Ezra Pound v.The Saturday Review of Literature

Abstract

a *n Sunday, 20 February 1949, the New York Times printed as its front-page headline: Pound, in Mental Clinic, Wins Prize for Poetry Penned in Treason Cell. It was no surprise that the choice of Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos for the new Bollingen Award in Poetry by the Fellows ofthe Library of Congress would be controversial. At the time, Pound was at St. Elizabeths mental institution, to which he had been confined since 1946, ever since he had been found unfit to stand trial for the charge of treason resulting from the fascist broadcasts that he had given over Rome Radio during World War II. Newspapers throughout the country offered critical editorials and printed letters from readers in support and/or protest of the award. Just as the debates began to wane, The Saturday Review of Literature published two paranoid and hyperbolic attacks on Pound by Robert Hillyer on 11 and 18 June 1949, which received considerable publicity. In August, Congress decided that the government should not sponsor any awards in the arts (several were cancelled or relocated as a result), and the Bollingen award for poetry was moved to Yale University. These facts are well known. What is missing in this account is the deliberately manipulative role that the editors of the Saturday Review played in exacerbating this debate and alerting Con? gress to the strategically exaggerated argument put forth in their own periodical. Furthermore, standard accounts of the events surrounding the award have neglected the complicated negotiations of the Fellows in their decision to give Pound the award, as well as their varied reactions to the Saturday Review scandal. Ultimately, the editors of the Saturday Review and the Fellows agreed that a most important democratic principle was at stake. But they disagreed as to the extent this democratic principle was visible and relevant in the debate.