Ezra Pound and Interdisciplinary Poetics: An Interview with Massimo Bacigalupo (original) (raw)

2022, Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature

In this (virtual) interview, Massimo Bacigalupo, Emeritus Professor in the University of Genoa, Italy, begins by sharing personal anecdotes of his encounters with numerous literary figures who shaped his own experience of becoming an artist and scholar. Among these, the most influential for his future activities was the American poet, Ezra Pound (1885-1972). Massimo Bacigalupo's interdisciplinary approach, combining literature with other disciplines, finds parallels in the poetic method of Ezra Pound, whose magnum opus, The Cantos, embraces a wide variety of interests, ranging from humanities to science. Bacigalupo attempts to create his own Poundian "periplum," "not as land looks on a map / But as sea bord seen by men sailing" (Canto LIX). In so doing, he navigates the seas of his life experiences using a variety of media and approaches. In the course of the interview, Bacigalupo further provides readers, who are tasked with mentally immersing themselves in Pound's creations, with advice on, and suggestions for, approaching the intricacies and allusiveness of the American poet's multilingual work. He discusses the "vogue for writing about Fascism in Pound and others" in contemporary Anglo-American scholarship, which is occasionally marred by an insufficient knowledge of history and politics, and may lead scholars to see Fascist implications where none exist, or vice versa, to miss larger patterns of Pound's response to Italian politics of the 1930s. Bacigalupo notes Pound's frequent exclusion from current curricula, as against his popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, when he was seen as a scapegoat rather than as an espouser of discredited and offensive ideas, and accordingly doubly difficult to present in class. Ezra Pound's ultimate purpose was to offer an account of the world as he perceived it and to suggest a way out from war and debt, in the interest of a more just and satisfactory public and private life. While the ongoing digital Cantos Project helps us to identify sources and processes of composition, and is thus invaluable, readers must decide for themselves that Pound is worth reading as a poet and recounter of stories old and new.