Still beating on the same drum I see. And? So what?

GAVIN




En Lin Wei wrote:
>
> (continued from previous post)
>
> Pound had been broadcasting fascist propaganda for
> several months when, on December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.  Then
> he took off
> about two months time to consider whether he would continue broadcasting
> against the U.S.,
> which was now a member of the military alliance dedicated to defeating the
> Tokyo-Berlin-Rome
> Axis.  He suspected continued broadcasts might constitute treason.  When he
> does continue on
> Jan. 29, 1942, he begins with a reference to the notion of empire.
>
>    On Arbour Day, Pearl Arbour Day, at 12 o'clock
>   noon, I retired from the capital of the old Roman
>   Empire to seek wisdom from the ancients
>         (Doob, 23).
>
> His next thought is of China.
>
>   I wanted to figure things out.  I had a perfectly
>   good alibi, if I wanted to play things safe.  I was
>   and am officially occupied with a new translation
>   of the Ta S'eu  of Confucius
>       (Doob, 23).
>
> This "alibi" was already in print.  Time magazine had reported three days
> earlier that Pound had
> "retired to continue his study of Chinese philosophy" (Time, Jan. 26,
> 1942).  But his irrepressible
> dedication to fascism and his belief in empire were too strong by now.  One
> American journalist
> records,
>
>   The day of Pearl Harbor, Pound unexpectedly came
>   to our house and told us the war between the United
>   States and Italy was inevitable but that he intended
>   to stay on.  [I] told him that he would be a traitor if he
>   did so, and now was the time for him to pipe down about the alleged
> glories of Fascism.  "But I believe in Fascism," said Pound, giving the
> Fascist salute, "and I want to defend it . . .
>    (Reynolds and Eleanor Packard, Balcony Empire,
>      Chatto & Windus, 1943, 179).
>
> Pound also believed in empire and was striving to discover the relevance of
> his Chinese studies
> to the crucial political choice he was making.  In Canto 53 he had written
>
>   Empire down in the rise of princes
>   Tçin drave the Tartar, lands of the emperor idle
>   Tcheou tombs fallen in ruin
>    from that year was no order
>   No man was under another
>    9 Tcheou wd/not stand together
>    were not rods in a bundle. . .
>      (53/271).
>
> Nolde informs us that this passage summarizes
>
> "the period described by Confucius in the Ch'un
> Ch'iu (The Spring and Autumn Annals), which is traditionally dated 722 - 481
> B.C. . . .  The
> reference to 'rods in a bundle' clearly refers to the symbol of Italian
> fascism -- the need to work
> together" (Nolde, 76).
>
> Confucius had thoroughly analyzed the disintegration of the Chou empire; and
> what was needed then, Canto 53 implies, was fascist discipline.  In 1942,
> Pound inverts this logic.  Now, what is needed, he thinks, is the study of
> Confucius' reflections to prevent a
> breakup of the fascist empire..  In the radio speech of Jan. 29, 1942, he
> says,
>
>   I have in Rapallo the text of Confucius, the text
>   of the world's finest anthology, namely that which
>   Confucius compiled from earlier authors. . .
>   I spent a month tryin' to figure things out. . . At any
>   rate, I had a month to make up my mind about some
>   things.  I had Confucius and Mencius, both of whom
>   had been up against similar things, Both of whom had
>   seen empires fallin' [emphasis added].  Both of whom
>   had seen deeper into the causes of human confusion
>   than most men ever even think of lookin'
>         (Doob, 24).
>
> Later in the same speech, for the sake of Axis solidarity, he goes on to
> defend the Japanese Noh-plays, which had seemed so childish to him a few
> months after translating them.
>
>   Anybody who had read the plays entitled Kumasaka
>   and Kagekiyo would have AVOIDED the sort of bilge
>   printed in Time and the American press, and the
>   sort of fetid imbecility I heard a few nights ago
>   from the British Broadcasting Corporation
>         (Doob, 26).
>
> Pound's rededication to the Axis cause leads him to defend the Japanese,
> whose racial
> characteristics are being maligned by the enemy.
>
>   A BBC commentator somewhere about January 8
>   was telling his presumably music hall audience
>   that the Japs were jackals, and that they had
>   just recently, I think he said, within living
>   men's lifetimes, emerged from barbarism. . .
>    A glance at Japanese sword guards, a glance
>   at Jimmy Whistler's remarks about Hokusai, or, as
>   I indicated a minute ago, a familiarity with the Awoi
>   no Uye, Kumasaka, Nishikigi, or Funa- Benkei.  These
>   are Japanese classical plays, and would convince
>   anyone with more sense than a pea-hen, of the degree
>   of Japanese civilization, let alone what they conserved
>   when China was, as Fenellosa put it, incapable of
>   preserving her own heritage.
>    China lettin' Confucius go OUT of the schools
>   for example.
>
>  Each member of the Axis, it seems, had its assigned task.  Japan's was to
> extend the Empire in
> Asia in order to preserve the teachings of Confucius.  Italy's was to
> perfect the fascist social
> system and confer the benefits on its colonies in Africa.  Germany's role:
> to perfect the "breed" and show how racial purity was important in Empire
> building.  Japanese Confucianism, Italian social reform and German eugenics
> were united only by the collective imperial drive.
>  Pound began to praise Hitler's writings very openly in 1942.  On the radio
> he admits almost
> sheepishly, "I was behindhand in reading Mein Kampf."   Then he asks
> scoldingly, "but do you know
> YET what is IN it?  Have you a clear idea of the program?"
>
> We have a fairly good idea, don't we?
>
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