Christopher Ricks' book TS Eliot and Prejudice has an admirable chapter on
Anti-Semitism. I am sure you have read it as it's very much your topic but
others may find the reference useful.
 
Richard Edwards
 
 
>From: Jonathan Morse <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>  <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Antisemitism and biography
>Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 03:49:46 -1000
>
>Lee Lady's speculation is as plausible as any. Sure, it's possible that
>Pound became more antisemitic during World War II as a means of resolving
>the cognitive dissonance between his prejudice and the realization of what
>that prejudice had led to. There's an incident in Carpenter that supports
>Lee's idea, too. I'm sorry I can't cite it exactly (my greedily held
>library copy of Carpenter is now on reserve for my Pound course), but most
>of you know the incident I mean: the one where Pound learns, in reliable
>detail, of the persecution of an acquaintance's Jewish friend. Pound's
>Italian friends hear the same story and are disturbed, but Pound reacts
>with rigid defensiveness. Individuals must suffer for the sins of the race,
>he dogmatically insists, and he refuses to listen further. And at that
>point, if I remember the tone correctly, he sounds almost panicky.
>
>On the other hand, maybe there's a simpler and more banal explanation, one
>that makes Pound appear less tragic and more ordinary. It's this: as we get
>older, our attitudes tend to harden, and psychological explanations
>therefore have to take age into account. Judith Miller's _One, by One, by
>One: Facing the Holocaust_ (Simon & Schuster, 1990) furnishes a grimly
>comic example from the science of demography.
>
>In Austria in the 1980s, according to Miller, survey data indicated that
>antisemitic feeling was generally age-related, with young people a lot less
>prejudiced than their elders. The media interpreted that news in an obvious
>and hopeful way. Yes, they said, Austria has a problem with antisemitism.
>But this survey assures us that the problem is bound to decrease. All we
>have to do is wait for the unprejudiced younger generation to replace the
>prejudiced older one.
>
>Unfortunately, however, that opinion survey had been taken every few years
>since the 1950s, and over the long run it showed that there actually hadn't
>been any decrease in antisemitism in Austria. In the 80s just as in the
>50s, Austria was antisemitic. In the 50s just as in the 80s, youth was
>open-minded and age was prejudiced. The prejudice hadn't changed; only the
>prejudiced people had. Yesterday's idealistic youth turned into today's old
>bigots, just as today's idealistic youth may be turning into tomorrow's old
>bigots. Surprise: the longer you live in a prejudiced society, the more
>prejudiced you get. In that respect, Pound may have been more average than
>we'd like to believe.
>
>Which brings me to Lee's biographical desideratum.
>
>The current anecdote is that I'm trying and failing to get through Jerome
>Loving's _Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself_ (University of California
>Press, 1999). How, you ask, is it possible to write a boring book about the
>life of Whitman? Answer: by writing sentences that force your reader to
>stop every few lines and reorient himself. Loving p. 49: "He returned to
>teaching briefly . . ." -- make that "He briefly returned to teaching."
>Loving p. 50: "His forte, like Theodore Dreiser . . ." -- oh, you mean "His
>forte, like Theodore Dreiser's." It goes on like that. The book is as
>informative and as carefully documented as you could desire, but boy. . . .
>
>On the other hand, Russell Baker's essay in the October 7 _New York Review
>of Books_ makes me look forward to Marguerite Young's _Harp Song for a
>Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs_, unfootnoted though it
>is and unreliable though it may be, and uninterested though I may be in the
>life or times of Eugene Victor Debs. After all, I can like Johnson's _Life
>of Savage_ without feeling the need to read Savage, and for that matter
>Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ is a stand-alone book, one that can be loved
>without having read Johnson. The explanation is as easy as the trick is
>hard: a significant biography needs to have been written by a significant
>writer. Read Robert Frost's letters and you'll see: THERE was a man who
>should have written biography.
>
>Corollary: sooner or later somebody will get the life of Pound right. When
>that happens, though, we readers ought to be prepared for surprises. The
>book may talk about the poetry, for instance, or it may not. It may get its
>facts right, or it may get them wrong. Those things will matter too. But
>finally Pound's life will have become a part of language, and that will be
>the ultimate determinant of the book's fate -- and of the future's memory
>of Pound, when all of those who knew the "real" man will have crumbled to
>dust.
>
>Jonathan Morse
 
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