{"id":7444,"date":"2026-08-18T14:16:49","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T18:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/?p=7444"},"modified":"2026-08-18T14:16:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T18:16:49","slug":"ezra-pound-hugh-selwyn-mauberley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/?p=7444","title":{"rendered":"Ezra Pound: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ezra Pound (1885-1972) came to London in the summer of 1908. He cobbled together a living as a reviewer and editor for magazines such as The New Age<\/em> and Poetry. <\/em>He served as the midwife for modernism by arranging the publication of T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.). Sometimes charming, sometimes arrogant, Pound antagonized many of his colleagues in both England the America. His Homage to Sextus Propertius<\/em>, a set of poems based on the work of the Latin poet, published in Poetry<\/em> 1918, was panned. Pound left for Europe in the spring of 1921. His publication of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/em> (1920) served as his farewell to London. The illustration shows a photographic portrait by E. O. Hopp\u00e9 taken in 1918 and published in 1920.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/strong><\/p>\n

The book was published in a limited edition of 200 copies by the Ovid Press, founded by the Jewish poet and printer John Rodker in 1919. Though only active for about three years, the press published T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and James Joyce. The book was elegantly printed with each poem preceded by abstract drop caps designed by Edward Wadsworth. The following illustration shows the beginnings of the first two poems:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/em> was reprinted in the 1923 edition of Personae<\/em> and then again in 1958 together with Homage to Sextus Propertius<\/em> in Diptych Rome-London<\/em>. Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/em> is divided in two, the first part containing 12 poems and the second 5, with an Envoi<\/em> separating the two. The full text is available at Wikisource<\/a>. This post, which will comment on some of the poems, is much indebted to the work of Espey (1955), Berryman (1983), and Ruthven (2020, pp 125-147). Pound was intelligent, fluent in several languages and widely read. He assumed his readers knew as much as he did, and failed to understand why they did not appreciate the significance of his work, which, though sometimes achingly beautiful, was often intractably obscure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ode pour l’\u00e9lection de son sepulchre<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first poem in the book is Pound\u2019s proposal for his own epitaph. Its title comes from a long poem by Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), wherein he asks not to be memorialized by a marble tomb but to be buried in the nature that he loved. A short excerpt together with a translation by Curtis Page (1903) that uses rhyme but loses much of the sense:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pound\u2019s poetry was nothing like Ronsard\u2019s (and even less like that of Page). He tried to write poetry that conveyed the truth of his time. He failed. He therefore requests an epitaph that recognizes his defeat. From the last stanza we learn that this poem is dated to the poet\u2019s 30th<\/sup> year. In a subsequent revision he changed this to the 31st<\/sup>. This would then be 1916, the date when Pound published Lustra.<\/em><\/p>\n

For three years, out of key with his time,
\nHe strove to resuscitate the dead art
\nOf poetry; to maintain “the sublime”
\nIn the old sense. Wrong from the start \u2013<\/p>\n

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
\nIn a half savage country, out of date;
\nBent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
\nCapaneus; trout for factitious bait:<\/p>\n

\u1f34\u03b4\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>\u03b3\u03ac\u03c1<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>\u03c4\u03bf\u03b9<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>\u03c0\u03ac\u03bd\u03b8\u1fbd<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>\u1f45\u03c3\u1fbd<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>\u1f10\u03bd\u1f76<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>\u03a4\u03c1\u03bf\u03af\u1fc3<\/em>
\n<\/em>Caught in the unstopped ear;
\nGiving the rocks small lee-way
\nThe chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.<\/p>\n

His true Penelope was Flaubert,
\nHe fished by obstinate isles;
\nObserved the elegance of Circe’s hair
\nRather than the mottoes on sun-dials.<\/p>\n

Unaffected by “the march of events”,
\nHe passed from men’s memory in l’an trentiesme
\nDe son eage<\/em>; the case presents
\nNo adjunct to the Muses’ diadem.<\/p>\n

The following is Pound\u2019s recitation of the poem from a recording<\/a> made at Harvard University in 1939:<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Pound-Ezra_Ode-Pour-LElection-de-Son-Sepulchre.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

The notion in the first stanza that Pound had tried \u201cto resuscitate the dead art of poetry\u201d alludes to Dante\u2019s Ma qui la morta poes\u00ec resurga<\/em>, (Purgatorio I,<\/a> 7, 1321). In the last stanza, Pound quotes from the Testament<\/em> (1461) of Fran\u00e7ois Villon, a comic poem that serves, like Ronsard\u2019s Ode, as the poet\u2019s will. Pound felt victimized by society, in much the same way as the medieval poet. In 1923, Pound wrote a short opera<\/a> based on Villon\u2019s poem.<\/p>\n

The second stanza refers to Capaneus, one of the \u201cSeven Against Thebes.\u201d A giant with immense strength, he claimed that even Zeus could not defeat him. Nevertheless, he was killed by a divine thunderbolt as he stormed the walls of Thebes. Pound shared his defiance.<\/p>\n

The Greek quotation that begins the third stanza (transliterated as \u00eddmen g\u00e1r toi p\u00e1nth\u1fbd \u00f3s\u1fbd en\u00ed Tro\u00ed\u0113 <\/em>refers to Homer\u2019s rendition of the song of the sirens in the Odyssey<\/em> XII<\/a>: 189: \u201cFor we know all the suffering that was endured on the plains of Troy.\u201d The next stanza refers to characters in the Odyssey: Penelope and Circe. Pound had begun to consider himself as a modern Odysseus. In 1917 published the first three parts of what were to become his life work: The Cantos. <\/em>His idea was to create a sequence of modern poems that covered everything we understood about life, much like the Dante\u2019s Divine Comedy<\/em>. He later abandoned these \u201cur Cantos,\u201d and began the project again with an episode from the Odyssey that had originally formed part of the original third canto. He then published A Draft of XVI Cantos<\/em> in 1925.<\/p>\n

This first poem of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/em> is intriguing for its bilingual rhymes: \u03a4\u03c1\u03bf\u03af\u1fc3<\/em> and leeway, Flaubert and hair, trentiesme<\/em> and diadem.<\/p>\n

Exactly who is speaking in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/em> is not easy to determine (Bush, 1990; Wong, 2000). Pound created Mauberley as a persona <\/em>separate from himself. In the first poem of the book this writer provides a eulogy for the poet E.P., who we can only assume was the youthful and idealistic Ezra Pound, who \u201cdied\u201d unappreciated in 1916. In the first part of the book Mauberley then goes on to consider the state of literary London after that death. Lacking the emotional energy of the young E.P., Mauberley speaks in a detached manner. Occasionally the mask slips.<\/p>\n

The second poem in the sequence tries to explain Pound\u2019s failure as a result of the public\u2019s taste rather than the artist\u2019s lack of talent:<\/p>\n

The age demanded an image
\nOf its accelerated grimace,
\nSomething for the modern stage,
\nNot, at any rate, an Attic grace;<\/p>\n

Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
\nOf the inward gaze;
\nBetter mendacities
\nThan the classics in paraphrase!<\/p>\n

The “age demanded” chiefly a mould in plaster,
\nMade with no loss of time,
\nA prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
\nOr the “sculpture” of rhyme.<\/p>\n

The following is Pound\u2019s recitation of this poem recorded<\/a> in Washington in 1958:<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Pound-Ezra_Hugh-Selwyn-Mauberley_II.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

By \u201cthe classics in paraphrase\u201d Pound is referring to his versions of the poems of Propertius in Homage to Sextus Propertius<\/em> (1919). Pound had attempted to convey the meaning of the poems rather than providing an exact translation. He had done the same with his translations from Chinese in Cathay <\/em>(1915) but there were no pedantic Chinese scholars to criticize those poems.<\/p>\n

In the third stanza, Pound distinguishes between statues made by means of plaster moulds from those sculpted from stone or alabaster. He likens prose to the cinema. For someone whose motto became Make it New<\/em> (1934), he was decidedly antagonistic to new art forms. Ruthven (2020, p 130) quotes him as claiming \u201cThe Cinema is not art\u201d in 1918.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

There died a myriad<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most devastating event of Pound\u2019s sojourn in London was World War I. Pound was acutely aware of the lives wasted by this terrible war. Pound\u2019s friend Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who had sculpted a striking Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound<\/em> in 1914, was killed in action in June 1915. Pound published a book on the sculptor\u2019s works and thoughts in 1916: Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir<\/em>. The following illustration shows a 1909 self-portrait of Gaudier-Brzeska and his sculpted portrait of Pound:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The fourth and fifth poems in the initial section of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/em> provide an elegy for the young men who died in World War I. These remarkably moving poems are the most memorable of the whole book. So much so that one can forget how well written they are.<\/p>\n

IV<\/p>\n

These fought, in any case,
\nand some believing, pro domo, in any case ..<\/p>\n

Some quick to arm,
\nsome for adventure,
\nsome from fear of weakness,
\nsome from fear of censure,
\nsome for love of slaughter, in imagination,
\nlearning later …<\/p>\n

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
\nDied some pro patria, non dulce non et decor \u2026<\/p>\n

walked eye-deep in hell
\nbelieving in old men’s lies, then unbelieving
\ncame home, home to a lie,
\nhome to many deceits,
\nhome to old lies and new infamy;<\/p>\n

usury age-old and age-thick
\nand liars in public places.<\/p>\n

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
\nYoung blood and high blood,
\nFair cheeks, and fine bodies;<\/p>\n

fortitude as never before<\/p>\n

frankness as never before,
\ndisillusions as never told in the old days,
\nhysterias, trench confessions,
\nlaughter out of dead bellies.<\/p>\n

V.<\/p>\n

There died a myriad,
\nAnd of the best, among them,
\nFor an old bitch gone in the teeth,
\nFor a botched civilization.<\/p>\n

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
\nQuick eyes gone under earth’s lid,<\/p>\n

For two gross of broken statues,
\nFor a few thousand battered books.<\/p>\n

The following is Pound\u2019s recitation of these poems, recorded<\/a> in Washington in 1958:<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hugh-Selwyn-Mauberley-IV-and-V-Ezra-Pound.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

The initial part of poem IV bases both its rhythm and its sense on the Lament for Adonis<\/em><\/a> (around 100 BCE) by Bion of Smyrna (Espey, 1955, p 44). Near the end of the lament, the Loves pay tribute to the dead Adonis:<\/p>\n

This flung upon him arrows,
\nthat a bow, this a feather, that a quiver.
\nOne hath done off Adonis\u2019 shoe,
\nothers fetch water in a golden basin,
\nanother washes the thighs of him,
\nand again another stands behind and fans him with his wings.<\/p>\n

Pound quotes from Horace Ode III: 2: 13: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori<\/em> (Sweet and fitting is it to die for fatherland). There was nothing sweet or fitting about death in the trenches of World War I. He also used the Latin phrase pro domo<\/em> (for the home) as one of the reasons that the soldiers went to war. Latin made everything seem necessary.<\/p>\n

Pound points to two main forces that led to the catastrophe of World War I: usury and lies. This is the first mention of \u201cusury\u201d in Pound\u2019s poetry. He had become convinced by the economic writings of Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952) that endeavors financed by interest-bearing loans cannot lead to anything new or good because banks will not risk take risks with their investments (see Kenner, 1971, pp 301-317). Far better for endeavors to be financed by the government by means of \u201csocial credit.\u201d Pound later became fixated on the idea of usury as leading to the downfall of civilization, for example in his Canto XLV<\/em><\/a> (1937)<\/p>\n

Almost like an ancient prophet, Pound foresees the collapse of the British Empire using the powerful consonance of \u201cbitch\u201d and \u201cbotch.\u201d However, the empire persisted between the wars, finally falling into pieces after World War II.<\/p>\n

And what did these young men die for? Ruthven (2020, p 133) suggests that the last two lines of the fifth poem indicate<\/p>\n

The bric-\u00e0-brac of an ancient and once vital tradition: but the civilization these men have died for is little more than a museum of shabby objets d’art.<\/em><\/p>\n

The following is a different interpretation from Tearle (2019, p 65):<\/p>\n

If \u2018statues\u2019 and \u2018books\u2019 are meant to be read as metonymic stand-ins for \u2018art\u2019 or \u2018culture\u2019 more generally, then our response to these lines is likely to be mixed. Does Pound think art is worth dying for, or not? Th e men who gave their lives in the First World War were not, aft er all, dying merely to defend the cheapened modern art which Pound\u2019s poem laments, but all art of all ages. And \u2018broken statues\u2019 and \u2018battered books\u2019 hardly sound like modern art, but classical art that has been allowed to fall into ruin. In other words, Pound\u2019s lines cast the soldiers as men defending something which the populace could not even be bothered to maintain, but which the artistic champion in him felt was worth dying for. Th e men who had sent Pound\u2019s generation off to war had also been those who had allowed several thousand years of Western culture to fall into decline.<\/p>\n

Envoi<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the memorial to those who died in the war, Pound presents several satirical portraits of people he had met during his time in London. Despite occasionally beautiful lines, they are for the most part not worth reading. But then, Pound inserts a poem entitled Envoi<\/em> to mark the end of the first part of his book. An \u201cenvoi\u201d (from envoyer<\/em>, send) is a writer\u2019s farewell message to the reader. It began in French medieval poetry and was famously used at the end of Chaucer\u2019s Troilus and Criseyde <\/em>(c 1385), The following is Chaucer\u2019s Middle English<\/a> and a modern translation<\/a>. He hopes that God will allow him to write a comedy now that his tragedy is finished:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pound bids his book farewell, believing it has nothing to say, but that it has born witness to the beautiful. The following is the text and a recitation by Pound from his 1939 recording<\/a> at Harvard University:<\/p>\n

Go, dumb-born book,
\nTell her that sang me once that song of Lawes:
\nHadst thou but song
\nAs thou hast subjects known,
\nThen were there cause in thee that should condone
\nEven my faults that heavy upon me lie
\nAnd build her glories their longevity.<\/p>\n

Tell her that sheds
\nSuch treasure in the air,
\nRecking naught else but that her graces give
\nLife to the moment,
\nI would bid them live
\nAs roses might, in magic amber laid,
\nRed overwrought with orange and all made
\nOne substance and one colour
\nBraving time.<\/p>\n

Tell her that goes
\nWith song upon her lips
\nBut sings not out the song, nor knows
\nThe maker of it, some other mouth,
\nMay be as fair as hers,
\nMight, in new ages, gain her worshippers,
\nWhen our two dusts with Waller’s shall be laid,
\nSiftings on siftings in oblivion,
\nTill change hath broken down
\nAll things save Beauty alone.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Pound-Ezra_Envoi_Harvard_1939.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Pound is describing his experience hearing the young soprano Raymonde Collignon singing Go Lovely Rose <\/em>(Berryman, 1983, pp 141-143; Hesse, 1981). This is a musical setting by Henry Lawes (1596-1662) of a poem by Edmund Waller (1606-1687). The following is the poem<\/p>\n

Go, lovely rose!
\nTell her that wastes her time and me,
\nThat now she knows,
\nWhen I resemble her to thee,
\nHow sweet and fair she seems to be.<\/p>\n

Tell her that\u2019s young,
\nAnd shuns to have her graces spied,
\nThat hadst thou sprung
\nIn deserts, where no men abide,
\nThou must have uncommended died.<\/p>\n

Small is the worth
\nOf beauty from the light retired;
\nBid her come forth,
\nSuffer herself to be desired,
\nAnd not blush so to be admired.<\/p>\n

Then die! that she
\nThe common fate of all things rare
\nMay read in thee;
\nHow small a part of time they share
\nThat are so wondrous sweet and fair!<\/p>\n

And this is a modern performance<\/a> by Ellen Hargis accompanied by Paul O’Dette on lute<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Lawes-Go-lovely-rose-.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

In the Envoi<\/em>, the persona of Mauberley appears to conclude his comments on literary London by quoting a poem from the now-dead poet E.P.<\/p>\n

This is one place where there is no doubt who is speaking. It is Pound himself, suddenly stepping from behind the wavering figure of Mauberley and all the veils of irony, to speak out personally, even confessionally, into a situation which he had seemed to contrive just so as not to speak in his own person at all. This wonderfully dramatic moment is signalized by the sudden appearance of a wholly unexpected metre and style, flowing, plangent, and cantabile, so wholly traditional in every respect that the voice of the poet seems to be the anonymous voice of the tradition of English song. (Davie, 1967, p 325)<\/p>\n

Pound hopes that his book description of the singer\u2019s grace might somehow excuse its writer\u2019s faults and make the singing long remembered. Then he imagines he might fix the rose in amber so that it might never fade or die. And finally, he notes that though singer and poet will pass away, the beauty of the song will not.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mauberley<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part II of the book is entitled Mauberley (1920).<\/em> If the reader has had problems knowing what persona is present the poems of the Part I, he will almost certainly be completely lost in Part II. The poems in this section are perhaps best interpreted as the work of a poet who, after suffering critical rejection, has changed his style so that it no longer suffers from his youthful enthusiasms. However, this has caused the poems to become so cryptic as to almost unintelligible: outlines without color or shape. The following is the first poem:<\/p>\n

Turned from the \u201ceau-forte
\nPar Jaquemart\u201d
\nTo the strait head
\nOf Messalina:<\/p>\n

\u201cHis true Penelope
\nWas Flaubert\u201d,
\nAnd his tool
\nThe engraver’s<\/p>\n

Firmness,
\nNot the full smile,
\nHis art, but an art
\nIn profile;<\/p>\n

Colourless
\nPier Francesca,
\nPisanello lacking the skill
\nTo forge Achaia.<\/p>\n

The following is a recitation by Pound from his 1939 recording<\/a> at Harvard University:<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Hugh-Selwyn-Mauberley-II-I.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Scholars agree that the fist two lines refer to the etching by Jules Jacquemart (1837\u20131880) that serves as a frontispiece to the book \u00c9maux et Cam\u00e9es<\/em><\/a> (Enamels and Cameos) by Th\u00e9ophile Gautier (1811-1872). Gautier wrote in a precise and unsentimental manner, The title of Gautier\u2019s book indicates the author\u2019s preference for the skill of a craftsman creating objets d\u2019art<\/em> to the excesses of the Romantics and their grand themes. The brief lines in the first poem in this Mauberley section are similar to those in Gautier\u2019s poem L\u2019Art<\/em> (Espey, 1955, pp 45-46), the last four quatrains (with my loose translations) of which are:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However, no one is certain what Pound meant by the \u201cstrait head of Messalina.\u201d Pound appears to have had in mind some portrait of Messalina (17-48 CE), the third wife of the emperor Claudius. Much younger than her husband she was rumored to have satisfied her desires by working clandestinely in a Roman brothel. Berryman (1977) suggested that Pound might have been referring to etchings of a bust of Messalina in the Louvre or of a head in Munich as presented in Bernoulli\u2019s R\u00f6mische Ikonographie <\/em>(pp 188, 193). Moody (2007, p 383) proposed Aubrey Beardsley\u2019s stark black-and-white 1895 etching of Messalina Returning Home<\/em> (from the brothel) (Wilson, 2020). The various candidate etchings are shown below. Neither interpretation makes much sense, other than that the Messalina etchings are outlines without shading. <\/em>Perhaps Pound is indicating that the poet Mauberley, chastised for his youthful excesses, has now drained his work of any form. This fits with the final stanza wherein he likens his new art to Piero della Francesca without the color, or Pisanello without the talent that let him make medallions as fine as those from ancient Greece (Achaia). \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The following is a 1447 medallion<\/a> of Pisanello showing s portrait of Cecilia Gonzaga, the daughter of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, on one side, and a representation of a virgin taming a unicorn on the obverse:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Luini in porcelain<\/strong><\/p>\n

The poems in Part II, cryptic and allusive, cannot be understood without access to scholarly annotations. The final poem recalls the description of Raymonde Collignon singing Go Lovely Rose <\/em>in the Envoi<\/em> that separates the two parts of the book. <\/em>This final poem describes the singer rather than the song. Mauberley imagines the singer as a small porcelain medallion, perhaps like one of Gautier\u2019s cameos, or one of Pisanello\u2019s bronzes:<\/p>\n

Luini in porcelain!
\nThe grand piano
\nUtters a profane
\nProtest with her clear soprano.<\/p>\n

The sleek head emerges
\nFrom the gold-yellow frock
\nAs Anadyomene in the opening
\nPages of Reinach.<\/p>\n

Honey-red, closing the face-oval,
\nA basket-work of braids which seem as if they were
\nSpun in King Minos’ hall
\nFrom metal, or intractable amber;<\/p>\n

The face-oval beneath the glaze,
\nBright in its suave bounding-line, as,
\nBeneath half-watt rays,
\nThe eyes turn topaz.<\/p>\n

The poem likens the singer to a painting by Bernardino Luini (1480-1532) who worked with Leonardo da Vinci. Pound is likely referring to his painting Head of a Girl<\/em> in the Wallace Collection (Berryman, 1977, p 299). This was part of a set of frescos in Villa La Pelucca near Milan (about1523) which were transferred to canvas in 1822.<\/p>\n

Pound also compares the singer to Venus Anadyomene (rising from the sea), a name for Aphrodite (which may derive from aphros<\/em>, sea foam\u201d), the\u00a0 goddess of love. In particular, to a sculpted head of Venus in the Leconfield Collection (Petworth House), illustrated as Plate 83 in the art encyclopedia entitled Apollo<\/em> (1904) compiled by Solomon Reinach (Berryman, 1977, p 301).<\/p>\n

His final image is that of a fresco fragment from Minoan Crete, commonly called La Parisienne, <\/em>also described in Reinach.<\/p>\n

The following illustration shows these three heads, all of which have survived long beyond the age of their creation. All have intricately braided hair, as we must presume did Raymonde Collignon:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As described in a letter to the editor<\/a> of Padieuma, <\/em>the half-watt lamp was a special type of light bulb that gave a \u201cwarmer\u201d lighting than the usual incandescent bulb. It would have highlighted the singer\u2019s \u201ctopaz\u201d eyes. Topaz is frequently yellow, but occasionally blue or even red.<\/p>\n

Once one has understood the allusions, the poem has a cryptic beauty. However, it still pales before the description of the singing as presented in Envoi.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Exile <\/strong><\/p>\n

In early 1921, shortly after the publication of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, Pound left for Europe. The journal The New Age<\/a> bid him an ambiguous farewell:<\/p>\n

Mr. Ezra Pound has recently gone abroad, perhaps for one year, perhaps for two, perhaps for good. Following the old and, in my opinion, the bad example first set by a man of letters, Landor, Mr. Pound has shaken the dust of London from his feet with not too. emphatic a gesture of disgust, but, at least, without gratitude to this country. I can perfectly well understand, even if I find it difficult to approve. Mr. Pound has been an exhilarating influence for culture in England; he has left his mark upon more than one of the arts, upon literature, music, poetry and sculpture; and quite a number of men and movements owe their initiation to his self-sacrificing stimulus; among them being relatively popular successes as well as failures. With all this, however, Mr. Pound, like so many others who have striven for the advancement of intelligence and culture in England, has made more enemies than friends, and far more powerful enemies than friends. Much of the Press has been deliberately closed by cabal to him; his books have for some time been ignored or written down; and he himself has been compelled to live on much less than would support a navvy. His fate, as I have said, is not unusual: I could parallel it near home and with more than one instance. Taken by and large, England hates men of culture until they are dead.<\/p>\n

After two years in Paris, during which time he edited T. S. Eliot\u2019s The Waste Land <\/em>(1922), Pound moved to Rapallo in Italy where he stayed in self-imposed exile. While in Rapallo, he resumed work on The Cantos<\/em>, a sprawling poetic work that by his death had extended to some 117 poems, the last of which remain uncompleted.<\/p>\n

A man of towering intellect and enviable talent, he fashioned for himself an ego that considered only himself. He wrote only in accord with his own judgment, and lost the feedback of his fellows. Becoming fascinated by the economics of C. H. Douglas, he began to attribute all the ills of the world to the Jews.<\/p>\n

During World War II, he made propaganda broadcasts for the Italian government, denouncing the Allied Governments and the Jews (Casillo, 1988). After the war he was indicted for treason, but judged mentally unfit to stand trial. He spent 12 years in St Elizabeth\u2019s Psychiatric Hospital in Washington, D.C. There was never any definite diagnosis for what was wrong with him (Torrey, 1984). After being released in 1958, he returned to Italy, where he lived until his death in 1972.<\/p>\n

Despite the keenness of his mind and the tremendous breadth of his reading, he could not see clearly, could not communicate his ideas so that they could be easily understood, and could not abide by any criticism. He became exiled in himself. This process began with Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bernoulli, J. J. (1886). R\u00f6mische Ikonographie. Teil 2, Die Bildnisse der R\u00f6mischen Kaiser, I. Das Julisch-Claudische Kaiserhaus<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> Verlag von W Speman.<\/p>\n

Berryman, J. B. (1977). The art of the image: allusions in Pound\u2019s \u201cMedallion.\u201d Paideuma<\/em>, 6<\/em>(3), 295\u2013308.<\/p>\n

Berryman, J. B. (1983). Circe\u2019s craft: Ezra Pounds\u2019s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/em><\/a>. UMI Research Press.<\/p>\n

Bush, R. (1990). \u201cIt draws one to consider time wasted\u201d: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. American Literary History<\/em>, 2<\/em>(1), 56\u201378.<\/p>\n

Casillo, R. (1988). The genealogy of demons: anti-Semitism, fascism, and the myths of Ezra Pound<\/em>. Northwestern University Press.<\/p>\n

Davie, D. (1967). Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. In Ford, B (Ed) The Pelican Guide to English Literature; Volume 7 The Modern Age<\/em>.<\/a> (pp 315-329).<\/p>\n

Espey, J. J. (1955). Ezra Pound\u2019s Mauberley: a study in composition<\/em><\/a>. Faber and Faber.<\/p>\n

Hesse, E. (1981). Raymonde Collignon, or (apropos Paideuma<\/em>, 7-1&2, pp. 345-6): the duck that got away. Paideuma<\/em>, 10<\/em>(3), 583\u2013584<\/p>\n

Kenner, H. (1971). The Pound era<\/em>. University of California Press.<\/p>\n

Kotin, J. (2023). Hugh Kenner\u2019s The Pound Era<\/em>: FAQ<\/a>. nonsite website.<\/p>\n

Moody, A. D. (2007). Ezra Pound: poet: a portrait of the man and his work<\/em>. Volume I The young genius.<\/em> Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

Pound, E. (1920). Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/em>. Ovid Press.<\/p>\n

Pound, E. (1926). Person\u00e6: the collected poems of Ezra Pound.<\/em> James Laughlin.<\/p>\n

Pound, E. (1958). Diptych Rome-London<\/em>. Officina Bodoni (reprinted in 1994, New Directions).<\/p>\n

Reinach, S. (1904). Apollo: histoire g\u00e9nerale des arts plastiques profess\u00e9e en 1902-1903 \u00e0 l\u2019\u00c9cole du Louvre<\/em><\/a>. Librairie Hachette et Cie. \u00a0English translation<\/a><\/p>\n

Ronsard, P. de (translated by Page, C. H., 1903). Songs & sonnets of Pierre de Ronsard, gentleman of Vendomois<\/em>. Houghton Mifflin.<\/p>\n

Ruthven, K. K. (2020). A Guide to Ezra Pound\u2019s Person\u00e6 (1926). <\/em>University of California Press.<\/p>\n

Tearle, O. (2019). Battered books: Ezra Pound, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. In The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.<\/em> (pp. 59\u201376). Bloomsbury Publishing.<\/p>\n

Torrey, E. F. (1984). The roots of treason: Ezra Pound and the secret of St. Elizabeths<\/em>. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.<\/p>\n

Wong, K. A. (2000). Blurring of poet and persona in Pound\u2019s \u201cHugh Selwyn Mauberley.\u201d Paideuma<\/em>, 29<\/em>(3), 193\u2013205.<\/p>\n

Wilson, S. (2020). Aubrey Beardsley\u2019s Messalina: going, or coming?<\/a> Audrey Beardsley Society.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) came to London in the summer of 1908. He cobbled together a living as a reviewer and editor for magazines such as The New Age and Poetry. He served as the midwife for modernism by arranging the publication of T. S. Eliot,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,457,13,4,6,5,11,8,1],"tags":[1292,807,1291,1290,1293,806,1289,1296,1294,1297,46,1295,1298,170],"class_list":["post-7444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-language","category-literature","category-music","category-painting","category-poetry","category-psychiatry","category-sculpture","category-uncategorized","tag-anadyomene","tag-antisemitism","tag-aphrodite","tag-bernardino-luini","tag-edmund-waller","tag-fascism","tag-henri-gaudier-brzeska","tag-homage-to-sextus-propertius","tag-odyssey","tag-ovid-press","tag-t-s-eliot","tag-the-cantos","tag-the-new-age","tag-world-war-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7444"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7447,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7444\/revisions\/7447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}