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Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory As a Narrative Arc in Ezra Pound's Cantos

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Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory As a Narrative Arc in Ezra Pound's Cantos “CRIME Ov two CENturies:” Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory as a Narrative Arc in Ezra Pound’s Cantos James Dowthwaite ABSTRACT Ezra Pound’s Cantos are as notorious for the difficulty of both their politics and their form as they are famous for their lyrical beauty. Pound’s long poem, which is about nothing less than the history of humanity, follows a cyclical structure and logic in which chronology is disrupted, making the narrative fluency of the text difficult to discern. Furthermore, Fascist politics and an anti-Semitic worldview lie at the heart of the poem’s political and historical visions. In this article, I explore the ways in which Pound uses an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to form a historical narrative structure in which the progress of humanity has been arrested by the sup- posed insidious actions of Jewish international capitalists. While there have been many critical engagements with Pound’s alleged anti-Semitism, the exact affect that it had on his long poem is yet to be determined. I argue that throughout Pound’s middle period (1920-1945), the theory that a cabal of Jewish figures were corrupting geopolitics is the central narrative thrust of The Cantos. That such a theory lies at the heart of a determined attempt to delineate a vision of hu- man history remains of crucial importance to literary studies. There have been many attempts to summarize and classify Ezra Pound’s epic poem, The Cantos, and not least by their own author. In the very first installment of the poem Pound referred to his long work as “a rag bag” (“Three Cantos – I” 113). By the late 1930s, Pound had conceived of his project as having greater his- torical and cultural grandeur, calling it “the tale of the tribe” (Guide to Kulchur 194). At the end of his Cantos, with Pound himself believing his work was collaps- ing into incoherence, he referred to it as “a great ball of crystal” (CXVI. 815).1 Most intriguingly of all is Pound’s remark in a 1959 interview that up until the middle of the poem “it is a sort of detective story, and one is looking for the crime” (Makin 95). While this interpretation of his work is indeed ambiguous, it is interesting because it gives the poem (and by extension the history it purports to include) a firm narrative structure. As what Pound takes for his subject mat- ter is, essentially, the entirety of human history, the implication here is that some calamitous, yet hidden, crime against humanity has been committed, and it is up to both Pound and his readers to expose it: to identify, in other words, history’s great criminals. Pound first introduces the notion of crime in Canto XLVI. Peter Makin identi- fies this canto as the key turning point in the poem. Written in 1936, it certainly represents the middle of Pound’s career, and it is a little short of halfway through 1 In this essay I will be using the standard convention when quoting from The Cantos by giving the individual Canto followed by the page number in brackets. 414 James Dowthwaite the poem. Makin argues that it reads like a case for a prosecution, an interpreta- tion which certainly fits both the tone and semantic fields employed in the text (Makin 95): nineteen Years on this case, CRIME Ov two CENturies, 5 millions bein’ killed off to 1919, and before that Debts of the South to New York, that is to the banks of the city, two hundred million, war, I don’t think (or have it your own way…) about slavery? (XLVI. 231) The “crime” implied in this case is the influence that certain private financiers have supposedly had on government affairs. Pound’s historical revisionism here leads him to claim that the American Civil War was engineered as a result of Southern debt to northern banks. He continues later in the poem to name one of the culprits of this alleged crime: Said Mr Rothschild, hell knows which Roth-schild 1861, ’64 or there sometime, “Very few people “will understand this. Those who do will be preoccupied “getting profits. The general public will probably not “see it’s against their interest.” Seventeen years on this case; here Gents, is/are the confession. “Can we take this into court? “Will any jury convict on this evidence?” 1694 anno domini, on through the ages of usury On, right on, into hair-cloth, right on into rotten building Right on into London houses, ground rents, foetid brick work, Will any jury convict ’um? The Foundation of Regius Professors Was made to spread lies and teach Whiggery, will any JURY convict ’um? (XLVI. 233) As he does throughout his Cantos, Pound focuses on the activities of the Roths- child banking dynasty, using them as an index of what he saw as corrupt financial activities and the insidious political lobbying of powerful international capitalists. Combined with the previous extract, what emerges in the middle of Pound’s poem is a famous Jewish banking dynasty exploiting international arms trade deals and wars for economic gain: a trope that is recognizable across the political spectrum to this day. That Pound’s interest in and endorsement of fascism as a political ideology in the 1930s is intimately linked with the development of allegedly anti-Semitic sentiments in his poetry and prose is of course beyond doubt. Equally, there is a pronounced increase in the voracity of Pound’s political remarks in the period fol- lowing the enactment of the Fascist Race Laws in Italy in 1938. We must be cau- tious, however, of identifying Pound’s anti-Jewish remarks as little more than a di- rect result of his engagement with fascism. David Barnes has similarly pointed out CRIME Ov two CENturies 415 that the tension a reader may note between Pound’s literary sensibility and output and Fascist aesthetics was not one that the author himself would have recognized. Barnes writes, “in his mind, the sharp lines of modernism seem to have been equated or even interchangeable with the totalitarian politics of Nazi Fascism,” a point that suggests a whole series of aesthetic and political correspondences drew Pound to Mussolini and (partially) Hitler, rather than anti-Semitism itself (32). Michael North has also noted that political anti-Semitism plays an important role across the spectrum, particularly in both anti-Capitalist and anti-Communist critiques: The Jewish figment makes possible a critique so illogical that it would otherwise evapo- rate of its own. Capitalism is blamed for dominating society, but also for having brought the proletariat into being as a threat against the stability of society. The uncomfortable position of fascism; both capitalistic and anti-capitalistic, is exposed here. But it is also true that fascism uses the specter of the Jew to obscure a contradiction it was itself ex- acerbating. The dual critique against modern society as regimented and centralized but also fragmented and anarchistic does rest on some basis in actuality. Fascism came to power in part by claiming to resolve this contradiction, but the anti-Semitic campaign of such as Pound confess its inability to do so. Anti-Semitism allows such as Pound to continue to criticize modernity from incompatible points of view without making good on fascism’s claim to resolve them into one. (173-74) The figure of the capitalist Jew performs a political function, then, as both a focal point for all ideological grievance and as a distraction from intrinsic inconsis- tencies. North’s critique of Pound’s anti-Semitism revolves around general ideo- logical arguments, but in many ways Pound’s own statements on capitalism are more particular. Pound’s treatment of Jewishness, in fact, may point towards the non-revolutionary principles which he applies to his politics and ideology, namely, anti-corruption. For Pound, it is not that Jewish figures are themselves embodi- ments of rival ideologies or political systems, but rather that they have corrupted otherwise desirable systems. It is this corrupt aspect that Pound focuses on, and around which his political, ideological, and aesthetic thoughts converge. Pound was not a strict anti-Capitalist, nor a strict Totalitarian, and he preferred to rely on both discourses to solve individually diagnosed problems. Massimo Bacigalupo has noted the pragmatic and conservative nature of Pound’s economic theories, suggesting that they tend away from radical social change, and instead converge on “the socially and racially differentiated type of Jewish banker” (54). Pound’s objections to unbridled capitalism, when made, focused on corruption, and sel- dom on intrinsic, systemic problems. Pound’s focus on the Rothschilds, and his interest in solving a “crime” that has supposedly corrupted the progress of humanity in its interaction with culture, nature, and economics, forms an essential part of the narrative of The Cantos. The crime motif introduced in Canto LXVI corresponds with a narrative of cor- ruption in its insistence on exposure as solution: if Pound’s Cantos can lay bare the nature of corruption and conspiracy, then not only does society have a document with which to rediscover its purity but the poem (and the history it contains) has a clear narrative structure. In this paper, I will explore the ways in which Pound’s use of a conspiracy theory alleging the existence of an international Jewish cabal 416 James Dowthwaite manipulating world politics is not simply an anti-Semitic trope amended to the poem but is an essential part of its narrative arc and cultural vision. The conspiracy theory in which groups such as the Rothschilds have corrupted financial institutions has two roles inThe Cantos.
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