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The third and final volume of A. David Moody's critically acclaimed biography examines Pound's final years, which saw much personal tragedy for Pound at a tragic point in World history.
List of contents
- PART ONE: 1939 - 1945
- Between Paradise and Propaganda: 1939-40
- A Dutifully Dissident Exile, 1941
- In a Web of Contradictions: 1942-43
- 'To Dream the Republic': 1943-44
- For the Resurrection of Italy: 1944-45
- PART TWO: 1945
- Talking to the FBI
- A Prisoner in the Eyes of Others
- 'In the mind indestructible': The Pisan Cantos
- PART THREE
- American Justice
- Giving Cornell his head - Lunacy at St. Elizabeths
- PART FOUR: ST ELIZABETHS 1946 - 1958
- A Year in the Hell Hole
- Resilience: 1947 - 50
- Histrionics - 'a awful lot of company' - No release - Thrown to wolves - Courage against cowardice
- The Life of the Mind: 1950 - 55
- 'Indictment Dismissed': 1956-58
- Clearing Out
- PART FIVE: 1958 - 1972
- A Final Testament: 1958 - 59
- 'You Find Me In Fragments': 1959 - 62
- His Sickness and His Wealth: 1962 - 64
- Afterlife of the Poet: 1965 - 1972
- APPENDIX
- The Settlement of the Estate
About the author
A. David Moody is a Professor Emeritus of the University of York, and the author of the acclaimed Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet (Cambridge University Press: 1979, 1994).
Summary
This third and final volume of A. David Moody's critical life of Ezra Pound presents Pound's personal tragedy in a tragic time. The first volumes of Moody's biography have been acclaimed as 'masterly' (Daily Telegraph), 'exceptional' (Literary Review), and 'invaluable' (New York Times Book Review). In this concluding volume, we experience the 1939-1945 World War, and Pound's hubristic involvement in Fascist Italy's part in it; we encounter the grave moral and intellectual error of Pound holding the Jewish race responsible for the war; and his consequent downfall, being charged with treason, condemned as an anti-Semite, and shut up for twelve years in an institution for the insane. Further, we see Pound stripped for life, by his own counsel and wife, of his civil and human rights.
Pound endured what was inflicted upon him, justly and unjustly, without complaint; and continued his lifetime's effort to promote, in and through his Cantos and his translations, a consciousness of a possible humane and just social order. The contradictions run deep and compel, as tragedy does, a steady and unprejudiced contemplation and an answering depth of comprehension.
Foreword
Winner of the 2015 Ezra Pound Society Book Prize
Additional text
It is a monumental feat of scholarship, and one which must surely be seen as an exemplar of modern critical biography.
