314
PARTISAN REVIEW
poet and Pound as politician. He admired Pound's literary acumen, his
ability to write and shape verse; but
he
detested the cruel, shrill rhetoric
to which Pound was so prone. "He is a fascist," Olson later wrote in
his journal, "the worst kind, the intellectual fascist, this filthy apolo–
gist and mouther of slogans which serve men of power.
It
was a sham
upon all writers when this man of words, this succubus, sold his voice
to the enemies of the people." That, of course, was
one
side of the coin;
the other 'side was quite different: "He remains (Olson wrote), on the
creative side of him, whole, and as charming and open' and warm a
human being as I know. Despite all the corruption of his body
politic..
.!
shall still hold out my hand."
This seeming contradiction between the two Pounds-Pound as
Jekyll and Pound as Hyde-is ultimately what binds this book to–
gether; it provides what otherwise might
seem
a disconnected narrative
with a common theme. But if it helps make these disparate notes
cohere,
it also serves as a divisive agent, splitting the author in twain.
Olson is unable, ultimately, to
come
to terms with these dual aspects of
Pound's personality. Following
one
of his visits to St. Elizabeths, the
then fledgling poet had this to say: " For the first time, the full shock of
what a fascist s.o.b. Pound is caught up with
me. "
And then: "Hate
blinds. It makes this man of exquisite senses a false instrument.
It
makes a lie of perception.
It
empties Pound.... I wonder...how long
more
I can hold out my hand to him as a poet and a man." But a breath
later, in the same paragraph,
he
reconsiders: "I shall do what I can, as
long as I can, for this fool of hate because
once he
was also a fool of
love."
If
Olson's uncertainty and indecisiveness in regard to Pound begin
to cloy, they nevertheless work well together as a kind of contrapuntal
device against which to measure the constancy and sameness of the
institution itself. Dickens and Poe in tandem could not have designed a
more
forbidding, lackluster setting than St. Elizabeths. With its
massive red brick Victorian buildings, winding footpaths the co lor of
clay, psychopaths and catatonics, it was a study in ugliness. During his
first year in captivity, Pound occupied a cramped cubicle in Howard
Hall, the hospital's maximum security ward,
home
of the criminally
insane. Pound dubbed it the "Hell-Hole," and it made the Detention
Training Center outside Pisa,
where he
had endured a previous
semester's stay, look like a country club.
Howard Hall, described by Olson in graphic detail , was a grim
1880s structure with locked doors and gratings at the windows. It was
surrounded by a massive cement wall. Outside the building, but within
