At 09:16 PM 11/26/99 -0500, you wrote:
>You seem to be implying that Pound's pro-Fascist politics, over a period
of decades, is the result of an inferiority complex stemming from his not
have been awarded the Ph.D. by University of Pennsylvania? Even though he
was a poet of international renown?
 
Not the rejection by Penn, Tim! The rejection by the International Jewish
Conspiracy!
 
Oops, I'm betraying company secrets.
 
>That those politics had little or nothing to do with his sense of civic
purpose and his having lived through the first world war, and his seeing
what was happening in the US and Britain and Germany and Italy during the
period of the Great Depression? His watching as the US moved away from its
position of neutrality towards a war footing?
 
Anybody who can apply the word "politics" to Pound's idees fixes of the
1940s is using the word only in a Humptydumptyan sense.
 
>Pound's use of "etc" suggested to me that he was more interested in
getting to the next sentence after making his point, than in quoting the
rest of that sentence. What is your point? That if Pound were truly
interested in clear language, he would have quoted the entire sentence?
 
I'm at a loss here, because I haven't read the Protocols. The quotation
marks in the transcript indicate that the sentence containing the
abbreviation "etc." was quoted verbatim, and my point is that it's a pretty
stupid sentence. But of course that isn't Pound's punctuation, it's the
FCC's.
 
>My point was that Pound's emphasis is on a conspiracy to undermine the
ability of the nation to follow politics crucial to its survival, and that
this conspiracy involved the undermining of the clarity of the written word
especially in matters relating to economics; he asks:
>
>"Was there a deliberate plot? That is what should concern you. WAS there a
plot? How long had it been in existence? Does it continue, with its
Lehmans, Morgenthaus, Baruchs?...With Mr. Willie Wiseman, late of the
British secret service, ensconced in Kuhn, Loeb and Co., to direct and rule
you?"
>
>Though one may hear echoes of Mein Kampf in this broadcast, Pound here
lays the blame upon a small and powerful clique of international
capitalists with access to power at the highest levels, not on "the Jewish
people" as a whole.
 
These days, actually, one hears echoes of Pat Buchanan. What was Pound's
nice word for the state of mind? Ah yes: "suburban."
 
But oh well. One difference between Pound and Buchanan is that Pound was --
is, while the English language lasts -- a great poet. Another difference is
that it's hard to know what Buchanan actually believes, while there's no
question that Pound believed in the blood-dripping stupidities of racism.
That's what makes his oeuvre tragic -- and I mean "tragic" in a narrow
Aristotelian way. The magnitude of the fall from greatness implies the
magnitude of the greatness. But to try to read Pound's "politics" with an
eye out for happy endings and constructive criticism strikes me as
analogous to telling Oedipus, "Here, take this Prozac and you'll feel
better. And by the way, I know a man who makes wonderful glass eyes. . . ."
 
Jonathan Morse