Ezra Pound (1885‐1972) remains one of the most controversial figures of twentieth century Anglo‐American letters. He was a poet, translator, critic, dramatist, librettist, expatriate and a friend of T.S.Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and others. Pound broadcast anti‐American and antisemitic radio talks in support of Mussolini during the Second World War from enemy territory. He was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum outside Washington DC in the years following the Second World War. His last years have been the subject of a powerful radio play, Ezra, by Bernard Kops, performed at the New Half Moon Theatre in London in 1981. Pound, played by Ian McDiarmid, is depicted as a character of heroic proportions yet gripped by diseased obsessions. Kops’ drama depicts theatrically the dilemma presented by Pound: the enigma of a great poet who held vicious extremist opinions.
Ira Nadel’s Companion to Ezra Pound presents 15 essays focusing on differing facets of Pound’s achievement. In his introduction, “Understanding Pound”, Nadel outlines Pound’s life and work, assesses the contributions which follow, and the challenges Pound presents. George Bornstein, in the second essay, “Ezra Pound and the making of modernism”, succinctly “establishes Pound’s prominence and importance in shaping the modernist enterprise”. Hugh Witemeyer writes without recourse to obscurantism on Pound’s “Early poetry 1908‐1920”, concentrating on Homage to Sextus Propertius (1919), and the Mauberley Sequence. The “Early Cantos I‐XLI” are the subject of an essay by Daniel Albright. Ian F.A. Bell writes on the “Middle Cantos XLII‐LXIII”. Ronald Bush gives an account of Pound’s “Late cantos LXXII‐CXVII”. The “ nature of Pound’s influence on a younger generation of writers” preoccupies Peter Nicholls’ “Beyond The Cantos: Ezra Pound and recent American poetry”. He nicely distinguishes between Pound’s influence and that of T.S. Eliot or William Carlos Williams.. Among the poets covered are Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, John Ashbery, Susan Howe and other poets.
“The texts of The Cantos” is the subject of a fascinating contribution by Richard Taylor who draws on recent textual criticism to discuss the various texts of Pound’s poems. Taylor’s written text is accompanied by helpful diagrammatic representation. Massimo Bacigalupo’s “Pound as critic” describes and analyses Pound’s criticism. Judiciously Bacigalupo concludes: “Pound’s criticism will continue to be read not only for its compact and witty style, its perceptions and reading tips, and the light it casts on the poetry, but also for the daring spectacle of creativity in action which it offers”. Ming Xie provides insights on “Pound as translator”. His essay concludes with “A brief bibliographic list of Pound’s principal translations in chronological order.” Reed Way Dasenbrock writes that “Ezra Pound wrote a good deal of art journalism and criticism, participated actively in one art movement, Vorticism, and wrote extensively in his poetry and prose about the effect chosen instances of art, particularly Italian Renaissance and modernist art, had on his sensibility and thinking”. Dasenbrock’s subject is “Pound and the visual arts”. On the other hand, Michael Ingham contributes a fascinating essay on one of Pound’s major interests in his “Pound and music”.
The final essays in The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound range from Tim Redman on “Pound’s politics and economics”, Helen M. Dennis on “Pound, women and gender”, and Wendy Stallard Flory’s consideration of “Pound and antisemitism”. Redman finds the genesis and key to Pound’s political and economic opinions in “the early heated discussions over the Pound family table” and in “American populism”. Dennis writes that “One can only conclude that, however flawed, confused and complex Pound’s love for women was, the traces which their presence leaves in The Cantos is fundamental to the overall coherence of its complicated design”. Flory perceptively writes, “the issue of Pound’s antisemitism has a very immediate bearing upon how he is perceived and evaluated as a poet”.
My paperback review copy is firmly bound. The book is clearly typeset in 10/13 pt Sabon with wide margins. Details of contributors are followed by acknowledgments, a useful but lengthy list of abbreviations and a detailed chronology. The volume closes with an unannotated enumerative “Further reading” listing, and a detailed index. A surprising omission from discussion of the reception of Pound’s poetry or prose is the name and work of F.R. Leavis who wrote with insight and not without passion on Pound. In spite of such a caveat, Ira B. Nadel’s The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound should be in every library having literature collections. It is highly recommended.
