Donald Hall - Interviewing Ezra Pound (44/111)
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- čas přidán 30. 07. 2017
- To listen to more of Donald Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: • Donald Hall (Poet)
US Poet Laureate Donald Hall (1928-2018) published essays and anthologies of both poetry and prose including "String too Short to be Saved: Recollections of Summers on a New England Farm", and "Ox-Cart Man", a children's book which won the Caldecott Medal. [Listener: Kendel Currier; date recorded: 2005]
TRANSCRIPT: Ezra Pound… I think it was 1958 when he was released from the custody in the mental hospital in Washington, because, rather than try him as a traitor, the government had judged him insane, incapable of standing trial, because he had broadcast for Mussolini to the American troops during the Second World War. And this was a difficult idea to… to… I loved Pound's poetry - the early stuff mostly - early 'Cantos' too, and I learned a lot from him… I admired him very much. But the words I'd heard out of Washington were that he was arrogant and fascistic and… 'The Paris Review' had earlier tried to do an interview with him, and he'd said yes at first, and then he said he'd discovered that the magazine was part of the pinko usary fringe. And that may be because the name of the publisher at that time was Jean Stein… I don't know that. So now he was back in Italy and 'The Paris Review' wanted me to interview him, and they wanted it like crazy, and I loved much of the work, so I decided to do it. I rented a Morris Minor station wagon, so that the baby could be on the top of her baby carriage, behind the seats, and… and we… could sit behind us, and we drove from Thaxted over to France, and through the Simplon Pass railroad train - wonderful - turn around and look at the baby as we were going through the tunnel sitting up, looking around - and my wife took the kids through the streets of Rome. These two little red-headed babies, and they were constantly remarked upon - ‘Rosso!’ But I went to see Pound the day we got there to arrange when we'd start the interview the next day. And he came to the door and opened it, and he was 74 then. His face was heavily wrinkled, almost like Auden's and kind of beautiful… that great hair swooping back, leonine, but he looked… he looked very old, and he carried a cane, and he said, ‘Mr Hall, you have come all the way from England, and you find me in fragments’. And it was an extraordinary time. I spent a good deal of four days with him, and I came to feel for him enormously. He was very guilty, but he didn't get it - what he had done wrong. He insisted he was not a traitor, because you could not be a traitor without treacherous intent. He said nothing… he was defending the real American republic against the usurpers. He said nothing anti-semitic to me. But one time he told a joke that had references to Judaism - it wasn't anti-semitic - and then his face fell, he was afraid he had been anti-semitic, he didn't know. Well, he went in and out of speech. There were times when he was eloquent and witty and building a story nicely, but then maybe in the middle of a sentence he would collapse, and close his eyes, and lie back on a little bed, and say that he was a failure. Succeeding in the interview was really important to him… that's one thing I thought of him as being so arrogant. He was desperate to do a good interview - to come off well, and so on. He was a very broken man. Shortly thereafter, he stopped talking, almost entirely, he went into the silence, and for the last 10 years of his life, he spoke very few words. He could speak - it wasn't a physical thing - but, he was sort of entering the silence at that time, and there was a lot of silence. But eventually over four days, there was a lot of talk, and when we saw him… I took a tape recorder on a very primitive machine… and the thing you can hear clearest on it was, ‘Turn that damn thing off! Turn that damn thing off!’ But I managed to get the interview off it, and out of memory, and so on. - Zábava
ultimately, for Pound, the establishment said, "I think you have had a little to much to think."
And with the most base tactic no less. ‘Antisemitism’ is not real
@@downwiththezionistpsychopa9812 Antisemitism is not real? Sure, the definition of antisemitism, and racism in general, has become inflated, but that doesn't mean there's no such thing
@@cumomsandcureloms you’re totally asleep and I hope you wake up go what’s going on in the world soon
@@downwiththezionistpsychopa9812 does the word "holocaust" mean anything to you ?
@@cumomsandcureloms how many gentiles and Christians died during ww2 at the hands of bolshevik (chewish) communists?
Donald Hall knows who pays his way.
Pound simply recognised the one real ancient enemy. He recognised, like Patton who was fighting against it.
I'm encouraged by some of the comments here, those who are aware certain generations of poetasters are almost entirely incapable of understanding Pound's economics and politics, 'The Jewish Question' aside. Usury was his point, and the point has skipped a few generations (generally speaking, there are always exceptions) and will now be carried on by the bravest of those born toward the end of the 20th century and on into this one.
Bravo
Thank you Mr. Hall. Wish I’d have been there!
oh shit, you died! Well, thanks anyway if you can read this. I could listen to you talk all day long, brother.
Pound's poetry is accomplished, but I can't say it's some of my favorite poetry. I admire "In a Station of the Metro" enormously. Much of the rest seems unnecessarily difficult and allusive
No trial because they were afraid of what he might say.
"broadcast for Mussolini to American troops" false. Pound was speaking for himself.
Exactly, and we supposedly fight these wars to defend free speech
heh heh poems heh heh
Are you kidding? You think he just opened up a podcast online? Pound was a fascist through and through.
@@geinikan1kan Oh so what theres absolutely nothing wrong with being a fascist. I mean that in the true sense of fascism. Not the usual way people throw the word about linking it the Hitler.
@@marcgray7317 Please tell me something right about being a fascist? I'll even accept unusual examples. Go for it.
Ezra Pound did and said nothing wrong.... Dante puts the usurers in the lowest sub-circle of the seventh circle of hell, many people have noted that usurers are placed deeper into hell than violent murderers, violent suicides, blasphemers, and sodomites.
With usura even Dante’s works are usurped and cheapened
upvoted
his spirit shall rise from the grave and the whole world will know that he was right.
I love Ez. I also own a copy of “Ezra Pound Speaking: Radio Speeches of World War II (Contributions in American Studies): 9780313200571: by Leonard W. Doob.” It’s heartbreaking to read the vitriol coming out of Pound’s mouth. Indeed, he had a psychotic break during the war, and later Ginsberg forgave him. I forgive him too. Yet, the record stands. (Thank the gods for the poetry.)
How dare he expose the jews?
eZRA POUNd "LIKE a unbroken house cat,, Dangerous around children" Ernest Hemingway, that IDAHO born BOY Ezra Pound LONG LIVE THE FIGHT WE havE;; LOST, AGAINST USURY,, kevin D. blanch
My mother in law interviewed him for her high school paper.......
Interesting! When would that have been? Has she told you anything about the experience? Please tell us more!
Pound... so very good. And was right.
100% right
Mr Hall, I seriously see that YOU did "not get it."
Despite his WW2 support of the enemy, I've admired Pound's poetry all my life. He's a literary giant on the same level as Joyce, Eliot, Yeats and others of his generation. He's one of the greatest American poets. He was a genius in the truest sense of the word. Unfortunately his extreme intelligence failed to grasp the enormous evil that the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler was capable of. Pound's intellectual support of fascist economics did not foresee the wholesale slaughter of millions in the Holocaust. That's his ultimate failure.
Sometimes it seems there is a thin line between colossal arrogance and infantile naivety. Having excessive faith in one's own high intelligence seems a sort of 'occupational hazard' of the highly intelligent, from what I, with my modest intelligence, have observed ....
Separate the art from the artist.
How says the H would of happened if the West stayed out? H happened right at the end when everything was lost for Germany.
Germany v ruthless Stalin and Communism was always going to kick off, we didn't need to get involved.
Pound was wrong about usury. But I understand his feeling that culture had failed in Europe but I think that despite everything, his great learning etc he was naive, almost childlike in his political views. His Cantos as an idea of fragmented writings and moments of intensity and reports, fails where it is tendentious. The US was no greater or 'better' really than Germany or Europe. Capitalism is an 'evil' but from there we start to get so many contradictions. Better to present history and its complexity. In some ways he succumbed to a vague Enlightenment idea of Progress. A myth. But his passion for art and ideas and his work was great. [The decline of European civilization is a myth also, but Europe in 30s to 40s became the culmination of and Idea that had existed and had been seen in the 1500s on. Seen in the savage Inquisition and ideas of Western superiority. ] The controversy goes on but Pound is still of great importance for anyone interested in Modernist and later poetry. He helped so many people (as did another Stein, Gertrude) so his intense poetry and poetics his ideas, were almost the greatest thing done in his day, but always these simplifications of history happen to even the most learned. Many Jewish writers admired his work. They understood his "madness".
Usury is destroying the West.