Lee Lady's speculation is as plausible as any. Sure, it's possible that
Pound became more antisemitic during World War II as a means of resolving
the cognitive dissonance between his prejudice and the realization of what
that prejudice had led to. There's an incident in Carpenter that supports
Lee's idea, too. I'm sorry I can't cite it exactly (my greedily held
library copy of Carpenter is now on reserve for my Pound course), but most
of you know the incident I mean: the one where Pound learns, in reliable
detail, of the persecution of an acquaintance's Jewish friend. Pound's
Italian friends hear the same story and are disturbed, but Pound reacts
with rigid defensiveness. Individuals must suffer for the sins of the race,
he dogmatically insists, and he refuses to listen further. And at that
point, if I remember the tone correctly, he sounds almost panicky.
On the other hand, maybe there's a simpler and more banal explanation, one
that makes Pound appear less tragic and more ordinary. It's this: as we get
older, our attitudes tend to harden, and psychological explanations
therefore have to take age into account. Judith Miller's _One, by One, by
One: Facing the Holocaust_ (Simon & Schuster, 1990) furnishes a grimly
comic example from the science of demography.
In Austria in the 1980s, according to Miller, survey data indicated that
antisemitic feeling was generally age-related, with young people a lot less
prejudiced than their elders. The media interpreted that news in an obvious
and hopeful way. Yes, they said, Austria has a problem with antisemitism.
But this survey assures us that the problem is bound to decrease. All we
have to do is wait for the unprejudiced younger generation to replace the
prejudiced older one.
Unfortunately, however, that opinion survey had been taken every few years
since the 1950s, and over the long run it showed that there actually hadn't
been any decrease in antisemitism in Austria. In the 80s just as in the
50s, Austria was antisemitic. In the 50s just as in the 80s, youth was
open-minded and age was prejudiced. The prejudice hadn't changed; only the
prejudiced people had. Yesterday's idealistic youth turned into today's old
bigots, just as today's idealistic youth may be turning into tomorrow's old
bigots. Surprise: the longer you live in a prejudiced society, the more
prejudiced you get. In that respect, Pound may have been more average than
we'd like to believe.
Which brings me to Lee's biographical desideratum.
The current anecdote is that I'm trying and failing to get through Jerome
Loving's _Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself_ (University of California
Press, 1999). How, you ask, is it possible to write a boring book about the
life of Whitman? Answer: by writing sentences that force your reader to
stop every few lines and reorient himself. Loving p. 49: "He returned to
teaching briefly . . ." -- make that "He briefly returned to teaching."
Loving p. 50: "His forte, like Theodore Dreiser . . ." -- oh, you mean "His
forte, like Theodore Dreiser's." It goes on like that. The book is as
informative and as carefully documented as you could desire, but boy. . . .
On the other hand, Russell Baker's essay in the October 7 _New York Review
of Books_ makes me look forward to Marguerite Young's _Harp Song for a
Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs_, unfootnoted though it
is and unreliable though it may be, and uninterested though I may be in the
life or times of Eugene Victor Debs. After all, I can like Johnson's _Life
of Savage_ without feeling the need to read Savage, and for that matter
Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ is a stand-alone book, one that can be loved
without having read Johnson. The explanation is as easy as the trick is
hard: a significant biography needs to have been written by a significant
writer. Read Robert Frost's letters and you'll see: THERE was a man who
should have written biography.
Corollary: sooner or later somebody will get the life of Pound right. When
that happens, though, we readers ought to be prepared for surprises. The
book may talk about the poetry, for instance, or it may not. It may get its
facts right, or it may get them wrong. Those things will matter too. But
finally Pound's life will have become a part of language, and that will be
the ultimate determinant of the book's fate -- and of the future's memory
of Pound, when all of those who knew the "real" man will have crumbled to
dust.
Jonathan Morse
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