Ezra Pound and the Transformation of Genital Fluid

Ezra Pound's postcript to his translation of Remy de Gourmont's The Natural Philosophy of Love begins by accepting as a possibility the idea that the brain is "only a sort of great clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserve" (295). Instead of merely being a kooky idea, however, this is a kooky idea that fits well with my reading of Pound's poetry, and in particular fits with the Apollo complex I've been developing to characterize Pound's poetic and philosophical perspective.

It's important to note that Pound uses this idea as a springboard for his aesthetic and practical concerns. In particular, he argues that Gourmont's idea "would explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter of images" (295). There is a direct link between male sexual desire and the creative impulse. While this seems to simply play into that tired old differentiation between men and women as "active" and "passive" principles, it is important to recognize the relation of this idea to Pound's notion of the image. It is not simply that "creative thought is an act like fecundation, like the male cast of the human seed" (301); it is also that the "spermatozoic particle" has "a capacity for formal expression: is not thought precisely a form-comparing and a form-combining?" (301).

Pound exerts a certain pressure on the genital fluid to exceed its base beginnings in order to develop into ideas, form-combinings. So my earlier reading of
"Alba" can be developed further by suggesting that the seeming peacefulness of the poem's setting actually represents a dissolution of the self and a passing of the potential energy of the speaker's sperm. Because he is sexually spent, he is also spent of ideas.