>From:  Erik Bader <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Two questions
>Date:  Wed, 26 Jan 2000 19:09:21 -1000
 
>1.) Did Pound ever meet Binyon or correspond with him? And if so/not...is
>there any record of Binyons reaction to Pound's "Hell" essay? (reviewing
>Binyon's "Inferno")
 
According to Humphrey Carpenter's biography, E.P. was introduced to
Laurence Binyon during his earliest days in London, about 1909.  Binyon
was then working at the British Museum, and it was he and two Japanese
scholars who managed to help Mary Fenellosa in 1912 make a two-volume
book, EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ARTS, out of Ernest Fenellosa's
notes.  (This was before Mary Fenellosa was introduced to Pound.)
Arthur Waley also worked together with Binyon in the Oriental Division
of the British Museum Print Room.
 
E.P. and Binyon apparently continued to be part of the same circle,
because Carpenter says that it was Binyon who introduced Wyndham Lewis
to Pound in 1914.  So the guy obviously got around.
 
According to Carpenter, during Pound's time in Rapallo (1933) he wrote
Binyon to encourage him with his project of translating Dante, and
there's an indication that Pound corresponded regularly with Binyon
during this period.  But Carpenter doesn't say anything about Binyon's
reaction to Pound's review.  One can say, though, that in this case, as
so often, E.P. was reviewing the work of a friend.
 
--Lee Lady