“Tempus Tacendi, Tempus Loquendi”: Manifestations of Madness in “Canto 74”

Year 2023, , 417 - 435, 25.12.2023

Seda Şen

https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2023-1291548

Abstract

On May 24, 1945, Ezra Pound was arrested for treason by the US Army authorities near Pisa and confined in a gorilla cage for two and a half weeks. He spent a total of 6 months in a prison camp. After being brought to America on December 21, 1945, he was declared medically unfit for trial and was committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital. However, there was a group of skeptical people who claimed that the poet was in fact quite sane. Studies about Pound’s life after his imprisonment and years at St. Elizabeths portray the poet as either an old delusional man who was once a prominent poet or as a great schemer who followed the advice of his lawyer and faked madness. Pound’s biographers pointed out that during his years at St. Elizabeths, the place became a literary mecca for aspiring poets, implying that the poet was in a rational state of mind. After more than 70 years since the poet entered the hospital, it is crucial to investigate not whether the poet was mad but rather how the poet’s words in “Canto 74” were utilized as evidence to persuade the jury and doctors of his insanity. This article aims to analyze “Canto 74” in light of Foucault’s approaches to madness and its relation to language. It further explores why The Pisan Cantos, which was declared the Bollingen prize winner in 1948, could be mistaken for the rambling manifestations of a madman.

Keywords

“Canto 74, ” Ezra Pound, language of madness, modernist poetry, poetry and madness

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