‘Ezra in a cage’ to restore the figure of Pound to the public

It is called ‘Ezra in a cage’ and aims to open wide the cultural prison in which the figure of Ezra Pound was imprisoned for decades, after the physical prison suffered by the intellectual locked up in a criminal asylum in 1945 after being declared mentally ill and incapable of understanding and willing, with a disputed psychiatric report which, however, avoided the prospect of life imprisonment or death sentence for treason, after joining fascism and praise for Mussolini and Hitler. The project – branded Teatro Stabile del Veneto and Oti, Officine Teatrali Italiane and presented at Palazzo Madama in the Sala Caduti di Nassiriya of the Senate by Icas, the parliamentary intergroup culture art show chaired by Federico Mollicone, Fdi deputy – after its debut at the theater Goldoni in Venice in 2018 and the forced suspension for Covid will now land in Rome for two evenings on 27 and 28 November at the Sala Umberto, directed by Leonardo Petrillo who also signs the text and for the interpretation in the role of the protagonist of Mariano Rigillo, flanked by Anna Teresa Rossini, his partner also in life, the show puts the figure of the American poet Ezra Pound in the spotlight, in view of the 50th anniversary of his death, who spent a good part of his life in Italy, starting from since 1958, especially in Venice, his city of choice and exile where he died in 1972. A certainly controversial figure, also for his adhesion to fascism and then to the RSI and for the he declared political admiration for Hitler and above all for Mussolini, which resulted in his capture by the Italian partisans in May 1945 and his delivery to the US military. The Americans transferred him to a prison camp in Tuscany where he remained for about a month, day and night, in a wire mesh cage with a tin roof and a concrete floor, exposed to the elements and constantly lit during the night; the ‘cage’ evoked by the title of the theatrical performance, before spending almost 13 years as a recluse in a criminal asylum in the USA. ‘Ezra in a cage’ is “a show based on obsessions – explains the director’s notes – Obsession for justice , for freedom, for the usury that corrodes the world. The obsession of the man Pound who feels inadequate for not being able, if not in flashes, to make charity and love flow, but to defend his poetry, discovery of social and artistic inconsistencies, of the world and of men “. The author and director of the show, Leonardo Petrillo, also proposes a sort of” parallelism with the figure of Dante: both poets, singers one from Italy the other of Usa, heretics, exiles, put on the index. Now, the time has come for Italy to reconcile itself with the intellectual and artistic figure of Ezra Pound “. The work also has a more particular and strategic objective – explains Mollicone – or rather to reunite historical and cultural memory to an institutional recognition of one of the greatest poets and prophets of the twentieth century, who found his chosen homeland in Venice. Through this project we intend to give official and public recognition to the figure and greatness of Ezra Pound, with a culpable delay on the part of the Italian State and of our nation in general “. Also for the leading actor, Mariano Rigillo,” a cultural reconciliation of Italy with this great poet who is Ezra Pound. To be men of our time, we must enter into the concept that culture is democracy: we cannot imagine that Italian intellectuals can continue to keep aside a poet of the greatness of Ezra Pound “. (By Enzo Bonaiuto)