Bob,
With his discovery of the archetypal nature of the Self
Pound progressed from Solipsism into Nature and Creation
to rediscover 'the green world' thereby completing the circle.
This universal place of grace he saw threatened
   by the relentless mechanization of human labor
   by the rapacious exploitation of natural resource
   by the endless barrage of soul-less advertisements
          and other projections whose goal was destruction
            of the inner-sanctum
             that we may become insatiable hedonistic consumers
                 who show up for work on time
                 and pay every tax
                 and cheerfully submit our selves to the machine.

Fascism was salvific for Pound for the paradoxical reasons you imply. The
directed will seemed indeed a manful remedy for the smothering machine.
Fascism projected an image of the nobility of the artisan versus the
dehumanized slave-labor-units of soviet socialism.  It seemed to hold the
promise of no more red-tape ... a government that would govern least,
organized around the collective will of the skilled trades. Imagine how
powerful its attraction for a liberty-techne'  freak like Pound.

Tim Romano


bob scheetz wrote:
> [...]
> instrumental reason has occupied the throne and
> gone on relentlessly augmenting its hegemony at the cost of
> the "progressive" diss-enchant-ment of our world.
> romanticism is in a sense a reaction or resistence to this progress.
> in the beginning  was a illusory sense of joy
> at the liberation from the traditional jewish oedipal god;
> and wordsworth's intimations and shelley's mt blanc
> did duty quite well for a little spell; but reason soon had solved
> the riddle of "nature" as well as old jehovah,
> and by the time of eliot & pound & co., there was left
> no place of grace.
> so finally, against juggernaut  reason,
> nietzsche posed a scorched earth strategy, proclaiming
> the nihility of all previous (transcendant) meaning, and staking
> out the last turf of meaning on the possibility (in everyman but not the
> herd) of a subject-hero, superman, who goes under into the solopsistic
> mystery of his self/ego/da-sein to discover the new theodicy wherewith to
> save Being from its iron cage of nihilism
> ...such is the allegory, from nature to self, of romanticism, no?
> ep, and il duce, etc., were these nietzschean subject-heroes,
> ...and, as tim sez, the cantos can be read thence
> as the apologia (mein kampf) of the superman.
>
> and certainly, given our modern dispensation,
> unmitigated alienation; this vision, albeit harsh,
> is manfull and honest... and, therefore, salvific.
> ...and plenty sufficient for our attraction, wouldn't you say?
>
> thanks,
> bob