The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn: 1915-1924
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The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn: 1915-1924
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Overview
Pound wrote to John Quinn—a New York lawyer, an expert in business law, and a collector of unusual taste and discrimination—about these artists and many more, urging him to support their journals, collect their manuscripts, and buy and exhibit their paintings and sculptures. Quinn at one time owned manuscripts of Ulysses and The Waste Land, Brancusi’s sculpture Mlle. Pogany, and Picasso’s painting Three Musicians. Yet he was often skeptical about the value of new schools of art, such as Vorticism, and disturbed by the outspokenness of authors such as Joyce. Pound’s letters are unusually tactful when he counters Quinn’s doubts and explains the premises of experimental art. Pound’s letters to Quinn are touched with his characteristic humor and wordplay and are especially notable for their lucidity of expression, engendered by Pound’s deep respect for Quinn.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822382904 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 05/30/1991 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 261 |
| File size: | 967 KB |
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The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn 1915â"1924
By Timothy Materer
Duke University Press
Copyright © 1991 Duke Universaity PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-8290-4
CHAPTER 1
Artist and Patron, 1915
John Quinn began the correspondence when he read Pound's criticism of him as a patron of art in the January 1915 New Age (see Introduction). Quinn's first letter refuted Pound's charges through a factual account of his dealings with Jacob Epstein and other artists and set the tone of their exchanges by assuring Pound, "Please remember I do not resent it one bit. You have a habit of hitting straight from the shoulder and I respect you for it." He also initiated his habit of giving Pound practical advice by telling him that he did Epstein no favor by advertising the sculptor's poverty. Quinn proclaimed his own commitment to the arts as vigorously as Pound himself:
I have done as much, if not more than you have done, to cure people of buying "faked Rembrandts and faked Vandykes". I did more than any other man to break up the practice of importing faked works of art when I drafted the new tariff law. I wrote every line and word of it. I inserted the word "original" in the law so that only original works of art come in duty free.... Since the new law went into effect, dozens of faked old masters have been rejected by the official examiners.
His claims for his own significance culminated with a challenge: "If there is a 'liver' collector of vital contemporary art in this country, for a man of moderate means, I should like to meet him." For Pound, however, the importance of Quinn's letter was that Quinn wished to obtain some of the Henri Gaudier-Brzeska works mentioned in the New Age article and also urged Pound to write for an American magazine. Pound immediately began locating available Gaudier sculptures and sent Quinn a Dial piece he wrote on the way American editorial taste was retarding the development of literature in America. Pound's career as the impressario of modern art and letters was thus fully launched because he now had a patron whose energy and ambition matched his own. The major subjects of their early letters is the acquiring of works by Gaudier-Brzeska and other "Vorticist" artists and the founding of a magazine that would uphold international standards for the arts.
1
TLS-8. Postmark: 9 March 1915. Enclosure: Pound's
"A Blast from London," Dial, 63 (16 January 1915): 40–41.
[5, Holland Place Chambers, Kensington. W.]
My Dear John Quinn:
Thanks, apologies and congratulations, If there were more like you we should get on with our renaissance.
I particularly congratulate you on having shed your collection of mss. and having "got as far as Derain" (Mind you, I think Lewis has much more power in his elbow but I wouldn't advise a man to buy "a Lewis" simply because it was Lewis. Out of much that I do not care for there are now and again designs or pictures which I greatly admire.). However there are few such reformed characters as yourself and I might have as well said "medals given to John Keats for orthography, first editions of eighteenth century authors" instead of "mss. of Wm. Morris", which allusions would not have dragged you into it and would have left the drive of my sentence about the same. I might have gone on about the way Morgan and a certain old friend of his, whose niece I knew in Paris, used to buy, but Morgan is such a stock phrase (and besides he has done some good to America by bringing in Old Masters). Then there's Ricketts now showing O.M.s collected for Davis, I think it is. There are a lot of heads at the fair.
I have still a very clear recollection of Yeats père on an elephant sailing like Elijah in the beatific vision, and of you plugging away in the shooting gallery. And a very good day it was.
I think it was the first evening I met you that you were in mid-flight on the Morris matter. And I! During that eight months in America I made just £14, my exact fare from Philadelphia back to Paris. Oh I was in a fine mood to appreciate the purchase of old mss. also I was just on the verge of an attack of jaundice. So it is small wonder I had you in my book along with the other examples.
As to fake Rembrandts etc. I carried twenty "Rembrandts", "VanDykes", "Velasquez" out of Wanamakers private gallery at the time of his fire some eight years ago, I know that they arent the only examples in the U.S., so my sentence was by no means a personal one. My god! What Velasquez!! I also know a process for Rembrandts one man studies the ghetto and does drawings, one the Rembrandtesque method of light and shade and manner and does the painting, and a third does the "tone of time", however that's a digression, let me go at your letter as it comes.
I haven't seen much of Epstein of late, he and Lewis have some feud or other which I haven't inquired into and as Lewis is my more intimate friend I have not seen much of Jacob though I was by way of playing for a reconciliation. Jacob told me some time ago that the sun god was in hock. He told me just before the war it was still in hock. I heard from W[illiam]. B[utler]. Y[eats]., after I had written the article (after it was in print), that you had bought "an Epstein", ("an Epstein" not half a dozen). I had also heard a long tale (not from Epstein) about John's dangling before the simple Jacob the fair hope of "some day being introduced or recommended to Quinn", which tale evidently dates from some earlier period of history. It was a touching tale of faith renewed, remended, and shattered.
By the way, if you are still getting Jacob's "Birds" for God's sake get the two that are stuck together not the pair in which one is standing up on its legs.
However let me apologize for my ignorance and make an end of it.
I congratulate you on the tarrif law. Have they, I wonder, done as well by the writers as by the painters. I wrote to the President (for all the jolly sort of good that sort of thing does). I have to pay duty if I am in America and want a copy of one of my own books, printed in England. You cant get a book printed in America unless it conforms to the commercial requirements. Rennert had to pay some huge duty on his Life of Lope de Vega, which is a standard and which got him into the Spanish Academy. Only an English firm would risk the publication. The American law as it stands or stood is all for the jew publisher and the rotten printer and all against the author, and more and more against him just in such proportion as he is before or against his time. If you are near the councils of the powers I would be glad to make out a fuller statement. This detail is one of the causes of American authors coming abroad, and of the punereal nature of all serious American periodicals. The printing is supposed to be so costly that it is impossible to publish in America, especially periodicals which are, as are a few in London and Paris, largely in the control of writers' or in which they have influence.
Henry IV took off the octroi from books coming into Paris, some centuries since, because they made for the increase of learning, and it is high time America followed suite. The absurd tarrif (25 % it was) and the egregious price the American booksellers stick on a foreign book, unnecessarily, "because of the tarrif" is just enough to prevent sale. (Example I caught a publisher selling my Spirit of Romance at i\ dollars. No fool would pay that for a six shilling book. Besides that damn swindler had bought the book at 3 shillings by special arrangement so as to be able to sell it at the English price (I being paid as @ 3/) These are merely personal instances, but it is the sort of thing that goes on and keeps books by living authors out of the U.S. and the tarrif, which is iniquitous and stupid in principle, is made an excuse. All books ought to be on the free list, but more especially all books of living authors, and of those the non-commercial books, scholarship and belles lettres most certainly.
About GAUDIER-BRZESKA. I naturally think I've got the two best things myself, though I was supposed by his sister to have bought the first one out of charity because no one else would have it. The second one is half paid for by money I lent him to get to France with, he is now in the trenches before Rheims. However, there is, or was, a charming bas relief of a cat chewing its hind foot, and there are "the stags" if you like them. However, money cant be of much use to him now in the trenches. I send him a spare £ when I have it to finish up my payment on the "Boy with a Coney". But when he comes back from the trenches, if he does come, I imagine he will be jolly hard up. In the meantime I will find out exactly what is unsold and let you know about it. Coburn is doing a photo of one of my own things of Brzeska's and I hope it will interest him enough to go on and do a portfolio, in which case you will be able to make your selection from the best possible photographs.
At any rate I will write to Gaudier at once and see what he has, and where it is, and how much he wants for it, and if there is anything that I think fit to recommend I think Coburn will probably photograph it for me. Then there will be no waste in dealer's commissions.
Which brings me back to another hobby, speaking of 30,000 dollars for two pictures, I consider it immoral to pay more than 1000 dollars for any picture (save perhaps a huge Sistine ceiling or something of that sort. Your Puvis' are big pictures so it dont hit you.) but NO artist needs more than 2000 dollars per year, and any artist can do two pictures at least in a year. 30,000 dollars would feed a whole little art world for five years.
My whole drive is that if a patron buys from an artist who needs money (needs money to buy tools, time and food) the patron then makes himself equal to the artist, he is building art into the world. He creates.
If he buys even of living artists who are already famous or already making £12,000 per year, he ceases to create. He sinks back to the rank of a consumer.
A great age of painting, a renaissance in the arts comes when there are a few patrons who back their own flair and who buy from unrecognized men. In every artists life there is, if he be poor and they mostly are, a period when £10 is a fortune and when £100 means a years leisure to work or to travel, or when the knowledge that they can make £100 or £200 a year without worry (without spending two thirds of their time running to dealers—or editors—means a peace of mind that will let them work and not undermine them physically.
BE sides, if a man has any sense, the sport and even the commercial advantage is so infinitely greater. If you can hammer this into a few more collectors you will bring on another Cinquecento.
(In sculpture I might let the price run over £200, simply because of the time it take to cut stone. Drill work is no damn good. Both Gaudier and Epstein cut direct, and there may be months of sheer cutting in a big bit of sculpture, especially if the stone is very hard.) Gaudier does mostly small things, which is sane for the sculpture of our time, save public sculpture, ought to be such as will go in a modern house.
About the "New Republic", I am afraid it is not much use. It will be another ten years before America will have me at any price. I saw and lunched with Lippmann when he was over here, but he didnt seem disposed to take any of my stuff. A poet, you know!!! bad lot they are. No sense of what the public wants. Even Cournos who isnt exactly a modern met Lippmann and said "You've heard of English stodge, well there's one stodge that's worse. It's American stodge. That's American stodge".
Even the New Age has nipped my series in the middle because I have dared to write an article praising an American writer of vers libre, one Edgar Masters. They [say] it's an insult to their readers to praise vers libre after they have so often condemned it. (God knows most vers libre is bad enough, still Masters has something in him, rough and unfinished, ma!) If you told Croly of the New Republic that I was an art critic he might believe you, but he'd think me very bad for his paper. The fat pastures are still afar from me. And I have a persistent and (editorially) inconvenient belief that America has the chance for a great age if she can be kicked into taking it. (Whereanent some remarks in the Dial, here enclosed.)
sincerely yours
Ezra Pound
best regards to Yeats pére, Sloan & his wife & King.
EP.
Lewis: Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957), who became Pound's close friend and ally in the Vorticist movement.
far as Derain: Quinn's phrase in his letter to Pound of 25 February 1915 was that he owned "more than one painting by Derain" (the French artist, André Derain, 1880–1954).
mss. of Wm. Morris: See Introduction.
Morgan and a certain old friend: J. P. Morgan (1837–1913), the American financier, was notorious for the high prices he paid for European art. In a note on a copy of this letter at Emory University, he identified the "niece" as "that old fool Amy Lowell" (1874–1925). Her elder brother, Abbot Lawrence Lowell (1856–1943), the president of Harvard, was acquainted with Morgan.
Ricketts ... Davis: Charles Ricketts (1866–1931), English painter, designer, and art connoisseur, advised his patron, Sir Edmund Davis (a director of mining companies, d. 1939), on purchases for his art collections.
Yeats père: See Introduction.
Morris matter: Quinn was collecting the manuscripts of the English poet and artist William Morris (1834–1896).
attack of jaundice: During his stay in America in 1910–11, Pound was hospitalized for jaundice early in 1911 and was still recovering when he returned to England in February.
Wanamaker's private gallery: See Introduction.
process for Rembrandts: In Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (p. 47), Pound describes how Henri Gaudier-Brzeska worked in a Munich "Rembrandt factory," providing drawings that would be treated to give them the qualities of a "Rembrandt."
Epstein ... Lewis: Jacob Epstein (1880–1959), an American artist who lived in England, was a pioneer in the use of abstract and primitive forms in sculpture. He introduced Pound to the painting of Wyndham Lewis.
sun god in hock: Pound's New Age article reported that Epstein's poverty forced him to pawn "The Sun God" and two other sculptures for approximately £60.
John: Quinn was a patron of the English artist Augustus John (1876–1961).
Jacob's "Birds": Pound refers to Epstein's copulating "Doves III" (1913). See Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts, ed. Harriet Zinnes, plate following p. 246.
tariff law: See Introduction.
Rennert: Hugo Albert Rennert (1858–1927), professor of Romance languages at the University of Pennsylvania, published his Life of Lope de Vega in 1904. Although he was not a member of the Spanish Academy, the Spanish government awarded him the Order of Isabel the Catholic for his service to Spanish letters.
Henry IV ... octroi: Even before the reign of Henry IV (1589–1610), books in France were free of the octroi or city duties as well as custom charges.
two best things: In Gaudier-Brzeska, Pound says that he bought a "marble group and a torse" from Gaudier-Brzeska soon after meeting him. On p. 128, he lists the "Marble group" as "man and woman, Taihitian (?)." This work appears under the title Embracers [Samson and Delilah) on plate 41 of Roger Cole's Burning to Speak, and the torso is reproduced on plate 29. For the bas relief [Cat) and Stags, see Cole, plates 46 and 52. Boy with a Coney [Boy with a Rabbit) is reproduced on plate 53.
Coburn: Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882–1966), American photographer of famous artists such as Mark Twain, W. B. Yeats, and Henry James. He collaborated with Pound in producing Cubistic "Vortographs." See Zinnes, pp. 154–57.
your Puvis': Quinn owned important paintings by the French artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824–1898).
New Republic: Quinn suggested that Pound write for The New Republic, a liberal New York periodical, which was founded in 1914 by Herbert Croly.
Lippmann: Walter Lippmann (1889–1974], American journalist, writer for The New Republic.
Cournos: John Cournos (1881–1966), Russian-born American journalist, poet, and novelist who lived in England, 1912–1930; friend and biographer of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.
New Age ... Edgar Masters: Pound was writing a series of "Affirmations" (affirming the importance of artists such as Gaudier-Brzeska and Lewis) for the New Age, but his "Affirmation: Edgar Lee Masters" appeared in the St. Louis periodical Reedy's Mirror, 24 (21 May 1915): 10–12.
Croly: See note to New Republic.
remarks in the Dial: Enclosed in letter; see headnote.
Sloan: John French Sloan (1871–1951), American painter and a close friend of J. B. Yeats.
King: Frederick Allen King (b. 1885), editor of the New York periodical Literary Digest and a friend of J. B. Yeats.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn 1915â"1924 by Timothy Materer. Copyright © 1991 Duke Universaity Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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Table of Contents
ContentsNotes on the Editing
Introduction From Henry James to Ezra Pound: John Quinn and the Art of Patronage
I Artist and Patron (1915)
II “Our Renaissance” (1916)
III War and Civilization (1917)
IV The End of an Era (1918)
V Bel Esprit (1919–1924)
Selected Bibliography
Index