An Unpublished Letter by Ezra Pound on William Blake

Abstract

IN 1956, more than a half century ago, I wrote to Ezra Pound, who at that time was incarcerated by government authorities at St Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington DC, where he was committed, being found ‘insane’ in facing charges of treason for activities during the Second World War in Italy. As an enthusiast of William Blake's work, I asked Pound, who had been legally declared incompetent, if he had any supplemental thoughts on his remarks about the sanity of the poet-artist Blake. Pound in his Literary Essays, first published in 1918, in a jeremiad on ‘MR. HOUSMAN,’ satirically mentioned that ‘Willie’ Blake ‘occasionally [was] sent off to do a week-end in an asylum’ (p. 71). A page later, Pound also castigated ‘Blake's metric’ in ‘The Tyger,’ although Pound added ‘That there was a fountain of poetry somewhere inside dippy William, I would be the last to refute …’1 My letter to Pound was impertinent—and I got an impertinent reply. I did not expect an answer from Pound, and therefore I did have the presence of mind to keep a copy of my original inquiry, and, unfortunately, when I got the letter by Pound, I did not save the envelope, which had the logo of the hospital were he was being confined. Pound's reply to my inquiry was typed on a torn half sheet of a scrap of paper, 8½ × 11. Although the letter was unsigned, its authenticity can easily be confirmed by comparing the typescript with other letters of this period, as many are extant (see the collections in the Yale Library). Pound's letter is as follows: 9 Lug/ 56 No interest in retrospect. No energy for people who Aren’t trying to get necessary history back into Univ. Curricula. Order of precedence: some studies are NEEDED at particular times. Anyone of yr/ generation who is not paying more attention to Beria Than to Blake Is purty nigh being detrimental, Or at least don’t give a damn for his possible progeny. Why don’t yu go talk to ‘Alfalfa’ at Tichimingo / lot more lively than Blake.