Jonathan,
I am not very far into the radio speeches, but at this point I am not ready
to agree with you about 'coded language'--clearly Pound does not hide behind
coded language in the way that some contemporary politicians do. Pound is so
blatant and direct.  What purpose would coded language have served?
 
In the March 15, 1942 speech, for example, Pound says the 'enemy is Das
Leihkapital...international, wandering Loan Capital.'  Now 'wandering' might
at first seem to be a kind of 'coded reference' to The Wandering Jew. But it
is actually a fairly straightforward association; in the opening sentence of
the second paragraph,  Pound writes: "The big Jew is so bound up with this
Leihkapital that no one is able to unscramble that omelet."   And in the
speech on March 26, 1942 -- the one where he talks about Gettysburg -- he
says "Where is BOSTON? Damn it, the is Kike and Kahal radio station all that
is left of Boston?"
 
I don't want to downplay the anti-semitism. But I want to try to disentangle
his ideas and prejudices as best I can. When Pound writes about those who
are not Jews by birth but have taken to Jewry 'by predilection,'  it seems
to me that the term 'Jewry'  can mean (a) 'individuals of Jewish descent'
 and  Pound often qualifies the reference with 'big'  Jew, by which he means
the international financier) and (b) 'international loan capitalists, some
or whom are Jewish, others not'.  'International usurious capitalism' and
'Jewry' are almost synonyms in Pound's usage.
 
The question you end with (what are we to do with the fact that Pound treats
the same idea with the same language in both broadcast, essay, and poem?) is
one that interests me a great deal. The poems and the speeches do shed light
on each other.  By 'ideologically equivalent' I understand you to mean are
they to be judged in the same way? To which I would answer, mostly, yes,
because Pound's poetry is a poetry of ideas, and to judge poetry merely on
aesthetic terms is to lobotomize it. Again, from the March 26, 1942 speech:
 
"Look to the LAST vestiges of approximate freedom of the press, even the
scholastic press, that gets out small editions. Communicate. Communicate.
COMMUNICATE.
 
A plot was outlined years ago to blot out classical scholarship, to blot out
the historical sense. It went about on soft paws, making no noise, it was
DEADLY.
 
It worked while the nation slept. A contempt for the Latin authors. The idea
<italic>Greek</italic> was useless. The concentration on innocuous authors.
Erotic poems and NOT the state of life as shown in the Athenian law courts.
 
The aesthetic angle, that the whole of my generation grew up in, all LOOKING
harmless, so HARMLESS."
 
Tim Romano
 
P.S. I think a statistical approach to the subject is misguided.
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan P. Gill <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, 12 Sep 1999 1:12 PM
Subject: Re: Pound and The Civil War
 
 
> Tim--
>
> When reading this passage from the broadcasts, keep in mind that this is
> one of Pound's coded anti-semitic passages--for him, as for so many
> anti-semites of populist persuasion around the turn of the century, "New
> York bankers" was a way of saying "Jew."  This phraseology and attitude
> return again and again in EP's poetry, essays, letters, and broadcasts.
>
> Note that Leonard Doob, for instance, won't list such a passage in his
> list of anti-semitic passages.  This is not to criticize Doob so much as
> our way of knowing anti-semitism when we see it.
>
> Also, what are we to do with the fact that Pound treats the same idea with
> the same language in both broadcast, essay, and poem?  Are they
> ideologically equivalent?
>
> Jonathan Gill
> Columbia University
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 11 Sep 1999, Tim Romano wrote:
>
> > I'm reading Pound's wartime radio speeches, and must relate a recent
> > experience.
> >
> > In the speech for 26 March 1942 Pound writes:
> >
> > ".... Can't go back before Gettysburg, the very names are forgotten now.
> > Names we, the men of my time, grew up on, but we WERE being taught to
> > forget. Or rather the WHOLE of the history was aimed at FORGETTING. It
was
> > top dressing, a monotony of military encounters, done with music and
> > banners, to KEEP the nation's mind OFF the causes--off the REAL causes.
> > Debts of the Southern states, to the bankers of New York City."
> >
> > Well, I was recently in Gettysburg and visited the National Park. As you
> > approach the tower, from which you can look out upon the cemetery and
the
> > battle fields, a triumphant J.P. Sousa march is BLARING from the loud
> > speakers stuck up in the trees lining the footpath. Then you pay your
money
> > and enter the tower. When you get to the top of that high tower, the
Sousa
> > march is no longer audible and a different piped-in music strikes your
> > ears-- a smooth and bubbly piece fit for the orchestra of the swankest
of
> > nightclubs, a number Fred Astair might have swirled Ginger Rogers across
the
> > floor by, in a 30's film musical.
> >
> > Since Pound mentions Gettysburg and forgetting in the same breath,
here's an
> > excerpt from Lincoln's address:
> >
> > "....The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here,
but it
> > can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to
be
> > dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus
> > far so nobly advanced
> > ..... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,
and
> > that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
> > perish from this earth."
> >
> > Tim Romano
> >
>
>