Tim Redman wrote:
 
 
>As I have stated before, I believe that Pound suffered from an
>undiagnosed manic-depressive (bipolar) disorder.  I am pursiuing that
>hypothesis in my biography.
>
>                                                Tim Redman
 
I believe Beethoven and Shelley are generally considered bipolar,
and I suspect Joyce and Mozart.
Pound's case has caused more heated and fetid debate than
any other because his politics always bedevil any discussion
of his "sanity" or lack thereof. (Also, EP's wonderful humor,
like Joyce's, makes it hard for some people to believe hilarity
could co-exist with depressive phases.)
My guess is that EP not only had bipolar tendencies (at least...)
but also tremendous personal resentments. His fury against
what he considered bad economics does not merely express
compassion for the victims ("The enormous tragedy of the dream
in the peasant's bent shoulders") and an ideal of social justice,
but anger (never expressed openly) that he never got the MONEY
or the fame he deserved. MONEY plays a central role in
the Cantos, in his economic theories, etc. because he never
had enough of it and was too proud and ornery to complain
about that in public. So he complained, in great poetry
and ranting radio broadcasts about the economic miseries
of everybody else.
The fact that "unsane" elements appear in Pound does not
make him a totally loony, anymore than the bipolar element
in Beethoven's music makes him "only" a case
history.  As Jung said, artists work out
their mental problems better in their art than non-artists
can understand. Absent his politics, EP never wd have
landed in the bughouse.
>
>On Tue, 11 Aug 1998 12:00:04 PDT jpg13 <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Re Pound's Mental Illness:
>>
>> I wonder if we might move the discussion beyond questions of sanity or
>> insanity, and into much murkier territory.  It seems clear that we can find
>> evidence of both from throughout Pound's career.  The St. Elizabeths
>> nursing logs recording Pound lying down on the road in the winter and
>> claiming that he couldn't go on make it sound like depression, and
>> these days we consider depression  a treatable illness, rather than a
>>lifestyle
>> choice.  Is Pound's depression a reaction to his earlier psychotic
>> periods?  Letters from Pound to Olga in the early 1940s, when he was making
>> broadcasts in Rome, show him constantly exhausted, taking frequent naps,
>> sleeping long hours--again, it could be a sign of severe depression.
>>
>> The question seems to me: what kinds of responsibility accrues to the
>> language act, either over the radio, or in poetry?  Is there a way we can
>> deal with the most eccentric or extreme of Pound's writing without
>> putting it in the literary equivalent of an insane asylum? Then again, as
>> E.P. put it on his arrival in Italy in 1958: "All America  is an insane
>> asylum."
>>
>> I for one would welcome the input of medical professionals out there, if
>> there are any on the list.
>>
>> Jonathan Gill
>> Columbia University
>
>Tim Redman
>School of Arts and Humanities, JO 31
>University of Texas at Dallas
>P.O. Box 830688
>Richardson, TX  75083-0688
>
>(972) 883-2775 (o)
>(972) 883-2989 (fax)
 
 
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