The Belgravia Dispatch: Young Pound

January 14, 2007

Young Pound

(Photo Credit: by Elliott and Fry, courtesy of Mrs. Donald Wing, via "collected early poems of Ezra Pound)

Ezra Pound, during his early career, writing a poem entitled "Revolt against the Crepuscular Spirit in Modern Poetry":

I would shake off the lethargy of this our time,
and give
For shadows – shapes of power
For dreams–men.

"It is better to dream than to do"?
Aye! and, No!

Aye! if we dream great deeds, strong men,

Hearts hot, thoughts mighty.

No! if we dream pale flowers,

Slow-moving pageantry of hours that languidly

Drop as o’er-ripened fruit from sallow trees.

If so we live and die not life but dreams,

Great God, grant life in dreams,

Not dalliance, but life!

Let us be men that dream,

Not cowards, dabblers, waiters

For dead Time to reawaken and grant balm

For ills unnamed.

Great God, if we be damn’d to be not men but only dreams,

Then let us be such dreams the world shall tremble at

And know we be its rulers though but dreams!

Then let us be such shadows as the world shall tremble at

And know we be its masters though but shadow!

Great God, if men are grown but pale sick phantoms

That must live only in those mists and tempered lights

And tremble for dim hours that knock o’er loud

Or tread too violent in passing them;

Great God, if these thy sons are grown such thin ephemera,

I bid thee grapple chaos and beget

Some new titanic spawn to pile the hills and stir

This earth again.

While I very much enjoy early Pound, of late I can't help re-reading him and shuddering to think such hotted up adolescent thoughts, while making for superb poetry, too often pass for policymaking in certain faith-based adventurist quarters of Washington these past years (imagine VDH's audiences w/ Cheney, for example).

Posted by Gregory at January 14, 2007 04:07 AM

Comments

Pond should have been shot at the end of WWII - he was a fascist and a traitor to his country.

Posted by: pen Name at January 14, 2007 04:55 AM | Permalink to this comment

Pound lent great comfort and support to the most important writer since Shakespeare, James Joyce - and was also a Nazi sympathizer - thus teaching us a great lesson we know but can never understand: people are really impossible things, really, just awful creatures.

Also another good lesson from that coiffed reactionary: mediocre writers are dangerous people. Seems counter intuitive, but no - Plato knew what to do with them.

Posted by: cull tech at January 14, 2007 01:27 PM | Permalink to this comment

Pound was one strange dude. Mentor to T.S. Eliot when he wrote his best poem. And to James JEsus Angleton in the late '30s. And said horrible things, in wartime.

Gilbert Highet's only funny joke, ever: on hearing Pound was born in Idaho, he called him the "Idaho poeta."

Dan

Posted by: Dan Tompkins at January 14, 2007 08:07 PM | Permalink to this comment

and was also a Nazi sympathizer

When did Pound support the Nazis (as opposed to the Fascisti)?

Po[u]nd should have been shot at the end of WWII - he was a fascist and a traitor to his country.

Nowadays, he's be in Gitmo indefinitely. But we were too sensible to shoot poets in 1945.

Posted by: Anderson at January 15, 2007 05:20 PM | Permalink to this comment

"Nowadays, he's be in Gitmo indefinitely. But we were too sensible to shoot poets in 1945."

Refresh my memory; When did we send Michael Moore to Gitmo indefinitely? o_O

But it's amusing to see that Greg sneered at faith-based adventurers the day before we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King. ^_~

Posted by: Towering Barbarian at January 16, 2007 04:54 AM | Permalink to this comment

Towering Barbarian is amusing when he touts the faith based adventurers of days gone by like the left leaning MLK, when news of the day suggest someone a bit more conservative - From the Summer of 2006 :

"As to the Arab rulers, I don’t want to ask you about your history. I just want to say a few words. We are adventurers. We in Hizballah are adventurers, yes. But we have been adventurers since 1982. And we have brought to our country only victory, freedom, liberation, dignity, honor, and pride. This is our history. This is our experience. This is our adventure. In the year 1982 you said and the world said that we were crazy. But we proved that we were the rational ones, so who then was crazy? This is something else and I don’t want to get into an argument with anyone. So I tell them simply: go bet on your reason and we will bet on our adventure, with God as our Supporter and Benefactor. We have never for one day counted on you. We have trusted in God, our people, our hearts, our hands, and our children. Today we do the same, and God willing, victory will follow ..." (Hassan Nasrallah)

Hopefully our new head of Central Command will learn the proper lessons from Halutz's resignation.

But speaking of MLK - if you listen to his family or his late wife, he may be the last person a hawk, faith base or not, would want to invoke regarding the Middle East. Jimmy Carter is practically a Bushian by comparison.

Posted by: Observed at January 17, 2007 09:40 PM | Permalink to this comment

I could be wrong, and I certainly have no evidence of how this might have been managed behind the scenes, but didn't Pound win the Bollingen Prize(administered by the Library of Congress)for the Pisan Cantos, while on trial for treason? I can just see that--one part of the gummint bestowing an award on him while the other's gettin' ready to offer him his last smoke.

Pound is one of those poets that is very hard to like--either for his politics or his poetry. Yes, he's immensely important--not just for The Wasteland--but for helping to coalesce an american poetic identity--he was very important in the career of Frost, Williams, and many others. His poetry, well, back when I was actually reading his early stuff, I found it a bit too self-important and a bit too close to self-promoting. For instance, the "translation" of "The Wanderer" is no translation at all--nor is it a BAD poem, but to read it as a translation is to have no idea of what a good translation is, and to get no sense of what Anglo-Saxon poetry might have been.

As he got older he seems to have embraced a bit of the Joycean notion that it was desirable to write verse(in Joyce's case the novel,"Finnegan's Wake")that was essentially impenetrable to all but his most devoted acolytes. Of course, by saying that I cast myself into the darkness of ignorance. But for technical splendor and no small political awareness, I'll take Auden any day--over anyone in that era--except perhaps for Yeats(and Auden's elegy for Yeats is just about perfect--accessible yet incredibly complex). Pound not only couldn't stop taking himself seriously, during the war, he couldn't resist the lure of the microphone--making himself no better than Tokyo Rose.

Posted by: Carwinrpc at January 18, 2007 06:43 PM | Permalink to this comment

	« Valor and Sacrifice \| Main \| Kurd Sell-Out Watch? » January 14, 2007 Young Pound (Photo Credit: by Elliott and Fry, courtesy of Mrs. Donald Wing, via "collected early poems of Ezra Pound) Ezra Pound, during his early career, writing a poem entitled "Revolt against the Crepuscular Spirit in Modern Poetry": I would shake off the lethargy of this our time, and give For shadows – shapes of power For dreams–men. "It is better to dream than to do"? Aye! and, No! Aye! if we dream great deeds, strong men, Hearts hot, thoughts mighty. No! if we dream pale flowers, Slow-moving pageantry of hours that languidly Drop as o’er-ripened fruit from sallow trees. If so we live and die not life but dreams, Great God, grant life in dreams, Not dalliance, but life! Let us be men that dream, Not cowards, dabblers, waiters For dead Time to reawaken and grant balm For ills unnamed. Great God, if we be damn’d to be not men but only dreams, Then let us be such dreams the world shall tremble at And know we be its rulers though but dreams! Then let us be such shadows as the world shall tremble at And know we be its masters though but shadow! Great God, if men are grown but pale sick phantoms That must live only in those mists and tempered lights And tremble for dim hours that knock o’er loud Or tread too violent in passing them; Great God, if these thy sons are grown such thin ephemera, I bid thee grapple chaos and beget Some new titanic spawn to pile the hills and stir This earth again. While I very much enjoy early Pound, of late I can't help re-reading him and shuddering to think such hotted up adolescent thoughts, while making for superb poetry, too often pass for policymaking in certain faith-based adventurist quarters of Washington these past years (imagine VDH's audiences w/ Cheney, for example). Posted by Gregory at January 14, 2007 04:07 AM Comments Pond should have been shot at the end of WWII - he was a fascist and a traitor to his country. Posted by: pen Name at January 14, 2007 04:55 AM \| Permalink to this comment Pound lent great comfort and support to the most important writer since Shakespeare, James Joyce - and was also a Nazi sympathizer - thus teaching us a great lesson we know but can never understand: people are really impossible things, really, just awful creatures. Also another good lesson from that coiffed reactionary: mediocre writers are dangerous people. Seems counter intuitive, but no - Plato knew what to do with them. Posted by: cull tech at January 14, 2007 01:27 PM \| Permalink to this comment Pound was one strange dude. Mentor to T.S. Eliot when he wrote his best poem. And to James JEsus Angleton in the late '30s. And said horrible things, in wartime. Gilbert Highet's only funny joke, ever: on hearing Pound was born in Idaho, he called him the "Idaho poeta." Dan Posted by: Dan Tompkins at January 14, 2007 08:07 PM \| Permalink to this comment and was also a Nazi sympathizer When did Pound support the Nazis (as opposed to the Fascisti)? Po[u]nd should have been shot at the end of WWII - he was a fascist and a traitor to his country. Nowadays, he's be in Gitmo indefinitely. But we were too sensible to shoot poets in 1945. Posted by: Anderson at January 15, 2007 05:20 PM \| Permalink to this comment "Nowadays, he's be in Gitmo indefinitely. But we were too sensible to shoot poets in 1945." Refresh my memory; When did we send Michael Moore to Gitmo indefinitely? o_O But it's amusing to see that Greg sneered at faith-based adventurers the day before we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King. ^_~ Posted by: Towering Barbarian at January 16, 2007 04:54 AM \| Permalink to this comment Towering Barbarian is amusing when he touts the faith based adventurers of days gone by like the left leaning MLK, when news of the day suggest someone a bit more conservative - From the Summer of 2006 : "As to the Arab rulers, I don’t want to ask you about your history. I just want to say a few words. We are adventurers. We in Hizballah are adventurers, yes. But we have been adventurers since 1982. And we have brought to our country only victory, freedom, liberation, dignity, honor, and pride. This is our history. This is our experience. This is our adventure. In the year 1982 you said and the world said that we were crazy. But we proved that we were the rational ones, so who then was crazy? This is something else and I don’t want to get into an argument with anyone. So I tell them simply: go bet on your reason and we will bet on our adventure, with God as our Supporter and Benefactor. We have never for one day counted on you. We have trusted in God, our people, our hearts, our hands, and our children. Today we do the same, and God willing, victory will follow ..." (Hassan Nasrallah) Hopefully our new head of Central Command will learn the proper lessons from Halutz's resignation. But speaking of MLK - if you listen to his family or his late wife, he may be the last person a hawk, faith base or not, would want to invoke regarding the Middle East. Jimmy Carter is practically a Bushian by comparison. Posted by: Observed at January 17, 2007 09:40 PM \| Permalink to this comment I could be wrong, and I certainly have no evidence of how this might have been managed behind the scenes, but didn't Pound win the Bollingen Prize(administered by the Library of Congress)for the Pisan Cantos, while on trial for treason? I can just see that--one part of the gummint bestowing an award on him while the other's gettin' ready to offer him his last smoke. Pound is one of those poets that is very hard to like--either for his politics or his poetry. Yes, he's immensely important--not just for The Wasteland--but for helping to coalesce an american poetic identity--he was very important in the career of Frost, Williams, and many others. His poetry, well, back when I was actually reading his early stuff, I found it a bit too self-important and a bit too close to self-promoting. For instance, the "translation" of "The Wanderer" is no translation at all--nor is it a BAD poem, but to read it as a translation is to have no idea of what a good translation is, and to get no sense of what Anglo-Saxon poetry might have been. As he got older he seems to have embraced a bit of the Joycean notion that it was desirable to write verse(in Joyce's case the novel,"Finnegan's Wake")that was essentially impenetrable to all but his most devoted acolytes. Of course, by saying that I cast myself into the darkness of ignorance. But for technical splendor and no small political awareness, I'll take Auden any day--over anyone in that era--except perhaps for Yeats(and Auden's elegy for Yeats is just about perfect--accessible yet incredibly complex). Pound not only couldn't stop taking himself seriously, during the war, he couldn't resist the lure of the microphone--making himself no better than Tokyo Rose. Posted by: Carwinrpc at January 18, 2007 06:43 PM \| Permalink to this comment		About Belgravia Dispatch Gregory Djerejian, an international lawyer and business executive, comments intermittently on global politics, finance & diplomacy at this site. The views expressed herein are solely his own and do not represent those of any organization. More About the Author Email the Author Recent Entries Lunch w/ the FT... 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