Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

One of the most influential as well as controversial figures inward twentieth-century literature, Ezra Pound was a bang-up poetic innovator as well as i of the essential shapers of the cultural movement known equally Modernism.

He was also a purveyor of conspiracy theories, some concerning heretical medieval religious cults, as well as others focusing on modern state of war as well as international finance, alongside the latter type ofttimes demonizing Jews. Ultimately, Pound wove these threads together into a grand conspiracy myth.

Born inward Hailey, Idaho, inward 1885, Pound attended Hamilton College as well as the University of Pennsylvania, where he distinguished himself inward the written report of Romance languages as well as medieval literature. In 1906, Pound traveled to Europe to make thesis research and, though he never completed his dissertation, he made fruitful discoveries, amidst them a rare collection of troubadour manuscripts at the Ambrosian Library inward Milan.


Troubadours, Cathars, as well as the “Mediterranean Sanity”

Troubadours, the singer/poets who came to prominence inward twelfth-century Provence, became for Pound a focus of inspiration as well as fascinated inquiry. The troubadours were also associated alongside the Cathars, a religious movement based inward Provence, against which the Catholic Church waged a bloody war, the Albigensian Crusade, from 1208 to 1229.

The brutality of the crusade was such that few if whatever actual Cathar documents survived, a fact that allowed after writers, ofttimes of an occultist bent, to contradict Church accounts of the heresy.

In 1909, inward London, Pound gave a serial of lectures concerning such matters, collected equally The Spirit of Romance, inward which he suggested that troubadour fine art reflected an ecstatic dry soil of consciousness rooted inward sensuous experience, highly attuned perception, as well as a sacramental vision of nature.

Framing this sensibility equally an outgrowth of Greco-Roman paganism as well as after labeling it “the Mediterranean sanity”, Pound contrasted it alongside what he saw equally the otherworldly, life-denying thrust of Hebrew as well as Hindu religiosity. Eventually, he speculated that troubadour civilization indicated the survival, hush-hush inward Provence, of the Eleusinian mysteries as well as Hellenistic goddess worship.

Pound’s version of Provençal spirituality contrasted sharply alongside the Church’s concern human relationship of Catharism, a fact that aroused Pound’s suspicion. According to the Church, the Cathar heresy was “Manichean”—that is, it preached a pessimistic dualism that framed the trunk equally a prison home as well as the cosmos equally the devil’s creation.

But, argued Pound, “If in that place were whatever Manicheans” inward twelfth-century Provence, they “left no delineate inward troubadour art”, a dot that begged the question: Could 2 such radically dissimilar spiritualities flourish at the same time, inward the same pocket-size cultural niche? Pound’s respond was that the heresy was non what the Church had claimed it to be. Rather, Cathars as well as troubadours must receive got been united inward devotion to a neopagan religiosity that the Church had conspired to destroy as well as misrepresent.

The New Age, Social Credit, as well as the “Causes of War”

Pound spent much of the menstruation from 1911 to 1921 inward England, where he married Dorothy Shakespear as well as collaborated alongside older artistic masters similar W. B. Yeats equally good equally avant-garde innovators similar Wyndham Lewis.

He produced a large trunk of poetry, translations, as well as criticism piece studying theosophy, Japanese theater, as well as Chinese linguistic communication as well as philosophy. He also labored generously to promote the operate of then-obscure contemporaries similar T. S. Eliot as well as James Joyce.

Pound published much of his prose from this menstruation inward The New Age, a London-based magazine of politics as well as the arts edited past times A. R. Orage, a proponent of Guild Socialism.

Through Orage, Pound met C. H. Douglas, whose theory of Social Credit proposed to correct economical problems past times counting the cultural inheritance equally a shape of wealth held inward mutual past times all people of a nation. Like other socialist groups, the New Age circle opposed British entry into World War I, viewing the conflict equally benefiting exclusively ruling elites as well as fiscal profiteers.

Pound lost several unopen friends to the state of war as well as depicted it inward his poesy equally the self-destruction of “a botched civilization”. In a biographical sketch from 1949, he wrote: “1918—began investigation of causes of war, to oppose same”.

In 1921 Pound moved to Paris and, past times 1924, on to Italy, where he resided until the terminate of World War II. During this period, he made headway on an ambitious epic poem, The Cantos (1972), as well as became increasingly isolated from friends as well as collaborators. He devoted bang-up release energy to a elbow grease to popularize Social Credit, which he instantly saw equally the cure for modern social ills.

Pound became enthusiastic well-nigh Mussolini due to the fascist dictator’s apparent openness to Social Credit policies. In diverse tracts, Pound argued that in that place were parallels betwixt the thoughts of the Duce as well as that of U.S. founders similar Jefferson as well as Adams, as well as he railed against the ability of key banks similar the U.S. Federal Reserve as well as the Bank of England.

In 1939, he voyaged to the U.S. for a lecture tour. In Washington, D.C., he spoke alongside some congressmen well-nigh Social Credit as well as sought, unsuccessfully, to come across alongside President Franklin Roosevelt, whose policies he detested.

Audiences as well as erstwhile friends were disturbed past times his obsession alongside coin as well as outbursts of antisemitism. Pound instantly attributed economical insecurity as well as modern state of war to a conspiracy of powerful fiscal interests and, increasingly, he identified those interests alongside the Jews.

Fascism, Antisemitism, as well as Private Mythology

Soon dorsum inward Italy, Pound began inward 1941 to brand radio broadcasts sponsored past times the fascist government that, he after claimed, were used exclusively for “personal propaganda inward back upward of the U.S. Constitution” (Pound 1957, n.p.). The broadcasts consisted largely of obscure lectures well-nigh coin as well as civilization laced alongside rants well-nigh alleged Jewish conspiracy.

At times the twisted logic of his conspiracism seemed to pick out handgrip of Pound up, equally inward the next passage where he mentions Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious antisemitic forgery purporting to document a Jewish excogitation for basis domination. Pound acknowledges the document to live a forgery, but nevertheless attempts to recuperate his conspiracy scenario: “Certainly they are a forgery, but this is i proof nosotros receive got of their authenticity.

The Jews receive got worked alongside forged documents for the past times twenty-four hundred years”. In 1941, inward a conversation that “shook” Pound, the leftist Romano Bilenchi conveyed the floor of an SS massacre of German linguistic communication Jews as well as insisted that “it was Hitler as well as Himmler who had organized a conspiracy”; nonetheless, Pound clung to his antisemitic beliefs.

Indeed, these beliefs were key to a individual mythology that integrated the many divergent strands of Pound’s intellectual concern. An idiosyncratic variation on Matthew Arnold’s thought that Western civilization swings betwixt phases of Hebraism as well as Hellenism, this mythology framed European history equally a scrap betwixt embattled exponents of the Hellenistic “Mediterranean sanity,” similar the Cathars, as well as groups, similar the Calvinists, or the Jews themselves, who supposedly pulled the West inward a Hebraistic direction.

Pound’s aversion to abstractions did non forestall him from edifice his mythology but about the crudest racist stereotypes. Far from beingness business office of some imagined Jewish “essence,” the association of Jews alongside usury tracked dorsum to the piece of cake medieval menstruation Pound knew so well, where moneylending, deemed past times the Church a sinful business for Christians, became for Jews i of the few available professions. Similarly, the ikon of the Jew equally unnatural alien, poisoning the wells of Christendom, was a staple of medieval rhetoric concerning enemies of the Church.

Treason, Mental Illness, Silence

In 1943, the U.S. indicted Pound for treason and, when the Allies took Italy inward 1945, he became a prisoner of war. Initially held inward Pisa, he spent thirty-one days inward an outdoor cage, eventually beingness moved to Washington, D. C., to expression upward charges. With a conviction belongings out the possibility of the decease penalty, defense forcefulness lawyer Julien Cornell decided to plead Pound equally insane.

Indeed, erstwhile friends similar Ernest Hemingway pointed to Pound’s radio broadcasts equally proof that he had lost his wits years before. Ultimately, a panel of psychiatrists as well as a U.S. jury constitute Pound unfit to stand upward case as well as he was confined to St. Elizabeth’s, a Washington, D.C., infirmary for the mentally ill, where he remained from 1946 to 1958.

St. Elizabeth’s director, Dr. Wilfred Overholser, constitute Pound to live suffering from some kind of debilitating mental disorder as well as at times used the discussion “paranoid” to depict his mental state, though he never diagnosed him equally paranoid (i.e., schizophrenic) inward the clinical feel of the term.

In 1949, amid much controversy, Pound was awarded the Bollingen Prize inward American poetry. In 1957, literary supporters of Pound petitioned the attorney full general to driblet the treason indictment as well as inward 1958 Pound gained release from St. Elizabeth’s, soon thereafter returning to Italy.

He remained by as well as large in that place until his decease inward 1972 as well as for many of his terminal years he was seldom heard to speak, the quiet seeming to some similar a sign of affliction as well as to others similar self-imposed punishment. On rare occasions when he conversed alongside visitors, he characterized his operate equally a wrongheaded failure as well as “the prejudice of antisemitism” equally his “worst mistake”.