>My grad student Sarah Holmes, who is finishing up the editing >of the 1930s EP/William Borah correspondence (forthcoming with U. Ill. >Press), has some questions she hopes you'll help her answer. >She is currently off-list. However, she would appreciate your >replying to her email address: [log in to unmask] > >Her questions follow: >==Dan Pearlman >---------------------------------------------------- >3) Why did Pound dislike Woodrow Wilson? I would like the answer to that one myself. I can't find it. In 1924 Pound asked Yeats, at that time a senator of the new Irish Republic, if he could get him an Irish passport, “and thus free me from the degrading contact with the sons of bitches who represent the infamous Wilsonian tyranny and red tape.” What this tyranny consists in, and how it is worse than the fascist tyranny Pound later embraces, remains one of the chief unanswered questions for Pound scholars. I have a few suggestions as to why Pound disliked Wilson so intensely. First let me mention that while looking up Wilson in the Carpenter biography, I came across these quotes on the antisemitic issue. (I must say, I came across them accidentally, because they happen to be on the same page as a quote about Wilson, lest it be suspected that I sought them out, or had Doob “under my bed” . . . .The quotes are not from Doob, but from POUND). Carpenter, interestingly enough, presents some of these quotes as evidence that Pound’s anti-semitism was not always consistent, at least in the pre-WWII years. Here are four quotes to examine: 1) "Heuffer is damn well no jew, and no man ever had less of the jew in him." 2) “Jews!!!! ooo sez I ates the jews? I hate SOME JEWS, but I have greater conempt for Christians. . . ." Why hate anyone, I ask. Why does Pound feel the need to hate. Doesn’t hatred itself detract from the creative impulse, or distort it? 3) ". . . . Look wot they [Christians] dun to america; Bryan, Wilson, Volstead, all goyim horrible goyim. Curtis, Lorimer, american womens clubs, all the tripe all goyim. Of course some jews are unpleasant, ask any jew if they aint.” Is this depreciation of “goyim” and of women for setting up clubs where they might work towards their political liberation supposed to mitigate our perception of Pound’s anti-semitism? Did Pound go around asking Jews if they were unpleasant, I wonder, expecting them to all say, "Yes, of course, we are very unpleasant, as you very well know." 4) "I will say this at least for Gracie, she isn’t a jew." Quite often, in Pound, the term ‘jew’ is simply a derogatory epithet in and of itself. And for good measure, we’ll throw in this quote: 4) My recollections of nearly all the niggers I have ever known are quite pleasant . . .” Will anyone on this list want to conclude from this quote that Pound did NOT have a racist attitude toward blacks? Just in this short space we have a lot to consider: anti-black racism, sexism, and anti-semitism. People want to blame me perhaps, but these are Pound’s words, and why should we avoid them? I wonder if Pound disliked Wilson because he was too much of an internationalist, not enough of a racist (though Wilson was racist enough in his own way), because he took the US into World War One, because he tried to found the league of nations, or for some other reasons. Wilson is mentioned in the Cantos as one who gives speeches out of "his arse" but that seems as applicable to Hitler and Mussolini as anyone else. So it remains for me a puzzle. Any answers? ---Wei ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com