Hilda Doolittle: End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound

“Eventually I discovered that Omar was a guard against the press who kept coming for photographs and interviews, neither of which was permitted. It was hot but cozy. Ezra was no different from ever. For half an hour he lectured me on college entrance examinations, and the program I must follow to improve them. He talked about Marcella Spann’s and his anthology [Confucius to Cummings] 50and what I must do about it. He showed me Canto 99 which had just appeared. I will get you a copy eventually. And so it went. Then the whistle blew at 3:30 and we bade farewell. Ezra took both my hands and pressed them warmly; Dorothy gave three affectionate kisses to me and an invitation to Brunnenburg. ‘Don’t look so sad,’ Ezra said.

“And so that is ended and I wonder if I shall ever see either of them again. And in any event your rose was with them. ‘It is for the Paradiso ,’ I said at the end.”

1Kūsnacht. At the time of the composition (1958) of End to Torment , H.D. was living in Kūsnacht, where she stayed until the Klinik Dr. Brunner was closed in 1961.

2Ignace Paderewski. The Polish pianist and composer (1860–1941).

3Erich Heydt. H.D.’s friend and doctor, the Oberarzt (chief doctor) at the Klinik Dr. Brunner in Kūsnacht.

4 Formel . (Literally, formula.) Pound had submitted H.D.’s first poems to Poetry (Chicago) under the signature “H.D. Imagiste ,” thereby providing Hilda Doolittle with a pseudonym and the “imagist” movement in poetry with a formal title.

5“Weekend with Ezra Pound” by David Rattray. This article, to which H.D. refers throughout End to Torment , was published as she notes in The Nation , November 16, 1957, pp. 343-49. In the article David Rattray, then a student of Provençal literature, reports on two days of visits with Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. Others present during his conversations with Pound included Dorothy Pound, Jean Marie Chatel, and David Horton.

6Ramon Guthrie poem. “Ezra Pound in Paris and Elsewhere,” by Ramon Guthrie, is published together with the Rattray article in The Nation , November 16, 1957, p. 345.

7Gaudier-Brzeska. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a young sculptor and friend of Ezra Pound in London. He was killed in World War I. Pound’s study of his work, first published in 1916, was reissued in a revised and expanded edition by New Directions in 1960, under the title, Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir .

8Klinik Hirslanden. The clinic in Zürich at which H.D. received treatment for a broken hip.

9Frances Gregg [Josepha]. A childhood friend of Hilda from Philadelphia. They traveled to Europe together in 1911.

10Richard Aldington. British poet, essayist, and translator. H.D. and Aldington were married in 1913, separated in 1919, and divorced in 1938. With Pound and H.D., Aldington was an original member of the “imagist” group of poets.

11Bryher. Pen name (later legalized) of Winifred Ellerman, British novelist, and friend of H.D.

12May Sinclair. British novelist, 1870–1946. The Divine Fire , London, 1904.

13 Séraphita . A mystical novella by Balzac, first published in 1835, whose protagonist is an androgynous figure variously called Séraphita or Séraphitus. Much of the book is devoted to an explication of Swedenborg’s doctrines of theosophy.

14 10ème Jour lunaire . This prayer is quoted from Le Kabbale pratique by Robert Ambelain, Paris, 1951, p. 220.

15 Merkur , January 1958. The article by Peter Demetz, entitled “ Marginalien: Ezra Pounds Pisaner Gesänge ,” appeared in Merkur , January 1958, v. 12, pp. 97-100. It intersperses commentary on the Pisan Cantos with a report on a visit by Demetz with Pound, at St. Elizabeth’s. He describes Pound’s profile as that of a Raubkatze (predatory cat), and refers to him as “ den heimlichen Kaiser der amerikanischen Dichtung” : the hidden emperor of American poetry.

16 15ème Jour lunaire . From Le Kabbale pratique by Robert Ambelain, p. 222.

17“They asked him to leave.” Pound was an assistant professor of Romance languages at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana in 1907–1908. He did not fit in well at the small Indiana college (he later wrote that they considered him too much “the Latin quarter type”: see Noel Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound , New York, 1970, p. 43). He was asked to resign his position after a landlady discovered a woman in his rooms.

18“Maenad, bassarid.” “Maelid and bassarid among lynxes,” from the “lynx-hymn” of Canto 79.

19“strange spells of old deity.” From “Cino,” A Lume Spento , 1908. See the Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound , New York, 1976, p. 10.

20Dorothy Shakespear. Pound met Dorothy Shakespear in 1909; they were married April 20, 1914.

21“There is a stir of dust from old leaves …” Canto 79.

22Mosher reprint. The Romance of Tristram and Iseult , retold by J. Bedier, tr. by H. Belloc, Portland, Me., Thomas Bird Mosher, 1907.

23 The Gadfly , New York, 1897. A historical novel by Ethel Voynich (1864–1960), set in mid-19th-century Italy. It is strongly anticlerical; the hero, the illegitimate son of an Italian prelate, is involved in revolutionary activities, and also publishes political verse-lampoons for the Republican movement under the pseudonym “The Gadfly.” His signature is the sketch of a gadfly with spread wings; he is slightly crippled, and as a youth spent some time as a “zany” in a traveling circus. He is eventually captured, court-martialed, and executed.

24 Ezra Pound, Dichtung und Prosa . Trans. Eva Hesse, Zürich, Im Verlag der Arche, 1953.

25“pig stye.” In 1954 Pound had written to H.D. concerning her interest in Freud: “You got into the wrong pig stye, ma chére. But not too late to climb out.” Quoted in Pearson’s foreword to Tribute to Freud , Boston, 1974.

26 Motive and Method in the Cantos of Ezra Pound , ed. Lewis Leary, New York, 1954.

27Frobenius. Leo Viktor Frobenius (1873–1938), German cultural anthropologist and archaeologist. Guy Davenport, “Pound and Frobenius,” in Leary, pp. 33–59.

28 An Examination of Ezra Pound , ed. Peter Russell, New York, 1950. In response to Peter Russell’s request for an article in honor of Pound’s 65th birthday, H.D. wrote a letter which contained a brief memoir of Pound, the seed of End to Torment . The letter was never published, and was eventually sold to H. Alan Clodd and then to Norman Holmes Pearson. It is now in the Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

29“San Cristoforo …’’ Canto 93.

30Undine. American painter who became a friend of Pound during the St. Elizabeth’s years.

31 Poetry . “An Exchange on Ezra Pound,” Poetry , XCI, 3 (December 1957), pp. 209-11. The correspondence concerns the poor quality of the F.B.I. transcripts of Pound’s broadcasts on Rome Radio and the consequent merits of the treason charge placed against him.

32“Helen and Achilles.” Helen in Egypt , New York, 1961.

33“Pomona, Pomona. Christo Re, Dio Sole.” Cantos 79 and 82.

34“Arche Verlag.” Dichtung und Prosa , ed. Eva Hesse, Zürich, 1953.

35 A Lume Spento, 1908–1958 , Milan, 1958. A selection from Pound’s earliest published poems, with a few poems from the San Trovaso Notebook of 1908.

36“Venetian Night Litany.” In A Quinzaine for this Yule (1908); see the Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound , p. 60: “Night Litany.” The autograph manuscript, to which H.D. refers, was published in facsimile in A Lume Spento, 1908–1958 .