Machine Art and Other Writings: The Lost Thought of the Italian Years : EssaysMachine Art and Other Writings presents previously unpublished and rare writings by one of the literary giants of the modernist period, Ezra Pound. Written from the late 1920s to the early part of the 1940s, these essays, selected by Maria Luisa Ardizzone and including "Machine Art," "How To Write," "European Paideuma," and "Pragmatic Aesthetics," are typically Poundian in style--irascible, eccentric, and by turns both engaging and cryptic. Importantly, these essays from Pound's Italian years shed light both on the sections of the Cantos written in the late 1940s and on the underpinnings of his well-known anti-Semitism. 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 Pound'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. General readers, students and scholars in the fields of European and American modernism, aesthetics, the history of technology, and art history, as well as Pound specialists and the many poets and writers influenced by Pound, will greet the publication of Machine Art and Other Writings with interest and anticipation. |
Contents
Machine Art 19271930 | 57 |
How to Write 1930 | 87 |
Addenda c 19281937 | 110 |
A Problem of Specifically Style 1934 | 122 |
European Paideuma 1940 | 131 |
Catholicism c 1940 | 141 |
Two Letters from Pound to the Frobenius Institute | 147 |
Pragmatic Aesthetics of E P c 19401943 | 155 |
A Note on the Texts | 161 |
A Note on the Illustrations | 167 |
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Common terms and phrases
ABC of Reading abstraction activity Addenda Antheil anti-Semitic appears Aristotelian Aristotle Aristotle's Bacon beauty biological logic biology BRBL Brunnenburg Cantos Cavalcanti Chinese Written Character Collected Prose concept of art contained Convenit esse Deos criticism critique culture edition English European Paideuma Ezra Pound Fenollosa Fenollosa's essay focusing folder formulation fragments Frobenius Frobenius Institute function George Santayana Gestalt Gestalt Psychology grammar Greek Guide to Kulchur idea ideogram ideogrammic method indicated intelligence Italian knowledge Leibniz letter literary Machine Art machinery mathematics meaning medieval melopoeia metaphysics method mind monad monism monotheism noise notes Novum Organum opposed organic Organum philosophy Photo plural poetry polemic Pound's reading Poundian Pragmatic Aesthetics problem production proposed published Rapallo reading marks relation religion Rémy de Gourmont Renaissance science of matter science of nature scienza Semitic sense substance syllogism syllogistic technę term things thought tion usury Vico Vorticism word Write York