Trite, yes, but a true dilemma nonetheless, since one can ignore neither the poet's contributions to modern literature nor the partisan's full-throated services to fascism and anti-semitism. Besides his own poetry, his support to other writers was vital--he helped both Eliot and Joyce get published, and other writers he mentored make up a veritable who's who. But his support for Axis powers was just as resolute; according to his own account, he begged the Italian authorities to let him make his infamous radio broacasts, in which he railed against the Allies and Jews in particular.
He had led a colorful life that included a youthful affair with Hilda Doolittle (the poet "H.D.") and fathering two children by two other women. He moved to Italy in the twenties, and by the thirties was an ardent supporter of Hitler and Mussolini, unwavering to the very end. Immediately after the war, he was charged with treason and interned at a camp in Pisa, in a 6' x 6' outdoor cell. After several weeks, his mental health showed signs of deterioration and he was given regular quarters. He began the "Pisan Cantos" at this time.
A few months later, Pound was transferred back to the States, and, represented by a lawyer, he was admitted to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital in Washington (where John Hinkley was also later sent). After being declared mentally unfit to stand trial, he spent the next 12 years living in relative comfort, and he continued to work, completing the "Pisan Cantos" and translating other writings. Meanwhile, a number of the world's most esteemed poets and novelists immediately and continually pressed for his release, awarding him the first Bollingen Prize for literature in 1948 in what some termed an attempt to pressure the government into releasing him, which it finally did, on this day in 1958, when he walked out a free man and returned to Italy where he would live for another 14 years.
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