While in Japan, Fenollosa undertook the intensive study of Chinese poetry, especially the work of Li Po (Rihaku, in Japanese). The last topic Fenollosa studied before leaving Japan was the Chinese writing system, preparing an essay on the written character of Chinese literature. The work, which Pound edited and would publish in 1919, strongly influenced Pound’s ideas of poetry and the Orient. Fenollosa believed that Chinese characters are actually representations of ideas (ideograms), which present concepts in visual forms. This paralleled Pound’s work at the time on Imagism, in which he was seeking a visually focused poetry. In a later work, ABC of Reading (1934), Pound elaborates these concepts, claiming that Fenollosa’s essay is “the first definite assertion of the applicability of scientific method to literary criticism” (ABC, 18).
Pound declares that Fenollosa “was perhaps too far ahead of his time to be easily comprehended” (ABC, 19). In contrast to European thought, which defines by abstraction, Chinese thought, as stated by Fenollosa, defines in terms of science, of exactitude through a language based on sight, not sound (ABC, 20). The ideogram is not a “written sign recalling a sound” but “the picture of the thing, ... it means the thing or the actions or situation, or quality germane to the several things that it pictures” (ABC, 21). To define “red,” for example, the Chinese writer puts together the abbreviated pictures of a rose, iron rust, cherry, and flamingo. Essentially, Fenollosa for Pound “was telling how and why a language written in this way simply HAD TO STAY POETIC” (ABC, 22).
In Fenollosa, Pound found confirmation of his commitment to “the efficiency of verbal manifestation”: “a general statement,” he announces, is “valuable only in REFERENCE to the known objects or facts” that the ideogram represents (ABC, 27, 26). Practically, this meant the use of transitive verbs and avoidance of “is.” English, Fenollosa writes, has a “lazy satisfaction with nouns and adjectives.” Pound, however, did not know the sound of Chinese and faced the dilemma of translating Chinese concept figurations with Japanese sound values (Fenollosa’s preferred medium). Only when he received R. H. Mathews’s Chinese-English dictionary years later, which organized characters by their sounds rather than by their radicals, would Pound begin to understand the phonetic structure of the language. However, the aesthetic value of the ideogram as understood in Fenollosa’s essay was incalculable for Pound’s developing aesthetic.
Pound’s early writings in poetry and prose reveal the direction of his later work. His ideas about language, history, reading, and influence are apparent, whether in the experimental Homage to Sextus Propertius, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, or “Three Cantos,” or in essays like “Imagism” or “The Serious Artist.” Pound’s work up to 1923, when he confidently asserts in “Criticism in General” three broad divisions for poetry: melopoeia—when words are charged with musical properties; phanopoeia—“a casting of images upon the visual imagination”; and logopoeia—“the dance of the intellect upon words,” charts his later work. Earlier, in 1915, Pound told Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry magazine, that in good writing “there must be no clichés, set phrases, stereotyped journalese. The only escape from such is by precision, a result of concentrated attention to what is writing ... objectivity and again objectivity” (SL, 49). As his writing up to 1923 evolves, he achieves this goal.
Pound and his wife, Dorothy, spent from January through April 1923 in Italy, anticipating their future residence there (1924-1945; 1958-1972). The period also initiated new work on The Cantos as Pound explored the life of Sigismundo Malatesta, the fifteenth-century condottiere and art patron of Rimini. In 1923, he also continued to develop his opera on Villon, now with the assistance of the composer George Antheil; reworked the opening of The Cantos (making part of Canto III the new beginning of Canto I); published an autobiographical volume, Indiscretions; and saw three of the Malatesta Cantos in print in Eliot’s Criterion. But none of these developments could have occurred without the writing and ideas formulated between 1908 and 1923.
In the material that follows, footnotes are by Pound, endnotes are by the editor. Because the texts for Pound’s essays follow those of their first publication, the punctuation reflects differing British and American practices.
Abbreviations
ABC—ABC of Reading. New York: New Directions, 1960.
Albright—Daniel Albright, “Early Cantos I-XLI,” The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound. Ed. Ira B. Nadel. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Cantos—The Cantos of Ezra Pound. 13th printing. New York: New Directions, 1995.
CEP—Collected Early Poems. Ed. Michael John King. New York: New Directions, 1976.
CSP—Collected Shorter Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1968.
Davie—Donald Davie. Pound. London: Fontana, 1975. GB—Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir. New York: New Directions, 1970.
GK—Guide to Kulchur. New York: New Directions, 1970.
LE—Literary Essays. Ed. T. S. Eliot. New York: New Directions, 1968.
Makin—Peter Makin, Provence and Pound. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
PER—Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound. Revised edition. Ed. Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz. New York: New Directions, 1990.
SL—Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941. Ed. D. D. Paige. New York: New Directions, 1971.
SP—Selected Prose, 1909-1965. Ed. William Cookson. London: Faber and Faber, 1973.
SPo—Selected Poems of Ezra Pound. Ed. T. S. Eliot. London: Faber and Faber, 1928.
SR—The Spirit of Romance. New York: New Directions, 1968.
Suggestions for Further Reading
BIOGRAPHY
Brooker, Peter. Bohemia in London: The Social Scene of Early Modernism. London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2004. Pound, Lewis, Eliot, and Ford engage in poetry, ideas, and gossip.
Carpenter, Humphrey. A Serious Character : The Life of Ezra Pound. London: Faber and Faber, 1988. A massive account of his life.
Hutchins, Patricia. Ezra Pound’s Kensington: An Exploration, 1885-1913. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1965. A glimpse at Pound’s Kensington period.
Nadel, Ira B. Ezra Pound: A Literary Life. London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2004. A concise life emphasizing his literary development and current scholarship.
Pound, Ezra. Indiscretions. Paris: Three Mountains Press, 1923. Reprinted in Pound, Pavannes and Divigations. New York: New Directions, 1958. Pound’s autobiographical essay.
—Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941. Ed. D. D. Paige. New York: New Directions, 1971. Crucial reading recording Pound’s emerging aesthetic, politics, and opinions.
—Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters, 1909-1914. Ed. Omar Pound and A. Walton Litz. New York: New Directions, 1984. An important record of their early relationship.
—A Walking Tour in Southern France. Ed. Richard Sieburth. New York: New Directions, 1992. Pound’s 1912 trip through southern France, drawn from his notebooks.
Stock, Noel. The Life of Ezra Pound. New York: Pantheon, 1970. An early life of the poet.
CRITICISM AND POETRY
Bornstein, George, ed. Pound Among the Poets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Bush, Ronald. The Genesis of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Espey, John J. Ezra Pound’s Mauberley: A Study in Composition. London: Faber and Faber, 1955.
Gallup, Donald. Ezra Pound, A Bibliography. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983. The standard bibliography.
Grieve, Thomas F. Ezra Pound’s Early Poetry and Poetics. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
Homberger, Eric, ed. Ezra Pound: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972. Important collection of criticism and commentary from 1904 to 1970.
Kenner, Hugh. The Poetry of Ezra Pound. 1951. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.
The Pound Era. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
Pound, Ezra. ABC of Reading. 1934. Reprint, New York
: New Directions, 1960.
Literary Essays. Ed. T. S. Eliot. 1954. Reprint, New York: New Directions, 1968.
Guide to Kulchur. 1938. Reprint, New York: New Directions, 1970.
The Spirit of Romance. 1910. Reprint, New York: New Directions, 1968.
Personae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound. Revised edition, ed. Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz. New York: New Directions, 1990.
Poems and Translations. Ed. Richard Sieburth. New York: Library of America, 2003. A comprehensive anthology, excluding The Cantos.
Ruthven, K. K. A Guide to Ezra Pound’s Personae (1926). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
Sullivan, J. P., ed. Ezra Pound: A Critical Anthology. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. Criticism by and about Pound.
Witemeyer, Hugh. The Poetry of Ezra Pound: Forms and Renewal, 1908-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
Brief Chronology
1885 Ezra Loomis Pound born on October 30 in Hailey, Idaho, to Homer Pound and Isabel Weston Pound. Pound’s grandfather was a congressman from Wisconsin whose connections obtained an appointment for his son, Homer, in the Idaho Territories as registrar of the Government Land Office.
1887 The Pounds leave Hailey for New York City, where they live with Uncle Ezra and Aunt Frank Weston.
1889-1897 Homer Pound becomes assistant assayer at the United States Mint in Philadelphia, where he will work until he retires in 1928. Family settles first in Jenkintown and then moves to the adjacent suburb of Wyncote. The young Ezra, nicknamed “Ra” (pronounced “Ray”), publishes his first poem in 1896, a limerick on the defeat of William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election. Poem appears in the Jenkintown Times-Chronicle. After several years in public school, enters Cheltenham Military Academy in 1897, where he learns Latin, fencing, tennis, and chess.
1898 First grand tour of Europe with his mother and her aunt Frank. Visits England, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy.
1901 Enters the University of Pennsylvania at age fifteen. Meets William Brooke Smith, a young artist, and Hilda Doolittle (later known as the Imagist poet H.D.).
1902 In the summer travels again to Europe with his parents and Aunt Frank. Also visits Gibraltar and Morocco. On return to Penn, meets William Carlos Williams, a medical student two years older than himself. However, Pound’s broader reading makes him Williams’s poetic mentor.
1903 Poor grades necessitate Pound’s transfer to Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, where he studies Romance languages and Anglo-Saxon.
1905 Graduates from Hamilton College with his bachelor’s degree and publishes a translation from Provençal in the Hamilton Literary Magazine. Reads Dante and considers writing a modern epic based on The Divine Comedy. Begins graduate study at University of Pennsylvania; sees a great deal of Hilda Doolittle, for whom he forms an anthology of his early poems that he calls “Hilda’s Book.”
1906-1907. Receives M.A. degree in Romance languages and a fellowship for summer doctoral work in Spain on the plays of Lope de Vega. Sails to Gibraltar and visits Madrid, Burgos, Paris, and London. He returns to the University of Pennsylvania in the fall but fails a literary criticism course and becomes disillusioned with his professors. Learns in 1907 that his fellowship will not be renewed. Accepts job in Crawfordsville, Indiana, at Wabash College, where he teaches Spanish and French.
1908 Accused of harboring an actress in his rooms overnight by his landladies, he is dismissed from Wabash. Spurned in love by both Mary Moore of Trenton, New Jersey, and Hilda Doolittle. Father agrees to underwrite a trip to Europe in pursuit of Pound’s becoming a poet. Sails in March and ends up in Venice, publishing A Lume Spento at his own expense. Moves to London in mid-August and begins to meet literary figures through publisher Elkin Mathews. Publishes A Quinzaine for This Yule.
1909 Delivers six lectures on literature of southern Europe, which he will revise and later publish as The Spirit of Romance. Meets Olivia Shakespear and her daughter Dorothy. A romance with Dorothy follows, leading to their marriage in 1914. Through May Sinclair meets Ford Madox Hueffer, who prints “Sestina: Altaforte” in his English Review. Mathews publishes Personae in April. Attends meetings of the Poets’ Club and that of the Secessionist Club founded by T. E. Hulme and F. S. Flint. Meets Wyndham Lewis, D. H. Lawrence, and Yeats.
1910 Completes second set of lectures on medieval literature, to be published with the first as The Spirit of Romance. Romantically linked with a series of women. William Carlos Williams visits. Leaves for Paris in March and, through the pianist Walter Morse Rummel, meets Margaret Cravens, who becomes his patron. Travels to Sirmione on Lago di Garda, where he is joined by Olivia and Dorothy Shakespear. Works on a translation of Guido Cavalcanti. In June, returns to United States, dividing his time between Philadelphia and New York, seeking either to start a business or an academic career. Provença, an American edition of his poems, appears in November. Meets Yeats’s father, then living and painting in New York; he, in turn, puts Pound in contact with New York lawyer and patron John Quinn. Renews contact with Hilda Doolittle, who is unaware of Pound’s involvement with Dorothy Shakespear. Doolittle considers herself Pound’s fiancée.
1911 Returns to London in February but immediately heads to Paris, where he works on a translation of the troubadour poet Arnaut Daniel and collaborates with Rummel on musical settings of troubadour poetry. Mathews brings out Canzoni. Translates “The Seafarer” from Anglo-Saxon while at Sirmione in July. Travels to Germany to meet Hueffer, who dismisses Pound’s archaic diction and urges him to concentrate on contemporary language. In London, meets A. R. Or-age, editor of The New Age, where he will begin to publish. Friendship with Yeats becomes closer. Hilda Doolittle arrives to learn that Pound intends to marry Dorothy Shakespear.
1912 Meets Henry James through Hueffer. Cavalcanti appears in May, Ripostes in October. Introduces Richard Aldington to Hilda Doolittle and they are soon a couple. To Paris in the spring, where he works on Provençal manuscripts. A walking tour in southern France through troubadour country is cut short by learning of Margaret Cravens’s suicide in Paris. Returns to London in August and by the fall begins to promote his new school, Imagism. Contacted in August by Harriet Monroe, about to launch a new magazine in Chicago, Poetry. Agrees to become their foreign correspondent. Submits work by Yeats, Aldington, himself, and Doolittle, whom he renames “H. D., Imagiste.”
1913 Meets Robert Frost; arranges for publication of William Carlos Williams’s The Tempers by Elkin Mathews; publishes his manifesto on Imagism in Poetry (March 1913); “In a Station of a Metro” appears in the April issue; travels to France; becomes literary editor of The Egoist. Meets young French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska; completes Lustra, although it won’t be published until 1916. Spends the first of three winters with Yeats at Stone Cottage in Sussex; meets Mary Fenollosa, widow of Ernest Fenollosa. Learns of Joyce.
1914 Arranges for serial publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in The Egoist. His anthology Des Imagistes appears in New York. Marries Dorothy Shakespear on April 20. Volume I of BLAST, edited by Pound and Lewis, appears in July, proclaiming the birth of Vorticism. In September the Fortnightly Review publishes Pound’s essay, “Vorticism.” Introduced by Conrad Aiken to T. S. Eliot and enthusiastically recommends publication of “Prufrock” in Poetry.
1915 Publishes “Exile’s Letter,” first of the poems drawn from Fenollosa’s notes. Cathay appears in April. Gaudier-Brzeska killed in June in France. BLAST number 2 appears. Edits and publishes Catholic Anthology with work by Eliot, Yeats, Sandburg. Begins work on a “longish new poem,” which will become The Cantos.
1916 Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir appears, as well as Lustra and Certain Noble Plays of Japan from the Fenollosa manuscripts.
1917 ‘Noh’ or Accomplishment, an expanded version of Certain Noble Plays of Japan with Fenollosa’s essay on Japanese theater, published. Egoist Press, at Pound’s urging, brings out Joyce’s Portrait after rejection by several publishers. Becomes fo
reign editor of New York-based Little Review. “Three Cantos” appears in Poetry. T. E. Hulme killed at the Front. Eliot’s anonymous pamphlet Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry appears in New York. Has affair with Iseult MacBride, daughter of Yeats’s great love, Maud Gonne. Pound is best man at Yeats’s wedding to Dorothy Shakespear’s friend Georgiana Hyde-Lees. Writes art criticism as B. H. Dias and music criticism as William Atheling for The New Age.
1918 Prose collection Pavannes and Divisions, which also includes translations and several poems, published. Meets Major C. H. Douglas, whose Social Credit approach to economics will have a lasting effect on Pound.
1919 Truncated version of Homage to Sextus Propertius appears in Poetry, resulting in a censorious letter from a classicist in the following issue. Pound severs association with Poetry. Spends April through September in France with Dorothy; goes on a walking tour with Eliot through the Dordogne. Quia Pauper Amavi published by Egoist Press with the original Three Cantos and full Sextus Propertius. Writes Cantos V, VI, VII.
1920 Hired as foreign correspondent for New York magazine The Dial. Instigations, containing “Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry” appears in April. Ovid Press publishes Homage to Sextus Propertius. Meets Joyce for the first time at Sirmione in June; helps him settle in Paris in July.
1921 Settles in Paris in April. Meets Picabia, Cocteau, and Brancusi. John Quinn visits Pound and Joyce. Begins composing opera Le Testament with the help of Agnes Bedford. Publishes Cantos V, VI, VII in The Dial. Eliot passes through and shows Pound early version of what would be The Waste Land. Meets Hemingway, who has just moved to Paris.
1922 Eliot in January gives Pound a revised draft of The Waste Land. Within three weeks, Pound returns the manuscript with extensive comments and suggested changes. Canto VIII appears in The Dial, as well as a review of Ulysses, which is published in February. Travels extensively in Italy, discovering the life and work of Sigismundo Malatesta, condottiere of Rimini. In Paris, completes rough drafts of Cantos IX-XI. Meets American violinist Olga Rudge and begins lifelong romance.