09-12-2023, 09:22 PM
I’ve finished the “Pound in the asylum book”.
It’s a remarkable and balanced study of Pound’s life and work post-WWII. I think, here on the forum, I’m a minority of one in my enthusiasm for Pound, but that’s OK, that’s what a forum is for.
It’s also led me to a determination to read Robert Lowell and John Berryman, both reluctant acolytes of Pound.
The book enormously informed and transformed my view of Pound. So I want to thank Rivernotch for bringing it to my attention.
Final verdict: there’s no doubt Pound was a dedicated, never reformed believer in fascism. He was released finally because he was pronounced incurably insane, the views on how to treat the insane had changed, and he was by then a broken man and a danger to no one. As to the treason he committed, it’s hard for me, a non-patriot, to get too worked up about it, especially now, after Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, just to name a few of our country’s misguided crusades.
At any rate, that verdict of insanity, that willingness to support a fascist worldview, will forever hang over The Cantos.
It’s a remarkable and balanced study of Pound’s life and work post-WWII. I think, here on the forum, I’m a minority of one in my enthusiasm for Pound, but that’s OK, that’s what a forum is for.
It’s also led me to a determination to read Robert Lowell and John Berryman, both reluctant acolytes of Pound.
The book enormously informed and transformed my view of Pound. So I want to thank Rivernotch for bringing it to my attention.
Final verdict: there’s no doubt Pound was a dedicated, never reformed believer in fascism. He was released finally because he was pronounced incurably insane, the views on how to treat the insane had changed, and he was by then a broken man and a danger to no one. As to the treason he committed, it’s hard for me, a non-patriot, to get too worked up about it, especially now, after Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, just to name a few of our country’s misguided crusades.
At any rate, that verdict of insanity, that willingness to support a fascist worldview, will forever hang over The Cantos.