![POUND, Ezra (1885-1972). Series of 19 letters to Allan Seaton, comprising 8 autograph letters and one autograph postcard signed (usually with initials) and 10 typed letters (6 with autograph additions), St Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital, Washington, DC, the majority undated [postmarks 2 June 1949 - 27 November 1953], altogether approximately 10 pages, 4to, in autograph and 12 pages, 4to, typescript, envelopes; together with a letter to Seaton from Olga Rudge, Paris, 1949, warning him that some of her letters from Pound have been intercepted by the Italian police. Provenance: by descent from the recipient.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2012/CKS/2012_CKS_05334_0043_000(pound_ezra_series_of_19_letters_to_allan_seaton_comprising_8_autograph081907).jpg?w=1)
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POUND, Ezra (1885-1972). Series of 19 letters to Allan Seaton, comprising 8 autograph letters and one autograph postcard signed (usually with initials) and 10 typed letters (6 with autograph additions), St Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital, Washington, DC, the majority undated [postmarks 2 June 1949 - 27 November 1953], altogether approximately 10 pages, 4to, in autograph and 12 pages, 4to, typescript, envelopes; together with a letter to Seaton from Olga Rudge, Paris, 1949, warning him that some of her letters from Pound have been intercepted by the Italian police. Provenance: by descent from the recipient.
An erratic and opinionated correspondence from the St Elizabeth's asylum, expressed with Pound's characteristically irreverent manipulation of language. The earliest in the series is characteristic, welcoming, in a mock-Irish brogue, the novelty of a correspondent in Ulster ('I'll take all the letters you can send') and concluding with a doggerel stanza on Yeats -- 'Neath Ben Bulben's buttocks lies Bill Yeats, a poet twice the soize of Wm. Wordsworth, as they say down Ballbillwuchlin way: Let saxon roiders brreak their bones, huntin' the fox thru' dese grave-stones'. Other letters touch on literary matters, including mentions of Henry Miller, the translator Arthur Waley, Christopher Logue and others, or reflect the poet's idiosyncractic politico-economic views -- 'the only place you can breathe is monetary (sic) reform group ... the rest either wholly corrupt or totally dead. And No attempt to correlate with continental thought, or even dig out what is suppressed in the U.S.'. Pound emphasises the value he places on Seaton's correspondence, though noting ironically 'Respekk fer the aged is not shown by urgin 'em to be more garrulous than they nacherley are, BUT by payin' some tention to wot they hv already said. / THEY talk toodammm much anyhow.'
In the wake of his arrest for treason in Italy in 1945 and subsequent breakdown, Pound was confined to St. Elizabeth's, where he remained until 1956. Parts of his correspondence with Seaton are held in the Lilly Library at Indiana University and at the Beinecke.
An erratic and opinionated correspondence from the St Elizabeth's asylum, expressed with Pound's characteristically irreverent manipulation of language. The earliest in the series is characteristic, welcoming, in a mock-Irish brogue, the novelty of a correspondent in Ulster ('I'll take all the letters you can send') and concluding with a doggerel stanza on Yeats -- 'Neath Ben Bulben's buttocks lies Bill Yeats, a poet twice the soize of Wm. Wordsworth, as they say down Ballbillwuchlin way: Let saxon roiders brreak their bones, huntin' the fox thru' dese grave-stones'. Other letters touch on literary matters, including mentions of Henry Miller, the translator Arthur Waley, Christopher Logue and others, or reflect the poet's idiosyncractic politico-economic views -- 'the only place you can breathe is monetary (sic) reform group ... the rest either wholly corrupt or totally dead. And No attempt to correlate with continental thought, or even dig out what is suppressed in the U.S.'. Pound emphasises the value he places on Seaton's correspondence, though noting ironically 'Respekk fer the aged is not shown by urgin 'em to be more garrulous than they nacherley are, BUT by payin' some tention to wot they hv already said. / THEY talk toodammm much anyhow.'
In the wake of his arrest for treason in Italy in 1945 and subsequent breakdown, Pound was confined to St. Elizabeth's, where he remained until 1956. Parts of his correspondence with Seaton are held in the Lilly Library at Indiana University and at the Beinecke.
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