>Date:  Mon, 15 Nov 1999 12:14:11 -1000
>From:  Wayne Pounds <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Pound & Fascism
>To:    [log in to unmask]
 
 
>What i would like to hear, and don't hear, is:
>
>1. Interrogation of the categories, Fascist (big -f or
>little), anti-Semite, etc.
>2. Contextualization. What is the ongoing discourse
>which give rise to P's words and to which they
>respond? Redman in <EP & Italian Fascism> showed us
>how this could be done.
>3. And historicization that links the present to the
>past.
>
>A proposal: A few years ago --1996?--there were some
>fine pieces on P & Fascism/anti-Semitism by
>Chalres Bernstein, Marjorie Perloff, and others. I
>think the items are still out there on the Buffalo
>poetics list.
>
>Would it be ok for me to download a few of these
>articles and send them to our p-list in the hopes that
>they would improve our discussions? Some will have
>already read them. Many others, i think, will have
>not.
 
Whatever the attitude of others on this list may be,
I for one would very much like to see these articles.
If nobody else is interested, email them directly to me.
 
As I've stated before, my own impression, based on reading
JEFFERSON AND MUSSOLINI and on things I heard EP say in
St. Elizabeths, is that Pound admired many aspects of
Mussolini's government which, in fact, were seen as
positive and widely admired by many intelligent and
informed Europeans up until a few years before the
Second World War.  By the end of the Thirties, though,
most people, especially intellectuals, began to become
aware of other aspects of Fascism which were quite ugly.
To the best of my knowledge, Pound never endorsed this
uglier side of Fascism, but on the other hand he never
condemned it and in fact did not seem to even acknowledge
it.
 
So I think it is correct to say that it is this lack of
condemnation on Pound's part, and his continued approval
of Mussolini even after the darker side of Fascism became
notorious, that we blame him for.  It does seem correct to
say that he showed extremely bad judgement in this respect.
And I think this is only one example of the fact that his
judgement on many types of issues, both in politics and
economics, was shallow and extremely poor.
 
-- Lee Lady  <Http://www2.Hawaii.Edu/~lady>