09-09-2023, 08:39 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-10-2023, 05:50 AM by TranquillityBase.)
Update on
The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra Pound.
From what I've read so far (about half the book, up to midway in his time in the asylum), Pound did not so much take refuge behind an insanity defense as just continue to be himself. Psychiatrists had no idea how to judge him. They settled on describing him as paranoid. He spent the first period in captivity translating Confucian Odes, then Greek tragedy. As he began to publish new works while in captivity, there were those who questioned why a man who could publish was considered too insane to be tried for treason.
In the beginning, he was just one of many (mostly former soldiers) driven mad by the war. Later, military patients were transferred out to Walter Reed. Once he was transferred out of the ward for the criminally (and violent) insane, he spent his days and nights, as far as they bothered with observing him, singing to himself and typing. No one much bothered with what exactly he was typing. Treatment (for most patients) consisted of lots of activity (gardening, making objects in workrooms), quiet and protection from the outside world. Pound didn't participate, but he was happy at his typewriter, so they left him alone.
The book focuses on particular visitors. Charles Olson is discussed first. Olson decided he was faking, turned against him, though not in a public way. At the same time, Laughlin at New Directions was reissuing many of his early works, avoiding entirely his incendiary prose work. Then comes William Carlos Williams, Eliot, then comes Robert Lowell. I did not realize Lowell (someone I'm unfamiliar with) was pretty crazy himself. Most of these visitors (the ones who wrote about the visits, usually much later) are quiet about exactly what their conversations consisted of.
I am now at the point where he resumes working on the Cantos (those that came after the Pisan Cantos, which were published to acclaim after he'd been at St. Elizabeths for three or so years).
The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra Pound.
From what I've read so far (about half the book, up to midway in his time in the asylum), Pound did not so much take refuge behind an insanity defense as just continue to be himself. Psychiatrists had no idea how to judge him. They settled on describing him as paranoid. He spent the first period in captivity translating Confucian Odes, then Greek tragedy. As he began to publish new works while in captivity, there were those who questioned why a man who could publish was considered too insane to be tried for treason.
In the beginning, he was just one of many (mostly former soldiers) driven mad by the war. Later, military patients were transferred out to Walter Reed. Once he was transferred out of the ward for the criminally (and violent) insane, he spent his days and nights, as far as they bothered with observing him, singing to himself and typing. No one much bothered with what exactly he was typing. Treatment (for most patients) consisted of lots of activity (gardening, making objects in workrooms), quiet and protection from the outside world. Pound didn't participate, but he was happy at his typewriter, so they left him alone.
The book focuses on particular visitors. Charles Olson is discussed first. Olson decided he was faking, turned against him, though not in a public way. At the same time, Laughlin at New Directions was reissuing many of his early works, avoiding entirely his incendiary prose work. Then comes William Carlos Williams, Eliot, then comes Robert Lowell. I did not realize Lowell (someone I'm unfamiliar with) was pretty crazy himself. Most of these visitors (the ones who wrote about the visits, usually much later) are quiet about exactly what their conversations consisted of.
I am now at the point where he resumes working on the Cantos (those that came after the Pisan Cantos, which were published to acclaim after he'd been at St. Elizabeths for three or so years).