Orientamenti 2(8)

Ezra Pound

In the autumn of 1935 I received from the publisher Stanley Nott of London the volume "Jefferson and/or Mussolini of Ezra Pound, having sub-title

"The statal Idea- Fascism as I have seen it"
on the back of the title -page

Following the frontispiece I found the following lines in April 1935, anno XIII, finally a foreword

The body of this M.S. was written and left my hands in February 1933. 40 publishers have refused it. No typescript of mine has been read by so many people or brought me a more interesting correspondence. It is here printed verbatim, unaltered. I had not seen the M.S. from the time it left Rapallo till it returned here with the galley proof. It is printed as record of what I saw in February 1933. The September preface (1933) indicated a flutter of hope, that has grown steadily more fluttery and less hopeful.

E.P., Rapallo, April, XIII.

It is enough to read the first two pages of the volume to understand how a book by Ezra Pound came to wander for two years and a half among the "readers" of 40 publishers before seeing the light. Pound is a friend and admirer of Italy and Mussolini. And as though that were not enough he has the inveterate bad habit of saying what he thinks even to the great of the earth. Incomprehension, ignorance and spite have tried to mangle him, and the five years that have passed since this typescript began its travels have served very little to enlighten the literate or those who review

for mercenary reasons, as one can see by a critique of Pound's latest book--Guide to Culture-- appearing in the English paper Midland Daily Telegraph of 26 August ult.

The reviewer signs himself "Bookmark" and says: "Mr. Pound is probably the most important poet writing in our language to-day, and when one of the major poets sets out( the title of the article is:Mr. Pound on the war-path)

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to furnish a guide to the younger generation in combative and lively prose, / presenting his ideas on all the subjects that his experience in art and life permit him to treat of, we may expect a very interesting book.

" Neither does Mr. Pound delude himself. He explores wide horizons; hi his book contains , among other things , much wisdom and also a little of the opposite... on philosophy, economy, culture, poetry, prose, religion, art, sculpture, anthropology, finance, politics... This book will attain its end at least for two of its aims: in giving the reader a shove towards thinking for himself and opening his eyes to a part of the treasures of science and beauty that Mr. Pound has accumulated to himself during his life"

After these recognitions the reviewer, for the opinions of the Master which he does not agree with, ought logically to show at least a deference: instead of which like all the usual happy ignoramuses, "Bookmark"opines : " then follows the monstrous contradiction of the whole bokk-- the cult ( the english word is: worship) of the author for Mussolini, the Dictator, the grotesque product of a nation's inferiority complex" And it is easy, according to him, to confute the opinions of Pound by his own words:" The best government, he (Pound) says , is that which employs the highest intelligence in the nation. Nevertheless how much of the best italian brains are now languishing in the most desert islands of the Mediterraneo?"

And would you like to see to what heights
sectarian blindness can climb? When Pound wrote asking him simply
give
name some names, he answered; Giovanni Gentile, modern Robinson Crusoe
is living on
on the island let us say, of Kimaro! Let
us hope that good conduct if he conducts himself well, they will move
behaves
him onto Levita, where he will have at least the company of the light-
house-keeper! One must admit that those Egean islands of ours are very us
useful.

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In no. 27 of Broletto, In the rubric "communications service" I noted in a pseudo-scientific novelette english, an array of ingenuous idiocies on the life in fascist Italy under Mussolini. In the following number an englishman living in Italy with his eyes open, John Drummond, an Englishman being unable to contradict me, told me that " to any englishman knowing Italy it would be evident that the Author is incapable of understanding Italian culture. Being ignorant of everything Italian, he is deceived by the anti-italian propaganda out in England ( which we hope is nearing an end) and in addition is encouraged to repeat it in his book for readers as ignorant as he is." These are the sons of those who bought ..for their weight in gold, as holy relics, the wisps of straw on which the cruel Italians made the successor of major Piero sleep.

Meanwhile this kind of idiocy finds an editor and readers while the truth that a man like Pound wishes to print in his own language finds a publisher only after two and a half years . And it cant be said, as some malignant person might insinuate who doesn't know the work and worth of the Poet and economist, that it was the name of the Author worth little on the market of little value, because, even not wishing count the testimony of Bookmark", while the leaves of this typescript unfortunate were being frittered away by the inquisitorial fingers of the

, five other volumes of prose and verse found publishers and readers.

Pound is pig-headed persistent, and for ten years has insisted on trying to get into the hard skulls of those who read it English, that the Duce's politics are constructive, but as the press is free in those countries, an american magazine of wide circulation, on starting an english edition, has suspended publication of his articles, Hemingway's collaboration bringing in better returns...that fantastic calumniator of Italy. The presence of articles by Pound would have excluded the magazine.

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kept the magazine off the station bookstalls, monopoly of W.H.Smith and Sons. It is necessary to add that renouncing this collaboration means a

luxury for Pound, treating as it does of a magazine which re
munerates Erskine Caldwell at the rate of 2000( two Thousand) dollars for a
longish story.

Anyhow Pound is always the Poet who, according to the recent
XIV edition of the Enciclopedia Britannica so popular in english-speaking countries, has written "tuneful melodies in free verse", so that those who wish to use their heads effectively should listen rather more often to his voice, might even ask themselves some day if all the anti-italian propaganda is 18 carat gold, if the professors who went to Downing Street, crossing the London streets in

to convince Chamberlain not to treat with the authoritarian states, are s
persuade
serious characters or only sad bluffers, or whether it is nt better to trus

to a high great cleverness accompanied by a fearless conscience.
high intelligence a

It would be a good thing also if Italy

too if a little more curiosity// were aroused in Italy for the work of
this Poet and economist, not always easy to handle because of his passion
for calling // a spade a spade. In an article of his appearing these d
days in a volume called Europea Fascista compiled by Erminio Turcotti,
he says that only "since 1935 have the italians stopped calling me extra-
vagant, because I considered the english press as the greatest disburser
of lies that the world has ever known."

Ezra Pound.

strewing we observe

From the newspaper cuttings coming to our table that very few peo-
ple are aware of the story and Ezra Pound's story and background
We almost expect the usual someone who affirms that our Ezra is a jew like
solomon or Moses. . How can we explain that his name is diffreent and his