In one of the wartime radio broadcasts (I don't have them handy and can't
remember which -- it's an especially nostaligic one) Pound is remembering
his days at home as a boy; he reveals a fondness for the black man who
helped out around the house and for the excellent culinary skills of the
family's black cook . The memories, while racially stereotypical and
patronizing (e.g. the man could be found playing checkers as often as he
could be found working) do not jibe at all with the radical view En Lin Wei
paints of Pound.  From Wei's discussion of Canto 40, and then of Mussolini's
invasion of Ethiopia and subsequent order to kill all adult males in
villages where any resistance to Italian troops had been raised, one might
conclude that Pound's racism was so utterly hard-hearted and vicious that he
could relate without blinking the tale of the murder and flaying of three of
the "savages", and that he would have condoned, or at least been able to
rationalize, Mussolini's atrocities.

By flame for three days to South Horn, the bayou,
the island of folk hairy and savage
whom our Lixtae said were Gorillas.
We cd. not take any man, but three of their women.
Their men clomb up the crags,
Rained stone, but we took three women
who bit, scratched, wd. not follow their takers.
Killed, flayed, brought back their pelts into Carthage.


I have a clear sense of the ideological foundations of Pound's racism. But
the man does not seem to me to have been capable of this kind of
monstrosity. Has someone assembled convincing evidence that Pound was truly
this inhumane in his race-thinking?

And to En Lin Wei: What is your understanding of the refrain: "Out of which
things seeking an exit"?

Tim Romano