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EZRA POUND 185
ture, March 27, 1937, a long tribute from which I quote: "Is there
an editor of a little tendenz magazine who is not deeply indebted
to Pound?—the elder who in the midst of composing his Cantos
has read seriously the new publication, has taken the pains to pen
his blessing, criticism and suggestions, has sent on writings of his
own, and has even out of the straitened circumstances of a poet
managed to make cash contributions to save the sinking ship?
There is no explaining the time, the unwearying energy, Pound
has expended on a succession of literary publications except to say
that he is an aficionado."
One might suppose that with all this expenditure of effort, Pound
would have built up a devoted clique in the United States, but this
was not the case. Many of the editors of little magazines whom he
had helped during the 1930s became his most bitter critics.
In 1933, Faber & Faber brought out a collection of work by
Pound and his current disciples. The Active Anthology included
William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, and T. S. Eliot. Pound
included some portions of his Cantos.
In the Prefatiio to this collection, Pound stated, "Young men are
now lured into colleges and universities largely on false pretences."
It would be interesting to know if this statement were the inspiration
for a suit recently brought against the trustees of Columbia
for fraud, when a student charged that he had received no education
there, after paying his tuition. The case was thrown out of
court, because the plaintiff could not prove his ignorance.
When Pound brought out his ABC of Reading (1934), he again
illustrated the gap between himself and the critical pack, by pointing
out that "The great break in European literary history is the
changeover from inflected to uninflected language. And a great
deal of critical nonsense has been written by people who did not
realize the difference." 38
In 1935, Pound invaded the field of the American popular
magazine. When Arnold Gingrich started Esquire, he decided to
get the most famous avant-garde writers of the time for his publication.
The masthead of the January, 1935 issue sports the names
of Pound, Hemingway, Dreiser, Scott Fitzgerald, and Edgar Lee
Masters. Pound contributed an article on Social Credit and the