Early Writings Read online

  1923 January through April in Italy. The autobiographical Indiscretions appears in March. Publishes three Malatesta Cantos in The Criterion in July. Completely revises opening section of The Cantos.

  1925 Eliot rededicates The Waste Land to Pound, calling him il miglior fabbro, “the better craftsman.” A Draft of XVI Cantos appears, published by Three Mountains Press, Paris, with ornamental initials printed in red designed by Henry Strater. Settles in Rapallo in a seaside apartment with Dorothy. In July, Olga Rudge gives birth to Pound’s daughter, Mary.

  1926 Pound’s opera Le Testament, scored for medieval instruments, performed in Paris. In September, Dorothy gives birth to a son, conceived during a December 1925 trip to Egypt. Publication of Personae, selections from his early work, appears late in the year.

  1927-1929 Pound edits and publishes four issues of his own magazine, The Exile. In February 1927, Olga Rudge performs for Mussolini at his residence. Pound awarded the Dial Prize for 1928 of $2000, which he invests, offering interest to others such as Ford. A Draft of the Cantos 17-27, with initials by Gladys Hynes, appears in London, published by John Rodker in 1928. Eliot introduces and edits Pound’s Selected Poems.

  1929 Homer and Isabel Pound retire to Rapallo. Olga moves to Venice, settling in a small house on the Calle Querini.

  1930 Two hundred copies of A Draft of XXX Cantos appear in Paris, published by Nancy Cunard at her Hours Press. Imaginary Letters also published. Begins to contribute literary and other commentary in Italian to L’Indice.

  1931 How to Read published as a pamphlet in London. BBC broadcast of Le Testament.

  1933 Private audience with Mussolini, who praises A Draft of XXX Cantos. Faber and Faber in London publishes ABC of Economics as well as Active Anthology.

  1934 ABC of Reading, plus Make It New, a collection of his literary criticism, appear. In New York, Eleven New Cantos XXXI-XLI published by Farrar and Rinehart. James Laughlin spends several months with Pound in Rapallo at what he calls the “Ezuversity.” Laughlin will return to America and begin New Directions press in 1936 at Pound’s urging.

  1937 Polite Essays published by Faber and Faber. Also The Fifth Decad of Cantos, XLII-LI (London: Faber and Faber; New York: Farrar and Rinehart).

  1938 Guide to Kulchur appears in July. Elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Travels to London for funeral of Olivia Shakespear. Meets Yeats for the last time, his son Omar for the first.

  1939 Returns to the United States after twenty-eight years. Visits congressmen and senators. Spends time in New York meeting H. L. Mencken, Marianne Moore. Receives honorary degree from Hamilton College, his alma mater. Returns to Italy in late June and begins friendship with philosopher George Santayana in Venice.

  1940 Cantos LII-LXXI published by Faber and Faber in London and New Directions in Norfolk, Connecticut, with some lines in Canto LII blacked out because of anti-Semitic statements. Writes scripts critical of the United States for Rome Radio, read in English by others. A Selection of Poems (London : Faber and Faber), including two Cantos from A Draft of XXX Cantos and one from The Fifth Decad of Cantos, published.

  1941-1945 Pound begins regular shortwave radio broadcasts for Rome Radio in January 1941, beamed to the United States. Will continue with vituperative broadcasts (120 in all) until the fall of the Fascist government in July 1943. German fortifications in Rapallo force Pound and Dorothy to move in with Olga in Sant’ Ambrogio, above the city. Begins to compose Cantos LXXII and LXXIII in Italian, supportive of the Italian war effort. Pound arrested by Italian partisans on May 3, 1945, and, after some initial confusion, sent to U.S. Army prison camp in Pisa; spends three weeks in solitary confinement in an exposed steel cage. After breakdown, transferred to medical tent, where he begins to compose what would be The Pisan Cantos (LXXIV-LXXXIV). Flown to Washington on November 17 and arraigned; assessed as mentally unfit to stand trial. Transferred to St. Elizabeths hospital, a federal asylum where he would remain until 1958.

  1948 The Cantos published (New York: New Directions). All the Cantos completed to date appear, including The Pisan Cantos, which are published in a separate volume the same month (July). The Faber and Faber edition would be delayed almost a full year while British editors expurgated sections they feared might cause libel actions.

  1949 Awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry for The Pisan Cantos, published the previous year. Controversy follows and Congress reacts by preventing the Library of Congress from awarding any more literary prizes.

  1951-1958 Translations, anthologies and more Cantos prepared. Publication of Literary Essays, edited by T. S. Eliot, in 1954. Section: Rock-Drill: 85-95 de los cantares appears in 1955, published first in Italy by Vanni Scheiwiller’s All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro. On May 7, 1958, the seventy-two-year-old Pound released from St. Elizabeths; visits William Carlos Williams before returning to Italy on July 9 with Dorothy and a young admirer, Marcella Spann.

  1959 Thrones : 96-100 de los cantares, written at St. Elizabeths, published by All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro in Milan. Composes some of the Cantos to appear later in Drafts and Fragments.

  1962 Wins Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize offered by Poetry magazine. Acknowledging the award, he replies that he is content to be remembered as a “minor satirist who contributed something to a refinement of language.”

  1964 Anthology Confucius to Cummings appears, edited with Marcella Spann.

  1967 Publication of Selected Cantos and Pound/Joyce letters. Pirated edition of Cantos 110-116 appears in New York.

  1969 Drafts and Fragments of Cantos CX-CXVII published by New Directions. Visits United States for exhibit of The Waste Land manuscript at the New York Public Library. Returns to Hamilton College, where James Laughlin is awarded an honorary degree. 1972 Dies on November I. Buried in Venice on the island cemetery of San Michele.

  POEMS

  TO THE RAPHAELITE LATINISTS

  By Weston Llewmys

  YE fellowship that sing the woods and spring,

  Poets of joy that sing the day’s delight,

  Poets of youth that ‘neath the aisles of night

  Your flowers and sighs against the lintels fling;

  Who rose and myrtle in your garlands bring

  To marble altars, though their gods took flight

  Long ere your dream-shot eyes drank summer light

  And wine of old time myth and vintaging,

  Take of our praise one cup, though thin the wine

  That Bacchus may not bless nor Pan outpour:

  Though reed pipe and the lyre be names upon

  The wind, and moon-lit dreams be quite out-gone

  From ways we tread, one cup to names ye bore,

  One wreath from ashes of your songs we twine!

  CINO

  Italian Campagna 1309, the open road

  Bah! I have sung women in three cities,

  But it is all the same;

  And I will sing of the sun.

  Lips, words, and you snare them,

  Dreams, words, and they are as jewels,

  Strange spells of old deity,

  Ravens, nights, allurement:

  And they are not;

  Having become the souls of song.

  Eyes, dreams, lips, and the night goes.

  Being upon the road once more,

  They are not.

  Forgetful in their towers of our tuneing

  Once for Wind-runeing1

  They dream us-toward and

  Sighing, say, “Would Cino,

  Passionate Cino, of the wrinkling eyes,

  Gay Cino, of quick laughter,

  Cino, of the dare, the jibe,

  Frail Cino, strongest of his tribe

  That tramp old ways beneath the sun-light,

  Would Cino of the Luth2 were here!”

  Once, twice, a year—

  Vaguely thus word they:

  “Cino?” “Oh, eh, Cino Polnesi

  The singer is’t you mean?”

  “Ah yes, passed once
our way,

  A saucy fellow, but ...

  (Oh they are all one these vagabonds),

  Peste!3 ‘tis his own songs?

  Or some other’s that he sings?

  But you, My Lord, how with your city?”

  But you “My Lord,” God’s pity!

  And all I knew were out, My Lord, you

  Were Lack-land Cino, e’en as I am,

  O Sinistro.4

  I have sung women in three cities.

  But it is all one.

  I will sing of the sun.

  ... eh? ... they mostly had grey eyes,

  But it is all one, I will sing of the sun.

  “’Pollo Phoibee,5 old tin pan, you

  Glory to Zeus’ aegis-day,6

  Shield o’ steel-blue, th’ heaven o’er us

  Hath for boss7 thy lustre gay!

  ’Polio Phoibee, to our way-fare

  Make thy laugh our wander-lied;

  Bid thy ’fulgence bear away care.

  Cloud and rain-tears pass they fleet!

  Seeking e’er the new-laid rast-way8

  To the gardens of the sun.

  I have sung women in three cities

  But it is all one.

  I will sing of the white birds

  In the blue waters of heaven,

  The clouds that are spray to its sea.

  NA AUDIART

  Que be-m vols mal1

  Note: Anyone who has read anything of the troubadours knows well the tale of Bertran of Born and My Lady Maent of Montagnac, and knows also the song he made when she would none of him, the song wherein he, seeking to find or make her equal, begs of each preëminent lady of Langue d’Oc some trait or some fair semblance: thus of Cembelins her “esgart amoros” to wit, her love-lit glance, of Aelis her speech free-running, of the Vicomtess of Chalais her throat and her two hands, at Roacoart of Anhes her hair golden as Iseult’s; and even in this fashion of Lady Audiart “although she would that ill come unto him” he sought and praised the lineaments of the torse. And all this to make “Una dompna soiseubuda” a borrowed lady or as the Italians translated it “Una donna ideale.”2

  Though thou well dost wish me ill

  Audiart, Audiart,

  Where thy bodice laces start

  As ivy fingers clutching through

  Its crevices,

  Audiart, Audiart,

  Stately, tall and lovely tender

  Who shall render

  Audiart, Audiart,

  Praises meet unto thy fashion?

  Here a word kiss!

  Pass I on

  Unto Lady “Miels-de-Ben,”3

  Having praised thy girdle’s scope

  How the stays ply back from it;

  I breathe no hope

  That thou shouldst ...

  Nay no whit

  Bespeak thyself for anything.

  Just a word in thy praise, girl,

  Just for the swirl

  Thy satins make upon the stair,

  ’Cause never a flaw was there

  Where thy torse and limbs are met

  Though thou hate me, read it set

  In rose and gold.4

  Or when the minstrel, tale half told,

  Shall burst to lilting at the phrase

  “Audiart, Audiart” ...

  Bertrans, master of his lays,5

  Bertrans of Aultaforte6 thy praise

  Sets forth, and though thou hate me well,

  Yea though thou wish me ill,

  Audiart, Audiart.

  Thy loveliness is here writ till,

  Audiart,

  Oh, till thou come again. b

  And being bent and wrinkled, in a form

  That hath no perfect limning,7 when the warm

  Youth dew is cold

  Upon thy hands, and thy old soul

  Scorning a new, wry’d8 casement,

  Churlish at seemed misplacement,

  Finds the earth as bitter

  As now seems it sweet,

  Being so young and fair

  As then only in dreams,

  Being then young and wry’d,

  Broken of ancient pride,

  Thou shalt then soften,

  Knowing, I know not how,

  Thou wert once she

  Audiart, Audiart

  For whose fairness one forgave

  Audiart,

  Audiart

  Que be-m vols mal.

  VILLONAUD FOR THIS YULE

  Towards the Noel that morte saison

  (Christ make the shepherds’ homage dear!)

  Then when the grey wolves everychone

  Drink of the winds their chill small-beer

  And lap o’ the snows food’s gueredon1

  Then makyth my heart his yule-tide cheer

  (Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone!)

  Wining the ghosts of yester-year.

  Ask ye what ghosts I dream upon?

  (What of the magians’ scented gear?)

  The ghosts of dead loves everyone

  That make the stark winds reek with fear

  Lest love return with the foison2 sun

  And slay the memories that me cheer

  (Such as I drink to mine fashion)

  Wining the ghosts of yester-year.

  Where are the joys my heart had won?

  (Saturn and Mars to Zeus drawn near!)c

  Where are the lips mine lay upon,

  Aye! where are the glances feat3 and clear

  That bade my heart his valour don?

  I skoal to the eyes as grey-blown mere

  (Who knows whose was that paragon?)

  Wining the ghosts of yester-year.

  Prince: ask me not what I have done

  Nor what God hath that can me cheer

  But ye ask first where the winds are gone

  Wining the ghosts of yester-year.

  HISTRION

  No man hath dared to write this thing as yet,

  And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great

  At times pass through us,

  And we are melted into them, and are not

  Save reflexions of their souls.

  Thus am I Dante for a space and am

  One François Villon, ballad-lord and thief

  Or am such holy ones I may not write,

  Lest blasphemy be writ against my name;

  This for an instant and the flame is gone.

  ’Tis as in midmost us there glows a sphere

  Translucent, molten gold, that is the “I”

  And into this some form projects itself:

  Christus, or John, or eke the Florentine;1

  And as the clear space is not if a form’s

  Imposed thereon,

  So cease we from all being for the time,

  And these, the Masters of the Soul, live on.

  IN DURANCE (1907)

  I am homesick after mine own kind,

  Oh I know that there are folk about me, friendly faces,

  But I am homesick after mine own kind.

  “These sell our pictures”! Oh well,

  They reach me not, touch me some edge or that,

  But reach me not and all my life’s become

  One flame, that reaches not beyond

  My heart’s own hearth,

  Or hides among the ashes there for thee.

  “Thee”? Oh, “Thee” is who cometh first

  Out of mine own soul-kin,

  For I am homesick after mine own kind

  And ordinary people touch me not.

  And I am homesick

  After mine own kind that know, and feel

  And have some breath for beauty and the arts.

  Aye, I am wistful for my kin of the spirit

  And have none about me save in the shadows

  When come they, surging of power, “DAEMON,”

  “Quasi KALOUN.” S.T. says Beauty is most that, a

  “calling to the soul.”

  Well then, so call they
, the swirlers out of the mist of my soul,

  They that come mewards, bearing old magic.

  But for all that, I am homesick after mine own kind

  And would meet kindred even as I am,

  Flesh-shrouded bearing the secret.

  “All they that with strange sadness”

  Have the earth in mockery, and are kind to all,

  My fellows, aye I know the glory

  Of th’ unbounded ones, but ye, that hide

  As I hide most the while

  And burst forth to the windows only whiles or whiles

  For love, or hope, or beauty or for power,

  Then smoulder, with the lids half closed

  And are untouched by echoes of the world.

  Oh ye, my fellows: with the seas between us some be,

  Purple and sapphire for the silver shafts

  Of sun and spray all shattered at the bows;

  And some the hills hold off,

  The little hills to east of us, though here we

  Have damp and plain to be our shutting in.

  And yet my soul sings “Up!” and we are one.

  Yea thou, and Thou, and THOU, and all my kin

  To whom my breast and arms are ever warm,

  For that I love ye as the wind the trees

  That holds their blossoms and their leaves in cure