Lot 1317
EZRA POUND
(1885 - 1972) American poet, editor and critic and a major influence on Joyce, Eliot, Hemingway and Frost. Superb, outrageous content T.L.S. "Ezra Pound", 4pp. 4to., on four individual sheets of his personal letterhead printed "Rapallo, Italy" (but writing from St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital in Washington, D.C.), Apr. 16, 1948 to the editor of Forum: A Magazine of Controversy, a heavily-corrected rant reads, in part: "Since the question is open perhaps the fair lady from Omaha will explain to us why aptitude for an art should breed tolerance of public imbecility; or why the more sensitive nostril should make one more tolerant of the odour of sewer gas. In the case of the mental nostril the aroma (since the lady objects to more Elizabethan terminology), the aroma rising from America appears to consist of the Sat. Eve. Post, the Harding Administration and its epigones, the appalling idiocy of Article 211 of the penal code and the corollary that American electees were responsible for it, the oedematous burocracy [sic], the loss of civil rights, Volstead and co, the damnable interference with free travel, the joy and contentment of a nation capable of our passport regulations and every other minor symptom of the major diseases. Why should a perception of the relation between apparently trifling things and their more general bearing breed 'tolerance' for either? If the lady likes to inhabit the same world as Cal. Coolidge, one can only animadvert on the difference of personal taste. And if, in place of hurried expression one is supposed to turn aside from 'literary' composition into painstaking and 'refined' express of one's preference, I can only say that I strongly dislike inhabiting a world that tolerates Cal. and nearly everything he has ever stood for or tolerated, that contains Lorimer, Volstead, the present bureaucracy and...their tendencies...In my earlier note I mentioned a few particularly violent odours. The saccharine of our 'leading magazines' is nearly as offensive. Disgust is a very valuable emotion. One sh[ou]d. not underestimate the faculty for disgust. Improvements in human conditions are mainly due to disgust. America lacks it, oh, abysmally lacks it. American tolerance lacks likewise the energy that c[oul]d. utilize it to good purpose. The fog is worse in England...The melancholy or religious or possibly Shellean attitude is that of sighing for a paradise and of desiring to shrink from the earth. Personally I experience strong desire to annihilate certain states of mind and their protagonists. Even 'so distinguished a critic as' Mr. Eliot mistakes my expression of hate for humour. There are a lot of things that I have apparently been suspected of being funny about when I merely expressed a desire to eliminate...British baccillae are asfixiant and soporific, the American are more irritant. Whatever one's aptitude for the arts, one can not always take time off to explain that a stink is an odour...In American all intolerance might seem to have been up till now the monopoly of the strongest battalions. Of course as 'literary artist' one should elaborate...last evening two ladies of moderate means, 60 dollars on passport expenses to get from Washington to Rapallo with details attempted extortion of more than legal fee by french consel etc.. This morning: a letter from member of the unemployed, the details. Letter from gent in California jail wanting to know about european conditions: would he in Europe have twenty five years for complying with the young lady's desire. All of these are of course assistances to ones [sic] tolerance of the state of American mind which underlies the status of the objective manifestation of America. -- even at a distance, where one might be supposed to be less flooded with stimulae, less submerged with daily and minute evidence of the state of the nation. yours very patiently...". During World War II, Pound famously excoriated Franklin D. Roosevelt and American involvement in the war in general during his radio broadcasts and publications in Italy, in which he expressed his unbridled enthusiasm for Fascism, Mussolini, and the efforts of Axis. Despite his residency in Europe, American authorities indicted Pound for treason in 1943, and he was brought back to the United States following the war for trial. Pleading insanity, his case garnered a mistrial, and he was sent to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital in Washington, where he remained until 1958, and from where he penned this letter. There, he also worked on his most famous work, The Cantos, and enjoyed visits from the literati of the time. Pound's disparaging of the American cultural attitude towards art and artistic endeavors in general went back many years and was a theme in many of his works, from the 1920 poem "Cantico del Sole", to his masterpiece The Cantos. In "Cantico", for example, Pound humorously muses: "The thought of what America would be like if the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep". Later, his criticism moved from cultural denunciations to economic consideration, with an increasing obsession with and distaste for centralized banking and the practice of charging interest for monies lent, which he sensationally dubbed "usury". The theme of unfettered American tolerance for what he perceived to be a cultural vacuity, however, eventually melded with his disgust with American's obsession with money. The collusion reached its apotheosis after his arrest, and became one of the central themes in The Cantos which, among other things, disturbingly demonstrated the correlation between his rabid economic philosophy and radical poetical style. Emendations and signature in bold ink. Wear to edges, light chipping thereon, else very good condition, and certainly worthy of further research.
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