You all should know first that I'm not any sort of scholar, and
it has been far too long since I've done academic work. With
that disclaimer let me tackle some elements of Wilson hatred.

Wilson was not likeable. Someday read his essay "The Great
Administrator", which expresses his political ideal. Basically,
Wilson was very anti-democratic. But try the essay for yourself.
His ideal seems to have been a super bureaucrat.

I am old enough that my parents lived under Wilson's
administration. My father always referred to WW I as "Mr.
Wilson's War." My father was rock-ribbed Republican, so
it is not possible to disentangle Republican propaganda,
which was obstructionist in purpose, from real objections
my father may have had.

However, Wilson used police state methods to force the
war upon the people. Someday, look up the Palmer Raids. Whole
neighborhoods were sealed, and the police swept the
area arresting any and all young men as "draft dodgers."
It was up to the arrested to prove they were not "draft
dodgers." Since my father was blind, his arrests were
comical. I remember reading somewhere the police and
the feds were particulary harsh in the Scandinavian
communities of Wisconsin and Minnesota. A local Lutheran
church would put on a dance and social only to be
raided with all young men charged with "draft dodging."
I think that the Scandinavians were conscientious objectors.
Someday read e. e. cummings' "i sing of Olaf,glad and big."

It was Wilson's abuse of rights that spurred the creation
of the American Civil Liberties Union. The FBI in those days
was known as the Bureau of Investigation. Its leader came from
either the Burns or the Pinkerton or Flynn Detective Agency,
which as you know were corporate goons used for strike breaking.

From what I can remember of my readings in history, it's
hard for me to think of anybody more cynical than Wilson, but
usually he is presented as a tragic figure, a disappointed
idealist. In my opinion he was an absolutely cynical,
manipulative bastard.

Somehow, he captured the hopes of some dispirited
intellectuals in Europe, for example Sigmund Freud for the
peace negotiations. He disappointed them. Freud denounced
Wilson. Someday look up Freud's and Bullard's denunciation
of Wilson.

Wilson blah-blahed "Open Covenants openly derived" or some
such rhetoric. He performed secret covenants secretly arranged.

Let me see: The War to End Wars. It guaranteed wars. A war to
make the world safe for democracy. That's the funniest.

What was the result? In my opinion he started the reduction
of Western Europe to American client states. He was early to
see that America could and should expand there. Was that good?
That is more than I can answer. The rest of American political
leadership (the Congress) did not agree at that time.

As for Pound: I think he was heavily influenced by canards of his
time that were floated in the papers and radio, and some intellectual
circles. The quote on interest attributed to Paterson for example
seems to me to be either an urban legend or a canard, created or
repeated by Hollis. There were good reasons for a person living
through those times to detest Wilson, but it would be difficult
to disentangle the valid reasons from the canards in Pound's
thinking.

As for racism: America was racist. I think it is still racist.
There is nothing surprising or extraordinary in Pound's racism.
My father is long dead, but as I remember him I can detect no
difference between his and Pound's racism. It was matter-of-fact.
(Indeed, Pound's rants sound a lot like my father's rants. I
think the rant is a peculiar American form, and that Pound makes
this native form into a poetic form.)

As for anti-Semitism: America was anti-Semitic. I am old enough
to have heard with my own ears "Hitler had the right idea." I
heard that many times when I was a kid after WW II. My wife, who
is German, immigrated to Houston, TX after the War. Since she
was pretty and young and had a European aura, men paid her
attention at parties. The first question she was asked by Houston
TX males, cocktail in hand, was "Did you ever see Hitler?" No. Her
family shielded her as best they could (which she did not explain).
A pause. Then, the Houston, TX male informed her "Hitler had the
right idea." I guess they figured that she, being German and
non-Jewish, would be sympathetic to their pronouncement.

Whether America is still anti-Semitic is more than I can say. I
do know that we were. Pound's anti-Semitism seems to me more
virulent than the general prevailing anti-Semitism of his time.
Maybe he got too educated in Europe. The virulence seems to me
to be European.


--
John K. Taber

-----Original Message-----
From: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of En Lin Wei
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2000 4:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Anti-Wilsonianism, Auntie Semitizm, Anti-Black Racism, and
Sexism


>My grad student Sarah Holmes, who is finishing up the editing
>of the 1930s EP/William Borah correspondence (forthcoming with U. Ill.
>Press), has some questions she hopes you'll help her answer.
>She is currently off-list.  However, she would appreciate your
>replying to her email address: [log in to unmask]
>
>Her questions follow:
>==Dan Pearlman
>----------------------------------------------------
>3) Why did Pound dislike Woodrow Wilson?

I would like the answer to that one myself.  I can't find it.

In 1924 Pound asked Yeats, at that time a senator of the new Irish
Republic,
  if he could get him an Irish passport, “and thus free me from the
degrading contact with the sons of bitches who represent the infamous
Wilsonian tyranny and red tape.”

What this tyranny consists in, and how it is worse than the fascist
tyranny
Pound later embraces, remains one of the chief unanswered questions for
Pound scholars.  I have a few suggestions as to why Pound disliked
Wilson so
intensely.

First let me mention that while looking up Wilson in the Carpenter
biography, I came across these quotes on the antisemitic issue.  (I must
say, I came across them accidentally, because they happen to be on the
same
page as a quote about Wilson, lest it be suspected that I sought them
out,
or had Doob “under my bed” . . . .The quotes are not from Doob, but from
POUND).

Carpenter, interestingly enough, presents some of these quotes as
evidence
that Pound’s anti-semitism was not always consistent, at least in the
pre-WWII years.

Here are four quotes to examine:

1)  "Heuffer is damn well no jew, and no man ever had less of the jew in
him."


2)  “Jews!!!!  ooo sez I ates the jews?  I hate SOME JEWS, but I have
greater conempt for Christians. . . ."

Why hate anyone, I ask. Why does Pound feel the need to hate.  Doesn’t
hatred itself detract from the creative impulse, or distort it?

3) ". . . . Look wot they [Christians] dun to america; Bryan, Wilson,
Volstead, all goyim horrible goyim.  Curtis, Lorimer, american womens
clubs,
all the tripe all goyim.  Of course some jews are unpleasant, ask any
jew if
they aint.”

Is this depreciation of “goyim” and of women for setting up clubs where
they
might work towards their political liberation supposed to mitigate our
perception of Pound’s anti-semitism? Did Pound go around asking Jews if
they
were unpleasant, I wonder, expecting them to all say, "Yes, of course,
we
are very unpleasant, as you very well know."


4)   "I will say this at least for Gracie, she isn’t a jew."

Quite often, in Pound, the term ‘jew’ is simply a derogatory epithet in
and
of itself.


And for good measure, we’ll throw in this quote:

4)  My recollections of nearly all the niggers I have ever known are
quite
pleasant . . .”

Will anyone on this list want to conclude from this quote that Pound did
NOT
have a racist attitude toward blacks?

Just in this short space we have a lot to consider:  anti-black racism,
sexism, and anti-semitism. People want to blame me perhaps, but these
are
Pound’s words, and why should we avoid them?

I wonder if Pound disliked Wilson because he was too much of an
internationalist, not enough of a racist (though Wilson was racist
enough in
his own way), because he took the US into World War One, because he
tried to
found the league of nations, or for some other reasons.  Wilson is
mentioned
in the Cantos as one who gives speeches out of "his arse" but that seems
as
applicable to Hitler and Mussolini as anyone else.  So it remains for me
a
puzzle.  Any answers?

---Wei


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