Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ezra Pound
-
Standard Name: Pound, Ezra
EP
, American poet, critic, editor, translator, and key figure in the literary modernist movement, lived in London from 1908 to 1921, in Paris from 1921 to 1924, and then in Italy until the end of the Second World War. His vociferous, antisemitic support for Italian fascism earned him thirteen years in a US hospital for the criminally insane. He worked from 1917 until near the end of his life on his massive and generically multiple epic poem Cantos, which he published in serial fragments.
DB
arrived in Paris with letters of introduction to Ezra Pound
and James Joyce
, and she soon came into contact with a great number of the US expatriates living there at this time, including...
Literary responses
Natalie Clifford Barney
Ezra Pound
reviewed the book in the October 1921 issue of Dial, writing that NCB
had managed to publish with complete mental laziness a book of unfinished sentences and broken paragraphs, which is, on...
Textual Features
Natalie Clifford Barney
Barney's translator Anna Livia
describes these memoirs as a combination of war commentary, political theory, and an account of daily life in Fascist Italy. Despite NCB
's insistence that she is apolitical, her loyalties clearly...
Fictionalization
Natalie Clifford Barney
In 1912-13, NCB
's fame was bolstered by a series of essays addressed to her by Remy de Gourmont
entitled Lettres à l'Amazone, published in the Paris literary magazine Mercure de France.
Rood, Karen Lane, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 4. Gale Research.
25
Occupation
Natalie Clifford Barney
NCB
and Ezra Pound
formed Bel Esprit, a short-lived patronage scheme which Pound described as a sort of consumers' league to pay for quality rather than quantity in literature and the fine arts.
Sieburth, Richard. “Ezra Pound: Letters to Natalie Barney”. Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarship, Vol.
Ezra Pound
, a friend and regular visitor at the salon during and after the interwar years, collaborated with NCB
on a couple of unsuccessful literary ventures.
Occupation
Natalie Clifford Barney
A few years later, in 1925, Barney approached Pound
with her ideas for a new bilingual literary magazine, which she planned to edit with Sinclair Lewis
.
Sieburth, Richard. “Ezra Pound: Letters to Natalie Barney”. Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarship, Vol.
5
, pp. 279-95.
287-8
Pound was discouraging, telling her that he...
politics
Natalie Clifford Barney
Abandoning her formerly held pacifist views, NCB
supported Mussolini
and the Fascists. In 1940 she presented Ezra Pound
with a radio and a letter praising Lord Ha Ha
's pro-Nazi broadcasts for their exceptionally far-sweeping...
Textual Production
Natalie Clifford Barney
In 1919 she hired Ezra Pound
to respond to the manuscript. He told her that she was out of touch . . . with the best contemporary work, that she did not understand the difference...
Publishing
Natalie Clifford Barney
Remy de Gourmont
published some of NCB
's poems in Mercure de France in 1910.
Wickes, George. The Amazon of Letters: The Life and Loves of Natalie Barney. G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
121
In 1921 Pound
had two of her poems published in the transatlantic review, with the caption Arranged by...
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
22, 26-7
With the loyal support of French literary figures such as Valery Larbaud
Literary responses
Arnold Bennett
AB
's reviews, combined with his visibly privileged lifestyle, did not help his reputation among younger writers (such as those in the Bloomsbury Group
) as a wealthy snob or a philistine. Wyndham Lewis
attacked...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Bishop
Important among EB
's friendships were those with Marianne Moore
(whom she met in March 1934 while she was still at college and learned a lot from in her early years in New York, but...
Friends, Associates
Phyllis Bottome
PB
was introduced to Ezra Pound
(as half American) by May Sinclair
at one of her parties in London.
Bottome, Phyllis. The Challenge. Harcourt, Brace and Company.
381-2
Timeline
1907: Alfred Richard Orage and Holbrook Jackson...