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Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound was born in 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey, Idaho Territory, as the only child of Homer Loomis Pound and Isabel Weston. His father had secured a job as registrar of the United States General Land Office through the influence of his own father, Thaddeus Coleman Pound, a Republican Party member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the 10th lieutenant governor of Wisconsin. Both sides of Pound's family had emigrated from England in the 17th century, with his paternal grandfather being a Quaker and his maternal ancestors including a Puritan who helped write the first Connecticut constitution. Despite this deep American heritage, Pound's early life was marked by a restlessness that would define his entire career. He attended dame schools and Cheltenham Military Academy, where he wore an American Civil War-style uniform and was taught drilling and how to shoot. By 1896, at the age of 11, he had already published his first work, a limerick about William Jennings Bryan, in the Jenkintown Times-Chronicle. His academic journey was erratic; he attended the University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College, often failing to graduate or complete degrees, yet he managed to secure a Harrison fellowship that allowed him to travel to Europe. In 1906, he stood outside the palace in Madrid during the attempted assassination of King Alfonso XIII and left the city for fear of being mistaken for an anarchist. His early years were a prelude to a life that would oscillate between the heights of literary genius and the depths of political infamy.
The Architect of Modernism
In 1908, Ezra Pound arrived in London, carrying 60 copies of his self-published collection A Lume Spento, and immediately set about dismantling the Victorian poetic tradition. He rejected the idea of poetry as a "versified moral essay," instead focusing on the individual experience and the concrete rather than the abstract. He lived in a boarding house at 8 Duchess Street before moving to 48 Langham Street, near Great Titchfield Street, where he mixed with the cream of London's literary circle, including W. B. Yeats, Laurence Binyon, and Ernest Rhys. It was in this environment that he founded the Imagist movement, a revolution in poetry that demanded precision and economy of language. In 1913, he edited one of H.D.'s poems and wrote "H.D. Imagiste" underneath, marking the founding of the movement. He insisted that poets should "go in fear of abstractions" and avoid superfluous words, a principle that would define the modernist aesthetic. His influence extended beyond his own work; he became the discoverer and shaper of contemporaries such as H.D., Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the 1915 publication of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses. Hemingway later wrote that for poets born in the late 19th or early 20th century, not to be influenced by Pound would be "like passing through a great blizzard and not feeling its cold." Pound's energy was relentless; he wrote music reviews as William Atheling and art reviews as B. H. Dias, and he edited three literary magazines simultaneously, exhausting himself in the process.
Where was Ezra Pound born and what was his family background?
Ezra Pound was born in 1885 in a two-story clapboard house in Hailey, Idaho Territory, as the only child of Homer Loomis Pound and Isabel Weston. His family emigrated from England in the 17th century, with his paternal grandfather being a Quaker and his maternal ancestors including a Puritan who helped write the first Connecticut constitution.
When did Ezra Pound found the Imagist movement and what were its core principles?
Ezra Pound founded the Imagist movement in 1913 when he edited one of H.D.'s poems and wrote H.D. Imagiste underneath. The movement demanded precision and economy of language, insisting that poets should go in fear of abstractions and avoid superfluous words.
Why did Ezra Pound move to Italy and what political views did he adopt there?
Ezra Pound moved to Rapallo, Italy, in 1924 seeking a quieter life, but his political views radicalized to embrace the economic theory of social credit developed by C. H. Douglas. He came to believe that World War I was caused by finance capitalism called usury and that Jews were to blame, eventually praising Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
What happened to Ezra Pound during World War II and how was he punished?
During World War II, Ezra Pound recorded hundreds of paid radio propaganda broadcasts for the fascist Italian government and its later incarnation as the Salò Republic. He was captured by the Italian Resistance in 1945, held in a U.S. military detention camp near Pisa including three weeks in an outdoor steel cage known as the Pound Cage, and later incarcerated for over 12 years at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C.
When did Ezra Pound die and what was his final literary work?
Ezra Pound died on the 1st of November 1972, at the age of 86, while remaining in Italy. He continued to work on The Cantos until his death, with the final complete canto, Canto CXVI, published in 1962.
By 1921, Ezra Pound felt there was no reason to stay in England, having become "violently hostile" to the country and its literary circles. He moved to Paris, where he became friendly with Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, and Tristan Tzara, but his life took a darker turn when he met the 26-year-old American violinist Olga Rudge in the summer of 1922. They were introduced at a salon hosted by the American heiress Natalie Barney, and although Pound was married to Dorothy Shakespear, he began a long-term relationship with Rudge. In 1925, Rudge gave birth to a daughter, Maria, whom Pound placed with a German-speaking peasant woman in Gais, South Tyrol, because he believed that motherhood ruined women. The couple moved to Rapallo, Italy, in 1924, seeking a quieter life, but Pound's political views began to radicalize. He came to believe that World War I had been caused by finance capitalism, which he called "usury," and that the Jews had been to blame. He embraced the economic theory of social credit, developed by C. H. Douglas, and began to write over 1,000 letters a year throughout the 1930s, promoting his ideas. His antisemitism deepened with the introduction of the Italian racial laws in 1938, and he began to praise Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In 1933, he met Mussolini at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, where he handed the dictator a copy of A Draft of XXX Cantos. Mussolini reportedly said of a passage Pound highlighted that it was not English, and Pound replied, "No, it's my idea of the way a continental Jew would speak English," to which Mussolini replied, "How entertaining." This meeting left Pound feeling that he had become a person of influence, someone who had been consulted by a head of state.
The Radio Traitor
During World War II, Ezra Pound recorded hundreds of paid radio propaganda broadcasts for the fascist Italian government and its later incarnation as a German puppet state, the Salò Republic. He attacked the United States government, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Britain, international finance, the arms industry, Jews, and others as abettors and prolongers of the war. He also praised both eugenics and the Holocaust in Italy, while urging American GIs to throw down their rifles and surrender. His broadcasts were filled with virulent antisemitism, and he wrote to a friend in 1942, "Your enemy is Das Leihkapital, international, wandering Loan Capital. Your enemy is not Germany, your enemy is money on loan." In 1945, Pound was captured by the Italian Resistance and handed over to the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps, who held him pending extradition and prosecution based on an indictment for treason. He spent months in a U.S. military detention camp near Pisa, including three weeks in an outdoor steel cage known as the "Pound Cage." Ruled mentally unfit to stand trial, Pound was incarcerated for over 12 years at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. During his time in the cage, he continued work on The Cantos, which was published by New Directions in 1948 as The Pisan Cantos. For this work, Pound was awarded the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1949 by the American Library of Congress, leading to enormous controversy. The prize was awarded despite his treasonous activities, and the decision sparked a fierce debate among poets and critics about the separation of art from the artist.
The Final Years
After a campaign by his fellow writers, Ezra Pound was released from St. Elizabeths Hospital in 1958 and returned to Italy, where he posed for the press giving the Fascist salute and called the United States "an insane asylum." He remained in Italy until his death on the 1st of November 1972, at the age of 86. His economic and political views have ensured that his life and literary legacy remain highly controversial. Despite his treason, Pound continued to work on The Cantos, which he described as a "cryselephantine poem of immeasurable length which will occupy me for the next four decades unless it becomes a bore." The final complete canto, Canto CXVI, was published in 1962, and in it, Pound wrote that he could not "make it cohere," although a few lines later, referring to the universe, he stated, "it coheres all right / even if my notes do not cohere." His life was a paradox: a man who helped create modernist poetry while simultaneously advocating for the very forces that would destroy the world. He was a patron of the arts, a discoverer of genius, and a traitor to his country. His story is a testament to the complexity of the human spirit, where brilliance and madness, love and hate, creation and destruction, are inextricably linked.