Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an American expatriate poet
and critic, who became a major figure of the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began
with his promotion of Imagism, a movement that derived its technique from classical Chinese and
Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language. His best-known works include
Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) and his unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos (1917–
1969).[1]
Working in London in the early 20th century as foreign editor of several American literary magazines,
Pound helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce,
Robert Frost and Ernest Hemingway. He was responsible for the publication in 1915 of Eliot's "The Love
Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and for the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses. Hemingway wrote of
him in 1925: "He defends [his friends] when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of
jail. ... He writes articles about them. He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take
their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying ... he advances them hospital
expenses and dissuades them from suicide."[2]
Outraged by the loss of life during the First World War, he lost faith in England, blaming the war on usury
and international capitalism. He moved to Italy in 1924, where throughout the 1930s and 1940s, to his
friends' dismay, he embraced Benito Mussolini's fascism, expressed support for Adolf Hitler and wrote for
publications owned by Oswald Mosley. The Italian government paid him during the Second World War to
make hundreds of radio broadcasts criticizing the United States, as a result of which he was arrested for
treason by American forces in Italy in 1945. He spent months in detention in a U.S. military camp in Pisa,
including 25 days in a six-by-six-foot outdoor steel cage that he said triggered a mental breakdown,
"when the raft broke and the waters went over me." Deemed unfit to stand trial, he was incarcerated in St.
Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., for over 12 years. [3]
While in custody in Italy, he had begun work on sections of The Cantos that became known as The Pisan
Cantos (1948), for which he was awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the Library of Congress,
triggering enormous controversy. He was released from St. Elizabeths in 1958, thanks to a campaign by
his fellow writers, and returned to live in Italy until his death. His political views ensure that his work
remains controversial; in 1933 Time magazine called him "a cat that walks by himself, tenaciously
unhousebroken and very unsafe for children." Hemingway nevertheless wrote: "The best of Pound's
writing – and it is in the Cantos – will last as long as there is any literature
Portrait d'une Femme Summary
The title of the poem tells us that in the following 30 lines, we're going to get a portrait of a woman. From
the first couple lines, however, we can tell that this portrait is not going to be exactly clear or
straightforward. The first thing we find out about the "femme"? She (and her mind?) is like the Sargasso
Sea. But she's also been living in London for a long time. OK….
This introduction of the Sargasso Sea kicks off a long series of sea-related imagery, all of which seems to
be metaphorical for the woman's interactions with other people. The speaker indicates that these people
tend to be pretty impressive figures (we're guessing writers, thinkers, or artists), and they always leave
something with her, such as ideas, knowledge, or gossip. It's not clear whether the speaker sees this as a
good thing, because he points out that the "femme" is the default choice for them and that what they give
her is often old and useless.
This giving is reciprocal, as the woman also offers up some equally useless facts, suggestions, and tales.
The speaker characterizes these as being decorative, even gaudy, like the ornate vases and statues
found in a rich lady's living room.
The poem concludes with the speaker stating that, despite all this clutter of things given to her and things
she gives – all these old, useless things and new, gaudy things – ultimately there's nothing that's really
the woman's own. And this is the woman's most defining characteristic; this is who she is.
Does this ending make you feel a bit lost at sea? Don't worry, you're not the only one.
