Rainer Maria Gerhardt and Ezra Pound

Walter Baumann investigates the life and work of the relatively obscure figure of Rainer Maria Gerhardt, who was instrumental in translating and promoting Pound in Germany after World War II. Baumann recalls how, when he himself was first studying Pound, he discovered in Clark Emery’s Ideas into Action (1958), an extended quotation from Gerhardt’s 1952 German radio broadcast on The Pisan Cantos, a reference that inspired Baumann to search for this little-known source. It turns out the broadcast was by a German student of poetry who had committed suicide in 1954. Baumann investigates the extent of Gerhardt’s efforts to bring Pound’s work to German-speaking readers: “How Gerhardt managed to make contact with poets and academics specializing in poetry, ‘from under the rubble heap’ (Canto 90/626) that was Germany well into the 1950s, is a miracle,” Baumann writes, “most of all his obtaining the German translation rights to the works of Ezra Pound.” Baumann also tracks Gerhardt’s correspondence with Charles Olson, especially his letters commenting on Olson’s manifesto, “Projective Verse,” as well as Olson’s poem for Gerhardt. This essay demonstrates Pound’s cross-cultural impact on mid-century poetry, through both Gerhardt’s translations and his deeply personal reaction to Pound’s vision.