the issue is not whether Pound was democratic, but that he didn't despise governments because they were democratic. as far as saying that he believed in the constitution, I think we can take him at his word, remembering, of course, that the our concepts of the constitution are not the same. my objection is to the sweeping denunciations of Pound and his politics, as if nothing he believed in wasn't somehow vitiated or contaminated by his more obnoxious beliefs. there's merit in much of what he had to say about politics, as well as his economic positions. the ugliness of Pound is not news, and to imply, as wei has done, that his sins outweigh his value, is, from my point of view, simply wrong. Pound borrowed from many sources, so to say that the key to understanding him is to understand his Confucianism is to reduce him to that, which is, again, unhelpful. the genius of Pound's poetry is that it isn't reductive, but, on the contrary, it increases and expands the experience. as has been pointed out, Mussolini's involvement in the Cantos is no greater than, Jefferson's or Malatesta's. To say that Mussolini is central to the Cantos, and thus to Pound, makes one wonder how Mussolini & Confucius can simultaneously occupy the same place, unless he's implying that there's no difference between the two. I don't get the impression that anyone is trying to sanitize Pound's politics, and I find the suggestion offensive. joe brennan In a message dated 06/02/2000 3:18:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: << This list has seen a number of threads on Pound's politics, but I have to say that I've been more than a little surprised by some of the recent claims. Yes, Pound praised Thomas Jefferson and said he believed in the Constitution. In itself that means nothing: the ACLU, Pat Buchanan, the students at Tiananmen Square and Timothy McVeigh have all done the same. Lester Bangs once said all speed freaks are liars, because anyone who talks that much can't tell the truth all the time. A similar situation obtains in Pound's work: he wrote so much that through selective quotation one could construct any number of political positions for him. It seems absolutely clear to me that (as En Lin Wei as suggested) the key to Pound's political beliefs is his Confucianism, and that this Confucianism is deeply skeptical of representative democracy and deeply sympathetic to powerful and even totalitarian individuals and elites. That's why Pound could simultaneously praise Malatesta, Jefferson, Bronson Cutting, Lenin, Huey Long (whose economic views were wildly at odd with Pound's), Mussolini and Coughlin. As Leon Surette has stated, Pound was not an ideologue and with the exception of economics and a handful of idiosyncratic interests, he didn't really care about the specifics of government. Power and "insight" were enough. Even results (sometimes) don't matter that much: Pound admits Malatesta's tempio is a jumble and a junkshop, but praises it because it "registers a concept." Likewise, he admits that Mussolini is full of contradictions, then insists those are irrelevant if one treats him as an "artifex." (Talk about transference.) Contrary to what a number of people have claimed, this is not somehow extraneous to the Cantos; it is absolutely central to it. Additionally, I say that neither because I'm an academic looking to further my career by trampling on Pound, nor because I'm indifferent to the poetry. I think Pound is perhaps the most extraordinary poet of the 20th century. That doesn't mean I'm going to sanitize his politics. >>