Abstract
Turning to World War II, this shorter chapter approaches serial misunderstandings in the ‘Pound case’, many of which are derived from the patchy historical record on his wartime activism. In setting out the areas to be discussed over the second part of this book, this chapter introduces many of the key figures with whom Pound worked at Fascist Italy’s EIAR, in addition to emphasizing both the difficulty of separating Pound’s poetry from his other writings, as well as his general importance to the Axis war effort — particularly Anglophone radio broadcasting.
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Notes
Ezra Pound, the opening of “A Visiting Card”, William Cookson, ed., Ezra Pound: Selected Prose, 1909–1965 (Faber, London: 1973), 276. “LIBERTY A DUTY” was one of Mussolini’s favored mottos.
Pound to Ungaro, 27 June 1941, excerpted in Tim Redman, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1992), 211; hereafter Redman/EPIF; italics added.
Arthur Miller, cited in Wendy Flory, “Pound and Antisemitism”, The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, ed., Ira B. Nadel (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1999), 285.
The wide range of accounts covering these well-documented years include Julien Cornell, The Trial of Ezra Pound (Faber, London: 1966);
Harry Meacham, The Caged Panther, Ezra Pound at St Elizabeths (Twayne Publishers, New York: 1967);
Catherine Seelye, ed., Charles Olsen and Ezra Pound: An Encounter at St. Elizabeths (Grossmann Publishers, New York: 1975);
Conrad L. Rushing, ‘“Mere Words’: The Trial of Ezra Pound”, Critical Inquiry 14 (1987); Jerome Kavka, “Ezra Pound’s Personal History: A Transcript, 1946”, Paideuma 20/1–2 (1991); Donald W. Jackanicz, “Ezra Pound at St Elizabeths Hospital: The Case File of Patient 58, 102”, Manuscripts 43/3 (1991); William McNaughton, “The Secret History of St. Elizabeths”, Paideuma 30/1 (2001); and most recently, Romolo Rossi, “A Psychiatrist’s Recollections of Ezra Pound”, Ezra Pound, Language and Persona, eds., Massimo Bacigalupo and William Pratt (Università degli studi di Genova, Genova: 2008).
Noel Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound (Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1970), 396; hereafter Stock/LEP.
Benjamin Friedlander, “Radio Broadcasts”, Ezra Pound in Context, ed., Ira B. Nadel (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2011), 122–123; hereafter Nadel/EPIC.
Guido Bonsaver, Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy (University ot Toronto Press, London: 2007), 192.
Frances Stonor Saunders, The Woman who Shot Mussolini (Faber and Faber, London: 2010), 311.
J.J. Wilhelm, Ezra Pound: The Tragic Years, 1925–1972 (Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park: 1994), 194.
Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Rome-Berlin Axis (Collins, London: 1966), 251;
and Winston Churchill, “Wars Are Not Won by Evacuations”, 4 June 1940, The Speeches of Winston Churchill, ed. David Cannadine (Penguin Books, London: 1990), 165.
W. Vincent Arnold, The Illusion of Victory (Peter Lang, New York: 1998), 11.
Paul Baxa, “Capturing the Fascist Moment: Hitler’s Visit to Italy in 1938 and the Radicalization of Fascist Italy”, Journal of Contemporary History 42/2 (2007), 239, 241.
Max Ascoli, Fascism for Whom? (WW. Norton, New York: 1938), 311, 316.
Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy (Routledge, London: 2002), 70–71.
Wiskemann, The Rome-Berlin Axis, 250; and Paul Corner, “Fascist Italy in the 1930s: Popular Opinion in the Provinces”, Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes, Paul Corner, ed. (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 2009), 135.
MacGregor Knox, Common Destiny: Dictatorship, Foreign Policy and War in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2000), 145, 159.
Roland Sarti, The Ax Within: Italian Fascism in Action (New Viewpoints, New York: 1974), 210.
Pound to Joseph Ibbotson, 14 July 1939, Letters to Ibbotson, 1935–1952, eds., Vittoria I. Mondolfo and Margaret Hurley (National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine, Orono: 1979), 101, 105; and Pound, “European Paideuma”, in Machine Art and Other Writings: The Lost Thought of the Italian Years, ed., Maria Luisa Ardizzone (Duke University Press, London: 1996), 134.
Pound to Münch, 25 October 1939, YBL 36/1504. The view that Pound’s political views betrayed a “Pollyanna attitude” (179) was recently advanced by Leon Surette, Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia: Literary Modernism and Politics (McGill-Queen’s University Press: London, 2011), 244ff.
Pound, cited in Alec Marsh, Ezra Pound: Critical Lives (London: Reaktion Books, 2011), 152.
John Tytell, Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano (Bloomsbury, London: 1987), 254.
Pound to Burton K. Wheeler, 19 July 1940, YBL 55/2502; and Pound to William Joyce, 18 July 1941, YBL 26/1117; see also Mary Kenny, Germany Calling: A Biography of William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw (New Island, Dublin: 2004), 211;
and Horst J.P. Bergmeier and Rainer E. Lotz, Hitler’s Airwaves: The Inside Story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing (Yale University Press, London: 1997), 75–79.
Pound to the Ministry of Popular Culture, 10 May 1940 and 30 April 1940, Ezra Pound’s FBI file, divided into 12 sections on microfilm, Section 7; hereafter FBI/Pound. The only text to date specifically covering Pound’s FBI file is Karen Leick, “Madness, Paranoia and Ezra Pound’s FBI file”, Modernism on File: Writers, Artists and the FBI, 1920–1950, eds., Claire A. Culleton and Karen Leick (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke: 2008).
Pound, “Why There Is a War in Europe”, Japan Times Weekly, 13 June 1940, Lea Baechler et al., eds., Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose, 11 volumes (Garland, London: 1991), VIII:43–44; hereafter EPPP.
David Heymann, Ezra Pound, The Last Rower, A Political Profile (Seaver Books, New York: 1976), 101–102, 112.
Pound to Pellizzi, 4 May 1940, ibid., 7 May 1940, ibid.; 9 May 1940, ibid.; and Pellizzi to Pound, 27 December 1940, YBL 40/1690. Pound’s World War II publications are listed in Donald Gallup, Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia and St. Paul’s, Charlottesville: 1983), 66–73 and 321–333.
Pound to Ronald Duncan, 31 March 1940, The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. D.D. Paige (Faber and Faber, London: 1971), 441; and Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound (Faber, London: 1988), 579.
Mary de Rachewiltz, “Fragments of an Atmosphere”, Agenda 17/2–3–18/1 (1980), 157.
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© 2013 Matthew Feldman
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Feldman, M. (2013). Reappraising the ‘Pound Case’, 1940–45. In: Ezra Pound’s Fascist Propaganda, 1935–45. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137345516_4
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