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230 The Translator’s InvisibilityThe correspondence shows that Blackburn’s identity as poet-translatorwas not only modernist, but masculinist. It was constructed on thebasis of an oedipal rivalry with Pound, in which Blackburn soughtapproval and encouragement from his poetic father in frank, personalletters that linked his writing to sexual relationships with women. Theoedipal nature of this rivalry shapes Blackburn’s bohemian selfportraitin the correspondence, his deviations from bourgeoisrespectability, his occasional use of obscenities (“The defense is to notgive a fuck”). His letters imitated the gruff colloquialism of Pound’sletters, but far exceeded them in shock value (Pound doesn’t gobeyond “goddam”). After Pound wrote that he submitted Blackburn’sversion of Peire Vidal’s “Ab l’alen” to an editor (12 August 1950),Blackburn’s response made clear the oedipal configuration of hisauthorial identity:THANKYOU, POUND. And the dry season is over! Have beensitting here trying to divert me by reading. NG. Other diversionsphysical better for the health et alli. Going to sources like sex andfinally getting it relaxed and fine and broke the drought in ashower of somethingorother. Pure peace: to go into a womanrelaxed, i.e. in control of the tensions; to sit and write again, i.e. incontrol of the tensions. So up and about and seeing and doing andfeeling.(early September 1950?)Although this remarkable passage opens with Blackburnthanking Pound “for the practical encouragement” of submittingthe translation, it quickly begins to suggest that Blackburnhimself “broke the drought” in his writing through “sex.”Blackburn does not challenge Pound in any direct way: one of thestriking things about the passage is the conspicuous omission ofany first-person pronouns that would indicate Blackburn’sagency. This passage constructs only one subject-position,Pound’s. Yet an agent appears in the sudden syntactical break at“broke the drought,” which assumes an “I,” distinct from Pound,and thus hints at the sexual competition underlying Blackburn’sidentity as poet—translator. This identity is fundamentally apatriarchal construction requiring the female to be an object ofmale sexuality so that Blackburn might regain his “control” overhis writing. A sexual exploitation of “a woman” displacesBlackburn’s literary dependence on Pound.