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Modernism, Antisemitism and Jewish Identity in the Writing and Publishing of John Rodker

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Modernism, Antisemitism and Jewish Identity in the Writing and Publishing of John Rodker Modernism, Antisemitism and Jewish Identity in the Writing and Publishing of John Rodker Dominic Paul Williams Submittedin accordancewith the requirementsfor the degreeof Doctor of Philosophy, the University of Leeds, Centre for Jewish Studies,September 2004. The candidateconfirms that the work submittedis his own and that appropriatecredit hasbeen given where referencehas been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Acknowledgements In the course of writing this thesis, I have accumulated many debts: intellectual, personal and financial. I am very happy to acknowledge one of all varieties to my Mum and Dad, who, among everything else, helped to fund a research trip to the John Rodker Papers at the University of Texas at Austin. I am indebtedto the University of Leeds for funding me with a Research Scholarship. I am grateful to staff at Harry RansomHumanities ResearchCenter, University of Texas at Austin, Brotherton Library Special Collections, Cambridge University Library, University College London, and the British Library for their help. Dalit Berman and Brian Richardson answered my questions about Yiddish and Italian with speed and expertise. Thanks to Catherine Bates, Daniel Hannah, Ben Caines, Jeffrey On, Philippa Plock, Edel Porter, Marcel Swiboda and Colin Winborn for proof-reading sections of this thesis, and for not finding too many mistakes. Nick Chare and Annette Seidel-Arpaci read substantial portions of my work and commented on it in detail. The hours spent drinking coffee with them was an essential part of my research. Thank you to my supervisors. Eva Frojmoviir managed to work out what I was saying before I had properly said it. Michael Weingrad's increasing enthusiasm for my project was one of its major pleasures and rewards. And finally, thanks to Rob Stanton, who has read almost every word I have written in the past two years, and who puts my knowledge of poetry to shame. Abstract This thesis examines the relationship between the English Jewish writer and publisher John Rodker and the modernism of the Pound circle. Previous considerations of the antisemitism of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot have either ignored or cited in their defence their Jewish friends and acquaintances. This thesis shows that the modernist interest in the figure of `the Jew' took effect not only in their poetry and social commentary but also in the social grouping which they formed in order to produce and circulate this writing. Rodker was both a necessary figure to Pound's theory and practice of modernism, but one who had to be kept on the margins. This resulted in his being able to articulate certain aspects of his experience as an assimilated Jew-loss, disconnection, feeling out of place-while excluding any other possible aspects, including naming himself as Jewish. Chapter 1 shows that Pound and Eliot's antisemitic statements and poetry functioned as part of the formation of the `men of 1914', and as a means of shocking their audience through a poetry of ugliness. Chapter 2 considers a printing error in Rodker's Ovid Press edition of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and reads it as a sign of Pound's failure to carry out his social and poetic project, a failure which he blamed on Jews, but, because this failure was inevitable, part of the task for carrying the project out was assigned to Jews. Chapter 3 reads Rodker's volume of poetry Hymns (1920), and traces how his marginal position within modernism resulted in a poetry which did not directly address Jewish issues, but was affected by his Jewish social position. Chapter 4 considers Rodker and two other Jewish writers, Carl Rakosi and Louis Zukofsky, who Pound published in The Exile (1927- 28), showing that Pound's interest in these writers was combined with an unease with them that played out in editorial decisions and means of framing their work. Chapter 5 examines Rodker's Memoirs of Other Fronts (1932). His self- descriptions of himself as a foreigner are shown to be still influenced by the Pound circle's ideas of Jews, but also reworked through his increasing interest in psychoanalysis. 3 Contents Acknowledgements 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 List of Illustrations 5 Introduction 6 Chapter 1: Circulating Antisemitism: The `Men of 1914' Introduction 25 Circulating Antisemitism: The `Men of 1914' 26 `Imaginary Letters': Collaboration and Dialogue 33 Lewis, Pound, the `Men of 1914', and Rodker 44 Ara Vos Prec and the Avant-Garde 51 `Gerontion' and the Necessity of Jewishness 61 Chapter 2: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) Introduction 66 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) 67 Mauberley and Collaboration 70 Hard vs. Soft 75 Editing, Sex, Censorship and Judaism 78 The Uncertainties of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley 83 Tradition 87 Mistakes and Hesitations in the Typescript of Mauberley 91 Mauberley, `Brennbaum', and the Letter `T' 94 Coda: Dead Ezra 103 Chapter 3: Rodker's Hymns (1920) Introduction 106 Rodker's Hymns (1920) 108 Reviews of Poems and Rodker's Counter-Attack 115 From Yiddish to Avant-Garde Theatre 119 Hymns 122 Sexual Excess 126 Foreign and Modem 130 Collaboration and Isolation 135 Sexual and Other Differences 139 Schlemihls 146 Andre Spire 151 Chapter 4: `A FEW MORE SERIOUS JEWS': Advertising Race in The Exile (1927-28) Introduction 157 `A FEW MORE SERIOUS JEWS' 159 Framing Carl Rakosi 161 Canto 22: Jews, Parataxis and Collage 169 Pound as Editor 177 `Poembeginning "The"' 186 Adolphe 1920 196 Rodker's Place in TheExile 212 Chapter 5: Memoirs of Other Fronts (1932) Introduction 215 Memoirs of Other Fronts (1932) 217 Part I: Sex 222 Part II: War 229 Part III: Excrement 240 Squatting 244 Language and Time 247 Psychoanalytic Cognates 250 Jewishnessas Trauma, Jewishnessand Trauma 255 Conclusion 257 Bibliography 263 List of Illustrations Figure 1 68 E. P. [Ezra Pound], Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: Life and Contacts (London: Ovid Press, 1920) 16. Figure 2 92 Typescript of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, reproduced in Jo Brantley Berryman, Circe's Craft: Ezra Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Epping: Bowker, 1983) 227. Figure 3 97 E. P. [Ezra Pound], Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: Life and Contacts (London: Ovid Press, 1920) 12. Figure 4 209 John Rodker, Adolphe 1920 (London: Aquila Press,1929) 119. Introduction 6 Introduction In January2003, Modernism/Modernity addedto the continuing debateon l light T. S. Eliot and antisemitism with an article by Ronald Schuchard. In the of Horace the recent discovery of a lengthy correspondence between Eliot and Schuchard Kallen, and taking into account his friendships with a number of Jews, called for a reassessment of Eliot's `allegedly anti-Semitic' writings. Since his `Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar' and `Gerontion', two of most notorious poems, had both originally been published by Jews, Schuchard found it impossible to believe that Eliot's purpose in them was to `exercise a little gratuitous anti-Semitism in the face of his Jewish friends. ' Far from being an `anti-Semite', he argued, Eliot showed by these friendships that he was in fact 2 a `philo-Semite', and readings of the poems had to take this into account. ' Ronald Schuchard, `Burbank with a Baedeker, Eliot with a Cigar: American Intellectuals, Anti- Semitism, and the Idea of Culture, ' Modernism/Modernity 10.1 (Jan 2003): 1-26. As Ronald Bush pointed out ('A Response to Ronald Schuchard, ' Modernism/Modernity 10.1 (Jan 2003): 33), Schuchard's essay was effectively a rejoinder to Anthony Julius, T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995). Anthony Julius's book produced a far more public controversy than Schuchard, eliciting responses which were little more than sophistry from Craig Raine, `In Defence of T. S. Eliot, ' In Defence of T. S. Eliot (London: Picador, 2000) 320-332, and Christopher Hitchens, 'How Unpleasant to Meet Mr Eliot, ' Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere (London: Verso, 2000) 184-186; and prompting Tom Paulin to call for a review of Eliot's 'stifling cultural authority'. 'Undesirable, ' rev. of T. S. Eliot: Anti-Semitism and Literary Form, by Anthony Julius, London Review of Books 9 May 1996: 12-15. The disapproval of Julius's book seems to me a little over-stated, and often appears to be a reaction to a solicitor, rather than an academic, writing a book of literary criticism. E. g. Ronald Schuchard, `My Reply: Eliot and the Foregone Conclusion, ' Modernism/Modernity 10.1 (Jan 2003): 61. (This second piece by Schuchard provides a brief survey of the ways in which Eliot's `seemingly anti-Semitic stance' has been treated. Ibid. 58-59). Bryan Cheyette was right to say Julius appeals in a crude way to an undifferentiated history of antisemitism as its context. `The Enemy Within, ' rev. of The War After: Living with the Holocaust, by Anne Karpf, and T. S. Eliot: Anti-Semitism and Literary Form, by Anthony Julius, The New Statesman 5 July 1996: 44-45. However, Julius's readings of the poetry, about which Cheyette said nothing, although not always convincing, are perfectly respectable. See my discussions of them in Chapter 1. 2I am not concernedhere with Schuchard'sreading of the poems,nor his discussionof After Strange Gods, neither of which merits seriousattention. Introduction Schuchard'srespondents were not convinced.Anthony Julius dismissedhis Jewish'. argumentsas simply saying that `someof [Eliot's] best friends were Schuchard retorted that these friendships did indeed count for something, and the `foregoneconclusion' that Eliot was an antisemitehad led them to be entirely ignored. Why is my essay the first to show Eliot in the company of an Anglo- Jewish community in London, the first to show that [John] Rodker and [Sidney] Schiff were the Jewish editors and publishers of Eliot's allegedly anti-Semitic poems, and that he actively sought their advice 4 and criticism when he sent the manuscripts to them? Schuchard's readings of Eliot were strained at best, but his essay is significant for two reasons.
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