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PARTISAN REVIEW
know get together and
disagree
that any sort of criticism is born."
"Isn't it worth while having
onc
critic who won't say a thing is
good
until he is ready to stake his whole position on the decision?" "You
offer to find a publisher . . . if I abrogate my privileges, if I give
way to, or saddle myself with, a damn'd contentious, probably incom–
petent committee.
If
I tacitly, tacitly to say the least of it, accept a cer–
tain number of people as my critical and creative equals, and publish
the acceptance." "Dear H[arriet] M[onroe]: No, most emphatically
I will not ask Eliot to write down to any audience whatsoever. I dare
say my instinct was sound enough when I volunteered to quit the maga–
zine quietly about a year ago. Neither will I send you Eliot's address
in
order that he may be insulted."
He forced Eliot on Harriet Monroe's Chicago
Poetry,
and with
a patent absence of concern for anything but the reputation, livelihood
and development of poets and writers, did what he could to get them
published and known, and to make 'such organs as he could start, com–
mandeer or get a hand in, serve his magnanimous purposes. To discover
and launch Eliot-that is a historic achievement. He may
claim
also a
large part of the credit for Joyce. Whom else did he push?-Wyndham
Lewis, in recording which item we come, it seems to me, to the other
side of the account, and to Pound's limitations. For these, which are
very serious in a man who has been so influential, have to be insisted
on, and at length.
Wyndham Lewis' reputation as a writer was established by the
efforts of the Egoist group, in which Pound played so large a part.
As a result, that reputation-which cannot, I believe, bear the beginnings
of critical scrutiny--enjoyed the support of Eliot's rising prestige in the
1920s. Eliot remained faithful till at least the middle 'thirties (and today
we are in danger of having
Tarr
and
The Childermass
revived and
pressed on us as memorable works). I stress the instance of Wyndham
Lewis, because he is reprp.sentative; he represents a kind of toughness-a
truculent inhumanity or anti-humanity ("My God, they stink!"), a
mechanistic externality-an attraction to which is to be found
in
Eliot
as well as Pound.
(It
is to be noted, too, that while Pound backed
Mussolini, and Wyndham Lewis wrote a book in favor of Hitler, Eliot
drew inspiration for such distinctive ethos as
The Criterion
had from
Charles Maurras.)
If
we ask what other poets Pound backed (other than Robert
Frost), the answer is that it is hard to remember, because on the whole
they matter so little. And here again we have Pound's limitations.
