Dorothy Shakespear

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dorothy Shakespear (born September 14, 1886 in London , as the wife of Ezra Pound since 1914 with the surname also Shakespear Pound or Pound ; † December 8, 1973 ibid) was a British artist; she was one of the few women involved in “ Vorticism ”, an avant-garde movement in the visual arts . Her works appeared, for example, in the magazine Blast , the organ of the Vortizists published in 1914 and 1915 .

Dorothy Shakespear Pound, wife of Ezra Pound (around 1915).

Life

Born to the novelist Olivia Shakespear and her husband Henry Hope Shakespear, Dorothy Shakespear married the American writer and publicist Ezra Pound on April 20, 1914. Thanks to the couple's financial support from Dorothy's mother Olivia, Ezra Pound, who is enthusiastic about journalism, was able to support up-and-coming writers such as James Joyce , TS Eliot and Ernest Hemingway through donations. Together with Dorothy, Ezra Pound lived and worked as private secretary at William Butler Yeats , who in the 1890s had a close friendship with Olivia Shakespear, whose literary salon helped shape the literary life of London and was also visited by Ezra Pound from 1909. - Influenced by Japanese woodcuts and by artists such as Wyndham Lewis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska , Dorothy developed her own abstract style. Dorothy's face looks “like Dresden China porcelain ”, Yeats noted in 1915, while she spent “whole days ” producing “extremely monstrous Cubist images ”.

In the lecturer's magazine Blast , founded by Wyndham Lewis in 1914/1915 and edited together with Ezra Pound , graphics by Dorothy were published, just as Ezra Pound used woodcuts by his wife as illustrations in her own publications around 1915, for example on the title pages of his poetry collection Ripostes and the Catholic Anthology edited by him ; this anthology contains not only its own poems, but also texts etc. a. by William Butler Yeats and TS Eliot, whose verses The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, reproduced herein, are considered to be his first significant poem. Seven years later, Ezra Pound edited TS Eliot's poem Das wüsten Land , which, with its own cantos, is one of the most famous lyrical works of English-language modernism.

From 1920 the couple lived in Paris . During this time Ezra met the concert violinist Olga Rudge , with whom he and his wife lived in a so-called triangular relationship until his death . In 1924 Dorothy and Ezra settled in Rapallo , Italy , where their livelihood consisted of the English currency income Dorothy received from securities. Ezra Pound could not support himself and his wife from his literary work. - Olga Rudge, meanwhile pregnant by Ezra Pound, followed the couple to Italy; Less interested in the child than in the possibility of a stronger bond with the vital literary figure, after their birth in July 1925 , their daughter Mary gave them as foster child for 200 lire a month to a farming family in Gais in the Pusteria Valley , whose own child had died. After Dorothy had found out about this pregnancy, in order to separate from him, she lived for a time with her mother in Siena and went on a long journey through Egypt ; upon their return, now also pregnant, Ezra Pound left Rapallo with his wife. Dorothy gave birth to her son Omar in Paris in September 1926 after Ernest Hemingway had driven her to the American hospital there . Although it is not certain that he was the biological father, Ezra Pound signed the son's birth certificate and assumed responsibility as his father: “The next generation is here, a boy,” he wrote to his parents, “both, D & he, are doing well ”; and to his mother-in-law Olivia Shakespear in England, looking at the name of the boy Omar Shakespear Pound - “note the crescendo ”! Dorothy entrusted the baby to her mother's care, and from 1930 she spent the summers with her son in Kensington , while at the same time Ezra Pound lived with Olga Rudge in Venice and brought her daughter Mary from the mountain village to live with her. Omar was twelve years old when his grandmother Olivia died in 1938. Ezra Pound had become an advocate for the Italian dictator Mussolini and actively supported fascism ; he spread anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda on Radio Rome . - Mary and Omar met for the first time in the United States of America to visit their father, who was being held in a mental institution as a result of his conviction for treason . Mary had lived on the fascist side of Italy during the war ; Omar had joined the American Army as a volunteer . Both later devoted themselves to the memory of their parents: Mary helped create an Ezra Pound literary center and edited letters from her father to his parents and wrote memoirs of her father; and Pound's son Omar edited his parents' correspondence and helped organize exhibitions of works by Dorothy Shakespear, for example in Venice ( Peggy Guggenheim Collection ) and London ( Tate Britain ).

Ezra Pound was arrested by partisans in 1945 and handed over to the Americans. During this time the most famous part of his Cantos, the Pisaner Cantos, was created. Pound was taken to Washington and charged with high treason there. He escaped conviction by being declared "incurably insane, but harmless" by an expert witness. He spent the next twelve years in a state mental hospital at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington because of mental illness . In 1958, Dorothy Shakespear Pound, as the legal representative of her incapacitated husband, as well as with the assistance of former friends, including Ernest Hemingway, was able to enforce his release and transfer to her care in court. He returned to Italy. Until his death he lived very withdrawn and with increasing age refused to speak at all. While Ezra Pound stayed in Venice with Olga Rudge until his death, Dorothy Shakespear Pound spent her last years separated from her husband in London.

Works / exhibitions (selection)

  • 1914: Aldeburgh Boats .
  • 1914/1915: Composition (= blue / black ).
  • 1914/1915: Abstract Composition.
  • 1915: Cover picture for: Ezra Pound, Catholic Anthology 1914–1915 (London 1915).
  • 1915: Ripostes - Cover picture for Ezra Pound, Ripostes… Whereto are appended the Complete Poetical Works of TE Hulme, with prefatory note (London 1915).
  • 1915: Snow Scene (" Snow Scene "). In: Blast No. 2, p. 35.
  • 1915: Vorticist Figures in: Blast No. 2 (1915).
  • 1918: Plane Tree (watercolor).
  • 1919: Pyrenees (woodcut).
  • 1951: Untitled (Abstract Landscape), from private ownership (Omar S. Pound). In: The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–1918, exhibitions, carried out in cooperation with the Nasher Art Museum, Duke University (Durham, North Carolina, USA, 2010), Peggy Guggenheim Collection (Venice 2011) and Tate Britain (London 2011).
  • 1971: Etruscan Gate / a notebook with drawings and watercolors (= "Etruscan Gate / diary with drawings and watercolors").
  • 1997: Dreamscapes and Alphabets (= "dream landscapes and alphabets").

literature

Biographical
  • University of Sheffield Library, Ezra Pound, the London years (= book for an exhibition on Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear Pound in the London years, 23 April - 13 May 1976 in the Sheffield University Library): Sheffield 1976.
  • Omar Pound, A. Walton Litz (Eds.), Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear, their letters, 1909-1914, New York 1984, ISBN 9780811209007 .
  • Ezra Pound & Dorothy Shakespear. (Book overview.) In: Library Journal. June 1984, year 109, p. 1126; ISSN  0363-0277 .
  • James Longenbach, Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats and Modernism , 1988, ISBN 9780195362015 .
  • John Harwood, Olivia Shakespear and WB Yeats: After Long Silence, St. Martin's 1989, ISBN 0-312-03458-X .
  • Omar S. Pound (Eds.), Dorothy (Shakespear) Pound, 1886-1973: A Biographical Note, 1997; Accompanying publication to the exhibition under the title Introspective eye, Dorothy Shakespear's modernist vision at the Emerson Gallery, Clinton / NY (1996/1997).
  • Grace Fill, Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946. (Brief overview.) In: Booklist, December 1998, volume 95, p. 721; ISSN  0006-7385 .
  • Omar Shakespear Pound, Robert Spoo (Eds.), Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946, New York 1999, ISBN 0195107934 .
  • Ronald Ray Ratliff, Ezra and Dorothy Pound: Letters in Captivity, 1945-1946. (Brief overview.) In: Library Journal, January 1999, Volume 124, p. 97; ISSN  0363-0277 .
  • Anne Conover, Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound: 'What Thou Lovest Well…' New Haven & London 2001, ISBN 0-300-08703-9 .
  • Patricia A. Cockram, Shakespear, Dorothy. In: Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos, Stephen Adams (Eds.), The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia, 2005, p. 274; ISBN 978-0-313-30448-4 .
  • Helen M. Dennis, Pound, Women and Gender. In: Ira Nadel (Ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-85391-0 .
  • John Cahassey, Hemingway and Pound. A Most Unlikely Friendship, Jefferson / North Carolina 2014, ISBN 978-1-4766-1647-6 .
Art history
  • Peter Groth, Vorticism in Literature, Art and Science: Studies on the Movement of the ›Men of 1914‹; Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Gaudier-Brzeska, TS Eliot and others, Hamburg 1971.
  • Moelwyn Merchant (Ed.), Etruscan gate / a notebook with drawings and watercolors by Dorothy S. Pound (= An illustrated edition of diary notes with drawings and watercolors by Dorothy Shakespear Pound); Exeter 1971.
  • Richard Cork, Origins and development (Volume 1 of Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age ), 1976, ISBN 9780520031548 .
  • Shakespear, Dorothy (1886–1973), Wife of Ezra Pound, an English Painter in: Harriet Zinnes, Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts, 1980, ISBN 9780811217835 ; P. 315.
  • Haus der Kunst Munich, Sprengel Museum Hannover (ed.), BLAST Vortizismus - The first avant-garde in England 1914-1918 (exhibition catalog), Berlin 1996.
  • David A. Lewis (Ed.), Dorothy Shakespear, 1886-1973: An Exhibition of Dreamscapes and Alphabets, Nacogdoches 1997; ISBN 9780938361237 .
  • Stephanie B. Miller, Dorothy Shakespear and Her Vorticist Landscapes, Brigham 2004.
  • Philipp Somrowsky, REBEL ART. Art and context of Vorticism (dissertation), Bayreuth 2005.
  • Brigid Peppin, Women That a Movement Forgot. In: Tate Etc., Volume 22, 2011.
Fiction
  • Gael Turnbull, Some Knots: For Dorothy Pound (1965); Poems.

Individual references / comments

  1. ^ Noel Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound, Routledge 2013, ISBN 9781136658914 .
  2. ↑ On the special Hemingway / Pound relationship, cf. John Cahassey, Hemingway and Pound. A Most Unlikely Friendship, Jefferson / North Carolina 2014, ISBN 978-1-4766-1647-6 .
  3. ↑ James Longenbach, Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats and Modernism , 1988, ISBN 9780195362015 ; P. 111.
  4. ↑ See also: David A. Moody, Ezra Pound, Poet: The Young Genius 1885–1920 , 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-921557-7 ; P. 252.
  5. ↑ TS Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, in: Ezra Pound (Ed.), Catholic Anthology 1914–1915 , London 1915, pp. 2–8. Accessed August 19, 2014.
  6. ^ Anne Conover, Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound: 'What Thou Lovest Well ...' New Haven & London 2001, ISBN 0-300-08703-9 .
  7. ^ Mary de Rachewiltz, Ezra Pound, Father and Teacher: Discretions, 2005, ISBN 978-0-8112-1647-0 .
  8. ↑ Mary de Rachewiltz, David Moody and Joanna Moody (Eds.), Ezra Pound to His Parents: Letters 1895-1929, 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-958439-0 .
  9. ↑ Omar S. Pound, A. Walton Litz (Eds.), Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear, Their Letters, 1909-1914, 1984, ISBN 9780811209007 .
  10. ↑ Omar S. Pound (Ed.), Dorothy (Shakespear) Pound, 1886-1973: A Biographical Note, 1997; Accompanying publication to the exhibition under the title Introspective eye, Dorothy Shakespear's modernist vision at the Emerson Gallery, Clinton / NY (1996/1997).
  11. ↑ Omar S. Pound, Robert E. Spoo (Eds.), Ezra and Dorothy Pound: letters in captivity, 1945-1946, 1999, ISBN 0195107934 .
  12. ↑ Mary de Rachewiltz, Discretions. Memories of Ezra Pound's daughter. Innsbruck 1993, ISBN 3852181321 .
  13. ↑ Eva Hesse, Ezra Loomis Pound. Contacts and life. In: Ezra Pound. Reading book. Poetry and prose. Edited and with a biographical essay by Eva Hesse. Munich 1987; ISBN 3-423-10812-6 ; Pp. 185-277.
  14. ↑ Patricia A. Cockram, Shakespear, Dorothy. In Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos and Stephen Adams. The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia. 2005. p. 274. ISBN 978-0-313-30448-4 . Accessed August 20, 2014.
  15. ↑ James Longenbach, Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats and Modernism , 1988, ISBN 9780195362015 ; P. 110.
  16. ^ Richard Cork, Origins and development (Volume 1 of Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age ), 1976, ISBN 9780520031548 ; P. 288.
  17. ↑ Philip Somrowsky, REBEL ART. Art and context of Vorticism (dissertation), Bayreuth 2005, p. 224 (Fig. 19).
  18. ↑ The title artwork is also reproduced in: James Longenbach, Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats and Modernism , 1988, ISBN 9780195362015 ; P. 138.
  19. ↑ Wyndham Lewis (ed.), Blast No. 2 (War Number). Review of the Great English Vortex. (London 1915.) - In this issue the illustrator Dorothy Shakespear is named as Shakespeare with an additional e : Pages 4 and 35; your other graphics herein are only verifiable by their signature DS .
  20. ^ Richard Cork, Origins and development (Volume 1 of Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age ), 1976, ISBN 9780520031548 ; P. 288. - See the graphics in Blast, No. 2 (1915), pp. 47 and 103.
  21. ^ A b Richard Cork, Origins and development (Volume 1 of Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age ), 1976, ISBN 9780520031548 ; P. 289.
  22. ^ William Moelwyn Merchant (Ed.), Etruscan gate / a notebook with drawings and watercolors by Dorothy S. Pound, Exeter 1971
  23. ↑ David A. Lewis (Ed.), An Exhibition of Dreamscapes and Alphabets, Nacogdoches 1997; ISBN 9780938361237
  24. ↑ In this article on “Women who have been forgotten by a movement” the author Brigid Peppin makes particular reference to the well-known painting by William Roberts The Vortizists in the “Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel”: Spring 1915 from 1961/62 and complains that the painter Dorothy Shakespear (1886–1973) is not shown as a collaborator and contributor to BLAST II .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Shakespear, Dorothy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pound, Dorothy; Pound, Mrs. Ezra; Shakespear Pound, Dorothy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British painter and graphic artist involved in the Vorticism movement
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH 8th December 1973
Place of death London