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268 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
Pound's lawyer, Julian Cornell, immediately wrote Cerf that
this was a clearly libelous statement, and demanded a retraction.
Cerf replied that he would retract the statement "only over my
dead body."
With their position on Pound clearly defined, Cerf and the
editors of The Saturday Review waited for Pound's next move. They
had to wait several years, and even then the action was not initiated
by him, but by a quasi-governmental body, the Fellows of American
Literature at the Library of Congress.
Pound's work had received little recognition in the way of
prizes. He had been awarded a fellowship from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1906, such as are given to "bright" students, and
in 1927, he had received the annual "Dial" award, but the Guggenheims
and their imitators had ignored him when it came to
passing out the cake. In 1949, however, he was awarded the
Bollingen prize of one thousand dollars for "the best poetry published
by an American citizen during the year in the United
States." The award was given for his Pisan Cantos, and the New
York Times headlined the front-page story, on February 20, 1949,
"POUND, IN MENTAL CLINIC / WINS PRIZE FOR PO­
ETRY / PENNED IN TREASON CELL".
The implication of the headline was that Pound was not only
continuing to write his "treasonable" works, but that he was being
praised for them. The award was given at the recommendation
of the Fellows of American Literature, a group that had been
organized four years previously to function in coordination with
the Library of Congress. They had been asked to serve in this
capacity at the suggestion of Allen Tate. At the time of the
Pound award the group was composed of Leonie Adams, Conrad
Aiken, W. H. Auden, Louise Bogan, Katharine Garrison Chapin,
Robert Lowell, Archibald MacLeish, Katharine Ann Porter, Allen
Tate, Willard Thorp and Robert Perm Warren. Thus it included
a good cross section of the leading American poets of the 1940s.
Paul Green was a member of the Fellows at this time, but he
abstained from voting for Pound. Tourists may recall that he
writes outdoor dramas that are staged in public parks. Theodore
Spencer also was a member, and he cast his vote for Pound, but
he died before the prize was awarded.