Ezra Pound's American Scenes: Henry James and the Labour of Translation

What is it about?

This is a chapter from my book "American Modernism's Expatriate Scene." Here I discuss the importance of James for Ezra Pound, basing myself largely on Pound's long piece on James from 1918. I argue that Jamesian notions of cultural interference, projection, and subjective displacement are crucial to Pound's thinking about "translation" in every sense. I also suggest that Pound's reading of James as unheard expatriate addressing the Motherland rehearses the position he will adopt with tragic consequences in the 30s and 40s.

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