Ezra Pound

Damn sight better chap (and author) than the grreat Paul Moron (or Morand)“. In Bezug auf den Leitartikel vom Freitag fragt er, ob Ragner das Sozialregister jemals gesehen hat; wenn nicht, möchte er es sich gerne ansehen. Pound hat vor zwei Jahren nur einmal eine Kopie bei Foyots gesehen. „If you don’t know who is the first and who is the last, I give you three guesses. Shame to tell you right out, spoil yr. pleasure of discovery. […] It begins with Aarons, and ends with Zogbaum […]“.

S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis (“W.L. about only writer I can READ“), William Carlos Williams, Santayana, Basil Bunting, T.E. Hulme, Robert Creeley, Gaudier-Brszeska and Remy de Gourmont, comments vindictively on literary critisism (“Blithering LITERARY criticism. WHEN one wants IDEAS in 1951“) and on poetry in America (“Gheez yu SEElected. and NOT passed by the author“), exounds his ideas on writing and language, reflects on Lady Gregory’s techniques (“Lady Gregory used to write masses of chat and CUT. preparing plays for Abbey (with W B Y[eats]), used to CUT, work down to smallest number of characters needed for plays“), discusses the suppression of the Cantos in Ireland and in Spain, the re-publication of some of his early work (including the A.B.C. of Economics) by Faber & Faber (“TSE [T.S. Eliot] will arrange the ceremonial bendediction of silent over-handling“) and of some of his war pamphlets by Peter Russell, his own contributions to Four Pages, those of others (Williams, Bunting, Cummings, et al.) and his association with Nine (a literary magazine published by Peter Russell); he reviews his earlier work (“Lookin bak over th years, the miracle of EZ findin printers in 1908“), informs Hughes that he is sending him his Analects, comments wryly on himself (“May be nuts but am not a school girl, not given to that sort of hysteria“), suggests that a study of the English language be made from the ,CYMRIC angle’ and advocates the curiosity of the intellect. The letters also contain pithy expositions of Pound’s theories on economics and politics: he argues about taxation, tithes, usury, interest, mechanisms of production, systems of government, the theories of Silivo Gesell (“unforchoonately nearly all Gesellites are crack pots“), those of Butchard and of Del Mar (“Del Mar great when factual ... lack of theological training, cant get all out of same bottle“), remarks on Robespierre, Lafayette and Mirabeau, insists that ,there can be no mental LIFE in a nattion or group until a series of improvements are made in THOUGHT’, discusses the American judicial system and the political situation in Britain, France and Italy, vituperates about the decay of contemporary culture (“No sense of intellectual responsibility in Britain OR the U.S.“) and makes vitriolic remarks on America (“Horror of this continent … Iggurance in U.S. so appalling that hardly any denizens CAN tell the truth“), the press (“falsifiers of news“), French drama (“Doubt the merit of most of those frogs / Claudel punk, Sartre nuts, Mauriac swill“), contemporaries and former friends (“Orwell a god DAMNED liar / who chose to lie about me when I was down“) and on other magazines (“Parisan review / pewk / NO honesty among commies / and fellow punks“), and throughout the series he gives sympathetic advice on the running of Four Pages. Included are (i) a printed ,Petition for Ezra Pound’ (in English and in French) addressed to the „President of the people of the United States of America“, concerning Pound’s release from St. Elisabeths, (ii) a series of letters concerning attempts to obtain Pound’s release, consisting of autograph letter signed and typed letters signed by Olga Rudge (Ezra Pound’s mistress), Mary Barnard and D. D. Paige (who edited The Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941) and of typed transcript of letters by Ernest Hemingway and T. S. Eliot, (iii) five autograph letters signed by Dorothy Pound. Pound was incarcerated as insane at St. Elizabeths between 1945 and 1958. „It was not long before Pound was seeking an outlet for his economit and political ideas and in 1948 a young man by the name of Dallam Simpson began to publish at Galverston, Texas, a small Poundian leaflet called Four Pages, with Henry Swabey its representative in England. This important end extensive series has remained unpublished. (Noel Stock, The Live of Ezra Pound, London, 1974)..