***
There was much in Frobenius' writings which could be used to justify the
worse excesses of racism, and colonialism, and imperialist European policy.
The German anthropologist's view of Paideuma was extremely fatalistic: "The
environment forms Paideuma," he said, and "Paideuma forms the race" (Erlebte
Erdteile, IV: 213, 259, quoted in Jahn, p. 14). Such premises led to absurd
conclusions, such as the belief that those who went to South Africa became
"clumsy and heavy like the Boers and Kaffirs" and that "those who
permanently settle in West Africa turn to niggers" (Erlebte Erdteile, IV:
242, 282, quoted in Jahn, p. 14).

Frobenius' views on race were often contradictory. He was hailed by the
Senegalese poet-statesman Leopold Sédar Senghor for making such statements
as "We see the Earth. We respect everyone equally We reject value
preferences. Nothing we know merits either more or less consideration." "The
concept of the 'barbaric Negro' is a creation of Europe" (quoted in Jahn,
19). But in reality he was unable to escape many of his pro-Western
prejudices. As Janheinz Jahn, one of his great admirers and critics, admits,

***
His theory of culture, which turned man into an
involuntary vehicle of a fetishized "culture," made
him see in the real Yoruba only the basically
unworthy vehicles of an ancient classical culture.
He was "seized with sadness when thinking that this
assembly of slow-witted proletarians should today be
the preservers and heirs of this classical beauty." He
saw no African, but Greek beauty in the excavated
terra-cottas -- "Out of these scattered fragments
spoke harmony and vitality, the expression of a
gracefulness in form directly recalling the ancient
Greek, the proof of a non-Negroid pure race which
had resided here from time immemorial"
(Jahn, 11).

Of course there was no such race. But Frobenius, who never mastered even one
African language, decided on the basis of his "research," that black
civilization was inferior and doomed to enslavement.

***
Even if black energy can achieve something
significant. . . there will have to be twice as much
intelligence put out by directors of that energy,
that is by the European vehicles of culture. This
black race will never achieve a lasting victory;
all the factors of world history testify to this
(Und Afrika Sprach I: 77, quoted in Jahn).

Frobenius's pessimistic and condescending attitude toward Africans is allied
with a fervent belief in German nationalism. He was scornful of democracy
and advocated a "limitless" expansion of the colonial empire. He deplored
the lack of a "fuhrer," asking, "Why does no leader appear who, with
'originality' and 'will power,' is able to save all peoples from almost
ubiquitous wretchedness." "No doubt," says Jahn,

***
Frobenius was a pacesetter of fascism. His
lack of critical acumen, his contempt for analytical
knowledge, his hatred of any kind of education, his
irrationality, his pseudo-scientific speculations, his
megolomania, his petty hatred of the French, his
Germanitude, his longing for a "leader" and his juvenile
enthusiasm for war -- "Where the blades and swords and
the heads of spears jerk into the enemy's body, where
the breath and the splashing blood of fighting men flow
together; there, splendid manhood grows with blessed
intoxication" -- and many other features besides, are
part of that agitation which drove Germany into the
arms of Hitler.
(Jahn, 17).

Many of these features of Frobenius' thought may also have encouraged Pound
to embrace Hitler's racism as the necessary corollary of Mussolini's
fascism. Pound's frequent communication with the Frobenius Institute and
Afrikarchiv somehow "proved" to him the superiority of the German race.
Pound once wrote to the Institute, asking about the 'makute' as a measure of
value among Africans governed by the Portuguese. As he records in the Guide
to Kulchur,

Within a week Frankfurt sends me the names
of the tribes using makutes. . . . This Teutonic
thoroughness is a quality Europe cannot dispense with.
(GK. 61).

In this same section of the Guide to Kulchur, Pound then goes on to lambast
the hirelings, boors and usurers at the University of Chicago who refused,
at his written behest, to remodel their system of inter-university
communication on the Berlin model (GK. 62). Having elevated the Frobenius
method to the pinnacle of human wisdom, Pound equates it with Confucian
philosophy.

Kung is modern in his interest in folklore.
All this Frazier-Frobenius research is Con-
fucian.
(GK. 272).

Pound reasons thus: What is good is Confucian. Frobenius research is good;
therefore it must be Confucian.

Pound connects ideogrammic thinking with Frobenius' notion of Paideuma in a
rather convoluted way. The so-called "ideogram of the mortar" and the phrase
Ch'ing Ming, or "True Word" are heralded as symbols of the "New Learning"
which will usher in the New Paideuma:

The "New Learning" under the ideogram of the
mortar can imply whatever men of my generation
can offer our successors as a means of new com-
prehension. . .
Ch'ing Ming, a new Paideuma will start with
that injunction, as has every conscious renovation
of learning.
(GK, 25).

The "ideogram of the mortar" is xue, which Pound sees as a mortar grinding
knowledge into fine powder over the head of the student.
The dominant element in the sign for learning
in the love of learning chapter is a mortar. That is,
the knowledge must be ground into fine powder
(GK,21).

This image is appropriate, though, only for the passive student, receiving
his knowledge ground up for him by the authority, who, in orthodox Confucian
fashion, interprets the material without challenging it. Nevertheless the
image is consistent with Pound's view of the student as a cow to be
cow-herded. He explains his philosophy of education by placing it under the
rubric of the Confucian doctrine of Ch'ing Ming.

The tenderness of the cow is subject for analysis.
Whether the cow has need for a cow-herd I leave
to ethical specialists.
I doubt if a man deserves freedom until he
can get along without being cow-herded.
"The art," says my venerable colleague
once Vorticist W. Lewis, "of being ruled !" The
art of not being exploited begins with "Ch'ing
Ming"!. . .
(GK. 244).


(continued in Pound and Frobenius (Second Part)--posted earlier by accident)

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