Ezra Pound – Quote Investigator®

Edith Wharton? Ezra Pound? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: A classic work must be timeless, and it must also exhibit an irrepressible freshness. This notion has been attributed to the prominent U.S. novelist Edith Wharton and the well-known poet and critic Ezra Pound. Would you please help me to resolve this uncertainty?

Quote Investigator: In 1934 Ezra Pound published “ABC of Reading” which included the following passage. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:^[1] 1960 (1934 Copyright), ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound, Section: Warning, Quote Page 13 and 14, New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York. (Verified with scans)

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

QI has found no substantive evidence that Edith Wharton used this saying. She died in 1937, and she received credit by 2006.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading It Is Classic Because of a Certain Eternal and Irrepressible Freshness

References

References
↑1	1960 (1934 Copyright), ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound, Section: Warning, Quote Page 13 and 14, New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York. (Verified with scans)

William Butler Yeats? John Butler Yeats? Carl Sandburg? Ezra Pound? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: A reader who requests clarification for a poem that is opaque is sometimes met with a rejoinder of this type: If the lines can be explained then the work is not poetry.

This notion has been attributed to the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet William Butler Yeats and the U.S. poet and biographer Carl Sandburg. Interestingly, it has also been credited to John Butler Yeats, a painter who was the father of W. B. Yeats. Would you please explore this topic?

Quote Investigator: In 1917 a collection titled “Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats” was published in Ireland. The book’s editor, Ezra Pound, stated that he selected the excerpts from notes sent by J. B. Yeats to his son W. B. Yeats between 1911 and 1916. The following remark about poetry appeared in a message dated September 6, 1915. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:^[1]1917, Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats, Selected by Ezra Pound, Note: Four hundred copies of this book have been printed, Letter date: September 6, 1915, Quote Page 15, Cuala Press, … Continue reading

I take up some lines of poetry and say I will explain them and make the effort, always to end in giving it up. No explanation is possible. There is nothing to be done except to read out with friendliest voice the lines I started to make plain. What can be explained is not poetry. It is when the powers of explanation desert him that the poet writes verse.

Thus, John Butler Yeats deserves credit for this quotation and not William Butler Yeats. Two mechanisms help to explain this misattribution:

(1) Attributions sometimes shift between people with similar names.

(2) Attributions sometimes shift from a person of lower prominence to a person of greater prominence.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading What Can Be Explained Is Not Poetry

References

References
↑1	1917, Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats, Selected by Ezra Pound, Note: Four hundred copies of this book have been printed, Letter date: September 6, 1915, Quote Page 15, Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum, Ireland. (Verified with scans from archive.org) link