As A. David Moody admits, it is not easy to write about Ezra Pound. He left a huge output of prose, poetry and, especially, letters, in which he is given to extensive self-fashioning. The pictures he paints of himself are at loggerheads with each other, and with the descriptions of him by others, which themselves are often self-contradictory. William Carlos Williams, a close friend, good-humouredly thought him ‘Artificial,’ for example. If Pound’s character is not always obvious to understand, then his poetry is more or less never obvious.
Yet it is the link between the man and his work, as suggested by the title, which Moody uses as his “key” to crack the Pound code. As such, this is the first critical biography of Pound, and it is invaluable. It becomes clear that to understand Pound, one must read his character alongside his writings. He would have agreed. Leaving America for London, via Venice, Pound wanted to be known strictly as a poet (rather than as a man who writes poetry). His voice, according to Moody in a discussion of the 1908 collection A Quinzaine for this Yule, was ‘a voice of pure poetry.’ At times, mainly in his early life, Pound’s affecting and infectious enthusiasm for poetry was not balanced by an unreservedly happy social life. Pound said, ‘I don’t suppose anyone can live in books steadily & not get grouched occasionally.’
To chart the development of Pound is to chart the invention of Modernism, for want of better terms. His aim, to become by living in books a flawless artist, was achieved (if we allow the idea of flawlessness). Not merely a book about Pound, then, Moody presents a panorama of the main proponents of Modernism, as well as its lesser-known precursors. Describing Pound’s successful search for Yeats and, later, Joyce, Moody enlivens the interactions which would go on to form modern literature. It is undeniable that Pound was not only at the centre of it all, but the centre itself. For example, he founded Imagism (although, as Moody recognises, this is debated), and experimented with Vorticism. Some people go so far as to say that Pound was co-writer, by being editor, of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), the exemplary Modernist poem. In any case, it can be argued that Pound made it a Modernist poem. Without reservation, Moody credits him as being the most important exponent during this period of vers libre, ‘disturbing the established order’ as he did throughout his life.
Pound’s revolutionary drive, linking his early aesthetic and the epic Cantos, was, in Moody’s words, ‘to set a strong dream at the heart of the everyday world.’ In London it soon became clear to Pound that this would involve injecting American energies into old world, European civilization, and indeed Europe was to Americans the locus fo culture. Developments around this theme are to a great extent the story of Modernism, and will appear in Volume Two of this study. This will be indispensable, and Volume One, ending with Pound bidding farewell to London for Paris, is enticing, a beginning in itself.
This is both literary criticism and a biography of human comedy and tragedy. The latter of course will be the defining feature of Volume Two due to Pound’s subsequent politics. Moody has an understated and moving capacity of earning sympathy for Pound through simple stating of sadness. For example, Pound ‘was perceived by his classmates as having little to do with them. For his birthday, 30 October 1904, he took himself to Il Trovatore in nearby Utica.’ Pound had to work to find fame, defeating his loneliness in London to know, surely without exception, everyone literary of the period whom one might talk about. This is to some extent the overriding narrative of the book.
In one of his many important dicta, Pound announced that ‘Literature is news that stays news’, and really the great achievement of this book is its animation of the man and of his effect on the literary scene, making them news again. The tone is at once informative, anecdotal, serious, literary critical, and always enjoyably readable. Moody makes Pound and his world vibrantly current. After all, Pound, indulging from early on in Celtic and Romance languages and literature in a foreshadowing of his and Eliot’s use of allusion, believed that the ‘old gods’ of literature are current, that their ideas, expressed in poetry, were “indestructible”. Pound, perhaps in some cases more referred to than read, is here an old god made current, fuelling the idea that the aims and causes of Modernism are not irrelevant today. Pound is, then, not old, and after all, if poetry, as T. S. Eliot ordered, must be ‘difficult’, why would it have become “easy” since then?
Ezra Pound: Poet: The Young Genius 1885-1920 v. 1 is published by Oxford University Press at £25.0
Yet it is the link between the man and his work, as suggested by the title, which Moody uses as his “key” to crack the Pound code. As such, this is the first critical biography of Pound, and it is invaluable. It becomes clear that to understand Pound, one must read his character alongside his writings. He would have agreed. Leaving America for London, via Venice, Pound wanted to be known strictly as a poet (rather than as a man who writes poetry). His voice, according to Moody in a discussion of the 1908 collection A Quinzaine for this Yule, was ‘a voice of pure poetry.’ At times, mainly in his early life, Pound’s affecting and infectious enthusiasm for poetry was not balanced by an unreservedly happy social life. Pound said, ‘I don’t suppose anyone can live in books steadily & not get grouched occasionally.’
To chart the development of Pound is to chart the invention of Modernism, for want of better terms. His aim, to become by living in books a flawless artist, was achieved (if we allow the idea of flawlessness). Not merely a book about Pound, then, Moody presents a panorama of the main proponents of Modernism, as well as its lesser-known precursors. Describing Pound’s successful search for Yeats and, later, Joyce, Moody enlivens the interactions which would go on to form modern literature. It is undeniable that Pound was not only at the centre of it all, but the centre itself. For example, he founded Imagism (although, as Moody recognises, this is debated), and experimented with Vorticism. Some people go so far as to say that Pound was co-writer, by being editor, of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), the exemplary Modernist poem. In any case, it can be argued that Pound made it a Modernist poem. Without reservation, Moody credits him as being the most important exponent during this period of vers libre, ‘disturbing the established order’ as he did throughout his life.
Pound’s revolutionary drive, linking his early aesthetic and the epic Cantos, was, in Moody’s words, ‘to set a strong dream at the heart of the everyday world.’ In London it soon became clear to Pound that this would involve injecting American energies into old world, European civilization, and indeed Europe was to Americans the locus fo culture. Developments around this theme are to a great extent the story of Modernism, and will appear in Volume Two of this study. This will be indispensable, and Volume One, ending with Pound bidding farewell to London for Paris, is enticing, a beginning in itself.
This is both literary criticism and a biography of human comedy and tragedy. The latter of course will be the defining feature of Volume Two due to Pound’s subsequent politics. Moody has an understated and moving capacity of earning sympathy for Pound through simple stating of sadness. For example, Pound ‘was perceived by his classmates as having little to do with them. For his birthday, 30 October 1904, he took himself to Il Trovatore in nearby Utica.’ Pound had to work to find fame, defeating his loneliness in London to know, surely without exception, everyone literary of the period whom one might talk about. This is to some extent the overriding narrative of the book.
In one of his many important dicta, Pound announced that ‘Literature is news that stays news’, and really the great achievement of this book is its animation of the man and of his effect on the literary scene, making them news again. The tone is at once informative, anecdotal, serious, literary critical, and always enjoyably readable. Moody makes Pound and his world vibrantly current. After all, Pound, indulging from early on in Celtic and Romance languages and literature in a foreshadowing of his and Eliot’s use of allusion, believed that the ‘old gods’ of literature are current, that their ideas, expressed in poetry, were “indestructible”. Pound, perhaps in some cases more referred to than read, is here an old god made current, fuelling the idea that the aims and causes of Modernism are not irrelevant today. Pound is, then, not old, and after all, if poetry, as T. S. Eliot ordered, must be ‘difficult’, why would it have become “easy” since then?
Ezra Pound: Poet: The Young Genius 1885-1920 v. 1 is published by Oxford University Press at £25.0
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