Ezra Pound's Revolutionary Approach to Criticism

Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound was a literary innovator, both artistically and personally. His motto, "Make it new," encapsulates his approach. His critical writings were unconventional, innovative, and unique, and he is characterized by his unacademic style.

Although he wrote extensively on criticism, he considered it a "very low, second-class activity." Unlike Matthew Arnold, Pound believed that literary creation was superior to criticism, finding literature "100 times" more important. However, he didn't dismiss all criticism. He believed the only valuable criticism came from artists themselves, using it to improve poetry. Only artists, he argued, were sufficiently familiar with the creative cycle to offer meaningful critique.

Pound attributed two functions to criticism:

• An a priori function (before creation): to teach aspiring poets how to write well.
• An a posteriori function (after creation): to discriminate between good and bad poems.

Essentially, Pound's criticism offers a collection of guidelines for aspiring poets and a framework for evaluating poetry. In the first function, the critic acts as a teacher; in the second, as an anthologist.

Pound strongly disliked academic critics, believing they were overly influenced by previous opinions and lacked originality.

Pound expressed indifference towards three aspects of literary study:

• The history of criticism: He didn't believe it contributed to a better understanding of literature or poetry.
• Biographical approaches: He criticized what he termed "washlist criticism," which overemphasized biographical data.
• Historical context: His method of analysis was entirely ahistorical. He judged a poem based on its intrinsic qualities, not its historical period. He believed the passage of time did not affect a work's quality.