Nikolay Nikiforov wrote:

> Friday, September 29, 2000, 6:32:36 AM - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine wrote:
>
> JD> I think the fact that he tried to get
> JD> Confucius into Truman's hands when he returned from Pisa, just to choose one
> JD> example, is good proof that his mental state was at least questionable.
> Mad,  mad  for  sure.

"Mad" is such an unspecific and sloppy term. It should not be applied,
either in affirmation or in denial, to the author of

        lord of his work and master of utterance
                    who turneth his word in its season and shapes it

As was brought out in a thread several months ago, there is a very real
possibility that Ezra Pound (like a number of major writers, painters,
and composers) suffered from bipolar affective disorder ("manic
depression"). One frequent symptom of bipolar may have been partly
experienced by anyone who has ever taken such drugs as Dexedrine or
other "uppers" -- a most unrealistic sense of possibility. But of course
many of us suffer from far too limited a sense of possibility, and while
perhaps one would not wish a sufferer from bipolar to have his/her
finger on the nuclear button, it can be a very positive feature for the
poet or the adviser to the powerful. But I doubt very much that
*any* mental disorder would explain any total choice of world
view or of political position. Pound's political choices should be
regarded as rational but wrong.

(It is a very bad intellectual habit to equate the rational with the true
and the irrational with the false. It is very possible to quite rationally
arrive at the most outrageous positions.)


Carrol Cox