Poetical and Political: Ezra Pound as an Exilic Intellectual

ABSTRACT: In his “The Teacher‟s Mission” (1934), Pound defines the artists as “the antennae of the race”and “the voltameters and steam-gauges of the nation‟s intellectual life. They are the registering instruments, andif they falsify their reports there is no measure to the harm that they do” (Pound 1968, p.58 [1]). Pound trusts artand artists‟ power not only to descry, but also to cure social evils that are rooted in politics and economic;forbye, artists and intellectuals have a public role to speak truth to power and to spotlight social evils for thesake of a socio-cultural reform. Sixty years later, Edward W. Said speaks of the public role of the intellectualand characterizes the intellectual as “exile and marginal, … and as the author of a language that tries to speakthe truth to power” (Said 1994, p.xvi [2]). Said‟s vision of the public role of the intellectual in addition to hisperception of the humanist intellectual as exile and marginal unlocked the door for this current study which aimsat traveling back in time to read the American Modernist poet, and critic Ezra Pound as a Saidian exilicintellectual, an outsider, and a disturber of the status quo. Via examining selected poems composed by Pound atdifferent stages of his life, this article intends to explore Pound‟s stance as a self-exiled intellectual and a “naysayer” who straddles a critical, detached locus from where he proves capable of examining and criticizing notonly his native culture, but also the host ones.

KEY WORDS:Edward Said, Ezra Pound, Exilic Intellectual, “nay sayer”, Public Role.