| 1921 | Jan., after two week in Paris to Saint-Raphaël; back to Paris 10 April. Works on opera Le Testament de Villon. Translates Remy de Gourmont’s Physique de l’amour—published in 1922 as The Natural History of Love. Dec., Poems 1918–21, including cantos IV–VII, published in New York. EP and DP take studio at 70 bis rue Notre Dame des Champs, Paris VI. |
| 1922 | 3 Jan., T. S. Eliot in Paris with The Waste Land ‘in semi-existence’; EP edits the manuscript and transforms ‘a jumble of good and bad passages into a poem’. Joyce’s Ulysses published in Feb. by Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Pound’s ‘Eighth Canto’, later revised as canto II, published in Dial in May. Mar. begins ‘Bel Esprit’ scheme with Natalie Barney to raise a fund for Eliot and other writers. Apr.–June, travelling in Italy; drafting canto 12 and ‘Hell cantos’; early drafts towards Malatesta cantos. Back in Paris begins affaire with Nancy Cunard; declares himself ‘a Confucian’ to John Quinn; meets William Bird, whose Three Mountains Press will publish several of his works. 30 Oct., Mussolini forms government following Fascist ‘March on Rome’. Nov., The Waste Land appears in Dial. |
| 1923 | Jan.–Apr., in Italy; walking tour there with Hemingway in Feb.; researching and writing Malatesta cantos, to be published as ‘Cantos IX–XII of a Long Poem’ in Eliot’s Criterion in July. Indiscretions published by Three Mountains Press. In Paris, meets the violinist Olga Rudge (OR) in Natalie Barney’s salon. June, meets George Antheil, with whom he radically revises the score of Le Testament. Transatlantic Review, edited in Paris by Ford with assistance by Basil Bunting—EP promotes and aids the journal. Aug., walking tour in Dordogne with OR. Oct., Bride Scratton, whom EP first met in London in 1910, divorces her husband, naming him as co-respondent. |
| 1924 | Jan.–May, EP and DP tour Italy looking for permanent home there. June, William Carlos Williams in Paris. Oct., EP and DP leave Paris for Italy, first to Rapallo, then in Dec. to Sicily until Feb. Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony published by Three Mountains Press. |
| 1925 | Jan., A Draft of XVI Cantos published by Three Mountains Press. Mar., EP and DP now settled in Rapallo. 9 July, birth of daughter Mary in the Italian Tyrol, child of EP and OR. Child to be fostered and brought up there in local farming family. |
| 1926 | June, Le Testament concert version performed in Paris. 10 Sept., birth of Omar Pound in Paris, son of Dorothy. Child to be fostered in Norland Nurseries and brought up in England. Dec., Personae, The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound published in New York. |
| 1927 | EP begins to edit and publish his little magazine, Exile (four issues). Oct., studying Guido Cavalcanti and his philosophical context. |
| 1928 | EP receives 1927 Dial award for poetry. EP’s translation of the Confucian Ta Hio, or The Great Learning published by the University of Washington Bookstore. May, EP in Vienna for Antheil/OR concert; writes ‘Mensdorf letter’. July, EP’s translation of Cavalcanti’s ‘Donna mi prega’ with commentary in Dial. Sept., A Draft of The Cantos 17–27 published by John Rodker in London. Oct., OR buys small house in Calle Querini, Dorsoduro, Venice. Nov., Selected Poems, ed. TSE, published by Faber & Gwyer. W. B. Yeats takes apartment in Rapallo. Dec., EP completes his edition of Cavalcanti. |
| 1929 | 1 June, EP’s parents sail from New York for London, then go on to Rapallo, where they decide to settle. 24 Oct., Wall Street Crash sets off the Great Depression of the 1930s. |
| 1930 | May, to Frankfurt for première of Antheil’s opera Transatlantic (The People’s Choice); there meets Leo Frobenius. Aug., A Draft of XXX Cantos published by Nancy Cunard’s Hours Press. EP now working on cantos 31–5. Nov., begins writing to US Senator Bronson Cutting. OR begins renting upper floor of Casa 60, Sant’ Ambrogio, above Rapallo. |
| 1931 | 26, 27 Oct., BBC broadcasts Le Testament. Dec., How to Read published by Desmond Harmsworth in London. |
| 1932 | Jan., EP’s Guido Cavalcanti/Rime published by Edizioni Marsano, Genoa. May, EP’s Profile/An Anthology collected in MCMXXXI published by Giovanni Scheiwiller, Milan. Aug., EP completes Cavalcanti (‘a sung dramedy in 3 acts’). Begins to contribute to Il Mare, Rapallo’s local newspaper. An ‘Objectivists’ Anthology, ed. Louis Zukofsky, is dedicated ‘To Ezra Pound who…is still for the poets of our time the most important’. |
| 1933 | 30 Jan., EP granted interview with Mussolini. 30 Jan., Hitler becomes Reichschancellor of Germany. Feb., EP writes Jefferson and/or Mussolini. Begins correspondence with Congressman George Tinkham of Massachusetts. 21–31 Mar., EP gives series of 9 lectures at Milan’s Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, under general title ‘An Historic Background for Economics’, and beginning with ‘Why or how a poet came to be drawn into economic discussion’; the fourth lecture was on ‘Economic ideas of the early and constructive American presidents: Jefferson’; the fifth on ‘John Quincy Adams’; and the sixth on ‘Martin Van Buren’; the final lecture was on ‘What literature has to do with it—The function of good writing in the State’. Apr., ABC of Economics—‘a concise introduction to “volitionist economics”’—published by Faber & Faber. [Not the text of the Milan lectures.] June, first annual Rapallo concert series organized by EP. July, OR becomes secretary to Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. Oct., EP’s Active Anthology published by Faber & Faber. Nov., starts writing to Senator William Borah of Idaho. |
| 1934 | Feb., EP as ‘Alfie Venison’, ‘The Charge of the Bread Brigade’, the first of the ‘Alfred Venison’ songs of social protest. May, EP’s ABC of Reading published by Routledge, London. Aug., EP circulates his Volitionist Economics questionnaire. Aug., Hitler proclaimed Führer. Sept., EP’s Make It New/Essays published by Faber & Faber. Oct., Eleven New Cantos/XXXI–XLI published by Farrar & Rinehart, New York. |
| 1935 | Jan., EP’s first radio broadcast to USA—next will be in Jan. 1941. May, Social Credit: An Impact published by Stanley Nott, London. July, Jefferson and/or Mussolini/L’idea statale/Fascism as I have seen it/…Volitionist Economics published by Stanley Nott. Sept., Nazi Germany promulgates ‘Nuremberg Laws’ depriving German Jews of their citizenship and further restricting their civil rights. Oct., Italy invades Abyssinia. |
| 1936 | Jan., EP and OR promote Vivaldi revival. Feb., canto 45, ‘With Usura’, published in English Social Credit magazine Prosperity. July, Spanish Civil War begins. Nov., Germany and Italy form their ‘Axis’. Dec., EP sends cantos 42–51 to Faber. |
| 1937 | Feb., EP’s Polite Essays published by Faber. Feb.–May, writes Guide to Kulchur. The first chapter published in June by Giovanni Scheiwiller in Milan as Confucius/Digest of the Analects. June, The Fifth Decad of Cantos published by Faber. July, Sino-Japanese war begun by Japan’s invasion of northern China. |
| 1938 | Jan., EP elected to US National Institute of Arts and Letters. Mar., Germany annexes Austria in the ‘Anschluss’. July, Guide to Kulchur published by Faber. 29 Sept., British, French, and Italian prime ministers (Chamberlain, Daladier, and Mussolini) meeting in Munich support Hitler’s demand that Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland be ceded to Germany. Chamberlain boasts that this ‘Munich Agreement’ has bought ‘peace in our time’. 2 Oct., death of Olivia Shakespear; EP in London for five weeks settling her affairs; Wyndham Lewis does his portrait now in the Tate. 9 Nov., Kristallnacht: Nazi pogrom in which hundreds of Jewish shops, houses, and synagogues are looted and burnt, and many Jews murdered. The Nazis decree that the Jews should collectively pay for the insured loss. |
| 1939 | 28 Jan., death of W. B. Yeats at Cap Martin on the French Riviera. Mar., Hitler invades and occupies the remainder of Czechoslovakia. Apr., Italy annexes Albania. Apr., EP’s What Is Money For published by Greater Britain Publications. Apr.–June, EP goes to America in hope of persuading President Roosevelt to keep USA out of the looming European war. Awarded honorary doctorate by Hamilton College. 26 June, death of Ford Madox Ford at Deauville, France. Aug., EP contributing to Meridiano di Roma. 1 Sept., Germany invades Poland, thus setting off the Second World War. Nov., EP declares ‘my economic work is done’, prepares to write his paradiso. |
| 1940 | Jan., Cantos LII–LXXI [‘China’—‘John Adams’] published by Faber. |