WHY WAS EZRA POUND ERASED FROM HISTORY?

 

By Mike King

 
Image result for EZRA POUND

 

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was a world-renown expatriate American poet who, when it came

to writing, emphasized the importance of clarity, precision and, most of all, economy of

language. Pound worked as a literary editor in London during the early 20th century,

where he mentored and helped to promote now famous contemporaries of his, such as

T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway.  Angered by Britain's

role in starting World War I and disillusioned by the aftermath, Pound left for Italy in

1924. He blamed the war on Jewish finance capitalism, and embraced the fascism of

Italy's new leader, Benito Mussolini. Later on, Pound expressed support for Adolf Hitler,

and wrote for publications owned by the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. As you might

expect, media outlets such as Time Magazine began taking cheap shots at the ex-pat

literary genius. A 1933 article smeared Pound as: "a cat that walks by himself,

tenaciously unhousebroken and very unsafe for children."

 

Image result for EZRA POUND postage stampImage result for EZRA POUND postage stampImage result for EZRA POUND postage stampImage result for james joyce u.s. postage stamp

Fine and famous writers such as Frost, Elliot, Hemingway and Joyce came to Pound for

literary coaching. How is it that their name recognition and awards, as the years passed,

came to exceed that of Ezra Pound's? They are all honored on U.S.

postage stamps (Joyce in his native Ireland), but Pound the master never was.

 

During World War II, Pound made radio broadcasts criticizing Franklin Demono Roosevelt

and the Jews controlling him. Because of his "treason," he was arrested in 1945 by the

invading American forces. Pound spent several months in detention in a U.S. military camp

in Pisa, including three weeks in a 6-by-6-foot outdoor steel cage. The abuse triggered a

mental breakdown, which he later described as "when the raft broke and the waters went

over me." The following year Pound was deemed unfit to stand trial, and incarcerated in

St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. 

 

During his 12 years in the psych ward, Pound published portions of The Pisan Cantos (1948),

for which he was awarded the prestigious Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the U.S. Library of

Congress. This "controversial" award greatly displeased the (((usual suspects))). Mainly due

to a campaign by fellow artists, Pound was finally released from St. Elizabeth's in 1958.

He returned to live in Italy -- greeting his adopted country with the stiff-armed fascist salute.

He died there in 1972.

 

Though his name is still somewhat recalled in literary circles, in terms of name recognition

among the general reading public, he doesn't even come close to some of the above-mentioned

writers that he mentored -- men who regraded him as superior. And forget about ever seeing his

works in High School and most universities. That would be too "controversial," dontch'a know.

 

To best illustrate both the musical clarity of Pound's prose as well as his righteous hatred for

the International Cabal -- as well as  (((their))) hatred for him, TomatoBubble.com presents

the full script of one of his radio addresses on the subject -- a masterpiece of both

literature and history.

 

"Usury is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon’s

knife of Fascism can cut out of the life of the nations." 

- Ezra Pound, "What is Money For?"

 

Image result for EZRA POUND IN CUSTODYRelated image Image result for EZRA POUND  

1. Though an ex-pat for 34 years, Pound was still charged with treason. // 2. While in

St. Elizabeth's, the "crazy" Pound produced "The Cantos" -- considered by his literary

peers to be among his finest work. // 3. Old and free in his beloved Italy,

Pound gives the fascist salute.

 

Broadcast from Rome / March 15, 1942

(Pound is addressing England)

 

The enemy is Das Leihkapital (loan capital). Your Enemy is Das Leihkapital, international,

wandering Loan Capital. Your enemy is not Germany, your enemy is money on loan. And

it would be better for you to be infected with typhus, and dysentery, and Bright’s

disease, than to be infected with this blindness which prevents you from understanding

how you are undermined, how you are ruined.

 

The big Jew is so bound up with this Leihkapital that no one is able to unscramble that omelet.

It would be better for you to retire to Darbyshire and defy New Jerusalem, better for you to

retire to Gloucester and find one spot that is England than to go on fighting for

Jewry and ignoring the process.

 

It is an outrage that any clean lad from the country — I suppose there are still a few English

lads from the country — it is an outrage that any nice young man from the suburbs should be

expected to die for Victor Sassoon, it is an outrage that any drunken footman’s byblow

(bastard child) should be asked to die for Sassoon.

 

As to your Empire, it was not all of it won by clean fighting. But however you got it, you did

for a time more or less justify keeping it, on the ground that you exported good government or

better government than the natives would have had without England.

 

You let in the Jew and the Jew rotted your empire, and you yourselves out-jewed the Jew.

Your allies in your victimized holdings are the bunyah, you stand for nothing but usury.

 

And above metal usury; you have built up bank usury, 60% against 30 and 40%, and by that

you will not be saved. Corrupting the whole earth, you have lost yourselves to yourselves.

 

And the big Jew has rotted every nation he has wormed into. A millstone. Well, an exceptionally

good swimmer might conceivably be cast into the sea with a stone tied round his neck. He

might perhaps untie it. If he were a Scotchman, he would remember his jackknife,

before being thrown overboard.

 

You seem to remember nothing. It were better you were infected with typhus. As to federal union,

or JEW/nion. There is no question of race in Streit’s proposition. It is as proposed a union of slaves,

under jewry. Offered by liars and abettors of thieves.

 

You have stolen land from your late Allies, and land slips from your control. The only conquests

of Britain and Rosenfeld are conquests from their alleged allies.

 

All right, say that Franklin Delany swipes all South America — to what end? And ruin the

United States of America while he is doing it. What’s that to you? It is not England’s salvation.

Will you ever look at the story of empire? You are not even in the mercantile system,

you are in a fake mercantile system, not even mercantile. It was for a time called mercantile

or the mercantilist system and defined as considering the happiness of a nation to consist in

the amount of money it owned, and its process to consist in stealing, welching, pouching the

greatest possible amount of same (i.e., of money) from other nations.

 

That defines the usury system, the only system Anglo Saxons have known or used in our time.

 

And it will not save you. NOR will Judaized Russia. Nor will the Kahal, the Jew’s central

committee of bleeders. WHAT is their system? Unvarying, cheap goods, sweated out of

cheap labor, dung dust hurled on the world, the world conceived as sweat shop, to hell

with the 8-hour day, down with abundance. Dumping sweated goods, dumped against any

and every nation that pays a just price for labor. That is your ally.

 

And in your past a trail of blood and of infamy. You bought Hessians to kill your own

blood in America. You bought ’em from a stinking feudal overlord, who was in the hands

of the Rothschild; that is History. You stirred up the American savages against your own kin

in America. But now Eden and Cripps have called in the Muscovite, to bum and destroy all

Eastern Europe, and kill Finland, for the sake of the stinking Jews nickel mines.

 

Your infamy is bound up with Judaea. You can not touch a sore or a shame in your empire

but you find a Mond, a Sassoon, or a Goldsmid. You have no race left in your government.

 

God knows if it can be found still scattered in England.

 

It must be found scattered in England. The white remnants of England, the white remnant

of the races of England must be found and find means to cohere; otherwise, you might as

well lie down in your grave yards.

 

You have for years had cheap goods dumped in from Russia. Your alliance with Moscow

will bring no relief to that wound. Your Jews have ruined your home manufactures.

Loans from the city of London, loans to the Orient, interest paid in cheap cotton goods,

loans to the South American countries, interest paid in beef from the Argentine, and

ruin of English grazing. The laws of durable government have been known from the days

of King Wen. When empires go to rot, they go to rot for known reasons.

 

The Times, Telegraph, Manchester Guardian, are there to conceal these reasons.

Your press is an infamy, has been throughout our time.

 

The laws of durable government have been known from the days of King Wen, and when

the Roman Empire perished it perished from the same follies that your kikes, your Rothschilds,

Beits, Sieffs, Schiffs, and Goldsmids have squirted into your veins.

 

Cheap grain dumped from Egypt, ruin of the Italian farming, usury, and more usury,

that is the answer.

 

For two centuries, ever since the brute Cromwell brought ’em back into England, the

kikes have sucked out your vitals. A mild penetration, for a hundred years they have

bootlicked your nobility and now where is your nobility? You had at least the semblance

of control; you had, let us say, some influence with the Lords of Judaea as long as they

wanted your titles, as long as Levy Levinstein Lawson wanted to be addressed as

Lord Burnham. You could turn the worst edge of their avarice, or rather you could

turn it off, the upper or huppar clawses; and turn it onto the peer. As you did without mercy.

 

But when the same scroungers have moved over to New York City, how will you manage

’em? The same bloody minded extortioners, or their descendants. The same financial houses.

The same Rothschilds who plotted with Sherman, and Vandergould to kill the American

nation, who betrayed the United States in the sixties. Head office in London,

agents in the U.S. of America.

 

Now the address is altered. Main office in Wall Street and Cohen in London. You send

Willie over to spy on us. You send 5000 usurers’ pimps over to Washington and give

special passports, diplomatic, to inveigle the United States into your plans to get cannon

fodder from Idaho and from Iowa to weld your slaves cellar on Europe. And this time

you get dumped into the ash can.

 

You have even forgotten your Kipling. Pig Baldwin has forgotten his cousin; if his obscene

and treacherous mind ever grasped the meaning of Rudyard’s stories. Let me recall one

passage to the sow face:

 

“The Americans,” wrote Rudyard, “obligingly slaughtered each other in order that the

Czechoslovaks might inherit Boston Common.” Cras tibi, tomorrow is your turn. Damn it

all, you slaughtered the flower of England in the Boer War. Then in 1914 in the first three

months, the best of you went out and got slaughtered.

 

. . .been seen only too clearly. And your foul papers, the filth of your newsprint has been

subsidized to keep your minds off it.

 

A dirty bit of meat by the name of Gollancz has used your book trade to conceal it. You have

almost no means of communication. When a Brooks Adams writes five volumes that would

help you to see it, six copies reach England. You have lost the health of the mind. God knows

how the scattered handful of Englishmen still in England can still speak one with another.

 

I see no remedy in your parliament. I don’t mean as parliament. I mean in the personnel. It

is your problem. You do not now even elect your own parliament. Whether with an election

you could get anything save old dead meat, I do not know. During the last war a few men

had a glimmer of instinct. On whatever formula, they called it pacifism. Was it? All of ’em

I ever met were pugnacious. Was it an instinct to save the butt end of the race by not fighting?

Is it a mistake to combat Germans by force?

 

Is there a race left in England? Has it any will left to survive? You can carry slaughter to Ireland.

Will that save you? I doubt it. Nothing can save you, save a purge. Nothing can save you, save an

affirmation that you are English.

 

Whore Belisha is not. Isaccs is not. No Sassoon is an Englishman, racially. No Rothschild is

English, no Strakosch is English, no Roosevelt is English, no Baruch, Morgenthau, Cohen,

Lehman, Warburg, Kuhn, Khan, Baruch, Schiff, Sieff, or Solomon was ever yet bom Anglo-Saxon.

 

And it is for this filth that you fight. It is for this filth that you have murdered your empire,

and it is this filth that elects your politicians.

 

You have lost your tradition. You have not even learned what Lord Byron told you. You are,

as even that foul rag the Times tells you, a little late in making a start.

 

In the year 1942 Anno Domini, there is only one start you can make. And that is a start toward

being England. A refusal to be a province of Israel, or an outpost of Yankee-Judaea.


 

In his Italy-based radio broadcasts, Ezra Pound named the

names of the biggest Globalist Jews in the USA and England.

Image result for victor sassoonImage result for Bernard Baruch Image result for Morgenthau Image result for Anthony Gustav de Rothschild

1. "Sir" Victor Sassoon // 2. Bernard Baruch // 3. Henry Morganthau // 4. Anthony Gustav de Rothschild

 

 

 

 

“England,” Ezra’s Pound’s Radio Broadcast Of March 15, 1942

 

 

 

The following is the text of Ezra Pound’s Radio Rome broadcast of March 15, 1942.

Pound began writing radio broadcasts in the fall of 1940. His first scripts were read by

professional announcers. In January of 1941, he began to record his own scripts.

Generally, he did two broadcasts per week, and he would pre-record them

in batches of 10 to 20.

 

The broadcasts ended in July, 1943 with the fall of the Mussolini government.

 

After Mussolini established the Saló Republic, Pound again

volunteered his services, but no broadcasts were ever recorded.


Pound always spoke as a patriotic American and was given complete freedom to

determine the content of his broadcasts. After January 29, 1942, Pound’s broadcasts

were introduced with the following statement which he drafted: “Rome Radio, acting in

accordance with the fascist policy of intellectual freedom and free expression of

opinion by those who are qualified to hold it, has offered Dr. Ezra Pound the use of

the microphone twice a week. It is understood that he will not be asked to say anything

whatsoever that goes against his conscience, or anything in compatible

with his duties as a citizen of the United States of America.”


When Pound fell into the hands of other freedom-living Americans in 1945, he was

imprisoned in an open air cage in Pisa, then returned to the US where he was declared

insane and imprisoned for 13 years at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C.

When released, he returned to Italy and greeted his adopted homeland with a fascist salute.


The texts of 115 Pound broadcasts were published as Ezra Pound Speaking, ed.

Leonard W. Doob (Westport, Conn.: Greewood Press, 1978). The texts are available online here.


Although no recordings of these broadcasts are available, perhaps the flavor of them can

be gathered from a BBC recording from June 21, 1958 in which Pound outlines his path

toward dissidence culminating in his Rome Radio broadcasts.

The link is here. You will need RealPlayer to listen.


The enemy is Das Leihkapital. Your Enemy is Das Leihkapital, international, wandering

Loan Capital. Your enemy is not Germany, your enemy is money on loan. And it would be

better for you to be infected with typhus, and dysentery, and Bright’s disease, than to

be infected with this blindness which prevents you from understanding

HOW you are undermined, how you are ruined.


The big Jew is so bound up with this Leihkapital that no one is able to unscramble that

omelet. It would be better for you to retire to Darbyshire and defy New Jerusalem, better

for you to retire to Gloucester and find one spot that is England

than to go on fighting for Jewry and ignoring the process.


It is an outrage that any clean lad from the country — I suppose there are STILL a

few ENGLISH lads from the country — it is an outrage that any nice young man from

the suburbs should be expected to die for Victor Sassoon, it is an outrage

that any drunken footman’s byblow should be asked to die for Sassoon.


As to your Empire, it was not all of it won by clean fighting. But however you got it,

you did for a time more or less justify keeping it, on the ground that you exported good

government or better government than the natives would have had without England.


You let in the Jew and the Jew rotted your empire,

and you yourselves out-jewed the Jew.

Your allies in your victimized holdings are the

bunyah, you stand for NOTHING but usury.


And above metal usury; you have built up bank

usury, 60% against 30 and 40%, and by that you

WILL NOT be saved. Corrupting the whole earth,

you have lost yourselves to yourselves.


And the big Jew has rotted EVERY nation he has wormed into. A millstone. Well, an

exceptionally good swimmer MIGHT conceivably be cast into the sea with a stone tied

round his neck. He might perhaps untie it. If he were a Scotchman,

he would remember his jackknife, before being thrown overboard.


You seem to remember NOTHING. It were better you were infected with typhus. As to

federal union, or JEW/nion. There is NO question of race in Streit’s proposition.

It is as proposed a union of slaves, under jewry. Offered by liars and abettors of thieves.


You have stolen land from your late Allies, and land slips from your control.

The ONLY conquests of Britain and Rosenfeld are conquests FROM their alleged allies.


All right, say that Franklin Delany swipes ALL South America — to what end? And

ruin the United States of America while he is doing it. What’s that to you? It is not

England’s salvation. Will you ever LOOK at the story of empire? You are NOT even in the

mercantile system, you are in a fake mercantile system, not even mercantile. It was

for a time called mercantile or the mercantilist system and defined as considering the

happiness of a nation to consist in the amount of MONEY it owned, and its process to

consist in STEALING, welching, pouching the greatest

possible amount of same (i.e., of money) from other nations.


That defines the USURY system, the ONLY

system Anglo Saxons have known or used in our time.


And it will not save you. NOR will Judaized Russia. Nor will the Kahal, the Jew’s central

committee of bleeders. WHAT is their system? Unvarying, cheap goods, sweated out of

cheap labor, dung dust hurled on the world, the WORLD conceived as sweat shop, to

hell with the 8-hour day, down with abundance. DUMPING sweated goods,

dumped against any and every nation that pays a just price for labor.

That is your ALLY.


And in your past a trail of blood and of infamy. You bought Hessians to kill your own

blood in America. You bought ’em from a stinking feudal overlord, who was in the

hands of the ROTHSCHILD; that is HISTORY. You stirred up the American savages

against your own kin IN America. But now Eden and Cripps have called in the Muscovite,

to bum and destroy all Eastern Europe, and kill Finland,

for the sake of the stinking Jews nickel mines.


Your infamy is bound up with Judaea. You can not touch a sore or a shame in your

empire but you find a Mond, a Sassoon, or a Goldsmid.

YOU HAVE NO RACE left in your government.


God knows if it can be found still scattered in England.


IT must be found scattered in England. The white remnants of England, the white

remnant of the races of England must be FOUND and find means

to cohere; otherwise, you might as well lie down in your grave yards.


You have for years had cheap goods DUMPED in from Russia. Your alliance with

Moscow will bring no relief to that wound. Your Jews have ruined your home manufactures.

Loans from the city of London, loans to the Orient, interest paid in cheap cotton goods,

loans to the South American countries, interest paid in beef from the Argentine, and

ruin of English grazing. The laws of durable government have been known from

the days of King Wen. When empires go to ROT, they go to rot for known reasons.


The TimesTelegraphManchester Guardian, are there to conceal

these reasons. Your press is an infamy, has been throughout our time.


The laws of durable government have been known from the days of King Wen, and

when the Roman Empire perished it perished from the same follies that your kikes,

your Rothschilds, Beits, Sieffs, Schiffs, and Goldsmids have squirted into your veins.


Cheap grain dumped from Egypt, ruin of the Italian farming,

usury, and more usury, THAT is the answer.


For two centuries, ever since the brute Cromwell brought ’em back into England, the

kikes have sucked out your vitals. A mild penetration, for a hundred years they have

bootlicked your nobility and now where is your nobility? You had at least the semblance

of control; you had, let us say, some influence with the Lords of Judaea as long as they

WANTED your titles, as long as Levy Levinstein Lawson WANTED to be addressed as

Lord Burnham. You could turn the worst edge of their avarice, or rather you could turn it

OFF, the upper or huppar clawses; and turn it ONTO the peer. As you did without mercy.


But when the same scroungers have moved over to New York City, how will you manage ’em?

The same bloody minded extortioners, or their descendants. The same FINANCIAL HOUSES.

The same Rothschilds who plotted with Sherman, and Vandergould to KILL the American

nation, who betrayed the United States in the “sixties.”

Head office in London, agents in the U.S. of America.


Now the address is altered. Main office in Wall Street and Cohen in London. You send

Willie over to spy on us. You send 5000 usurers’ pimps over to Washington and give

special passports, diplomatic, to inveigle the United States into your plans to get cannon

fodder from Idaho and from Iowa to weld your slaves cellar

on Europe. And this time you get dumped into the ash can.


You have even forgotten your Kipling. Pig Baldwin has forgotten his cousin; if his obscene

and treacherous mind ever grasped the meaning of Rudyard’s stories.

Let me recall one passage to the sow face:


“The Americans,” wrote Rudyard, “obligingly slaughtered each other in order that the

Czechoslovaks might inherit Boston Common.” Cras tibi, tomorrow is your turn. Damn it all,

you slaughtered the flower of England in the Boer War. Then in 1914

in the first three months, the best of you went out and got slaughtered.


. . .been seen only too clearly. And your foul papers, the filth

of your newsprint has been subsidized to keep your minds off it.


A dirty bit of meat by the name of Gollancz has used your book

trade to conceal it. You have almost NO means of communication.


When a Brooks Adams writes five volumes that would help you to see it, six copies reach

England. You have LOST the health of the mind. God knows how the scattered

handful of Englishmen still in England can still speak one with another.


I see NO remedy in your parliament. I don’t mean as parliament. I mean in the personnel.

It is your problem. You do not NOW even elect your own parliament. Whether WITH an

election you could get anything save old dead meat, I do not know. During the last war a

few men had a glimmer of instinct. On whatever formula, they called it pacifism. Was it?

All of ’em I ever met were pugnacious. Was it an instinct to save the butt end

of the RACE by not fighting? Is it a mistake to combat Germans by force?


Is there a RACE left in England? Has it ANY will left to survive? You can carry slaughter

to Ireland. Will that save you? I doubt it. Nothing can save you, save a purge.

Nothing can save you, save an affirmation that you are English.


Whore Belisha is NOT. Isaccs is not. No Sassoon is an Englishman, racially. No Rothschild

is English, no Strakosch is English, no Roosevelt is English, no Baruch, Morgenthau,

Cohen, Lehman, Warburg, Kuhn, Khan, Baruch, Schiff, Sieff, or Solomon

was ever yet born Anglo-Saxon.


And it is for this filth that you fight. It is for this filth that you have

murdered your empire, and it is this filth that elects your politicians.


You have lost your tradition. You have not even learned what Lord Byron told you.

You are, as even that foul rag the Times tells you, a little late in making a start.


In the year 1942 Anno Domini, there is only one start you can make. And that is a start

toward being England. A refusal to be a province of Israel, or an outpost of Yankee-Judaea.


Quando tutti saremo forti. [United, we are strong–Ed.]

 


 
 
Ezra Pound, a noted poet and critic, was a major figure in the modernist poetry movement of the 20th century Europe. Born in the United States of America in late 19th century, he immigrated to Europe at the age of 23 to establish himself as a poet. After a short stay at Gibraltar and Venice, he moved to London, where he lived for twelve years. It was during this period that he played a leading role in the development of Imagism. He also had an eye for talent and working as a correspondent in various journals, he promoted many budding artists and poets. After the WWI, he shifted to Paris and from there to Italy, blaming Jewish bankers for the war. During the WWII, he actively campaigned for the fascist regime of Italy, concurrently retaining his US citizenship. Consequently at the end of the war, he was arrested for treason; but on being declared insane, he was interned at a mental hospital in the USA, where he continued to write. On his release, he was brought back to Italy, where he breathed his last a few days after his 87th birthday.
 
 
  • Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born on 30 October 1885 in the small mining town of Hailey, then a part of the Territory of Idaho. At the time of his birth, his father, Homer Loomis Pound, originally from Wisconsin, was employed as the Registrar of the General Land Office in Hailey.

  • Ezra’s mother, Isabel Weston, was from New York. She could not adjust to the life at Hailey and in 1887 she returned to New York, taking eighteen-month-old Ezra with her. Subsequently Homer too followed them. Ezra remained their only child.

  • In 1889, Homer was appointed an assayer at the Philadelphia Mint and with that the family moved to Jenkintown, located just outside the city. There in 1892, Ezra began his education at the Miss Elliot’s dame school.

  • Ezra spent a major part of his early years at Wyncote where his father bought a house in 1893. Here he was first enrolled at the Heathcock family's Chelten Hills School. Later in 1894, he was moved to the Florence Ridpath School.

  • In 1896, while studying at Florence Ridpath School, eleven-year-old Ezra had his first poem published. It was a limerick on the Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan, who had narrowly lost the 1896 Presidential Election. It was published in the 7 November issue of the ‘Jenkintown Times-Chronicle.’

  • In 1897, Ezra Pound was admitted to Cheltenham Military Academy, where he studied Latin, English, history, arithmetic, marksmanship, and military drilling. Moreover, it was here that he learned the importance of submitting to the authority.

  • In 1898, while he was studying at the Military Academy, he was taken on a tour of Europe by his mother and aunt. In this three-month trip, he visited England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

  • In 1900, he left the Academy to finish his high school education at Cheltenham Township High School, finally graduating from there in 1901. By now he had decided to become a poet and had told his parents. It is not known if at this stage they had taken him seriously.

  • After graduating from school, he first entered the University of Pennsylvania's College of Liberal Arts. In 1902, Pound was taken on another three-month’s tour of Europe. Thereafter, he left the university without graduating.

  • In 1903, Pound entered Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, with philosophy. In addition, he took up a Latin-Scientific course and studied the Provençal dialect as well as Old English.

  • Now, his aim was to “know more about poetry than any man living” and to fulfill it, he learned nine foreign languages and read oriental literature in translation, fighting with everybody who tried to dissuade him from his path. This was also the time he developed from Dante’s works, the idea of long poems.

  • In 1905, Pound earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Hamilton College. Thereafter, he returned to the University of Pennsylvania to study Romance languages, a branch of the Italic languages within the Indo-European language family.

  • In 1906, on earning his M.A. from Pennsylvania, he started working for his doctoral thesis with a Hamilton Fellowship, which not only covered his tuition fees, but also provided a travel allowance of $500. His dissertation was intended to be on the jesters of the Spanish playwright Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio.

  • However, he never finished his doctoral work; instead in 1907, he started teaching Romance languages at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Unfortunately, the place, as well as the college, was much too conservative for his bohemian mannerism. He therefore lost his job in early 1908.
  •  
 

  • Subsequently, he left for Europe sometime in February 1908, arriving at Gibraltar on 23 March. Here he worked for few weeks as a guide to American tourists, earning $15 a day and then moved to Venice in April. At that time, he had only $80 in his kitty.

  • While in the USA, he had compiled a book of poems, titled ‘A Lume Spento’, but failed to find a publisher for it. Now in Venice, he spent $8 out of his own pocket to self-publish the work. The initial edition was of one hundred copies.

  • Later that year he moved to London and there he was able to persuade Elkin Mathews, a London publisher and book seller, to display his book. Although it did not have the kind of impact he had expected, by October, he had begun to be discussed in the literary circles.

  • In December 1908, he self-published another book of poems, titled ‘A Quinzaine for This Yule’ and then spent the following two months teaching at Regent Street Polytechnic. Meanwhile, he managed to persuade Mathews to publish his next three books.

  • Out of the three, ‘Personae of Ezra Pound’ was published in April 1909. It was his first commercial success and was followed by his fourth book of poems, ‘Exultations of Ezra Pound’, published in October 1909. The next book, ‘The Spirit of Romance’, published in 1910, was on literary criticism.

  • In the mean time, in January 1909, he met Olivia Shakespear and through her, the English poet W. B. Keats. Subsequently the two men developed a close friendship. Incidentally Olivia’s daughter Dorothy would one day become Pound’s wife.

  • Eventually Ezra Pound began to be accepted in the London literary and artistic circles and met luminaries like sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, painter Wyndham Lewis and poet T. E. Hulme. For a short while, he also received patronage from the American heiress Margaret Lanier Cravens.

  • In June 1910, he returned to the USA, trying to establish himself as a poet in Philadelphia. When that did not happen, he returned to England in early 1911. After a brief visit to Paris, he settled down in London, writing a weekly column for the socialist journal, ‘The New Age.’

    • In 1912, Pound was appointed London correspondent of ‘Poetry’, a Chicago based magazine founded by Harriet Monroe. He worked hard on it, reviewing the works of many upcoming poets like Robert Frost and D. H. Lawrence. Very soon, he became a well-established name in London’s literary circles.

    • Sometime in the same year, Pound, along with Richard Aldington and Hilda Doolitle decided to start a movement they called Imagism. The main theme of the movement was that, any word that does not contribute directly to the presentation should be avoided.

    • In October 1912, he had ‘Ripostes of Ezra Pound’ published. The book, containing twenty-five poems, is his first example of Imagism. This was also the book, in which he for the first time used the word ‘Imagiste.’

    • Subsequently, he began writing for ‘Egoist’ and in 1914, published ‘Des Imagistes’, the first anthology of the Imagism movement. In the same year, he also started collaborating with then un-known James Joyce and helped to publish his two novels, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ and ‘Ulysses.’

    • At the same time, Pound continued with his own literary pursuits, starting his long poem, ‘The Cantos’ in 1915. However, he was not very earnest in this work for it took him two years to publish ‘Canto III’ in ‘Poetry.’

      • Maybe that was because the destruction brought about by the World War I had a terrible effect on him. He published a number of works at the conclusion of the war, and then in December 1920, he left England for good. ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’ was the last work completed in England.

      In Italy

    • After residing in London for twelve years, Ezra Pound moved to France. There he became friendly with a number of artists and writers, but by 1924, he was fed up with the Parisian scene and decided to move again. Significantly, it was here in Paris that he developed his friendship with Ernest Hemmingway.

    • He now chose the city of Rapallo in Italy and there he spent the next two decades of his life. It was here that he actually restarted his work on ‘The Cantos.’

    • Sometime now, he came to believe that capitalism was the cause of the First World War, blaming the Jewish bankers for it. His greatest fear was that the economy would henceforth be dependent on armament industry and war and peace would depend on its hunger for profit.

    • He now gave a series of lectures on economics and contacted the US political leaders to discuss international politics. He also met Benito Mussolini on 30 January 1933. Sometime now, he also applied for broadcasting rights on Rome Radio, but believing him to be a double agent, they refused permission.

    • Ultimately, he received the permission after two years of haggling and from January 1935, he began broadcasting on Rome Radio, criticizing Jews as well as American policies, President Roosevelt, and even his family. He also spoke about poetry, economics, and Chinese philosophy.

    • In April 1939, he sailed for the USA, trying to stop the country from getting involved in the upcoming Second World War. Unsuccessful in his mission, he returned to Italy in June or July, retaining his US citizenship.
    • He now began writing anti-Semitic articles for Italian newspapers as well as for Sir Oswald Mosley’s fascist newspaper ‘Action.’ He also wrote a letter to James Laughlin, criticizing Roosevelt, and signed it with “Heil Hitler.”

    • When the Second World War finally broke out in September 1939, along with writing letters and articles, he continued with his broadcast, which was monitored by Foreign Broadcast Information Service of United States. In 1943, he was tried for treason in absentia; but he defended his right to free speech through a letter.

    • As the war ended and Italy surrendered to the Allied force, Ezra Pound was arrested by the US Army sometime in May 1945. He imprisoned in a small wire cage with concrete flooring, kept out of door in the American Disciplinary Training Center near Pisa.

    • It was summer and the daytime was hot; at night his cage was floodlighted. He was also denied communication and exercise. Living under such conditions for two and a half weeks, Pound had a mental breakdown.

    • Later, he was shifted to a tent, where he was allowed reading material and had access to a typewriter. It was during this period that he wrote ‘The Pisan Cantos.’ Published in 1948 in New York, it is the most admired section of the work.

    • Arrest & Release

    • Pound was brought back to the USA on 15 November 1945 and charged with treason on the 25th. But before he could be put to trial, he was declared insane and admitted to St. Elizabeths Hospital. Initially, he was kept in the prisoner’s ward, but later shifted to the more pleasant surroundings of Chestnut Ward.

      • Here he was allowed to read and write and also entertain visitors. Slowly, he resumed his work on ‘The Cantos’ and also started translating ‘Sophocles's Women of Trachis’ and ‘Electra.’ He felt so comfortable there that he refused to entertain any discussion on his release.

      • Nonetheless, his friends started campaigning for his release. It received the requisite momentum when Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, pledged in 1957 to give $1,500 to Pound upon his release. Ultimately in April 1958, Pound was set free.

      • In July 1958, Pound was brought back to Italy, where he lived until his death in 1972. Although he resumed his work on ‘The Cantos’ he could never finish it.

      Major Works

      • Ezra Pound is best remembered for his unfinished epic poem, ‘The Cantos.’ Mostly written between 1915 and 1962, the work contains 116 sections, each of which is a ‘canto.’ It is a mixture of satire, hymns, elegies and essays, covering different themes such as economics, governance, culture and memoirs.


    • Personal Life & Legacy

    • Ezra Pound married Dorothy Shakespear on 20 April 1914, while he was a budding poet in London. They had one son Omar, who was raised by Dorothy’s mother Olivia Shakespear. Pound hardly knew him.

    • He also had a life-long affair with American violinist Olga Rudge, whom he met in 1922 while he was living in Paris and with whom he had a daughter named Mary. Although Dorothy accepted the liaison, Mary never knew about her father’s other family until he told her just before his arrest.

    • Both the women Dorothy and Olga stood by him during his arrest and subsequent release. However, it was Olga who took care of Pound during the last eleven years of his life, while Dorothy lived in London with their son Omar. Unlike his relationship with Omar, Pound was close to Mary and lived with her for some time.

    • During the last eleven years of his life, Pound suffered from declining health. In spite of that, he traveled to London and Dublin in 1965 and to New York in 1967. However by 30 October 1972, he was too weak to leave his bedroom.

    • He died on November 1, 1972, because of an intestinal blockage. His body was later buried in the island cemetery, Isola di San Michele.