A portrait of censorship in our own country. Our own legal and cultural moment has swung so decidedly in the way of free expression (though challenges persist) and our national story has been one  of freedom contrasted with the tyranny of fascist countries. I knew Ulysses was once banned for over a decade in America and I assumed it was a bureaucratic matter, a negotiation between the government and publishers, something like television today with the FCC. 

 

What it actually took to get a modern classic into America, and the risks many took along the way to make that happen is the subject of Kevin Birmingham's The Most Dangerous Book: the Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses. A good bit of set-up is required for the story, and much of  the book details the operations of early 20th century publishing house and their challengers in the vice societies which policed obscene material, along with biography of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Sylvia Beach and other colleagues in the defense of literature. Birmingham writes about the sting operations on bookshops, publishers going to jail, publications shut down over the printing of shit or fuck or descriptions of bodies and sexuality. It is, at times, accidentally comical how joyless the societies are in how reluctant they are even in carving out exemptions for classics. Birmingham quotes a decision by Judge Augustus Hand asserting the authority of the US Postal Service to declare material obscene and take action which exempts classics, "because they have the sanction of age and fame and usually appeal to a comparatively limited number of readers."

 

It seems amazing today that a man who had to watch his own eye surgery while awake(a spine-chilling episode in a book which dwells on Joyce's litany of health problems) would face a decade-long court battle over frank discussions of the body and sex. In a world with real problems (throughout this book I thought  back to the show Scrubs where the character Turk, while getting ready for the birth of his daughter, warns his coworkers not to tell her that she has a vagina until she is 18).

 

The Most Dangerous Book is an interesting story and a good read, particularly for fans of Joyce. It does a good job answering the questions it wants to address, but that framing is very specific. Birmingham is definitely more interested in the biographical elements than in constitutional history. He provides the required background the context we are given for battle for Ulysses is the development of Modern literature more than the legal battles toward free expression.

I work for a company that produces academic content, so we have a pretty substantial reference library. They just announced that they are clearing out their unused and out-of-date materials, so I picked up a nice hefty stack of FREE BOOKS! I focused on grabbing as much poetry as I could, since it is something I've been meaning to tackle a lot more.

Alphabetical List of Titles

from Personae (1908, 1909, 1910)
--Cino
--Na Audiart
--Villonaud for this Yule
--The Tree
--Sestina: Altaforte
--Ballad of the Goodly Fere
--Planh for the Young English King
--"Blandula, Tenulla, Vagula"
--Erat Hora
--The House of Splendour
--La Fraisne
--A Villonaud: Ballad of the Gibbet
--Marvoil
--Piere Vidal Old

from Ripostes (1912)
--Portrait d'une Femme
--An Object
--The Seafarer
--∆ὡpia
--Apparuit
--The Return

from Lustra
--Tenzone
--The Garret
--The Garden
--Salutation
--Salutation the Second
--The Spring
--Commission
--A Pact
--Dance Figure
--April
--Gentildonna
--The Rest
--Les Millwin
--A Song of the Degrees
--Ité
--The Bath Tub
--Liu Ch'e
--Arides
--Amities
--Meditatio
--Ladies
--Coda
--The Coming of War: Actæon
--In a Station of the Metro
--Alba
--Coitus
--The Encounter
--Ιμέρρw
--"Ione, Dead the Long Year"
--The Tea Shop
--The Lake Isle
--Epitaphs
--Villanelle: the Psychological Hour
--Alba from "Langue d'Oc"
--Near Perigord

Cathay
--Song of the Bowmen of Shu
--The Beautiful Toilet
--The River Song
--The River-Merchant's Wife: a Letter
--Poem by the Bridge at Ten-Shin
--The Jewel Stairs' Grievance
--Lament of the Frontier Guard
--Exile's Letter

--Four Poems of Departure
--Separation on the River Kiang
--Taking Leave of a Friend
--Leave-taking Near Shoku
--The City of Choan

--South-Folk in Cold Country
--Sennin Poem by Kakuhaku
--A Ballad of the Mulberry Road
--Old Idea of Choan by Rosoriu
--To-Em-Mei's "The Unmoving Cloud"

--Homage to Sextus Propertius (1917)

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
--I E. P. Ode Pour L'Election de son Sepulchre
--II "The age demanded an image"
--III "The tea-rose tea-gown, etc."
--IV "These fought in any case,"
--V "There died a myriad,"
--VI Yeux Glauques
--VII "Siena Mi Fe'; Disfecemi Maremma"
--VIII Brennbaum
--IX Mr. Nixon
--X "Beneath the sagging roof"
--XI "Conservatrix of Milésien"
--XII "Daphne with her thighs in bark"
--Envoi (1919)
--Mauberley 1920

--Cantos

 

Ezra Pound (1913)

 

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972) had his fingers in many pies, some of which were hot enough to burn him badly. One of these pies was the translation of poetry into English. Over his lifetime he published translations from at least 10 different languages, though of some of these, like Chinese, he had only a very weak grasp. However, he did have the papers of the great cultural explorer Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908) which included more or less literal translations of poems by the great T'ang dynasty poet Li Po (Li Bai) and others.(*) On the basis of these notes Pound wrote the "translations" published in his Cathay (1915). Needless to say, sinologists object to these "translations", but they are without a doubt fine English poems. 

 

I read most(?) of this when I was 15 or 16. Ezra Pound was committed to an insane asylum for fascism. If it's because he preached against WWII before it started, he could be a kind of martyr. If it's because he loved Hitler, well, he was worse than insane. I do remember that Eustace Mullins would be the last person to argue against Ezra Pound.