A brief expression of gratitude to    Luca Gallesi <[log in to unmask]>     for
his post on the

>Subject: pound-gentile
>
>Pound was sure at least somewhat familiar with Giovanni Gentile -even if =
>not with his philosophy:
>-in 1926 Yeats -who was a ferventestimator of the Italian Minister of =
>National Education since 1923- made a proposal to the irish senate to =
>introduce in ireland the same educational system that gentile had =
>introcudec in Italy (and that made the italian schools be -until the =
>recent ill-fated reform- among the best in the world).
>-Odon Por, in the 20s, used to write every month for the important =
>journal "Critica Fascista, edited by Giovanni Gentile
>-During the Repubblica Sociale italiana Pound wrote to Gentile -who =
>passed this letter to the head of State benito Mussolini- "enclosing a =
>three-page proposal for a national education program in literature..." =
>(Heymann, "The Last Rower", pag 142)
>- in his letters to Olivia Rossetti Agresti (edited by =
>Surette-Tryphonopoulos) Pound mentions Gentile twice, recalling his vile =
>assassination by Communists speeded up by British Secret Services
>-in a 1952 letter to W.Lewis (n.225 in EP-WL letters) Pound mentions his =
>not deep acquintance with Gentile's philosophy, speaking about Italian =
>culture in the Fascist Era:
>"the best of it was constructive/ but along with the live thought there =
>was the non conforming thought/ naturally my Doug(las)/ and Gesellism =
>had NO italian origins/ and was NOT part of govt/ program BUT it was not =
>suppressed for NOT being such/ and a lot of second rateliberaloid =
>palukas/ such as Croce and einaudi burbled along
>             beside Gentile (probably a better egg/ tho I wasn't reading =
>abstract discussion at the time...

Thank you very much, Luca Gallesi.

I find this most informative.  But it raises several questions in my mind:
1)  If Pound was not very familiar with Gentile's work, how did he know "the
best of it was constructive".   (Has anyone on this list read Gentile?  His
work is quite awful, a severe misreading of Hegel to justify fascist
political thought), and 2) If Pound did not read it or study it closely, did
he just accept that it must have been good because it was the "official
fascist 'metaphysic' "?  Or, 3)  Did Pound really read it carefully ---after
all, it was extremely important in the Italian intellectual milieu of the
30's and 40's ---and just decide that it was too Hegelian to get into too
deeply? (Pound said, I recall, that he did not like the dialectical method,
as employed Hegel or Marx).

----Wei




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