This third and final volume of A. David Moodys critical life of Ezra Pound presents Pounds personal tragedy in a tragic time. The first volumes of Moodys 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 Pounds hubristic involvement in Fascist Italys part in it; we encounter the grave moral andintellectual 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 civiland human rights. Pound endured what was inflicted upon him, justly and unjustly, without complaint; and continued his lifetimes 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.
This third and final volume of A. David Moody's critical life of Ezra Pound presents Pound's personal tragedy in a tragic time. In this 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.
