Tim,

An examination of Pound's published articles and letters shows
that from 1935 his antisemitic rhetoric is suddenly revved up
in concert with the vehemence of his ongoing anti-banker rhetoric.
The culmination of all this is, of course, the broadcasts, but
he appears not to have changed his attitude one whit during his
imprisonment, even though he remained more guarded in what he
published on the subject in all those 13 years.  What I'd like
to know, if anyone has researched it, is whether, after news
of the Holocaust broke, Pound became a holocaust denier.

To return to your point: despite EP's out-of-control viciousness
of language on the subject, I do not think he would have personally
harmed anyone or cheered while actually witnessing Jews getting killed.
Only a handful of human types are capable of that sort of violence.
Even among the Nazis, very few could handle the actual job of
running the camps.  No one, however, would assign the heaviest
burden of guilt on just those few.  It's like blaming the
executioner alone for pulling the switch on a man condemned to
death by the Volk.  Therefore, there are degrees and types of
guilt to be assigned for such historical abominations.  The issue
is still being wrestled with by historians, so we won't solve it
here re Pound.

As to reading the Cantos like a sort of dream, the whole issue of
reductionist readings of literature--whether in the light of
psychoanalysis, or Marxism, or feminism--is a disturbing one.
Reductionist criticism, in general, has attempted to employ
literature as an instrumentality for the advancement of so-
called critics' personal ax-grinding missions.

==Dan

At 06:23 AM 7/23/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Dan,
>
>Do you think it is fair to say that, in the American popular imagination,
>Nazism is not understood in terms of revolution?
>
>Let me clarify my point about EP not seeing himself as belonging to a mob.
>What I was referring to there was not a sense of _individuality_ but a sense
>of isolation. I wrote:
>
>>  The impression
>>  one gets from the broadcasts is that, if anything, Pound felt isolated,
>that
>>  he was reaching very few people indeed.
>
>Others on this forum have said that Pound's attempting to distinguish
>between "jew bankers" and "innocent jews" is specious, because the violence
>anti-Jewish rhetoric awakens tends to ignore such distinctions. I don't
>disagree with that criticism.   My reply to such criticism is that Pound
>often gives the impression that he thinks his audience--his American
>audience-- is a tiny one.  He is not expecting his words to incite violence.
>He does not think that thousands of people, who are ready to explode in
>anger, are listing to his every word.  And when the idea dawns on him that
>his words might incite violence, he says "do not start a pogrom."  And the
>"pogrom at the top" which he does urge, he qualifies by saying that maybe
>there is a humane way to do it--put the handful of top international
>financiers on a desert island somewhere. A very small number of individuals.
>Wyndham Lewis considered Pound to be, beneath all of the violent rhetoric, a
>gentle fellow. I think it is possible to see this softness in the midst of
>the very passages that are most often cited to portray Pound's evil fascist
>hardheartedness.   He is hardly the unsentimental revolutionary idealized in
>his Cantos.
>
>Wei suggests that, as an experiment, we read the Cantos as if it were a
>dream.  In dream, Wei says, alluding to pschyoanalytic dream theory, things
>often represent their opposites. In this light, I would say that characters
>such as Ezzelino are a kind of wish-fulfilled Pound, the opposite of how he
>is -- how he would like to be. An alter ego, rather like the film Fight
>Club.  Wyndham Lewis's famous portrait of Pound (which divides the canvas
>diagonally in half, light and dark, showing Pound to be in a liminal realm
>between sleep and waking; the bottom left-hand corner, looking life a cleft
>hoof, lying in a kind of melting-flux; the top right-hand corner culminates
>in the trim lines of his confucian goatee, and the trim lines of head and
>hair) is consonant with this quick-and-dirty pschyo-analytic sketch of a
>divided self.
>
>Tim Romano
>
>
>
>> As I recall, Tim, Hitler began with "an ideological purge."
>> Apart from that, you raise the point of EP's not "seeing
>> himself as belonging to a mob."  I don't see how that sense
>> of individuality of his, and of many other intellectuals
>> who turned to fascism, prevented him from subscribing to
>> fascist ideology.  I thought we all knew that the only mob
>> mentality Pound detested was the bourgeois-democratic one
>> (well, okay, he detested communism also)
>> and that the turn to fascism seemed to him and others entirely
>> congenial with their pronounced sense of individuality.  Hey,
>> isn't the fascist leader the ideal of the Romantic Hero in
>> political translation?
>>
>> Apologies if I've repeated points already made in recent weeks
>> during which I've been unable to follow the discussion threads.
>>
>> ==Dan
>>
>> At 08:33 AM 7/22/00 -0400, you wrote:
>> >Dan,
>> >Pound uses anti-Jewish epithets. He blames war on the putative
>machinations
>> >of Jewish international banking families.  He would deny Jews the
>> >opportunity to work in civil service.  Pound was interested, I believe,
>in
>> >an ideological purge, in removing Jews from positions of power. However,
>I
>> >do not find evidence in his published poetry or polemics of his ever
>having
>> >advocated genocide, overtly or covertly, actively or passively.  From the
>> >perspective hindsight gives us, we recognize Pound's voice as one voice
>> >among many voices which, when regarded as one voice, seem to us to be
>> >assenting to, if not openly advocating, the wholesale slaughter of a
>people.
>> >But Pound did not seem himself as belonging to a large mob. The
>impression
>> >one gets from the broadcasts is that, if anything, Pound felt isolated,
>that
>> >he was reaching very few people indeed. Morever, where he seems to be
>aware
>> >that his anti-Jewish rhetoric could bring physical harm and destruction
>of
>> >property upon those whom he would have regarded as "innocent Jews", as
>> >victims of the "Jew bankers", he goes out of his way to address his
>imagined
>> >audience, advising them _not_ to start a pogrom.  I  know of  no evidence
>> >which shows that he was aware that his rhetoric, which relies upon
>> >anti-Jewish feeling as an engine of social change, might lead to
>something
>> >worse than 'street violence'.
>> >
>> >Where would you put Pound? In Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell?  If in
>Purgatory
>> >or Hell, please describe the torments which you would consider apposite.
>> >
>> >Tim Romano
>>
>> HOME:
>> Dan Pearlman
>> 102 Blackstone Blvd. #5
>> Providence, RI 02906
>> Tel.: 401 453-3027
>> email: [log in to unmask]
>> Fax: (253) 681-8518
>> http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/
>>
>> OFFICE
>> Department of English
>> University of Rhode Island
>> Kingston, RI 02881
>> Tel.: 401 874-4659
>>
>>
>
HOME:
Dan Pearlman
102 Blackstone Blvd. #5
Providence, RI 02906
Tel.: 401 453-3027
email: [log in to unmask]
Fax: (253) 681-8518
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/

OFFICE
Department of English
University of Rhode Island
Kingston, RI 02881
Tel.: 401 874-4659