Beautifully done, Tom. I feel exactly the same way about Pound, and I
would expect there are others who share a similar honest interest and fair
assessment. Furthermore, you demonstrate that over the years you have become
truly familiar with the man and his works. This is one of the best postings
I have seen on this list. It is one which was worth waiting for.
    Have you any thoughts about Pound's association with Mencken, and how
relevant both these loveable curmudgeons are to today's "boobism"?

Charles

----------
>From: Tom White <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Pound & Politics
>Date: Mon, Jan 20, 2003, 10:59 PM
>

> 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