Poitiers is charming and extraordinary because of its history. That history, momentous and humorous, has inspired travelers of all kinds to come to Poitiers. For the artists among them, that history has also inspired creativity. We can see evidence of this particularly in the medieval architecture and sculpture with which Poitiers is so rich, and we can hear it when we listen to the music of the troubadours, and their ballads in old Provençal. While we associate this artistic creativity in Poitiers mostly with the Middle Ages, or with the Renaissance poets who flourished here not long after the Middle Ages, there was an important 20th century figure also inspired by Poitiers’ history: the poet Ezra Pound.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was one of the most influential poets of the 20th century. He was an early adopter and champion of avant-garde styles and artists, and is best-known for his life-long epic, The Cantos. Pound developed an interest in poetry, and troubadour poetics in his early days, before his own poetic voice became established. Since his studies at Hamilton College, the young poet considered troubadours’ art as one of the most important traditions one had to refer to in order to accomplish a renewal of modern poetic language. This interest grew stronger as Pound moved to Europe: he kept working on his translations of troubadours’ poems and started reading the medieval manuscripts recounting their lives at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. In 1912, he decided to leave Paris and go on a journey on foot in Southern France, in order to discover personally the places where the troubadours lived and sang. Meeting the ghosts of his literary ancestors and gradually taking leave from them, in order to build his own poetic path, the act of walking in the south of France was for Pound an act of poetry: as he walked, he composed songs in the manner of the troubadour of the town. Where else would he choose to start such a trip but Poitiers?
Pound set out from Paris in May of 1912 for Poitiers, what he considered to be the “Mother city” of Provencal Poetry and home of the earliest known troubadour, Guillaume IX of Aquitaine. Pound said the Count-troubadour had “brought the song up out of Spain/with the singers and viels.” In his Cantos, Poitiers would later become one of the “sacred places” which the work celebrates. Pound returned again to Poitiers in 1919. He refers to the “paradisal illumination” of the Tour Maubergeon, which he looks upon one evening, and he states that anyone who objects to the manner and form of the singing of troubadours, to their canzione or canzos, is as foolish as a man would be if he objected to growing roses on a trellis.