TEXT ONE
WHANG Boom Boom cast delicacy to the winds. Thus Ezra Pound in a letter to his father, urging the old man to help promote his first published collection. It might have been the poets manifesto.
Pound is as divisive a figure today as he was in his own lifetime. For some he was the leading figure of the Modernist movement who redefined what poetry was and could be; and who, in his role as cultural impresario, gave vital impetus to the literary careers of T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis, among others. But for many Pound remains a freak and an embarrassment, a clinical nutcase and vicious anti-Semite who churned out a lot of impenetrable tosh before losing the plot completely.
During the second world war he broadcast pro-Fascist radio programmes from Italy and later avoided trial for treason at home only because he was declared insane. On his release from St Elizabeths Hospital near Washington, DC, he returned to Italy , where he died in 1972 aged 87.
David Moody, emeritus professor of English at York University, makes a strong case for Pounds generous energy and the disruptive, regenerative force of his genius . His approach is uncontroversial. He follows the poets progress chronologically from his childhood in Idaho still, at the time of his birth in 1885, part of the wild west to his conquest of literary London between 1908 and 1920. He marshals Pounds staggering output of poetry, prose and correspondence to excellent effect, and offers clear, perceptive commentary on it. He helps us to see poems, such as this famous, peculiarly haunting 19-syllable haiku, in a new light:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
That Mr Moody is constantly being upstaged by the subject of his study is not surprising. Pound was one of the most colourful artistic figures in a period full of them.
According to Ford Madox Ford, who became a good friend of Pounds shortly after the bumptious young American arrived in London: Ezra would approach with the step of a dancer, making passes with a cane at an imaginary opponent. He would wear trousers made of green billiard cloth, a pink coat, a blue shirt, a tie hand-painted by a Japanese friend, an immense sombrero, a flaming beard cut to a point and a single large blue earring. W.B. Yeatss simple assessment was that: There is no younger generation of poets. E.P. is a solitary volcano.
A great merit of Mr Moodys approach is the space he gives to Pounds writings. It is love-it-or-hate-it stuff, but, either way, undeniably fascinating. All good art is realism of one kind or another, Pound said. Reconciling that tidy statement with practically any of his poems is hard work but, as Mr Moody shows over and over again, hard work that offers huge rewards. His first volume ends in 1920, with Pound quitting London in a huff, finally fed up after more than a decade of doing everything in his power to rattle the intellectual establishment with British insensitivity to, and irritation with, mental agility in any and every form . His disgraceful radio programmes and the full blooming of his loopiness lie ahead. So, too, do most of his exquisite Cantos.
上一篇: 2014年考研英语的阅读高分模版
下一篇: 2013年考研英语的阅读理解练习(二)
3年高考2年模拟1年原创备战2017高考精品系列之英语:专题14 交际用语(原卷版)
【名师小课堂】2017届高三英语新人教版一轮复习阅读写作技能课件:24 写好长句的技巧
【名师小课堂】2017届高三英语新人教版一轮复习阅读写作技能课件:10 首尾定位法巧解排序题
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练48(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练30(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练35(含解析)
2017名师指津高考一轮复习英语教师课件:巧采蘑菇巧解信息匹配(新人教版)
3年高考2年模拟1年原创备战2017高考精品系列之英语:专题20 阅读理解——应用文类(原卷版)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练40(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练39(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练45(含解析)
3年高考2年模拟1年原创备战2017高考精品系列之英语:专题18 人物故事、人物传记类(原卷版)
3年高考2年模拟1年原创备战2017高考精品系列之英语:专题13 特殊句式(倒装句、省略句、强调句)(原卷版)
【名师小课堂】2017届高三英语新人教版一轮复习阅读写作技能课件:28 推断写作目的的两条思路
3年高考2年模拟1年原创备战2017高考精品系列之英语:专题16 完形填空之夹叙夹议类(原卷版)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练46(含解析)
【名师小课堂】2017届高三英语新人教版一轮复习阅读写作技能课件:26 选择文章标题有三招
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练29(含解析)
2017名师指津高考一轮复习英语教师课件:如何让你的文章文采飞扬(新人教版)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练34(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练42(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练44(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练41(含解析)
【名师小课堂】2017届高三英语新人教版一轮复习阅读写作技能课件:33 如何推断文章出处
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练38(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练31(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练32(含解析)
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练33(含解析)
BBC推荐:3月必读书单
【高考调研】2017届高三英语一轮复习(外研版)课时规范训练43(含解析)