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Ezra Pound: The Last Rower: A Political Profile
Book by Heymann, C. David
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
372 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
28 people want to read
About the author
C. David Heymann
31 books30 followersC. David Heymann is the internationally known author of such New York Times bestselling books as The Georgetown Ladies' Social Club; RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert F. Kennedy; Poor Little Rich Girl: The Life and Legend of Barbara Hutton; and A Woman Named Jackie: An Intimate Biography of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Three of his works have been made into award-winning NBC-TV miniseries. A three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, he lives and works in Manhattan.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 31, 2022
Well-researched but not particularly insightful as a "political profile". The nature of the subject is such that any statement of Pound's political beliefs is the same as that set forth by the man himself in any of a number of more entertaining books & articles from the 30s and 40s, with the notable addition that he had it all wrong. Heymann's analysis of the versifier's descent into extremism and obscurity is that the immensity of his genius necessarily resulted in its own dissolution. There are many interesting citations from scarce & unpublished writings that make the book worth reading, e.g. Pound's identification of himself, during one of his late fits of despondency, as "minor satirist."
August 20, 2014
To its credit, the book treats at depth Pound's ugly anti-semitism and adherence to Mussolini's Fascist ideals. All well and good. Needed to be done, and good riddance. Now we all can see Pound in 3-D with the exuberant excellence of the poetry counterbalanced by the stupid hate-mongering and reductive avariciousness of petty orthodoxies.
That said, it's an annoying book and superficial. Heymann has the same affectation for gloaming elevation that plagues the older William Least Heat Moon. Pound is “the Great Bass” or “il miglior fabbro” or “il poeta” rather than simply Pound. At one point, having exhausted available superlatives, Pound even becomes “The Bard.”
The narrative is competent, but so hyper focused on the fascism and anti semitism that Heymann falls into the trap of presenting a life as a Lear-like drama with The Fall after The Hubris, which desiccates larger contexts. The importance of Olga Rudge, for instance, or the overwhelming presence of the dead Henri Gaudier-Brzeska to the entire corpus of Pound's work after World War I...the poetry, the economics, the politics, the translations---all of it.
Even Hugh Kenner gets this wrong, in my estimation.
So ... Glad to get this book under my belt as a sort of necessary exercise, but also glad to be moving on.
That said, it's an annoying book and superficial. Heymann has the same affectation for gloaming elevation that plagues the older William Least Heat Moon. Pound is “the Great Bass” or “il miglior fabbro” or “il poeta” rather than simply Pound. At one point, having exhausted available superlatives, Pound even becomes “The Bard.”
The narrative is competent, but so hyper focused on the fascism and anti semitism that Heymann falls into the trap of presenting a life as a Lear-like drama with The Fall after The Hubris, which desiccates larger contexts. The importance of Olga Rudge, for instance, or the overwhelming presence of the dead Henri Gaudier-Brzeska to the entire corpus of Pound's work after World War I...the poetry, the economics, the politics, the translations---all of it.
Even Hugh Kenner gets this wrong, in my estimation.
So ... Glad to get this book under my belt as a sort of necessary exercise, but also glad to be moving on.
August 28, 2007
Pretty decent book on Ezra Pound's more controversial aspects.
July 11, 2023
'You know the old story of the boy who is drawing a sketch and his father asks him "What are you drawing Johnny?' and the boy says 'a picture of God'. The father declares 'but nobody knows what God looks like' and Johnny shoots back 'they will when I am through with him'. You see, that's what is wrong with the arts today. Nobody has that kind of conviction any more".---Ezra Pound
Nobody ever accused Ezra Pound of lacking convictions, in fact quite the opposite. He had too many. "Ezra pound was a village explainer. This was excellent if you were a village but if not, not", said Ms. Gertrude Stein in THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS. C. David Heymann assigned himself the task back in 1972, the year Pound died, of examining Pound's political convictions in light of his poetry and vice versa, including one of the last interviews with the man Jean Cocteau called "The last rower on the river of the dead" in Europe. Pound became politically committed after the mass slaughter of World War I, which had taken the lives of millions, including artist friends: "There died a myriad, among them the best, for an old bitch got rotten in the teeth, for a botched civilization". After flirting briefly with Communism, which never would have worked out since Pound was a born elitist, like a flash it came to him that usury, or the charging of high interest rates, was responsible for war, famine, unemployment and the starvation of the arts and artists. ("With usura had no man a good stone".) This insight provided him with the inspiration for the greatest and most controversial poem of the twentieth century, THE CANTOS, a modernist take on nothing less than world history from the Greeks and Chinese to the end of World War II. Rejecting Bolshevism Pound embraced what the German Socialist August Babel called "the socialism of fools", anti-semitism. Hadn't the Jews introduced usury into Europe? (Actually, no, but facts seldom stand in the way of conviction.) After hanging out with the Lost Generation in Paris, Hemingway, Joyce, and Eliot turned into life-long friends, Pound settled in Rapallo, Italy under Mussolini, or as Ezra preferred to call him "The Boss" (Il Duce). Was Pound a Fascist? No. Heymann makes clear Pound though he found in Fascism a political system that might put some of his economic ideas into practice. After just one amicable and short talk with Mussolini, presenting him with the latest piece of THE CANTOS ("Ma questo e' divertente", said The Boss, grasping the point before the aesthetes got there") Mussolini turned his back on Pound, and the Foreign Office of the Fascist Party labeled him "a friend of Italy and an amiable madman". Notice what is missing here? Pound did not admire Nazism, seldom spoke of Hitler and in THE PISAN CANTOS, written while he was in American captivity in 1945, wrote of "Muss and La Clara hung by the heels a Milano...and Mussolini, wrecked for an error", meaning his alliance with Nazi Germany. Did Pound ever recant his anti-semitism? According to my old acquittance Allen Ginsberg, yes. In the Sixties when Allen and friends visited Pound in Venice Ezra told him, "The worst mistake I ever made was that stupid suburban prejudice of anti-semitism". After that and until his demise in 1972 there was literal silence. Pound often would not speak for weeks at a time. (Ezra also refused Allen's offer to light up a joint.) Ezra Pound lived an epic tragedy in reverse. He started in Paradiso, by World War I the most celebrated American poet since Whitman, descended into Purgatorio, Fascism and World War II, and finally ended his life in an Inferno of his own making. "Where are you living these days Mr. Pound?" an American reporter asked him in the Sixties. "In Hell", Ezra replied, and tapped his heart with his index finger.
Nobody ever accused Ezra Pound of lacking convictions, in fact quite the opposite. He had too many. "Ezra pound was a village explainer. This was excellent if you were a village but if not, not", said Ms. Gertrude Stein in THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS. C. David Heymann assigned himself the task back in 1972, the year Pound died, of examining Pound's political convictions in light of his poetry and vice versa, including one of the last interviews with the man Jean Cocteau called "The last rower on the river of the dead" in Europe. Pound became politically committed after the mass slaughter of World War I, which had taken the lives of millions, including artist friends: "There died a myriad, among them the best, for an old bitch got rotten in the teeth, for a botched civilization". After flirting briefly with Communism, which never would have worked out since Pound was a born elitist, like a flash it came to him that usury, or the charging of high interest rates, was responsible for war, famine, unemployment and the starvation of the arts and artists. ("With usura had no man a good stone".) This insight provided him with the inspiration for the greatest and most controversial poem of the twentieth century, THE CANTOS, a modernist take on nothing less than world history from the Greeks and Chinese to the end of World War II. Rejecting Bolshevism Pound embraced what the German Socialist August Babel called "the socialism of fools", anti-semitism. Hadn't the Jews introduced usury into Europe? (Actually, no, but facts seldom stand in the way of conviction.) After hanging out with the Lost Generation in Paris, Hemingway, Joyce, and Eliot turned into life-long friends, Pound settled in Rapallo, Italy under Mussolini, or as Ezra preferred to call him "The Boss" (Il Duce). Was Pound a Fascist? No. Heymann makes clear Pound though he found in Fascism a political system that might put some of his economic ideas into practice. After just one amicable and short talk with Mussolini, presenting him with the latest piece of THE CANTOS ("Ma questo e' divertente", said The Boss, grasping the point before the aesthetes got there") Mussolini turned his back on Pound, and the Foreign Office of the Fascist Party labeled him "a friend of Italy and an amiable madman". Notice what is missing here? Pound did not admire Nazism, seldom spoke of Hitler and in THE PISAN CANTOS, written while he was in American captivity in 1945, wrote of "Muss and La Clara hung by the heels a Milano...and Mussolini, wrecked for an error", meaning his alliance with Nazi Germany. Did Pound ever recant his anti-semitism? According to my old acquittance Allen Ginsberg, yes. In the Sixties when Allen and friends visited Pound in Venice Ezra told him, "The worst mistake I ever made was that stupid suburban prejudice of anti-semitism". After that and until his demise in 1972 there was literal silence. Pound often would not speak for weeks at a time. (Ezra also refused Allen's offer to light up a joint.) Ezra Pound lived an epic tragedy in reverse. He started in Paradiso, by World War I the most celebrated American poet since Whitman, descended into Purgatorio, Fascism and World War II, and finally ended his life in an Inferno of his own making. "Where are you living these days Mr. Pound?" an American reporter asked him in the Sixties. "In Hell", Ezra replied, and tapped his heart with his index finger.
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October 1, 2020Dobbs reportedly brought this to McLuhan at the coach house during their last meeting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews