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.
英国:明信片走到了末路?
关于公司老大的称呼
布莱顿当选英国“最健康城市”
美国人的时间观
美国开放的性文化
圣诞节
美国人的音乐爱好
美式烹饪
美式的名字与称谓
美式运动
美国学生与中国学生教育的十大区别
美国的法律与秩序
为什么英美国家的“汤”(soup)不能“喝”(drink)?
英美文化浓厚的几处景致
心情不好的各种英语表达
西方国家送礼习俗面面观
美国最新流行口语26句
国际交际礼节常用词句
美国方式:帮助他人
美国人的家
美国政府
密尔沃基当选美国“头号酒鬼城市”
美国旅游风尚
美国College,University,Institute的区别
美国老年人
美国人对人权的看法
美国家庭
英语12个月的名称来历
美国语言
哈佛图书馆自习室墙上的训言
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