Robert Duncan said that Pound was  "pagan fundamentalist."  That still
seems to me the smartest thing anyone has ever said about him.  Pagan =
open to the multiplicity of gods at work in the world--thus his
generosity, his ability to give himself to the radically "other," such
as Chinese poetry and culture.  Fundamentalist = convinced that there
is a simply truth in religion as in all other areas of human life,
something that any man can grasp in half a day's reading, so that
anyone who doesn't grasp it is a fool or worse, a "destroyer" --and
this doctrinaire cast of mind, this determination to divide the world
between we enlightened few and the ignorant and probably evil THEM,
makes him blind to the kinds of truth present in the monotheistic
religious tradition.

So here's the question that I think we should be talking about.  How
was it possible for a fascist and anti-semite to write the first true
"world epic"--or, if you want to be politically correct, the first
fully polyvocal, multicultural poem, rather than an epic of this
culture versus that (Greeks versus barbarians, Romans versus
Carthaginians and Etruscans, Christians versus everybody else)?

Hugh Kenner (no "New Critic" he) really did open up the question of
what makes this poem unique. Unfortunately, at the same time, his own
political/social predelictions made him unwilling to talk abour Pound's
fascism and anti-semitism. The critical debate will be banal and
unproductive until we can talk about the retrograde social and
political views AND  the astonishing inventiveness of the poetry, AT
THE SAME TIME.

Burt Hatlen