Tom W. NJ
I'll bite. I'm in so sense a scholar, rather, like you, just a reader of
Pound. Off and on, since 1950. Don't think the Cantos have ever been issued
WITH notes (and I hope they never are), but there are great books explaining
the "village explainer," easily found in the bibliographies. Hope you are a
subscriber to Paideuma.

To cut to the political question. It is all really about the money system.
Pound had become convinced the money system was a devilish racket. He never
wavered from this view, elaborated since by disciple Eustace Mullins and
others, and very much the opinion of the Austrian school of Economics and of
its leading American intellectual light, the late Murray N. Rothbard. The
jury on this is in: the system IS a devilish racket, but we are stuck with
it until it somehow transits to some other system. God's own guess as to the
how and when of that.

The Jewish question. Pound angrily pushed (he was not a saint) the routine
European distaste for the "alien" to the absurd degree visible in his Rome
radio talks, but in a calmer moment he said race prejudice is a sign of
intellectual defeat. He didn't hate Jews as people, or so I think, but he
hated the "Semitic" mind or ethos, which scholars tell me is on view in the
Talmud and of course is derivable from some of the morally dimmer passages
in the OT. He caste it up against the "Mediterranean" ethos, the Greek gods
if you will. He told an Italian nun who asked if he was a religious man that
he believed in the Greek gods, to which she answered (as I recall), "E tutti
religione," which I trust means "It's all religion."

The curious thing is how it doth appear the world is now at last catching up
with Pound. What he was objecting to was the left, socialist, atheist ethos
of non-observant or apostate Jews (which was oddly the mirror image of the
money worshiping Jews, à la Rothschild), what one writer, talking of the
Russian Rev. of 1917, has lately called "Lenin's willing executioners,"
mimicking the accusation by a Jewish writer that Germans and especially
German Catholics were Hitler's. But among the things now being revealed is
the extent to which the "big" and "Zionist" Jews themselves did not exert
maximum effort (this is the mild statement) to rescue their fellows in
Europe. We are not at the end of revelations on this. Accusations are now
being made by dissident Israeli intellectuals that the largely clueless
European Jews were deliberately sacrificed by the Zionist "organizing
brains," to gain international clout as super-victims, the very clout that
Finkelstein (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/) has now exposed as heavily
fraudulent.

None of this is to excuse Pound's faults, but the thing is more complicated
than most people are willing to see. The Net is opening it all up, and
nothing is finished yet. Pound will continue to be execrated by the same
people who think America should police the globe, take on the Arabs
wholesale, and contain China and Russia and North Korea and all the rest of
the Johnny-pop-ups. Belligerent idiocy seems to be the distinguishing
characteristic of our Maximum Leaders.

Enough. I've let myself be a bit carried away. You can't talk about Pound
with the average American school graduate. But there are a lot of people
around who agree with you on his poetry, and a lot, though fewer, who agree
that his hatred of the money system and the big money people (Jews figuring
prominently but not solely in the roster‹ say, "Rockefeller") was as
justified as any hatred can be, which, speaking in Christian-Catholic terms,
is never as to people but always as to "structures of sin."

I think Pound was horribly wrong in thinking the "State," the "Muss," or
anyone else of that ilk, could bring money and/or cultural salvation. But
his case presents a mile-high obstacle to the long-run continuation of the
present system. I believe as Alfred North Whitehead wrote, that ultimately
poets are the rulers of the world. Of course it remains to be seen if we get
by the current threat to the human race and are ever able again to settle
down to the study of letters and the practice of creative peace, that is,
return to questions of truth and beauty. Let us pray. Tom White

> From: Tom Walsh <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 21:19:48 -0500
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Intro
>
> Listserver,
>
> Thanks for this opportunity to share thoughts and discussions with
> experts in Pound. I hope I've used the correct email address. Although
> I've been a programmer for 25 years, for some reason, I've always had
> problems with listservs, and their complexity (at least what I perceive
> to be complexity!)
>
> I know what follows is redundant. I know you've all probably read this
> series of statements more than several times. As a background, I've read
> Pound since college, and have always had the same problem. Whenever a
> member of the previous generation spots the name "Pound", they, more or
> less, call me a traitor to America. I know about Pound's background, how
> he sided with Italy and its regime, how he broadcasted political
> messages, both anti-Semite and anti-Allies, and how he was arrested,
> tried as insane, apologized and was locked away, where he worked on the
> last part of the Cantos. The fact that his work won a post-War award
> must have shocked the world. However, it doesn't shock me. His lines
> remain brilliant.
>
> But, a true artist should be regarded as devoid of his past, as the
> Revisionists said, right? My mind's heart always stops when I read his
> powerful lines, dripping in myths, supported by ancient names and
> languages, bringing English to an airy arena, with literary splendor.
> His poetry is untouchable, striking, fresh, and always refreshing in its
> use of tones and words. And, of course, I haven't touched on who he
> influenced, which is every poet since his time.
>
> Can the list advise on the dichotomy between his politics and his
> poetry? Also, I'm currently trying to locate one book, which contains
> both the Cantos and annotations to the Cantos. Do you have any
> suggestions?
>
> Thanks, again, for this opportunity to address you.
> Tom NJ