Three on the tower : the lives and works of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams PDF
Preview Three on the tower : the lives and works of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams
H U I 111 N M ri\^gj M BI w ■ j ;j 'X ’' ^ S B i S P 1 - >■ •- !■ Jj'-Vi----* -'-um ■ ~ J^jp - BES ti 7. Xv ' M m VAfi - | u '. fi £ v i A A f l f l A w J \ , jH W w u V he Lives sind Wirk* of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot iliul William Carlos Williams by Louis Simpson , . R THREE on the TOWER The Lives and Works of Ezra Pound, T S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams THREE on the TOWER The Lives and Works of Ezra Pound, T S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams- by Louis Simpson Our spirit, shut within this courtyard of sense- experience, is always saying to the intellect upon the tower: “Watchman, tell us of the night, if it aught of promise bear ” —William James WILLIAM MORROW & COMPANY, INC., NEW YORK 1975 Copyright © 1975 by Louis Simpson* The author gratefully acknowledges permission to print excerpts from the following works. Ezra Pound, Personae. Copyright 1926 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Ezra Pound, The Cantos. Copyright 1934, 1937, 1940, © 1948, 1958, 1959, 1966, 1970 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Ezra Pound, Collected Shorter Poems (Personae and The Cantos). Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Excerpts from the poetry of T. S. Eliot and from The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party are reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright © 1943, 1963, 1964, by T. S. Eliot; copyright, 1971, by Esme Valerie Eliot. Excerpts from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot; Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot; Collected Plays by T. S. Eliot; and The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript, are reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Excerpts from Poems Written in Early Youth by T. S. Eliot are reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., copyright © 1967 by Valerie Eliot, and with the permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. William Carlos Williams, Collected Earlier Poems. Copyright 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. William Carlos Williams, Pictures from Breughel and Other Poems. Copyright 1954, 1955 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by. permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. William Carlos Williams, Paterson. Copyright 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, © 1958 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. The excerpt from Transfigured Night by Byron Vazakas is reprinted with the permission of Byron Vazakas. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016. Printed in the United States of America. 1 2 3 4 5 79 78 77 76 75 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Simpson, Louis Aston Marantz (date) Three on the tower. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Pound, Ezra Loomis, 1885-1972. 2. Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 1888-1965. 3. Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963. I. Title. PS3531.082Z836 811'.5'209 74-26952 ISBN 0-688-02899-3 Book design by Helen Roberts This book is dedicated to my mother. Preface In 1908 Isadora Duncan “in a short loosely hung Grecian dress, with bare feet and arms, danced a series of Greek dances from Gluck’s Iphigenie en Aulide, reproducing the postures of Greek dancers as portrayed on ancient vases.” 1 Isadora Duncan embodied the New Spirit. So did Ezra Pound with his red hair and cape. He saw himself as a troubadour poet, a Ronsard, another Villon. He left the United States, spent some months in Venice, then traveled to London. His timing was perfect. In the following years London was a vital center of the arts—there was nothing in Philadelphia to com pare with it. There was a Post-Impressionist exhibition. The Russian ballet arrived in London. There was Futurist art . . . shouting of poems while a drum was beaten. There was political turmoil in Ireland. There were suffragette outrages. There was Blast. OH BLAST FRANCE pig plagiarism BELLY SLIPPERS POODLE TEMPER BAD MUSIC BLESS ALL PORTS scooped out basins heavy insect dredgers monotonous cranes vii Vili PREFACE stations lighthouses, blazing through the frosty starlight, cutting the storm like a cake2 The period ended with the Great War, which produced sixteen million casualties. The human body, having been newly sensitized, was lacerated and flayed. Afterwards everyone had shell shock. It was to this postwar generation that The Waste Land spoke. “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.” 3 Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams made their reputations with short, intense, imagistic poems. There was, how ever, the question of how to continue—we live by the senses but at the same time we must have an aim that is not dependent on the senses. “Life itself” is incoherent, as a Great War plainly shows. “Our spirit,” says William James, “shut within this courtyard of sense-experience, is always saying to the intellect upon the tower: ‘Watchman, tell us of the night, if it aught of promise bear.’ ” 4 We are still looking for ways to continue. Therefore I have written about Pound and Eliot and Williams, each of whom went on to create a significant body of work. I have discussed their ideas as though they were new—and indeed, as they are necessary I be lieve them to be new. The poetry, however, is what matters—ideas are only points of departure—therefore I have concentrated on the poetry. Not the poem just by itself but as part of an ongoing pro cess of creation. I have attempted to enter into the process. To do this I have had to understand each man’s life—his connections with other people, his attitudes and beliefs. My rule has been to give these matters as much importance as he himself gave them. Williams wrote continually about his life, therefore I have talked about it in detail. Eliot hardly ever writes about his, but when he does it seems confessional. Pound, for all his volubility, gives little away: he writes about himself in the Cantos, but nothing personal, and this is the way I have dealt with him. I had to write this book to clarify my ideas. There are talented poets in the United States, but we need to consider where we are going. Pound, Eliot and Williams seem to have touched all the bases—with one possible exception, surrealism, though a case can be made for Eliot’s poems being surrealist, if we admit that sur realist writing may have logical connections. Each of these men PREFACE ix was remarkably fertile in ideas; even their failures are interesting, because they demonstrate an idea. I could not have written the book without the help of these people: my wife, Dorothy; my editor, Robert Levine, who gave encouragement and advice; Jean Robinson and Merridy Darrow, who worked on the manuscript; and my research assistant, Jean Carr.
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