Mark Chan writes:
 
>From sometime in the 1960s (date unknown to me: I wd
>love to be informed by one of the more learned members of
>this list  ) EP repudiated his anti-semitism. (See especially
>his interview with Allen Ginsberg) He then became silent,
>either in clinical depression (psychiatric view) or as
>pennance (religious view.) In either case, the punishment
>inflicted upon him by the US govt was continued by
>self-punishment.
 
So far as I'm aware, the interview with Ginsberg is the only instance of
anything like a repudiation of the antisemitism. Aside from the difficulty
of relying on a single case, the interview is problematic in itself for at
least these three reasons:
 
1. As has been pointed out on this list, by the time Pound met Ginsberg,
Olga was doing most of his thinking for him.
 
2. I could be wrong about this, but I believe that the only evidence we
have of Pound's repudiation is Ginsberg's own testimony -- a testimony
depending very much on the interpretation of non-verbal cues such as
Pound's facial expression. I suppose it's also possible that Ginsberg's
acount is simply a well-intended fiction.
 
3. As to the exact verbal form of the alleged repudiation -- "that stupid,
suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism" -- J.J. Wilhelm (_The Tragic Years_,
p. 344) points out that Pound's own father defied the antisemitism of his
Philadelphia suburb. But I think Pound may have been using the word
"suburban" (if indeed he used it) in the British sense rather than the
American one -- that is, to connote not middle-class Babbittry but
lower-class vulgarity. If I'm right, that implies two more things:
 
(a) Ezra Pound here is speaking the dialect of Dorothy Pound, a Jew-hater
who never repudiated _her_ prejudices, and
 
(b) Charles Olson was right: Pound's tragic flaw was snobbery.
 
In any case, the reference Mark is looking for is Ginsberg's "Allen
Verbatim," _Paideuma_ 3 (1974): 253+.
 
Jonathan Morse