to some extent be a revision and a summation.
To begin with, the Introduction by Robert Spoo is masterful. Toward Ezra
Pound the tone is at times ironic but always aware of his greatness as
a poet. Dorothy Pound is something else. She was Omar Pound's mother,
and these are the intimate letters between her and Ezra Pound, peppered
with intimate greetings and nicknames "Dearest," "Mao,"
etc. (Mao say the Editors is possibly a cat's miau, in Chinese; my Matthews
Chinese dictionary also gives "old one," and "eminent"
as possible. Dorothy also addresses him as "Ming" and "Ming
Mao", i.e. "brilliant" Mao. "Dorothy deserves a book
of her own," it was said, "And in a sense this is that book,"
remarks Robert Spoo.
Clearly Dorothy Pound was of essential importance to Pound, throughout
his life, but especially in those very dark days after World War II when
he was incarcerated and charged with treason. This is also the time when
he wrote the Pisan Cantos, at the DTC Camp in Pisa, and here we have the
letters of that moment.
Anyone who reads the Pisan Cantos must be aware of the high euphoria
of that poetry against a background of imminent doom. At the beginning
of his imprisonment Pound was aware that he could be taken by partisans
and instantly executed, as some were; and under U.S. guards the prospect
of long imprisonment or execution still faced him. Yet he was concerned
with programs for saving the world. He wanted to learn Georgian in a few
weeks to talk with Stalin in his own language and make a lasting peace.
He wanted the U.S. to arrange a meeting for him with the Japanese leaders
so that he could discuss peace with them. He wanted a conversation to
be arranged between himself and the President of the United States. Clearly
Pound's intellect was damaged and his sense of reality was badly askew.
Anyone who tries to judge or to measure Pound without this fact is bound
to founder in contradictions. Also, anyone who finds mental illness amusing,
or an occasion for racial recrimination - or for the rejection of a human
being - is too far from any understanding to be worthy of a response.
For as the present book shows, Pound was a poet of supreme humanity,
both in his family relations and with his many friends. His tragedy and
his suffering are a subject for our compassion, not for judgment. It is
only the poetry that requires judgment.
And here the paradox is that even his unrealistic ideas - his mad fancies
- spring from the highest idealism, from a desire to perfect man and society,
to bring peace and justice to the world. This inspires him to great poetry,
as in the Usura Canto and in the passage beginning "What thou lovest
well remains…"
There is much of the finest poetry and art, past and present, bound up
with neurosis and mental affliction. Marcel Proust has a long passage
on this theme, and modern psychology has taken it up in numerous books.
We should try to understand this association, not to undermine art or
poetry, but to understand its place in human life, in the turmoils of
the physical body, and in suffering.
No one who ever knew Pound, or came to know him well through his books,
could fail to love and admire him. This is so, as Plato explains in the
Dialogues, because love of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True evokes
an equal love in each one of us. We all love the good the beautiful and
the true, whether we believe and know it or not. And Pound was such an
exemplar or saint.
The present book shows him in very great detail, in a time of the greatest
distress and damage to his life. (He can write very little; most of the
letters are notes of encouragement from Dorothy.) Yet here we have an
admirable and truthful account of a great man, beaten and brought to his
knees, but somehow maintaining a human dignity through it all, and still
producing magnificent poetry. A book for which we must be grateful to
Robert Spoo and to Omar Pound.
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