Jongleur

In Paris, after several years in London, lives a thin-bearded, long, supple blade of a man, middle-ag-ing but of feverish vitality, whom "the foremost English novelist" (Ford Madox Ford) calls "the greatest living poet." This is not cant between members of a mutual adulation society. Many an-other able artist pays homage to Novelist Ford's bearded friend. They consult him about their pictures, statues, books, love affairs. They are not dazzled by his often eccentric habits and raiment, seeing within him a spirit like a flame blown in the wind. He is a genuine "original" on that shore of exotic wreckage and treasure, the Left Bank. That he was born in the U. S. is unimportant except that his inability to subsist there argues his febrility. There is about him much of the hot-house plant which, luxuriating in the warmth and humus of countries long inhabited, would perish in the rigers of a "wilderness." His name is Ezra Pound.* When first he appeared in London, a most erratic youth much given to "raw silk of good color," violent tennis and fencing, more violent language and gestures, and to two strong veins of poetry, lyric and satirical, he was adopted by descendants of the Pre-Raphaelite movement--as far as a wildish young man can be adopted. They liked his "splendid invective," fashioned after the Greeks. He carried them away with his fleet excursions into the past--Norman England, old France, Rome, Egypt, Cathay--where, in translation and paraphrase, he brought to life moments and persons of high passion and beauty, each age with its own sharp flavor. Poetry being essentially a personal thing, none may credit nor gainsay Novelist Ford's estimate of Poet Pound. As criticism it is a foolish phrase. But it is certain that Ezra Pound is ... a poet that doth drink life As lesser men drink wine. He has been mad through the mountains of Cabaret with Peire Vidal, maddest jongleur of the old time. For the marriage at Cana in Galilee he has written a dance figure that is, so far as one can feel, no less lovely than any marriage ever was. In his swift, light, swirling pages are a host of echoes --of tall women and barbecues in Troy; a chant for the transmutation of metals under the larches of Paradise (Middle Ages) ; dirges for a Plantagenet, for Pan, for Nikoptis at Akr Caar; praise for Ysolt, for Evanoe, for thigh-embarked Daphne; a song of the Bowmen of Shu (China, 1100 B. C.) ; Browningesque (but far airier) narratives of Provence, her knights and troubadours. "Little naked and impudent songs," he has called his work. Perhaps "greatest living jongleur" would define him better, since he relies so upon borrowed accents, fantastic metres, the dress of other days. Once, at least, has this jongleur been more than little or impudent. He wrote "The Ballad of the Goodly Fere," an account of the Crucifixion by Simon Zelotes, hard-bitten mariner. The Goodly Fere bids his captors let his comrades go, "Or I'll see ye damned" says he.

* PEBSONAE: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound--Boni & Liveright ($3.50).