4pQonT

EZRA POUND 65
splendid posture, of dancing and chanting, and of acting that is not
mimetic. It is a symbolic stage, a drama of masks—at least they
have made masks for spirits and gods and young women. It is a
theatre of which both Mr. Yeats and Mr. Craig may approve.'
"A little school of devotees of the Noh plays grew up in London,"
says Ellman, "including Pound, Yeats, Arthur Waley, and Edmund
Dulac. Pound began to publish his translations of the plays in
magazines and then in a small volume, with a preface by Yeats, at
the Cuala Press. The difficulty was that none of the devotees had
ever seen a Noh play, but late in 1915 Pound discovered, living in
poverty in a backstairs room, the Japanese dancer Ito, who had
acted in the Noh in Japan." 14
It seems uncanny that Pound should have been able to locate
an actor of the Noh in post-Victorian London. Joseph Hone, in
his biography of Yeats, says "one of his [Yeats'] collaborators
was a Mr. Ito [a traditional dancer of Japan] who attracted considerable
note at the London Zoo by prancing about outside the
cages of the birds of prey, and behaving in such a weird way that
people supposed he must be either mad or a follower of some unknown
Eastern religion who worshipped birds. Presently Mr. Ito
was set to evolve a dance based on the movements of the birds as
they hopped about and stretched their wings, and Yeats was often
beside him at the Zoo, all attention." 15
Pound was aware of the effect he was having upon Yeats for he
mentions it in a letter to his mother, written in November, 1913:
"My stay in Stone Cottage will not be in the least profitable. I
detest the country. Yeats will amuse me part of the time and bore
me to death with psychical research the rest. I regard the visit as a
duty to posterity." 16
As foreign editor of Poetry, Pound had secured for Harriet
Monroe some of the finest talents. One of these poets was Yeats.
Perhaps Pound was taking his duties as an editor too seriously
when he revised the final line of a poem, "Fallen Majesty", which
Yeats suggested that he send to Miss Monroe. The line, which originally
read, "Once walked a thing, that seemed as it were, a burning
cloud," was altered by Pound, without consulting the author, to
"Once walked a thing that seemed a burning cloud".
Ellmann cites this incident, in The Identity of Yeats, as proof of