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Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot
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William Carlos Williams
by Louis Simpson ,
.
R
THREE
on the
TOWER
The Lives and Works of
Ezra Pound, T S. Eliot and
William Carlos Williams
THREE
on the
TOWER
The Lives and Works of
Ezra Pound, T S. Eliot and
William Carlos Williams-
by Louis Simpson
Our spirit, shut within this courtyard of sense-
experience, is always saying to the intellect upon
the tower: “Watchman, tell us of the night, if it
aught of promise bear ”
—William James
WILLIAM MORROW & COMPANY, INC., NEW YORK 1975
Copyright © 1975 by Louis Simpson*
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to print excerpts
from the following works.
Ezra Pound, Personae. Copyright 1926 by Ezra Pound.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Ezra Pound, The Cantos. Copyright 1934, 1937, 1940,
© 1948, 1958, 1959, 1966, 1970 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by
permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Ezra Pound, Collected Shorter Poems (Personae and The Cantos).
Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpts from the poetry of T. S. Eliot and from The Family
Reunion and The Cocktail Party are reprinted by permission of
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright © 1943, 1963, 1964,
by T. S. Eliot; copyright, 1971, by Esme Valerie Eliot.
Excerpts from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot;
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot; Collected Plays
by T. S. Eliot; and The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript,
are reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
Excerpts from Poems Written in Early Youth by T. S. Eliot are
reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.,
copyright © 1967 by Valerie Eliot, and with the permission of
Faber and Faber Ltd.
William Carlos Williams, Collected Earlier Poems. Copyright 1938
by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission
of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
William Carlos Williams, Pictures from Breughel and Other Poems.
Copyright 1954, 1955 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by.
permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
William Carlos Williams, Paterson. Copyright 1946, 1948, 1949,
1951, © 1958 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission
of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
The excerpt from Transfigured Night by Byron Vazakas is
reprinted with the permission of Byron Vazakas.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Inquiries should be addressed to William Morrow and Company, Inc.,
105 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016.
Printed in the United States of America.
1 2 3 4 5 79 78 77 76 75
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Simpson, Louis Aston Marantz (date)
Three on the tower.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Pound, Ezra Loomis, 1885-1972. 2. Eliot, Thomas Stearns,
1888-1965. 3. Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963. I. Title.
PS3531.082Z836 811'.5'209 74-26952
ISBN 0-688-02899-3
Book design by Helen Roberts
This book is dedicated to my mother.
Preface
In 1908 Isadora Duncan “in a short loosely hung Grecian dress,
with bare feet and arms, danced a series of Greek dances from
Gluck’s Iphigenie en Aulide, reproducing the postures of Greek
dancers as portrayed on ancient vases.” 1 Isadora Duncan embodied
the New Spirit. So did Ezra Pound with his red hair and cape. He
saw himself as a troubadour poet, a Ronsard, another Villon. He
left the United States, spent some months in Venice, then traveled
to London.
His timing was perfect. In the following years London was a
vital center of the arts—there was nothing in Philadelphia to com
pare with it. There was a Post-Impressionist exhibition. The
Russian ballet arrived in London. There was Futurist art . . .
shouting of poems while a drum was beaten. There was political
turmoil in Ireland. There were suffragette outrages. There was
Blast.
OH BLAST FRANCE
pig plagiarism
BELLY
SLIPPERS
POODLE TEMPER
BAD MUSIC
BLESS ALL PORTS
scooped out basins
heavy insect dredgers
monotonous cranes
vii
Vili PREFACE
stations
lighthouses, blazing
through the frosty
starlight, cutting the
storm like a cake2
The period ended with the Great War, which produced sixteen
million casualties. The human body, having been newly sensitized,
was lacerated and flayed. Afterwards everyone had shell shock. It
was to this postwar generation that The Waste Land spoke. “My
nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.” 3
Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams made their
reputations with short, intense, imagistic poems. There was, how
ever, the question of how to continue—we live by the senses but
at the same time we must have an aim that is not dependent on
the senses. “Life itself” is incoherent, as a Great War plainly shows.
“Our spirit,” says William James, “shut within this courtyard of
sense-experience, is always saying to the intellect upon the tower:
‘Watchman, tell us of the night, if it aught of promise bear.’ ” 4
We are still looking for ways to continue. Therefore I have
written about Pound and Eliot and Williams, each of whom went
on to create a significant body of work. I have discussed their ideas
as though they were new—and indeed, as they are necessary I be
lieve them to be new. The poetry, however, is what matters—ideas
are only points of departure—therefore I have concentrated on the
poetry. Not the poem just by itself but as part of an ongoing pro
cess of creation.
I have attempted to enter into the process. To do this I have
had to understand each man’s life—his connections with other
people, his attitudes and beliefs. My rule has been to give these
matters as much importance as he himself gave them. Williams
wrote continually about his life, therefore I have talked about it
in detail. Eliot hardly ever writes about his, but when he does it
seems confessional. Pound, for all his volubility, gives little away:
he writes about himself in the Cantos, but nothing personal, and
this is the way I have dealt with him.
I had to write this book to clarify my ideas. There are talented
poets in the United States, but we need to consider where we are
going. Pound, Eliot and Williams seem to have touched all the
bases—with one possible exception, surrealism, though a case can
be made for Eliot’s poems being surrealist, if we admit that sur
realist writing may have logical connections. Each of these men
PREFACE ix
was remarkably fertile in ideas; even their failures are interesting,
because they demonstrate an idea.
I could not have written the book without the help of these
people: my wife, Dorothy; my editor, Robert Levine, who gave
encouragement and advice; Jean Robinson and Merridy Darrow,
who worked on the manuscript; and my research assistant, Jean
Carr.
