Machine art and other writings: the lost thought of the Italian years : essays

Abstract

The essays in this volume address Pound's diverse aesthetic concerns, including his Vorticism and his criticism of Western metaphysics, his advancement of the machine as a new criterion for beauty, his encounter with the German Bauhaus movement, and his search for a type of writing ruled by mathematical rather than grammatical laws. Machine Art and Other Writings documents the wide proportions of Pounds's polemic against the abstractions of modernism and reveals the extent to which he was at odds with the metaphysical assumptions of his time. The volume, edited by Ardizzone, is the result of years of systematic and intensive study of Pound's manuscripts, including glosses from the texts of his personal library. Proposing an unconventional approach to Pound studies that focuses on marginality and intertextuality, she subverts the canonical hierarchy of Pound's works by revealing the power of texts considered marginalia.

Contents

Machine Art (1927-1930) -- How to Write (1930) -- Addenda (c.1928-1937) -- A Problem of (Specifically) Style (1934) -- Ogden and Debabelization (1935) -- European Paideuma (1940) -- Convenit esse Deos (c.1940-1942) -- [Catholicism] (c.1940) -- The Organum According to Tsze sze (1942) -- Appendix. Two Letters from Pound to the Frobenius Institute. To Douglas C. Fox (1935-1937). Letter from Pound to George Santayana (1914). and Santayana's Response -- Pragmatic Aesthetics of E.P. (c.1940-1943).