Harry

“Everybody wants to see me. Everybody insists on talking to
me. People pester me and they pester others with inquiries about what I
am doing. How am I? Am I quite well again? Do I still go for my walks in the
country? Am I working? Have I finished my book? Will I begin another soon?
"A skinny monkey of a German wants me to translate his works. A wild-eyed
Russian girl wants me to write an account of my life for her. An American
lady wants the very latest news about me. An American gentleman will send
his carriage to take me to dinner -- just an intimate, confidential talk, you
know. An old schoolmate and chum of mine, of ten years ago, wants me to read him all that I write as fast as I write it. A painter friend I know expects
me to pose for him by the hour. A newspaper man wants my present
address. An acquaintance, a mystic, inquires about the state of my soul;
another, more practical, about the state of my pocketbook. The president
of my club wonders if I will make a speech for the boys! A lady, spiritually
inclined, hopes I will come to her house for tea as often as possible. She
wants to have my opinion of Jesus Christ, and -- what do I think of that new
medium?...

"Great God! what have I turned into? What right have you people to clutter
up my life, steal my time, probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for
your companion, confidant, and information bureau? What do you take me
for? Am I an entertainer on salary, required every evening to play an
intellectual farce under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and paid
for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers and lay at your feet all that I
do and all that I know? Am I a wench in a brothel who is called upon to lift
her skirts or take off her chemise at the bidding of the first man in a tailored
suit who comes along?”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“and powerful towards both the people and the state. He reaffirms the basic cause of ‘our revolution’, No taxation without representation; he insists that government revenue ‘be kept under public control’ and not be given over to the banks to speculate with; and he endorses President Jackson’s saying ‘No where so well deposited as in the pants of the people, | Wealth ain’t’.”
― A. David Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet: Volume II: The Epic Years

“Canto 34 goes back in time to the beginnings of that betrayal. Pound condensed into seven printed pages Allan Nevins’s 575-page Diary of John Quincy Adams (1928),”
― A. David Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet: Volume II: The Epic Years

“Canto 37 contains the major episode in Pound’s treatment of the American Revolution in this suite of cantos: the critical war for supremacy between the effectively private Bank of the United States and President Jackson representing the people of the United States. The war was carried on in the Senate, in the financial economy, and in the press from 1829 to 1835. Pound took as his principal source for that part of the canto The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren (published in 1918). Van Buren (1788–1862) was Secretary of State and then Vice-President (1833–7) to Andrew Jackson, and succeeded him as President (1837–41). Pound credited him with having been the brains behind Jackson’s saving the nation by freeing the Treasury from the despotism of the Bank,”
― A. David Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet: Volume II: The Epic Years