doesn't everything about ep point to raging narcissism?
the great man/poet thing, the sequence of picturesque personae
beginning with bertran, mandarin, jefferson/adams, etc
...the impregnable self-assurance,
...luxuriating in self-fantasy, exhibitionism,
and poetry qua self-promotion?
...the imperviousness to umwelt & mitwelt,
except qua stage and audience?
 
is ep the laureat of the age of narcissism?
the cantoes a kinda lotus-eater-land poetry,
wherein all we can indulge
our personal poet manque narcissism?
-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Morse <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, November 01, 1999 5:33 AM
Subject: A summary for Richard Caddel
 
 
>In "Ezra Pound: 'Insanity,' 'Treason,' and Care," _Critical Inquiry_ 14
>(1987): 134-41, William M. Chace writes:
>
>"[A] blend of compassion and outright annoyance characterizes the attitudes
>of a great many of Pound's acquaintances over the years. As early as the
>1920s in Rapallo, his visitors and correspondents, among them Ernest
>Hemingway, W. B. Yeats, and James Joyce, tended to note the same thing: the
>poet was embarrassingly self-congratulatory, impervious to advice or
>criticism of even the mildest kind, and high-handed in every regard.
>Hemingway wrote that the poet 'makes a bloody fool of himself 99 times out
>of 100 when he writes anything but poetry.' Archibald MacLeish, later to
>rally to Pound's assistance, reported early on that he was 'a bit fed up
>with the Ezraic assumption that he is a Great Man.' Joyce saw him as a
>fellow writer who turned up 'brilliant discoveries' but also 'howling
>blunders.' Over the years, Pound put all his friends to the test, the test
>of complying with his wishes, agreeing with his findings about all matters
>under the sun, and surrendering their will to his. It was a strong will,
>but in the end it overwhelmed none of his friends. Those closest to him,
>particularly Williams, who had known him longer than anyone else, did not
>give in but watched with dismay: 'This ain't the old Ez I used to know,'
>Williams wrote in one of the most charged of his letters. 'You're in the
>wrong bin. Your arse is congealed. Your cock fell in the jello. Wake up!'"
>(136-37)
>
>Chace draws all his examples from Torrey's _The Roots of Treason_.
>Williams' letter is dated April 7, 1938.
>
>And this is the same issue of _Critical Inquiry_ that contains Conrad L.
>Rushing's "'Mere Words': The Trial of Ezra Pound" and Richard Sieburth's
>"In Pound We Trust: The Economy of Poetry / The Poetry of Economics." How
>much we lost when the PC Police mounted their coup against that journal!
>
>Jonathan Morse