4pQonT

34 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
although he received a bid. During a rather undignified part of
the initiation ceremony, he is said to have attacked one of the
elders, and he was subsequently blacklisted as one who had no
respect for constituted authority. The episode is illustrative of
what Ortega terms "the sportive origin of the State."
This resulted in an uneasy truce between Pound and his fellowstudents,
which was broken on at least one occasion. Mann records
that the students played a prank on Pound one afternoon when
his parents were scheduled to visit the school. While Pound was
at the train station waiting for them, the students removed all of
the furniture from his room and placed it on the campus. The bed
was neatly turned down, and a pair of pajamas lay on top of it
when the Pounds arrived. 9
Mann describes Pound as "a tall, long-striding dirty-collared
boy with tawny, leonine hair, who talked about getting a position
with the American Embassy in London." 10 Pound had gone abroad
with his aunt in 1898, and he was already chafing at the bit, anxious
to return to Europe. He was aware that there were few opportunities
in poetry for him in the land of "The Blue Flower", and
he had no desire to become imprisoned in its cultural strait jacket.
After obtaining a degree at Hamilton, Pound returned to the
University of Pennsylvania to take a master's degree in 1906. He
was given a fellowship as an instructor with professorial functions.
Williams relates that Pound performed impressively in the chorus
of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis, which the senior class staged at
the Philadelphia Academy of Music. 11
Another close friend of Pound's in Philadelphia, H.D., had had a
nervous breakdown, and had withdrawn from Bryn Mawr. She was
living quietly at home, devoting her time to working on her poems.
In June, 1906, Pound left for Europe. He had been awarded a
traveling fellowship by the University for the purpose of gathering
material on the work of Lope de Vega. He went to Spain, France
and Italy, returning to the United States the following summer.
The University board refused to renew the fellowship, and he
decided to become a teacher. He accepted an offer of a position
at Wabash College, in Crawfordsville, Indiana. In the autumn of
1907, he arrived there to take up his duties as Professor of Romance
Literature.