There were direct connections between Futurism (the Italian artistic movement) and Fascism, and Futurism influenced Vorticism.
Cancelling Pound would be no great loss for humanity.
Cancelling Pound would be no great loss for humanity.
This is really rather shoddy guilt-by-association - and second degree association at that.
He's a valuable critic and I am certainly grateful to him for i) turning me onto a number of European poets from times and tongues I would not otherwise have turned my attention to, and ii) for sharpening my concept of what poetry is and should be. I don't know what it means to talk of 'cancelling' a writer from a century ago but not to have his work would certainly be a loss.
Really? I was always told that the Futurists tried to position themselves as the official artists of Fascism (but they were sadly not conservative enough).
I don't doubt that there are good reasons to think Ezra Pound a fascist, but I don't think his involvement with vorticism is one of them.
The radio broadcasts for Mussolini were a bit of a giveaway.
It would be a loss, and not just because his poetry would be lost. The point is elaborated in a good, recent article on the attempt to cancel Pound in 1946: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/02/27/auden-on-no-platfor....
ABC of Reading (ch 3. p 42):
> "One has to divide the readers who want to be experts from those who do not, and divide, as it were, those who want to see the world from those who merely want to know WHAT PART OF IT THEY LIVE IN."
> "When it comes to the question of poetry, a great many people don't even want to know that their own country does not occupy ALL the available surface of the planet. The idea seems in some way to insult them."
I at least will study him, to figure out how he wound up there. It appears it may have been via antisemitism, through the christian/muslim anti-interest tradition. It may have been because he thought fascists rewarded artists better than democracies. It may have been other paths. I don't know yet.
(I still think self-deprecating humour may be an antidote: fascists are Serious People doing Serious Things, and I haven't been aware of any thick anthologies of famous fascist comedies. But after today I'm no longer so sure they don't exist.)
The proximal cause of his support for Fascism is obvious, on p.249:
> "Mussolini has told his people that poetry is a necessity to the state, and Carlo Delcroix is convinced that poets ought to "occupy themselves with these matters", namely credit, the nature of money, monetary issue etc."
and p.250:
> "Civilization becomes admirable when people begin to prefer a little of the best to a great deal of the pasty."
In between he's been a goldbug, railed against "international finance" (which, given his glowing reviews of Charles Coughlin, admiration of the medieval Church, and pining for the use of latin, not in the mass, but in academic publishing, all suggest he's never very far away from antisemitic dog whistles with his rants on usury), is convinced that radio has reshaped politics because it allows the sheeple to learn reality instead of the fake news, notes that the only knowledgable writers on economics are the non-economists (which goes well with his snark on LSE, less well with his rants against "cranks"), considers that the British Empire is decadent (and the US not much better: although they stayed out of the League of Nations, with Pound's approval, they've put Susan B. Anthony on a stamp, to his great disapproval), suggests that taxation is theft, and complains that neither US nor UK academia (people who chatter rather than do) are receptive to free inquiry by independent researchers, etc. all of which may be more distal causes.
In short, s/radio/social media/, give him Oakleys and an F-450[1], and he'd be right at home in 2020.
[1] we can imagine him in the cab (safely away from Dorothy, Marcella, and Olga?), stroking his goatee while telling us "[w]hat ultimately counts is the level of civilization. No decent man tortures prisoners. No clean man wd. tolerate the advertising atrocities between here and Genova. No man free of mental lice wd. tolerate the bank racket or the taxing system."
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish was certainly worth some reflection, although Pound's willingness to translate chinese poetry without knowing much chinese may show his practice (as is most of ours!) was not quite up to his preaching. (Edit: he leads "...Kulchur" by quoting 一以貫之[1], so he is stronger in chinese than I.)
Upon reflection: abstraction and instantiation are always dual, and just as we shouldn't exclusively fly abstract, neither should we exclusively rest concrete. There are more fascinating journeys to be had by skipping between both sides of the duality, passing between them adroitly, adjointly.
[1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Classics/Volume_1...
Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzQWYHHqvIw
I haven't read Guide To Kulchur but it seems like it edges towards the 'crazier' (late, fascist) side of Pound.
I'm about 10% into Guide and it does have a bit of (pre-internet) crackpottery to it: he's veered off from Confucius into goldbuggery at the moment, and has his syntactic quirks, such as the modals wd. cd. and shd.
However, just as those latter abbreviations do make sense on their own terms (sound them out, which also explains kulchur), he is very well read, thinks for himself instead of regurgitating, and has kept my google tab incredibly busy. So I'm very likely to continue, to see where he winds up.
(A straight-up guess at this point: he wound up at fascism because he's looking for a universal system that not only explains how things are, but is also a modus vivendi, saying what people should do.
Personally, I see "Party On" as the balancing counterweight to that viewpoint. Many people in the twentieth century interpreted "Be Excellent To Each Other" to mean breaking eggs was OK as long as it was going to lead to an excellent omelette. But if one equally weights the injunction to Party On, one can't borrow uncertain utilities from the future to justify certain disutility now.
In any case, I take the scientific tack on How Things Are, which by and large is completely indifferent to What People Should Do for the simple reason that it is completely indifferent to People.)
Tangentially related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oven_of_Akhnai