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VIII "THERE WAS never a day so gay for the Arts as any twentyfour hours of the early 1920s in Paris," says Ford Madox Ford, in the opening sentence of his charming book of memoirs, It Was the Nightingale. Because the Versailles Peace Conference was held there, Paris became the symbol of man's hope that there would be no more wars. From all over the world, people came to bask in the comforting glow of the rays of peace sent out from the City of Light. In this false light, a Renaissance of arts and letters took place. After the Second World War, young writers and artists again flocked to Paris, to live as their parents had done. Only one thing was missing—talent. There were no Pounds, no Eliots, no Hemingways among the shaggy creatures who disguised themselves in secondhand GI clothing. The cast of characters in the Bohemian drama "Paris—the 1920s" reads like a Who's Who of Eumerican arts. In addition to Pound, Eliot, and Hemingway, there were James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, Robert McAlmon, Peggy Guggenheim, Caresse Crosby, and many other fine talents. Ezra's departure from England was not abrupt. Robert Graves recalls that he met Pound in Lawrence's rooms at that time. Graves himself characterized post-World War I England as being symbolized by jazz and mad dogs. 128

EZRA POUND 129 Ezra made a tour of Italy and France in the summer of 1920, before going back to England for his effects. In Venice, where he had published his first book of poems twelve years earlier, he began a semi-autobiographical work, Indiscretions, Une Revue De Deux Mondes, which opens on a typically Poundian note: "It is peculiarly fitting that this manuscript should begin in Venice, from a patent Italian inkwell designed to prevent satisfactory immersion of the pen. If the latter symbolism be obscure, the former is so obvious, at least to the writer, that only meticulous honesty and the multitude of affairs prevented him from committing it to paper before leaving London." 1 Pound returned to England on June 30, 1920, to wind up his negotiations with the English. He ceded the island back to them, and departed for Paris on October 29. According to John Gould Fletcher, as a parting shot at London, Pound said that England was only a corpse kept alive by maggots. 2 Although this thesis may be somewhat inaccurate from a biological point of view, there is much to be said for it sociologically, especially as concerns the olfactory sense. When Ezra went to Paris, he was thirty-five years old. He had married well, had published a number of books (more than we care to count at the moment), had been listed in Who's Who in England for the past six years, and had built an international reputation as a poet and critic. His work with Yeats and Joyce was largely behind him; the Paris years were to be devoted to the careers of T. S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. In February, 1921, Pound issued a clarion call for assistance in rescuing Eliot from Lloyd's Bank. He requested thirty annual subscriptions of fifty dollars each. Although Eliot was earning more than the fifteen hundred dollars which might be raised through the subscriptions, he was willing to accept a cut in pay to become a poet. Many of the expatriates were living in Paris on considerably less. Fletcher cites the case of Humberston Skipwith Cannell, whose poems Pound had managed to get into Poetry, and who lived on the Left Bank on a modest thirty dollars a month sent him by his relatives. 3 The outcome of this new campaign was a fortunate one. In

VIII<br />

"THERE WAS never a day so gay for the Arts as any twentyfour<br />

hours of the early 1920s in Paris," says Ford Madox Ford, in<br />

the opening sentence of his charming book of memoirs, It Was<br />

the Nightingale.<br />

Because the Versailles Peace Conference was held there, Paris<br />

became the symbol of man's hope that there would be no more<br />

wars. From all over the world, people came to bask in the comforting<br />

glow of the rays of peace sent out from the City of Light.<br />

In this false light, a Renaissance of arts and letters took place.<br />

After the Second World War, young writers and artists again<br />

flocked to Paris, to live as their parents had done. Only one thing<br />

was missing—talent. There were no Pounds, no Eliots, no Hemingways<br />

among the shaggy creatures who disguised themselves in<br />

secondhand GI clothing.<br />

The cast of characters in the Bohemian drama "Paris—the<br />

1920s" reads like a Who's Who of Eumerican arts. In addition to<br />

Pound, Eliot, and Hemingway, there were James Joyce, Gertrude<br />

Stein, Ford Madox Ford, Robert McAlmon, Peggy Guggenheim,<br />

Caresse Crosby, and many other fine talents.<br />

Ezra's departure from England was not abrupt. Robert Graves<br />

recalls that he met Pound in Lawrence's rooms at that time. Graves<br />

himself characterized post-World War I England as being symbolized<br />

by jazz and mad dogs.<br />

128

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