San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks San José Studies, 1980s San José Studies Fall 10-1-1986 San José Studies, Fall 1986 San José State University Foundation Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sanjosestudies_80s Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation San José State University Foundation, "San José Studies, Fall 1986" (1986). San José Studies, 1980s. 21. https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sanjosestudies_80s/21 This Journal is brought to you for free and open access by the San José Studies at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in San José Studies, 1980s by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. '' #: ' ;;Fall 1! ,• ••• San Jose State University a Journal ,•••:.• •• '• - ••:y > ''^R' % Humanities, Social Sciences,—. r • ..;;i »" . 1i 1m * ',r ' '» Forthcoming in San Jose Studies—in addition to poetry and fiction: In Change Delight W. Ann Reynolds The Folly of the Body w» Harold J. DeBey The Culture of High Technology: Is It Female Friendly? Jan W. Kelly Vitamin A and Cancer Paul Gahlinger Cover: Ezra Pound and James Laughlin walking up the salite (stoney path) fromRapallo to San Ambrogio. About 1963. —photo by Ann Laughlin .!Ot­ AJ~J·A!Un ...4$ ltiOfJ U.S 9B6l c~ d3S 03AIJlJll ·....; - StiiOnlS tiSOf NVS SAN JOSE STUDIES Ezra Pound Centenary Issue San Jose Studies invited participants to submit essays written for or developed from presentations to an Ezra Pound Centennial Colloquium, sponsored by the San Jose Poetry Center and by San Jose State Univer­ sity, November 6-9, 1986, in San Jose. Selections from the submissions make up this issue, which was under­ written by the San Jose ,Poetry Center. In turn, the center was supported in presenting the Colloquium by the following agencies: The California Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fine Arts Commission of the City of San Jose California Arts Council National Endowment for the Arts Cultural Council of Santa Clara County Community Foundation of Santa Clara County San Jose Museum of Art The editors of San Jose Studies gratefully acknowledge the assistance as consulting editors of Alan Soldofsky, executive director of the San Jose Poetry Center, and of Victor de Mattei. Quotations from the writings of Ezra Pound, courtesy the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust and New Directions Publishing Corporation. SAN JOSE STUDIES Volume XII, Number 3 Fall, 1986 EZRA POUND CENTENARY ISSUE Ez As Wuz James Laughlin 6 Italy and Ezra Pound's Politics Fred Moramarco . 29 Ezra Pound and the Jews James E. B. Breslin. 37 Fascist of the Last Hour William McCraw . 46 Economics and Eleusis Leon Surette. 58 Anger and Poetic Politics in Rock-Drill Peter Dale Scott. 68 Ezra Pound and Hermes Robert Casillo . 83 Mythic and Archetypal Methods: a Reading of Canto IV Alan Williamson ...... ... ... .. .... .. .. .. .. ... 105 Metre and Translation in Pound's Women of Trachis Marianina Olcott ...... .. .. ..... .. .. ................... .. .. 111 Ezra Pound and Trobar Clus Carl Grundberg . .. .. .. .. ... .. .... .. .. .... .. ... ... 119 SAN JOSE STUDIES Volume XII, Number 3 Fall, 1986 EDITOR Fauneil J. Rinn, Political Science and America n Studies, San Jo se State Uni versity ASSOCIATE EDITORS Billie B. Jensen, History, San Jo se Stat e Univers it y Harold J. DeBey, Chemistry, San Jose Stat e Uni vers it y Allison Heisch, English and Humanities, San Jose Stat e University EDITORIAL BOARD Garland E. Allen, Biology, Was hington University John A. Brennan, History, University of Colorado, Boulder Hobert W. Burns, Philosophy, San Jose State Universit y Lee Edwards, English, Uni versity of Ma ssachu se tt s, Amherst Richard Flanagan, Creative Writing, Babson College Robert C. Gordon, English and Humanities, San Jose State University Richard Ingraham, Biology, San Jo se Stat e Uni versity Richard E. Keady, Religiou s Studies, San Jose State Universit y Jack Kurzweil, El e~ trical Engin ee ring, San Jo se Stat e University Lela A. Llorens, Occupational Th erapy, San Jo se State University Richard A. Scott, Busin ess, Uni versity of Arizona Jules Seigel, English, University of Rhode Island Robert G . Shedd, English and Humanities, Uni versity of Maryland, Baltimore Coun ty Dwight Van de Vate, Jr., Philosophy, The Uni versity of Tennessee Ellen C. Weaver, Biological Sciences, San Jo se Stat e Universit COMMITTEE OF TRUSTEES Jean Beard Elsie Leach Marshall J. Burak Arlene Okerlund Charles Burdick Rose Tseng Selma R. Burkom O.C. Williams, Chairman John A. Calm BUSINESS ASSISTANT Emi Nobuhiro GRAPHIC CONSULTANTS AI Beechick Laura Chau ©San Jose State University Foundation, 1986 ISSN: 0097-8051 Ez As Wuz James Laughlin MAY be the last survivor who knew Pound in his best years, in his I prime. Perhaps I can report what he was like before the newspapers turned him into a monster. I'd like to tell a little about Rapallo, Ezra and Rapallo, in 1934-35 when I was studying in his "Ezuversity." Then some­ thing about publishing him and how he endured the years in St. Elizabeths. Finally some recollections of his sad old age. The best thing that ever happened to me for my education was that my master at Choate, Dudley Fitts, had been corresponding with Pound about the affairs of Lincoln Kirstein's Hound and Horn magazine, which Pound always referred to as the "Bitch and Bugle." It was Fitts who started me reading Pound at school. We also read T. S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein-remarkable for a prep school. I was bored my first years at Harvard which was just then between two generations of great professors. Fitts arranged for me to go to Europe, to Rapallo, to study with Pound in his famous "Ezuversity." James Joyce once described Pound as "a large bundle of unpredictable electricity," which certainly was apt for my time in Rapallo. The Ezuversity was an ideal institution for a 20th-century goliard. First of all, there was no tuition. Ezra was always hard up, but he wouldn't take any payment. The only expenses I had were renting a room and paying for my meals with Mrs. Pound and him at the Albergo Rapallo, which he called the Albuggero Rapallo. The reason they ate in the Albergo was that Dorothy Pound, a most lovable woman, was a lady from Kensington and she had never been taught to cook. The classes usually met at the lunch table. They might begin with Ezra going through the day's mail, com­ menting on the subjects which it raised. He had a huge correspondence from all over the world; he told me that postage was his largest expense. Economics, of course, were by then his major concern; but there were letters from writers and translators, from professors and scholars of Chinese and the Renaissance, from monetary theorists, from artists, letters from Eliot, from Jean Cocteau, and, of course, from Ernest 6 Hemingway. Pound and Hemingway were devoted friends but Pound confided in me, "the trouble with Hem is that he can't keep two ideas in his head at the same time." Many interesting things came out of Pound's mail. I remember one day at lunch Ezra tossed a paperback across the table to me, saying "Waal, Jas, here's a dirty book that's pretty good." It was Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Whence came a friendship with Henry that lasted till his death. To be sure, I was never able to publish Tropic of Cancer in the States because I knew my family would disinherit me; but New Directions did about 20 of Henry's innocuous books, most of them collections of essays and stories. The Course of Study After he had covered the mail, Pound would get on to the real subjects of the course. These were literature, and history the way he wanted to revise it, because of course, as we know, all history has been miswritten since Gibbon. And poetics and the interpretation of culture. All this information was delivered in the colloquial. Ez always spoke in the colloquial. That was the tone of his discourse. I remember one day he said that it didn't matter where "Fat-faced Frankie," by whom he meant Francesco Petrarca, placed all those adjectives in his lines. They were just for decoration, not sense. Pound was a superb mimic and had total recall. He used five different accents. He had an American cracker-barrel accent, an American Black­ cent, he had cockney, he had bistro French, but my favorite was the "Oirrish" of Uncle Willie Yeats. Most astonishing were his puns. He loved to pun. Aristotle was Harry Stottle, and Aristophanes was Harry-Stop-Her-Knees. Every class was a performance by an actor with many personae; his hamming was part of his pedagogy. Equally exciting were the marginalia in the books from his personal library which he lent me to study. The most frequent comment in the margins of his Herodotus was, "Balls!!!" I read Propertius in his Mueller edition with his underlinings of passages to be used in the Homage. In his de Mailla Histoire General de Ia Chine, I found checked the emperors he had chosen for the Chinese Cantos, with a big star beside Emperor Ching who had the characters for "Make It New" engraved on his bathtub. The Ezuversity was peripatetic. Ezra was not didactic on the tennis court because he was too out of breath. But when he rowed out into the beautiful Tigullian Gulf on a patino to swim, the flow of useful knowl­ edge continued. I remember especially one day when we were walking up one of the salite, the steep stoney paths behind Rapallo.