Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."

10
Overture to War
1939–1940
‘‘Waitin’ for one or other cat to jump’’
In the spring of 1939, Ezra returned to the United States for the first time
in twenty-eight years. He had corresponded with senators and congressmen,
expounding his economic theories in an attempt to convince them of
the errors of the Roosevelt Administration. The time had come to go to
Washington to straighten things out. He boarded the S.S. Rex in Genoa on
April 13, Je√erson’s birthday—‘‘and hers,’’ Olga wrote; ‘‘she hates being
out of everything—yeow!’’
‘‘Glad you have come over in the nick of time, for eye-opening,’’ wrote
the Princesse de Polignac, who had preceded him on the Queen Mary and
was ensconced in the Plaza Hotel. On his arrival, the Herald Tribune called
Pound ‘‘a prophet who taught his generation to throw o√ what he called
the ‘smoke screen erected by half-knowing and half-thinking critics’.’’ A
Sun editorial heralded ‘‘that bearded wanderer upon the literary waste
lands of our sorry world,’’ whose ‘‘chief concern, literature, is now a
minor theme in the Poundish symphony . . . immediately the talk turns to
economics, propaganda, and what he calls ‘left-wing Fascists’ in Italy.’’
After elaborating his theories in New York, Ezra took the train to
Washington, ‘‘the only inhabitable American city I know of.’’ He stayed in
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