Ezra Pound Trial: 1946

Defendant: Ezra Pound
Crime Charged: Treason
Chief Defense Lawyers: Thurman Arnold, Julien Cornell, and Robert W. Furniss, Jr.
Chief Prosecutors: Isaiah Matlack, and Oliver Gasch
Judge: Bolitha J. Laws
Place: Washington, D.C.
Date of Trial: February 13, 1946
Verdict: Unsound mind; indictment dismissed in 1958

SIGNIFICANCE: This case involved a unique combination of elements: the charge of treason, a defendant who was widely known and respected in the literary world, the question of insanity (never fully resolved), and the commitment of such renowned figures as T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and Archibald MacLeish.

Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, a town of one street, one hotel, and 47 saloons, in 1885. After unhappy college years, he moved to Europe before World War I. There, while publishing poetry and working as secretary to Irish poet William Butler Yeats, he helped establish such literary giants as T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and James Joyce.

In Paris in the 1920s, the expatriate colony found Pound superbly confident of his own talent and outspokenly critical of all people and ideas that earned his disdain. In the 1930s, he settled permanently in Rapallo, Italy, where he continued to work on the long poems he called Cantos.

"Europe Calling! Pound Speaking!"

Hitler's war loomed. Pound had strong opinions on world politics. Turned down when he suggested that the Italian Government put out publications that would improve American sympathy for Italian fascism, he proposed short-wave radio aimed at America. By January 1941, his "Europe calling! Pound speaking! Ezra Pound speaking!" was on the air regularly. Paid for his services, he urged America to stay out of the war and concentrated on anti-Semitism as his chief message. "Clever Kikes," he said, were "runnin' ALL our communications system." After Pearl Harbor, he declared (early in 1942):

America COULD have stayed out of the war… IF America had stayed neutral the war would now be over… For the United States to be makin' war on Italy AND on Europe is just plain damn nonsense … And for this state of things Franklin Roosevelt is more than any other one man responsible.

America heard Pound. Attorney General Francis Biddle had him indicted for treason, the only crime that is defined in the U.S. Constitution:

Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of Two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or in Confession in open Court.

Pound was "completely surprised." He wrote Biddle:

I do not believe that the simple fact of speaking over the radio … can in itself constitute treason. I think that must depend on what is said …

I obtained the concession to speak over Rome radio with the following proviso: Namely that nothing should be asked of me contrary to my conscience or contrary to my duties as an American citizen …

I have not spoken with regard to this war, but in protest against a system which creates one war after another … I have not spoken to the troops, and have not suggested that the troops should mutiny or revolt…

Learning of the indictment, Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish asked if it might not "confer the paraphernalia of martyrdom upon a half-cracked and extremely foolish individual."

In Rome, after the Italian Government collapsed, Pound continued on the air under the German occupation. But the day after Italy surrendered, partisans seized him at gunpoint. He was imprisoned in Italy for six months, then flown to America.

"Poor Old Ezra is Quite, Quite Balmy"

Said Ernest Hemingway, "He ought to go to the loony bin, which he rates and you can pick out the parts in his cantos at which he starts to rate it." MacLeish added, "It is pretty clear that poor old Ezra is quite, quite balmy."

Defense counsel Julien Cornell decided that proving clinical insanity might be the surest way to save Pound from execution. Psychiatric examinations by four doctors brought a unanimous report that Pound was not sane enough to stand trial. One said Pound suffered from delusions that he had valuable connections "in a half dozen countries" and should be "an adviser to the state department." Nevertheless, prosecutor Isaiah Matlack asked for a "public insanity hearing" before a jury.

On February 13, 1946, the jury heard that Pound:

shows a remarkable grandiosity … believes he has been designated to save the Constitution of the United States for the people of the United States … has a feeling that he has the key to the peace of the world through the writings of Confucius … believes that with himself as a leader a group of intellectuals could work for world order …

The jury was out for three minutes, then announced that Pound was of "unsound mind." He was immediately confined until he was fit for trial at the St. Elizabeth Federal Hospital for the Insane in Washington. Friends who were confident that he was not insane pondered how he could ever be released without facing another trial.

Pound characteristically accepted his situation, reading and writing in his room. Over the next 12 years, applications for bail and petitions of habeas corpus were denied. In 1948, he was awarded the prestigious $10,000 Bollingen Prize for Poetry. Congress then ordered the prize's sponsor, the Library of Congress, to give no more awards. A Presidential pardon was proposed in 1954, but was dismissed under the dubious rationale that one cannot be pardoned until after one has been found guilty.

In 1955, MacLeish began trying to get the attorney general to nol pros, or quash, the standing indictment for treason. Hemingway, Eliot, and Frost joined the effort. In April 1958, Judge Bolitha Laws, who had presided at the original insanity hearing in 1945, dismissed the indictment, basing his decision on an affidavit of Dr. Winfred Overholser (the superintendent of St. Elizabeth's) that Pound was still unfit for trial.

Ezra Pound was released from St Elizabeth's and promptly sailed for Italy. He died in Venice in 1972.

—Bernard Ryan, Jr.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Ackroyd, Peter. Ezra Pound and His WVorid. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980.

Carpenter, Humphrey. A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound. Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1988.

Heymann, C. David. Ezra Pound. The Last Rower. New York: Viking Press, 1976.

Tytell, John. Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano. New York: Doubleday-Anchor Press, 1987.