By selective quotation, you softpedal the antisemitism of the 30s, which grew more and more severe. ==DP At 12:09 PM 9/6/99 -0800, you wrote: >If I may intrude my ignorance into this learned discussion one more time... > >EP's "anti-semitism" seems to me a much more complicated matter than >either his defenders or detractors appear to realize. > >1.From his earliest letters, poems & articles, EP had an "anti-Judaic" >positition,but I don't think this qualifies as "anti-semitic" because >it was part of his general "anti-monotheist" stance, and (I think) >always appears as part of a general rejection of Chrisitianity, Judaism >and Islam --"all this Xtian-Jew-Moslem bunk"as he sez in one place. >(Selected Leters) >B. In a 1919 aritcle,EP says he prfers the Jews to the Xtians and Moslems >because they haven't started a religious war in 2000 years (Selected Prose) >C.The anti-monotheist position seems part of that aspect of EP >which comes closest to conventional "liberalism": he dislikes monotheism >because it appears historically linked to intolerance. >[Okay: he also disliked monotheism on poetic grounds. His type >of multilinguistic/multicultural sensibility resonated more to >polytheistic imagery than to monotheistic abstraction >or to Hindic monist abstraction.] > >2. In the 1930s, Pound repudiated anti-semitism specifically and >precisely in several places. Having joined the anti-banker radicals >as distinct from the anti-free-market radicals, Pound found he >had a lot of anti-semitic allies. He was not quickly seduced by >them. His 1930-1940 writings include several explicit rejectons >of generalized anti-semitism, usually on the grounds that "the >poorJews"were not responsible for the Rothschilds, and twice on >the grounds that the worst "usurers" (money-coiners) were >not all Jews and once on the grounds that some of them were "Aryan" >-- a sarcastic repudiation of Hitler's ideas. (Collected Letters, Cantos, >Terrel's Companion to the Cantos.) > >3. From about 1940 to somewhere in the 1960s EP clearly >and unambigously expressed uncritical (bigoted) anti-semitism on >many, many occasions. Only rarely did he pull back to the >(relatively sane) position of only blaming certain banking families. >He raved and ranted against "the Jews" in general. >Some consider this immoral; some consider it insane; >I can see some truth in both perspectives. > >4.From sometime in the 1960s (date unknown to me: I wd >love to be informed by one of the more learned members of >this list ) EP repudiated his anti-semitism. (See especially >his interview with Allen Ginsberg) He then became silent, >either in clinical depression (psychiatric view) or as >pennance (religious view.) In either case, the punishment >inflicted upon him by the US govt was continued by >self-punishment. > >5. The anti-monotheist position disappeared around the same >time as the anti-semitism. The religious imagery of Pound's >paradise cantos very carefully remains non-sectarian, >open to both monotheist and polytheist readings. > >This letter does not arrive at a verdict, and does not intend >to move others toward a verdict or toward abandonning thier >previous verdicts. I merely wish to share my own sense >of the complexity and tragedy of Pound's "errors and wrecks." >Most of the Cantos seem to me neither error nor wreck..... > > >Most humbly, > > >mark chan > > >[log in to unmask] > > >That is precisely what common sense is for, to be jarred into uncommon >sense. One of the chief services whcih mathematics has rendered the >human race in the past century is to put "common sense" where it >belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dust cannister labeled >"discarded nonsense." > Eric Temple Bell, Mathematics: Queen of the Sciences > > >Las die Lasagne weiter fliegen! > >~ > HOME: Dan Pearlman 102 Blackstone Blvd. #5 Providence, RI 02906 Tel.: 401 453-3027 email: [log in to unmask] Fax: (253) 681-8518 http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/ OFFICE Department of English University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI 02881 Tel.: 401 874-4659