Lee Lady: Memories of Ezra Pound

So for forty years, since the age of about twenty, I maintained a pretty firm disinterest in things concerning Pound. I noted the occasional biographies, glanced through them in bookstores, looked in the index to see if names I knew ( Sheri Martinelli, John Chatel, Bill McNaughton) were mentioned (usually, but almost always briefly), noticed with relief that my own was not. I threw away my letters from Pound, which was just as well because there was little of interest in them. (I do regret, however, not having saved the letters from Sheri, which were much more interesting.) My signed copy of Guide to Kulchur got left behind in the library at a commune/school called Summerlane in upper New York State.

A few years ago, I decided that maybe it was time to remember that time from my past again and to find out what people now know about it which I didn't know at the time, to once again become acquainted with Pound's thought and see whether I now found any value in it, and to understand more about Pound's poetry than I did at the time --- the only critical work on the Cantos then was Hugh Kenner's book, and I didn't read even that, since it was part of our mystic as Poundites to despise critics. When Kenner's name came up, Pound would say, "I've designated him as the official biographer." Only recently did I discover that the cover of The Poetry of Ezra Pound should have read, "By Ezra Pound (as told to Hugh Kenner.)"

I have to say that everything I have learned recently has confirmed that my decision forty years ago was the correct one. Nobody now seems to understand much more about EP than they did when he was in St. Elizabeths, and none of the academics who have made a profession out of being experts on Pound seem to have any interest in his ideas.

Perhaps that's just as well. Most of the ideas don't seem to have had that much value, and a lot of them were just plain foolish. A recent subject heading on this mailing list was, "Pound's Fatal Flaw," and certainly one of EP's fatal flaws was the tendency, once he had learned a little bit about a subject, to believe that he was an expert on it. (I tend to have the same flaw myself, and have learned to be wary of it.) The kind of thinking which EP had trained himself in and which served him so well as a literary critic did not prove equally valuable in investigating questions of economics, government, politics, and the like.

As far as economics goes, it's not so much that his ideas (which were not original with him in the first place) were wrong (although certainly some of them were) as that by now most of them have become rather trite. He stressed that wealth is not synonymous with money, which is merely a medium of exchange. He also stressed that "money" is not merely the same as currency and that banks actually create money every time they make a loan. And he tried to get people to realize that an expanding economy requires an expanding money supply. However the specific means he recommended for accomplishing this (based on the ideas of Gesell and C.H. Douglas) were rather impractical and quirky.

Still, you would think that if someone wants to be an expert on Pound, he would try to understand his thinking and his ideas.

Those who contribute to this list certainly don't seem to know anything about the lesson of Agassiz and the fish, for instance.

Reading this list for several weeks now, and looking at several months of archived articles, I discover that apparently the most significant things about Pound are that he was an anti-semite, that he was (or perhaps was not) a Fascist, and was (or perhaps was not) a traitor. Oh, and yes, there are some really good lines in his poetry, and he was a pretty good literary critic.

The idea seems to be that if we can just find the correct labels to pin on him, then we'll understand who the man was. And so the arguments turn on the correct meanings of the labels. What does "Fascist" really mean, what is the correct definition of "treason"? If we just had, it would seem, a sufficiently comprehensive dictionary, then we would understand everything about Pound.

In this case, I don't know that I have much to contribute here. I'm not an expert on the meanings of words such as "Fascist," "treason" and the like. It does seem to me that anti-semitism is not primarily a character defect, but rather a matter of holding opinions which are based on incorrect factual information and reasoning, but I don't know that I want to argue the point. (I live in a part of the world, incidentally --- Hawaii --- where ethnic stereotypes and ethnic prejudices are an essential part of life. One may try to be free of them, but one can't ignore their existence.)

What information I can give here may be of interest to only a few, since it has to do with my actual experience, at the age of 17 and 18, of what EP was like. I am no Pound scholar, nor do I have any interest in being one. I can give you some of my perceptions of the fish, but I can't help you in figuring out what labels to pin on him.

It has been suggested here that when Pound said, "New York bankers," he meant this as a code word for "Jews." From what I knew of EP, I would say that this has it almost backwards. Yes, anti-semitism was a constant background to Pound's conversations (or perhaps it might better to call them lectures), but over and over again he stressed that the fundamental and number one issue was economics, and in particular the monetary system. I can't claim that this is an actual quote, but I think he would have said, "If the country could just gain control over its own money, then the Jews would no longer be such a problem, because they would have lost their power." (There was also a suggestion that re-introducing Greek and Latin into the nation's schools might be a big help in this respect.)

I think that when people read the radio speeches or material such as the Agresti letters, with the frequent references to "Jewsevelt," etc., they imagine a strident tone of voice. In fact, a big part of EP's charisma was that he said these sort of things in a quiet voice of complete conviction, speaking very slowly in the hope that the listener might finally understand something completely obvious. (To the end of his life, Pound remained the "village explainer," as Gretrude Stein had once characterized him.) One can get a good idea of this, although at a much older age, on a brief BBC recording (although the content is not very interesting). Words like "Jewsevelt," and so on were said with a somewhat humorous intonation (cracker-barrel, one might say). Most of what EP said had a common-sense appeal very much like that which would later be characteristic of Ronald Reagan or H. Ross Perot. One can easily see this in books such as The ABC of Reading. And he talked about Jews in a way very similar to the way in which many people I know today talk about the Christian Right: namely, that they constituted a pernicious force whose influence (both in politically and other realms) was dangerous to American society (and to the rest of the world as well), and that it was vital that the nation needed to find a way to curb their influence.

Of course these two examples are in several ways not very comparable. Attacking a group because of the beliefs and policies they explicitly promote is not the same as attacking people purely because of their ethnicity. And not even the strongest opponents of the Christian Right suggest violent attacks on their members or on businesses owned by their members or defacing their cemeteries. Certainly none of them would watch with approval if Christian right-wingers were packed into cattle cars and sent off to death camps. There's no indication that Pound approved when the Nazis did this sort of thing to Jews either, but even his silence on the issue was disturbing.

A recurring theme in his conversation about politics, including the radio broadcasts, was the assertion that the values he championed were the same as those of America's Founding Fathers, and that these values had been treasonously discarded or distorted by leaders such as Roosevelt. Pound thus thought of himself as a much greater American patriot than those who so fiercely attacked him as a traitor.

I recently read a suggestion that Pound had set aside certain days of the week at St. Elizabeths for literary visitors, and certain others for political ones. This does not correspond to my memory at all. I definitely recall being at the hospital almost every day of the week for at least one summer, and every weekend during the school year. If some more or less distinguished literary vistor was present, then naturally Pound would talk primarily about literature, but mostly what he talked about seemed to depend both on his mood and on questions that visitors might ask. I never had any sense that he tried to conceal his political views from anyone. Quite the contrary.

When Kasper and Horton started their publishing company (later renamed the Square Dollar Press after Kasper became notorious), Pound did not instruct them to publish anti-semitic books. The only book on their list even vaguely of this nature was Mullins's book on the Federal Reserve, and anti-semitism was only a minor theme of that book.

Instead, EP had them publish Fenellosa's monograph on the Chinese character, Alexander Del Mar's rather curious little book on the history of currency, the Analects of Confucious, writings of Louis Agassiz, and maybe one of two other books of similar nature.

It is true that someone among the Pound circle (not EP himself; most likely Kasper's ex-girlfriend Nora) gave me a copy of the Protocols and a few similar anti-semitic books. I read them, thought they might conceivably be true, although a lot of the arguments were far from convincing and some of the claims were quite far-fetched. In any case, I did try being an anti-semite for a while, but after a while just got bored with it. And later on, when I did notice that someone among my circle of acquaintances was Jewish, I usually observed that he seemed to have pretty much the same interests and concerns as I did.

The things I industriously set about learning as a direct result of recommendations from EP were not a matter of right-wing politics or anti-semitism. In addition to the volumes published by the Square Dollar Press, mentioned above, I contacted a rare book dealer and bought Thomas Hart Benton's (not the artist, his father) memoir Thirty Years in the Senate and Martin van Buren's autobiography. Benton's book consisted mostly of transcripts of Senate debates, and was quite fascinating in its way, but I never did figure out what I had been intended to learn from it. Van Buren's autobiography was largely devoted to settling some now long-forgotten grievance with some other politicians. (Something about whether his election as Vice-president had been valid, as I recall.) Louis Agassiz's book was mostly devoted to disputing the theory of evolution, but I don't think that this was EP's concern.

Study of Confucius was obligatory for anyone who hung around Pound, and I dilgently studied Pound's translation of the Analects, published by the Square Dollar Press. I also got a copy of Pound's translation of the Odes, although I had a hard time understanding why Pound considered them so valuable. Then someone told me that the most crucial thing was the Li, or Book of Rites, but I don't think I was ever to locate a copy of this.

And of course I read The Law of Civilization and Decay by Brooks Adams (Henry Adams's older brother), which Pound was constantly recommending. I later read Spengler by way of comparison. My impression then was that although the two were similar, Spengler was more of a philosopher and Adams more of a historian. (As usual, I think I missed the main lesson that Pound thought one should get out of Brook Adams.)

Among literary works, Pound's comments led me to read several novels by Wyndham Lewis and Ford Madox Ford, as well as Eimi and The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings. In the Library of Congress (which in those days was open even to high school students such as myself) I was able to find issues of Blast, the Vorticist magazine edited by Pound and Wyndham Lewis.

A few years later, I subscribed to the Congressional Record for at least a year. Pound had always claimed that a lot of the nation's muddle-headedness about government might be cleared up if the Congressional Record were sold on newstands. Indeed, reading the Record is a fascinating experience, but since it doesn't record the work of Committees, one only learns a limited amount from it about the legislative process.

The more important way in which EP's influence changed my life was in the courses I chose to take in college. I already knew that I was interested in languages, and had had some French and Latin in high school. Because of knowing Pound, and having read the ABC of Reading, I now took three years of Greek in college, at which point the Classics Department suggested that I might as well apply for a second Bachelor's degree in Classics. (My primary degree was in Mathematics.) I also took three years of German, another year of Latin, and a year of classical Chinese. (Thank god nobody at the universities I went to taught Provençal!)

In addition, it was EP's influence that made me satisfy my humanities requirement by taking upper level courses in Chinese History and Greek and Roman History, rather than some freshman survey courses.

God knows what good any of this ever did me. But I hope that it will indicate that there was a little bit more to Pound's interests and ideas than anti-semitism, Fascism, radio speeches, and a few good lines of poetry.

If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.

--- Ezra Pound

To: Epound-L@Maine.Maine.Edu
Subject: Re: Visitors and fish
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 09:20:14 -1000

>Lee was there and I wasn't, but I don't think it can be correct that Pound
>was simply at home to anybody who felt like dropping in. Evidence to the
>contrary can be found on Jonathan Williams' Website,
>
>www.jargonbooks.com/ep.html

Correct. A new visitor could definitely not just drop in. The standard procedure was to write a letter to St. Elizabeth's asking for permission to visit Pound. The hospital then checked with Pound, who would make the decision. If Pound approved this request, one's name was added to the file of permitted visitors, until such time as Pound decided that one was no longer welcome. Occasionally, an especially distinguished visitor might be able to stop by the Hospital office without prior notification and be allowed in, especially if he was only in town for a few days.

On each visit, a visitor was supposed to check in with the hospital office upon arrival. I got a little lax about this after a while, and Pound asked me to please comply with standard procedure.

One of my friends in high school (I was a junior at that point) knew T. David Horton and had visited a number of times. This was undoubtedly the reason why I got approval for the first visit. I had never heard of Ezra Pound up till then and was not especially interested in poetry. But my friend Eric made it sound like visiting him would be an interesting experience.

My first visit was sometime during the winter, because Pound was receiving inside, in an alcove of the Chestnut Ward. There were about twenty people visiting that first time, which I would later learn was an unusually large crowd. Pound was in top form, talking continuously while nobody else said much of anything. I didn't understand a word he said, so I just sat there and listened and looked around at the scene.

Among the visitors was a somewhat large youthful male with a large boil on his forehead and an expression on his face that I found rather disturbing. I wondered whether this might be a fellow inmate. For all I knew, it might be possible that other inmates sometimes attended Pound's lectures. Later I would learn that this was John Chatell, who was certainly not crazy, but after I came to know him, often seemed a bit of a fool.

I was later told that the reason I was invited back after that first time was that I had sat quietly and not tried to interrupt with comments or questions.

Directory of links for Pound

Pound Page at Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY Buffalo