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

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“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 supposed 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 human 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 historical 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 matter 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 identifies 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 interpretation 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 following 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 direct 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 ideological 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 corruption 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. First, it clarifies and focuses the historical vision of the poem, and second, it provides villainous figures, themselves functioning in part to draw the literary-narrative and chronological threads of the poem together in a kind of historical story. It is not the function of literary criticism to act as a judiciary, and it is not the intention of this essay to pronounce Pound “guilty” of any crime (indeed, even judicially speaking, Pound was not on trial for anti-Semitism); rather, it seeks to explore the extent to which anti-Semitic theories influenced his poetic work. The Cantos employ a variety of poetic forms that are notoriously difficult to read. Even Pound’s portrayal of history in the poem is difficult to follow. Passages move backwards and forwards in time according to subject matter, and ideas, principles, and events emerge in fluctuating temporal sequences. Sean Pryor’s succinct and beautiful description of the form of Canto XVII may well be read as a meton- ymy for the entire poem: “rather than making a clear narrative with discrete steps, it winds from qualification to qualification, detail to detail” (71). This repetitive, or cyclical, logic is indicative of much of literary modernism, and it creates a series of narrative patterns that disrupt the chronology of human history in order to focus on the profundity of individual or recurrent details. This is not to say, however, that readers cannot discern chronology in Pound’s work. In terms of subject matter, Pound negotiates between permanence, recurrence, and narrative. Simply because historical events do not unfold chronologically is not to say that Pound does not engage with historical narratives. It is worth remembering that part of Pound’s poetic celebrity was his ability to combine different poetic and narrative forms. David Ten Eyke has identified three poetic modes that Pound employs in his “documentary cantos” (those such as the Malatesta Cantos, or the Adams Cantos of the 1920s and 1930s which revolve around quotation from historical documents), but which are valid models for considering Pound’s poetics more broadly. First, there is the “lyrical mode,” which is used in “those moments when the material circumstances of a given historical complex modulate into a vision of timeless ideas or principles” (44). There is, secondly, a “narrative mode,” which Ten Eyke claims is “tied to the march of historical events” and which “maintains the flexibility needed to summarize heterogeneous material in a unified account or to dramatize a given event” (44). Finally, there is the documentary mode, which functions “in the space delineated by a written text,” and revolves primarily around citation (44). Although these modes are essentially intractable, this essay will be primarily concerned with the “narrative mode,” as the conspiracy theory around which anti-Semitism co- alesces relies upon an interpretation of human history as betrayed at given points; a rise-and-decline vision of civilization. While this is indeed a cyclical vision, it nonetheless relies on chronological narratives within its given spaces. There has been a great deal of critical discussion about Ezra Pound’s alleged anti-Semitism. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the decades following Pound’s death, critical distance allowed more thorough discussions than earlier scholars were perhaps able to perform. Robert Casillo’s famous A Genealogy of Demons CRIME Ov two CENturies 417

(1987) and Tim Redman’s Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism (1991) are seminal studies for understanding the cultural and historical (and intellectual) context of Pound’s views. In his The Poetics of Fascism, Mark Morrison attempts to bridge the ideological, cultural and political aspects of Pound’s writing, warning us that “Pound’s political commitments do not simply taint a greatness that nevertheless rises, phoenixlike, above them,” but rather that they cannot be extracted from the poetry, and that we should similarly avoid allowing condemnation to obscure critical discussion (4). It is not my intention to contradict the work of any of these scholars, all of whom provide essential insights into the way in which Pound’s political and poetic works converged. However, most discussions of Pound’s politics have focused on the relationship between fascism and anti-Semitism. While this is indeed an essential relationship, a too close association between the two risks seeing the latter as an adjunct of the former. Nazism and Fascism are not the only political projects to make use of an anti-Semitic narrative, nor were explicitly political projects the only source of twentieth-century anti-Semitism: so-called “casual” anti-Semitism may be less political and less overt, but it no less advocates a cultural narrative of difference, conspiracy, and corruption.

The Origins of Pound’s anti-Semitic Sentiments

As David Moody points out in the first volume of his biography, Ezra Pound: Poet, there is little evidence of anti-Jewish thought in Pound’s writing prior to the 1930s (371). While this may be because Pound’s sentiments changed as a result of his engagement with fascism, there is a dearth of critical evidence because prior to around 1930, his side of his correspondence in the archives is relatively less rich. Certainly, J. J. Wilhelm, in his The American Roots of Ezra Pound, concludes that his anti-Semitism was “intellectually generated” as a result of his experiences in Europe, and was not, he believes, directly related to his upbringing in Philadel- phia (75). Wendy Flory similarly sees Pound’s anti-Semitism in the context of his psychological state in the build-up to, and duration of, World War Two. Her essay, “Pound and anti-Semitism,” contains two particularly useful warnings for those readers who explore Pound’s views: first, and most significantly, she notes that the post-war focus on Pound’s prejudices has served as a “stand in for all those individuals of the silent majority” in pre-war Europe, the analysis of whose views and their effects she believes requires a more difficult and more balanced analysis (300). Second, she points out that actual instances of outright anti-Semitism in Pound’s work are not numerous. While this may be true, as Timothy Yu has suggested in his “Modernist Poetry and Race,” this “quantifying” is useful in deter- mining Pound’s guilt but it does not explain “how racial discourse shapes Pound’s work” (101), which is the concern of literary critics. This task is itself further complicated by the absence of any definitive sources for Pound’s attitudes. In order to broach the necessity of exploring the influence of anti-Semitism on Pound’s work with the important caveats that attend it, it is useful to explore the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes in the material conditions which surrounded him. 418 James Dowthwaite

Although the increase in anti-Semitic remarks in Pound’s work at the end of the 1930s mirrors that of the Fascist state (and Europe generally) in which he lived, it is worth examining these tendencies prior to that time. In his Anti- Semitism in America, Leonard Dinnerstein explains the myths surrounding the power of the Rothschild family in Europe and their long history in the United States. He describes how newspapers and other media outlets fuelled popular perceptions of the Rothschilds, concluding that by the end of the nineteenth century “the impression of the Rothschilds controlling enormous sums of money and governments held sway among the untutored and even among many educated Americans” (20-21). Similarly, mainstream politics reflected the influence of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The brief political successes of the Populist Party in the mid-1890s saw the promotion of a more demagogic anti-Semitism which went hand-in-hand with anti-Capitalist critique. In his Concise History of American Antisemitism, Robert Michael outlines how the shared presidential election platform of the Populist and Democratic Parties in 1896 saw the conflu- ence of conservative Christian anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitic bent of populist anti-Capitalist critique, particularly in the figure of its presidential nomi- nee, William Jennings Bryan. Michael notes how Bryan attempted to distance himself from charges of anti-Semitism by declaring that his campaign was not attacking a race but “greed, and avarice which knows no race or religion” (93). Essentially, such a view simultaneously dismisses as coincidental the shared ethnic or religious background of the figures it attacks whilst also ignoring the openly anti-Semitic beliefs of many of its proponents. Betsy Erkkila also draws on the link between Pound’s background and the populist campaign of 1896, noting that in that year Pound’s first published poem, a limerick entitled “By E. L. Pound, Wyncote, aged 11 years” which appeared in the Jenkintown Times- Chronicle, was about Bryan (xlvi). The fact remains, however, that there is little or no trace of any racial prejudices in his critical writing and his poetry during his early career. In fact, Pound is remarkably apolitical prior to the First World War, after which, due perhaps to the influence of his colleagues at London’s New Age magazine, for whom he had written a number of wartime articles, his politics became increasingly radical. After the war, affected by the experiences and deaths of acquaintances, he became increasingly interested in European and American politics. Pound had been living in Britain for over a decade by this point and, as William Brustein notes, the United Kingdom of the early twentieth century similarly provided fer- tile ground for anti-Semitic sentiments to grow. The notion that prominent Jewish families held undue influence over David Lloyd George’s Liberal British government (which may well be the source of Pound’s attack on “whiggery” in Canto XLVI) had taken hold in populist political circles. Brustein claims that “the prime culprits targeted here were wealthy London Jewish families, including the Roth- schilds, Sassons, Cassels, Hirschs, Levy-Lawsons, Simons, Samuels, Montagus, Abrahams, and Isaacs” (297). The binding of Jewish names to allegations of undue political and financial influence was thus a common feature in the political atmosphere. The notion of a “crime” of history and its guilty culprits was long established by the time of Pound’s turn towards the theory. CRIME Ov two CENturies 419

Under the influence ofThe New Age’s editor, A. R. Orage, Pound became increasingly interested in the economic theories of C. H. Douglas, whose general theory can be summarized as the belief that the economic exploitation of the arms trade by international capitalists kept the world in a state of perpetual war whilst also keeping wages low and exploiting workers. Indeed, Canto LXVI opens in Orage’s office, marking a close connection between Pound’s interest in this theory and his vision of human history. This anti-Capitalist argument was a belief that ranged across the political spectrum, and for this reason, looking solely to Pound’s interest in the far right may limit avenues of critical exploration. Douglas developed an alternative economic theory, Social Credit, in which money was to be replaced by stamp scripts as evidence of work done, thus miti- gating against the supposedly unfair profiteering of international capitalism. As Janine Stingel demonstrates in her study of Social Credit as a political force in Canada, Social Discredit (2000), the movement was for the vast portion of the twentieth century bound up with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, ranging from publicising the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to claiming that international bankers manipulated military efforts in the First World War (187). In his An- ti-Semitism in British Society, 1876-1939, Colin Holmes writes that “the Social Credit Movement, under the driving force of Major C. H. Douglas, placed a stress upon a total reform of the financial system and in the course of presenting such a program showed a clear hostility to Jews” (209). Douglas himself outlined the suspicions he held surrounding Jewish people in a major explanation of his movement, Social Credit (1924, republished 1933):

No consideration of this subject would be complete without recognising the bearing upon it of what is known as the Jewish Question; a question rendered doubly difficult by the conspiracy of silence which surrounds it. At the moment it can only be pointed out that the theory of rewards and punishments is Mosaic in origin; that finance and law derive their main inspiration from the same source, and that countries such as prewar Germany and postwar Russia, which exhibit the logical consequences of unchecked collectivism, have done so under the direct influence of Jewish leaders. Of the Jews themselves, it may be said that they exhibit the race-consciousness idea to an extent unapproached elsewhere, and it is fair to say that their success in many walks of life is primarily due to their adaptation to an environment which has been moulded in conformity with their own ideal. That is as far as it seems useful to go, and there may be a great deal to be said on the other side. It has not yet, I think, been said in such a way as to dispose of the suggestion, which need not necessarily be an offensive suggestion, that the Jews are the protagonists of collectivism in all its forms, whether it is camouflaged under the name of Socialism, Fabianism, or “big business,” and that the opponents of collectivism must look to the Jews for an answer to the indictment of the theory itself. It should in any case be emphasised that it is the Jews as a group, and not as individuals, who are on trial, and that the remedy, if one is required, is to break up the group activity (11).

This is a particularly important insight into the nature of Anglophone anti-Sem- itism in the early twentieth century. Douglas’s attempts to distance himself from any prejudice faced by individual Jewish people seems particularly prescient, and Pound’s own writing on this matter follows a similar vein. Undoubtedly, the strain of political radicalism in Douglas was driven, at least in part, by conspiracy theories. Holmes summarizes the importance that Jewishness held for Douglas, writ- 420 James Dowthwaite ing of how Jewish “exclusiveness” had “resulted in the breeding of a race which was far more homogenous than any other and which tended to think in an overall way” (209). This racial essentialism was by no means uncharacteristic of figures on both the left and right of British and North American politics in the 1920s and 1930s, but its combination with economic radicalism and social ambivalence is striking. Holmes continues by suggesting that, according to Douglas, “the Jewish community was an ideal vehicle through which those seeking power could achieve their ends” (209). Thus, Douglas’s distrust of Jewishness was established, perhaps most disturbingly of all, as a pragmatic political tool. Pound paid great attention to Douglas’s economic theories. As E. P. Walkie- wicz and Hugh Witemeyer suggest, “Douglas’s program rhymed at many points with the Populist-Progressive tradition in which Pound was brought up,” and thus his “conversion was not, therefore, an entirely new departure” (7). There is some debate over whether Pound’s personal upbringing could be described as “Popu- list-Progressive,” as his grandfather, whom he greatly admired, was a Republican senator. It is clear, however, that Pound’s sympathies on various issues aligned with the popular movement during his youth. Having been inducted into Doug- las’s ideas in the offices of the New Age, Pound disseminated his works and ideas amongst friends and acquaintances, wrote regular columns for various pro-Social Credit journals such as The New English Weekly, and even went so far as to dedi- cate a portion of Canto XXXVIII to explaining the key tenets of Social Credit. Although there is no concrete evidence that Pound developed anti-Semitic beliefs as a direct result of his engagement with Douglas, C. David Heymann attests that Orage himself was keen to imply to both Pound and Douglas that the majority of British wealth was concentrated in the hands of a predominantly Jewish minor- ity, an idea which he claims would later become an obsession for the poet (35). Certainly, it seems inconceivable that the correspondences in their thought and arguments did not similarly coalesce around this point given its prominence in the work of both men. It is highly likely, therefore, that Pound’s political sentiments were drawn as much from the populist politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they were from his engagement with totalitarian ideologies. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1930s, Pound’s politics not only became more prominent but also increasingly inflected with racial ideas. Pound was particularly interested in the anthropological implications of the German ethnologist Leo Frobenius, although Pound as disciple focused on race to a greater extent than Frobenius did in his studies. In 1938, Pound published a critical book on the subject of race, culture, and language: Guide to Kulchur. Pound was interested in Frobenius’s notions of paideuma and kulturmophologie. Paideuma was, for Pound, essentially those unique aspects of a race or culture that become embedded in artefacts and, particularly, literature and language. Kulturmorphologie, he took it, was the way that culture changes and relates with other cultures across time and space. Examples of this anthropological approach can be seen in the following passages: The study of savages has in our time come to be regarded as almost the sole guide to anglo-Saxon psychology. If we reflect on African or Oriental vagueness as to time, if we reflect on what is often called “feminine” lack of punctuality among our more irritating CRIME Ov two CENturies 421

acquaintances, it shd. not unduly astonish us that the idea of a MEASURE of value has taken shape slowly through human consciousness. (162-63) Later in the text Pound tends towards more pejorative discussions of supposed ethnic differences: No adequate study yet exists of the effect of Law-worship as pervertive. It wd., I think, be impossible wholly to segregate racial tropism in such a study. The near eastern races that have evolved code worship in lieu of truth worship, form, or could be categorized as a group to themselves – to be treated re tropism pure, or as examples of arrested development. (163-64) Pound outlines the necessity of Frobenius’s work for understanding his view of the modern world, claiming that this kind of racialist thinking constitutes rigorous scholarship, performing a function for humanity akin to biological classifications. For Pound, racial hatred is a separate point entirely, running against the scientific ethos of Frobenius’s work: Race prejudice is a red herring. The tool of man defeated intellectually, and of the cheap politician. No one will deny that the jews [sic] have racial characteristics, better or worse ones. (242) This quotation has often been used to dissociate Pound from the worst excesses of political anti-Semitism. However, as condemnation, were this Pound’s intention, “race prejudice is red herring” is remarkably weak. While it undoubtedly shows that Pound had no appetite to judge a man or woman on account of their race, it still implies that the judgement of race is permissible. Pound’s fascism does not necessarily indicate racial prejudice, not least as, prior to 1938, Italian Fascism largely lacked Nazism’s anti-Semitic bent. That being the case, however, Pound did himself combine Italian Fascism with race-based ethnology on his own. He continues, writing: The use, and more than use, the NEED of Frobenius’ dissociation shows at this juncture. Whatever one think of his lists of symptoms, Hammite, Shemite, etc he rhymes with Dante “che’l giudeo fra voi di boi non ride”. It is useless for the anglo saxon [sic] to revile the jew for beating him at his own game. (243) Note that “anglo saxon” is ambiguous here, the boundary between race and nation being blurred in the discussion. Whether or not this calls for prejudice against Jewish people, it marks them out as sinister and corrupt in such a way that prejudice against them is given an intellectual force. Jean-Michel Rabaté has suggested that the quotation from Dante’s Paradiso (V. 81), which roughly translates as “that the Jew amongst you should not laugh at you,” has been “rightly glossed as a praise of cultural difference and not envy or hatred,” but in the light of Pound’s developing views during this period, this seems an optimistic assessment (48). In- stead, it is a symbol of Pound’s ambivalence. Much like his dismissal of race prejudice as a “red herring,” his choice of “useless” rather than “wrong” would suggest that he is thinking in practical terms, rather than politically harmonious ones. Pointing out Pound’s support for Mussolini, Hitler, and numerous of their aco- lytes, as well as those philosophers and ethnologists who used racial theory, is evidence of his political extremism and, perhaps more poignantly, the attendant 422 James Dowthwaite dangers of his economic radicalism. It is not, however, evidence of anti-Semitism and its centrality to his project. Indeed, as the 1930s progressed and eventually passed into the war years, Pound’s faith in the political and economic theories upon which his poem hinged increased to such an extent as to lead to a kind of ideological dogmatism that would have been anathema to his younger self. Whereas in the early 1930s his presentation of Jewish people was something of an ambivalent curiosity, his distinctions between usurious bankers and arms dealers who happen to be Jewish, individual Jewish people, and Jewishness itself, collapse into conflation in the latter part of the decade.

The Presentation of Jewishness in The Cantos

If we assume that anti-Semitic sentiments begin to appear in Pound’s work at a certain point around the early 1930s, then it is useful to trace the arc of his treatment of Jewish people or characters in the poem across the whole of the decade, culminating in the ambivalent presentations in The Pisan Cantos. Pound’s first significant mention of Jewish people occurs in Canto XXII, first published with A Draft of Cantos 17-27 in 1928, although it was probably written between 1926 and 1927. In Canto XXII, Pound writes of his experiences in Gibraltar in 1908, where he worked briefly as a guide for American tourists. The canto takes the form of vignettes, drawn from his own experiences and his reading about Gibraltar, although it opens in nineteenth-century America, with a description of economic arguments and the implication that exploitation of the arms trade was the cause of most wars. There are two brief vignettes that concern the presentation of Jewish life. The first is an account of a conversation between Pound, an American tourist, and a young Jewish man called Yusuf, of whom Pound remained very fond for the rest of his life, followed by a visit to a synagogue. The humorousness of the piece, coupled with the rich description of the religious service, would not seem to hint at any deeply held prejudice: And another day on the pier Was a fat fellah from Rhode Island, a-sayin’: “Bi Hek! I been all thru Italy An ain’t never been stuck! “But this place is plumb full er scoundrels.” And Yusuf said: Yais? An’ the reech man In youah countree, haowa they get their money; They no go rob some poor pairsons? And the fat fellah shut up, and went off. And Yusuf said: Woat, he iss all thru Eetaly An’ ee is nevair been stuck, ee ees a liar. W’en I goa to some forain’s country I am stuck. W’en yeou goa to some forain’s country You moss be stuck; w’en they come ‘ere I steek thaim. And we went down to the synagogue, All full of silver lamps And the top gallery stacked with old benches; CRIME Ov two CENturies 423

And in came the levite and six little choir kids And began yowling the ritual As if it was crammed full of jokes, And they went through a whole book of it; And in came the elders and the scribes About five or six and the rabbi And he sat down, and grinned, and pulled out his snuff-box, And sniffed up a thumb-full, and grinned, … And then they got out the scrolls of the law And had their little procession And kissed the ends of the markers. (XXII. 104-105) The intensity and beauty of Pound’s description make it clear that the scene left an impression on him. While the mockery of dialect and pronunciation is unpalat- able to us today, it is worth noting that the “eye dialect” that Pound employs for Yusuf is used for all people in the poem, including himself. Pound would later recall this scene during his internment, writing in the Pisan Cantos of how “in the Synagogue in Gibraltar/ the sense of humour seemed to prevail” (LXXVI. 474), and the general tone of this piece seems respectful. It is rather curious that this passage should be followed by another brief vignette detailing a discussion with another Gibraltarian acquaintance: An’ the nigger in the red fez, Mustafa, on the boat later An’ I said to him: Yusuf, Yusuf’s a damn good feller. And he says: “Yais, he ees a goot fello, “But after all a chew ees a chew”. (XXII. 105) It is, of course, perfectly plausible that Pound is simply recounting the prejudice of his acquaintance and that we are not meant to read this line as anything more than fragments of conversations that were in the air at the time. Indeed, Pound might simply be attempting to represent the curiosity of ethnic differences he en- countered in Gibraltar at the time and little more. It is difficult to accept this, however, when we look at the poem retrospectively. The act of seeing someone as essentially bound to their race is one that Pound repeats numerous times in both The Cantos and his critical work. Although those points do not compromise this piece, it does give the modern reader a strange sense of foreboding. The next major treatment of Jewish identity is in Canto XXXV. It is difficult to date this canto exactly, but Carroll Terrell notes that Pound’s conversation with “Mr Corles” (whom he identifies as the Austrian writer Alfred Perles) took place in 1934 (139-40). The frame of references in the canto place it firmly in Austria, the site of Pound’s “Mitteleuropa.” Pound details the malcontent amongst Aus- trian society at the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its defeat in the First World War. Although Pound’s interest in the arms trade had led him towards a conspiratorial reading of international relations, his interest in unfolding political events seems to have cemented his suspicions. Cultural and personal discon- 424 James Dowthwaite tents pervade the canto, and Austrian society is presented as fractious and unsta- ble, bitter at the collapse of both society and imperial power. The vignettes adopt the conversational tone that Pound employs in much of the mock epic modes of The Cantos as a whole, with “and” casually employed to link separate events in a chain of loosely assorted anecdotes. The first concerns how Mr Corles escaped punishment for a dereliction of his duties during the First World War. According to this account, Corles/Perles escaped punishment and was sent to a sanatorium due to the influence of his “bourgeois” family. It should be noted that Perles was Jewish. The second anecdote details the reservations a Mr Fidascz, whom Terrell claims is the musician Tibor Serly, held about the conductor Leopold Stokowski, whom Pound calls Nataanovitch in order to avoid censorship (140). Stokowski was not Jewish but there are hints that he is stylized as so for the purposes of the poem. While -ovitch (or -vitz) was a common Slavic name ending, meaning “son of,” and thus could apply to Jewish and non-Jewish people alike, the combination with Nataan, which seems to be an elongated form of Natan (the Hebrew form of Nathan), could indicate Jewish identity. Pound then moves on to the lament of “Fraulein Doktor” over the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Terrell claims that this is an acquaintance of Pound’s called “Marie Stiasny” whom he may have met in his trip to Vienna in 1928 (140). It is also possible that Pound could be referring to Eugenie Schwarzwald, a Vien- nese socialite of Jewish extraction whose literary salon he attended between April 28 and June 15, 1928, where he met the photographer Bill Brandt (Delany 48). Eugenie Schwarzwald was among the first women to receive a university educa- tion in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in 1900 earned her PhD before engag- ing in Viennese literary and cultural society. Robert Musil, Elias Canetti, and George Antheil all attended her salon. However, she married in 1900, and so the title “Fraulein” would have been inappropriate. Either way, Eugenie Schwarz- wald’s salon would at the very least have introduced Pound to the Viennese ar- tistic and high society he here describes. It would, furthermore, make a plausible setting for much of the canto. Moreover, the casual discussion of Jewish identity in ambivalent tones would similarly suit the atmosphere of the salon. Interestingly, Wolfgang Maderthaner and Lisa Silverman point out that “there are indications that an engagement with…universal antisemitic discourse was necessary for full participation in Viennese society between the wars” and show that “even Eugenie Schwarzwald…identified herself as an anti-Semite as a way of positioning herself in society” (64). Schwarzwald was, nevertheless, forced to flee Austria in 1938 after the Anschluss due to her Jewish heritage. One of the most interesting things about Canto XXXV is Pound’s combination of sympathy and amusement. His portrayal displays both affection and distance. On the other hand, there is little characterization of the culture of Viennese high society, and the poem seems to index a series of Austrian lamentations, remi- niscent of Eliot’s opening in his The Waste Land. Unlike Eliot, however, Pound satirizes the lamentation of the fall of Austria-Hungary: And the Fraulein Doktor nearly wept over the Tyrol, being incapable of seeing that the century old joke on Italia was now on somebody else CRIME Ov two CENturies 425

though if they cd. sentimentalize over that lousy old bewhiskered sonvabitch Francois Giuseppe of whom nothing good is recorded – in fact with the most patient research - nothing good is recorded……and so forth… this is Mitteleuropa and Tsievitz has explained to me the warmth of affections, the intramural, the almost intravaginal warmth of hebrew affections, in the family, and nearly everything else… pointing out that Mr Lewinsholme has suffered by deprivation of same and exposure to American snobbery…”I am a product,” said the young lady, “of Mitteleuropa”. (XXXV. 172-73) Again, Pound relies on a witty ambivalence toward grave matters of international concern to great populations appears, such as the passing of the Tyrol from Aus- tria to Italy at the end of World War One. More concerning is the association of “hebrew affections,” by which Pound means a closeness (and separateness, too, perhaps) of identity around familial or fraternal lines as well as its attendant emo- tions, with the state of “Mitteleuropa.” The terms with which Pound describes “hebrew affections,” here figured as uncouth bodily functions and later as “some communal life of the pancreas,” are a cause for alarm. Tsievitz has not yet been identified by Poundian scholarship, but Mr Lewinsholme is Richard Lewinsohn, a German-Jewish journalist whose work on the arms trader, Basil Zaharoff, would become important for Pound (Terrell 140). Similarly, the “young lady” who is quite obviously taken to be representative of those “hebrew affections” is thought to be a Judith Cohen, whose family Pound knew (140). In the latter case, Pound’s description has an element of affection itself, resulting in a somewhat conflicting attempt to both implicate and exonerate Jewish identity in the development of the condition of modern Austria. This contradiction is evident a few lines later in the conflation of two accounts of other Jewish characters. The lack of delicacy in the shifts between Pound’s comic, parodic modes and his moralistic vitriol make it difficult to discern the nature of the accounts given here, but it is likely that Pound is trying to strike a tone of gentle mockery: Mr Elias said to me: “How do you get inspiration? “Now my friend Hall Caine told me he come on a case “a very sad case of a girl in the East End of London “and it gave him an i n s p i r a t i o n. The only “way I get inspiration is occasionally from a girl, I “means sometimes sitting in a restaurant and looking at a pretty girl I “get an i-de-a, I-mean-a biz-nis i-de-a?” dixit sic felix Elias? (XXXV. 173-74) It is worth pointing out that although the name Elias is used by people of a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds, Pound most often associated this name with the prophet Elijah (LXXVIII). Similarly, the phrase “biz-nis i-de-a” will be re- 426 James Dowthwaite called in a later context with equally sinister associations. In this case, the notion of Jewish people getting business inspiration from seeing girls in restaurants, particularly in Vienna, is more than enough to recall contemporaneous propaganda that Jewish people were largely behind abuses in the sex trade. For example, in her Sexuality and German Fascism, Dagmar Herzog notes the effect that the existence of such myths in Vienna had in the development of Adolf Hitler’s anti-Sem- itism (79). This is not to suggest that Pound himself saw this anecdote as anything other than useful for satire, but such myths and ideas were a powerful propaganda tool for more influential and sinister political figures. The second vignette here concerns Pound’s account of a young Jewish painter whose acquaintance he met in Rapallo during the 1930s. Pound’s imitation of the Yiddish accent is in many ways a remarkable feat of eye-dialect, but, as with the instances in Canto XXII, this may index more than simple cultural difference:

The tale of the perfect schnorrer: a peautiful chewisch poy wit a vo-ice dot woult meldt dh heart offa schtone and wit a likeing for to make arht-voiks and ven dh oldt ladty wasn’t dhere any more and dey didn’t know why, tdhere ee woss in the oldt antique shop and nobodty knew how he got dhere and venn hiss brudder diet widout any bapers he vept all ofer dh garpet so much he had to have his clothes aftervards pressed and he ordered a magnificent funeral and tden zent dh pill to his vife But when they have high cheek-bones they are supposed to be Mongol. Eljen! Eljen Hatvany! He had ideals and he said to the general at the conference, “I introduce to you the head of the baker’s union. “I introduce to you the head of the brick layer’s union.” “Comment! Vous etes tombes si bas?” replied General Franchet de Whatshisname on behalf of the french royalist party, showing thus the use of ideals to a jewish Hungarian baron with a library (naturally with a library) and a fine collection of paintings? “We find the land overbrained.” (XXXV. 174) Pound’s ear for accents and languages is employed to extraordinary effect throughout The Cantos. He is able to compose a symphony of polyglossia, with the rhythmic flows and metrical contracts fading almost seamlessly into one another. This ability is the source of The Cantos’s aural richness, and a direct result of the poet’s effort to synthesize numerous cultures. On the surface, Pound is simply imitating the accent of an acquaintance in order to bring about a humorous effect—a kind of crass albeit literary observational comedy. There is an element of ridicule to Pound’s imitation of Yiddish accents, even if it is meant playfully. As one of few actual representations of Jewish people in The Cantos, the name- less voice is not introduced or presented with the level of cultural respect afforded to a number of other cultures. The line “wit a likeing for to make arht-voiks” is CRIME Ov two CENturies 427 both ridiculous and excessive in its tone as well as dismissive in its phrasing. In a sense, how Pound imitates the accent with a sense of ridicule is not the interesting aspect here, but rather the fact that he chooses to do it in the first place. The thrust of the canto up until this point has been the suggestion that Jewish people isolate and contain themselves within a kind of “intramural” community within “Mitteleuropa.” This passage may intend to do the same, but in reality it is Pound setting them apart with the mispronunciation of the words. As the passage itself is of little importance in terms of form, it becomes a performance of identity in pure sound, with the unusual sounds offset against the fluent English of the text; it thus indexes difference. Of course this emphasis of difference is by no means a racialist position in and of itself. Pound’s relativism led him to respect and even celebrate cultural difference. In the poem, however, this often manifests itself as a kind of profiling. These essentialist positions may seem relatively harmless in casual conversation, but the existence of extremist anti-Semitic or racist groups, with whom Pound did have cursory contact, expand this casual essentialism into wider philosophies.2 Pound is not responsible, of course, for any physical violence or even racial abuse suffered by any person during his lifetime. He is responsible, however, for delineating a worldview, powerful in its rhetoric and legitimized in its philosophical vision, in which essential difference is emphasised in a hierarchy of values. Although there are many indications of Pound’s tendency towards conspiratorial thinking throughout Eleven New Cantos and The Fifth Decad of Cantos, Can- to LII is the most significant. In this poem, Pound deploys a series of tropes that make it difficult to dismiss the centrality of his prejudice. Canto LII is ostensibly about the relationship between Chinese law, myth, and natural order, with Pound drawing on both ancient Chinese texts and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholarship to present a nation in both political and natural harmony. The poem opens, however, with a presentation of the usurious nature (as Pound saw it) of twentieth-century Europe and America. And I have told you how things were under Duke Leopold in Siena, and of the true basis of credit, that is, the abundance of nature with the whole folk behind it. ‘Goods that are needed’ said Schacht (anno sedici) commerciabili beni, deliverable things that are wanted, neschek is against this, the serpent. (LII. 257) Judaism is indexed in the phrase “neschek,” the Hebrew word for “interest” or, in certain cases, “usury.” While taken in isolation, Pound’s use of “neschek” may be an attempt to imbue the passage with the powerful conviction of Old Testa- ment law. However, it is difficult to see it as anything other than a marker of Jew- ishness when it is combined with his earlier pronouncements on Jewish people and with what follows in the text. Furthermore, its spelling in German phonetics,

2 For an extended account of this, see Alec Marsh, John Kasper and Ezra Pound: Saving the Republic (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). 428 James Dowthwaite rather than English, and its appearance after a quotation from Hjalmar Schacht, at the time the German minister for Economics and President of the Reichsbank, would seem to indicate political sectarianism. In this vein, the word “folk” loses its pastoral English associations and becomes inflected with the force of German propaganda. From here, Pound continues to a more explicit discussion of Jewish people with the famous lines: “Stinkschuld’s sin drawing vengeance, poor yitts paying for Stinkschuld/ paying for a few big jews’ vendetta on goyim” (LII. 257). These lines are often quoted as an example of Pound’s justification for his anti-Semitism. Essentially, he argues that it is not all Jewish people that he considers the en- emy of civilization and peace, but simply certain powerful ones. While this may distance him from a more totalizing anti-Semitism, the explicit linking of political hatred with ethnicity still marks his beliefs as anti-Semitic. “Stinkschuld” is a thinly veiled reference to the Rothschild family, whose banking activities were (and in some cases remain) a central focus for proponents of Jewish conspiracy theories. Hugh Kenner reads this passage as evidence of Pound’s political toler- ance, claiming that “Hitler jailed no Rothschilds, and Pound thought that the poor Jews whom German resentment drove into concentration camps were suffer- ing for the sins of their inaccessible correligionists” (465). Kenner assumes, quite logically, that Pound’s use of “poor” in this passage is sympathetic. However, its combination with the prejorative term “yitts” covers the semantic sympathy with tonal mockery. Second, it assumes that Pound has an argument to make with re- gard to the Rothschilds. Third, and perhaps most significantly, it subtly shifts the focus away from Pound and on to the activities of the Rothschilds themselves. Pound’s use of “Stinkschuld” also has darker connotations beyond the insult- ing nature of the name and its use to indicate conspiracy theories. The first part, “stink,” is obvious in its crass mockery. The second part, however, is rather more revealing. “Schuld” in German roughly translates as “debt” or “guilt.” Whether or not Pound was aware of the notion of a “Blutschuld” (literally “blood debt”) is unclear, as his German amounted to little more than an educated smattering, but it does seem an unlikely coincidence that he would use this phrase in place of “Rothschild” unwittingly. “Blutschuld” can refer, of course, to the blood libel (a medieval conspiracy theory that claimed Jewish people used Christian blood in ritualistic sacrifice), even if only as a metaphor. Similarly, even taken at a superficial value, the word “vendetta” carries enough conspiratorial weight, but combined with the use of “schuld” and the medieval origins of Pound’s particular grievances in this canto, associations with the blood libel cannot be cast aside so readily. Nevertheless, it is important to stress here that Pound’s anti-Semitism was primarily economic and political, and there is nothing to suggest that he person- ally indulged in religious or mythical hatred of Jewish people. Given the depth of his interest in fascism and his cursory contact with Nazism, as well as his propaga- tion of conspiracy theories, however, it is a metaphoric field that comes with the territory. Kenner reads the use of Rothschild as an important marker that Pound is only against the actions of individuals who happen to be Jewish, and the necessity of the poet changing the names in order to appease the censors destroyed the CRIME Ov two CENturies 429 subtlety of his point and led to more general charges of anti-Semitism. Kenner claims that “it is a pity Pound’s distinction between the financiers and the rest of Jewry was not allowed to be emphasized while he was still in the habit of making it. Correctly or not, it attempted a diagnosis, and one tending to decrease than to encourage anti-Semitism” (465). This, too, however, is problematic. First, that Pound was attempting a kind of “diagnosis” is predicated on the notion that the problem which Pound attempts to diagnose is genuine. Rather, Pound’s attempt at a diagnosis is not the extraordinary point, but rather it is his conclusion, the “diagnosis” itself, which is under discussion. Second, while Kenner is correct in pointing out Pound’s distinction, it is unclear how this would decrease anti-Sem- itism. In Kenner’s formulation, Pound’s attitude towards Judaism is one in which certain individuals who happen to be Jewish are committing crimes for which the majority are unfairly blamed; an attitude which, according to Pound, is not in itself anti-Semitic. Reading Pound’s lines closely, however, it would seem that the obverse is the case. In Canto LII, Pound explicitly identifies the actions of international financial corruption and warmongering with Jewish identity, indexing Jewishness with various motifs, tropes, and linguistic markers (such as “neschek” or imitations of Yiddish accents). He does this in such a way as to make such a separation intractable and to give it a place in a historical narrative which offsets Jewishness against the practices of peaceful civilization. Pound’s personal friend- ship with individual Jewish people may, in this case, be predicated on his views on the irrelevance of their race, not its essential character.

Conspiracy Theory in the Radio Broadcasts and The Pisan Cantos

During the Second World War, Pound took a long hiatus from The Cantos and instead took up numerous positions writing and broadcasting propaganda on behalf on Mussolini’s government, as well as advocating American non-interven- tion as a private citizen. While Pound retained editorial control of the content, his broadcasts were by and large reflective of his confused state of mind and his constrained conditions as an American national living in an Axis country. His broadcasts are well known and contain some of his most virulent anti-Semitism. In “Zion,” broadcast in 1943, Pound deals most explicitly with an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: If or when one mentions the Protocols alleged to be of the Elders of Zion, one is fre- quently met with the reply: Oh, but they are a forgery. Certainly they are a forgery, and that is the one proof we have of their authenticity. The Jews have worked with forged documents for the past 24 hundred years, namely ever since they have had any documents whatsoever. And no one can qualify as a historian of this half century without having examined the Protocols. Alleged, if you like, to have been translated from the Russian, from a manuscript to be consulted in the British Museum, where some such document may or may not exist. (Radio Speeches 283) It is worth pausing on this remark. At first glance, Pound’s assertion seems non- sensical: he would seem to be suggesting that the texts were forged as a kind of exposure of a plot that would have otherwise remained hidden. The necessity of 430 James Dowthwaite their forgery, in other words, is proof of their general truth. In fact, Pound suggests that the situation of the war itself is proof of their general truth, as he remarks later in the speech, “the program contained in them has so crushingly gone into effect up to a point, or down to a squalor” (283). Furthermore, Pound assigns the Protocols a crucial historical role—as The Cantos take the history of Pound’s “half-century” as one of their main subjects, we may assume he was applying this remark to himself. Pound’s judgment that a forgery may expose itself as fundamental truth may seem counter-intuitive, and the reason for this may lie in Pound’s sources rather than his own logical exposition. Indeed, I would like to suggest that this remark does not come from Pound’s own judgment, but from that of Adolf Hitler, who had two decades earlier made a similar assessment: Wie sehr das ganze Dasein dieses Volkes auf einer fortlaufenden Lüge beruht, wird in unvergleichlicher Art in den von den Juden so unendlich gehaßten „Protokollen der Weisen von Zion“ gezeigt. Sie sollen auf einer Fälschung beruhen, stöhnt immer wieder die „Frankfurter Zeitung“ in die Welt hinaus: der beste Beweis dafür, daß sie echt sind. Was viele Juden unbewußt tun mögen, ist hier bewußt klargelegt. (Hitler 337)3 We know that Pound had at least read parts of Mein Kampf from the praise that he assigns it in his other radio broadcasts. Pound was not, however, a committed admirer of Hitler, and his praise for him is superficial at best. If we assume that his reading was similarly half-hearted, it follows that he would not pay full attention to Hitler’s precise meaning. It is also worth noting again that Pound was by no means fluent in German. In this extract, Hitler is calling the impartiality of the Frankfurter Zeitung, a journal later consistently attacked by the Nazi regime, into question. If the Frankfurter Zeitung declares the Protocols a forgery, so runs Hit- ler’s line of argument, then we may conclude that they are authentic. The Frank- furter Zeitung was founded by Leopold Sonnemann in 1856, who was of Jewish extraction, and it was a moderate, democratic paper which later supported the Treaty of Versailles and the establishment of the Weimar Republic. By missing this crucial part of the argument, Pound is forced to elaborate a more complicated thesis, but one which fits his historical narrative. In a later broadcast, Pound explains what he believes to be the true meaning of the Protocols. He suggests that their essential validity as a document comes from its raising of a series of questions, all of which focus on international capitalism led by Jewish bankers: Who are the lunatics? Was there a deliberate plot? That is what should concern you. WAS there a plot? How long had it been in existence? Does it continue, with its Leh mans, Morgenthaus, Baruchs? Proposals to send the darkies to Africa, to work for Ju- dea, and the rest of it? And WILL you, after Japan is thru with you, take on Russia? In order to maintain the banking monopoly? With Mr. Wille Wiseman, late of the British

3 “How much the whole existence of these people is based on a continuous lie is shown in incomparable style in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, so hated by the Jews. They are supposed to be a forgery, so moans the Frankfurter Zeitung out to the world: this is the finest proof that they are genuine. What many Jews do unconsciously, is here clearly exposed” (my own translation). CRIME Ov two CENturies 431

secret service, ensconced in Kuhn, Loeb and Co., to direct you and rule you? (Radio Speeches 284) A year earlier in a broadcast on April 30, 1942, Pound had advocated a “pogrom” at the “TOP” in response to this “plot” (though whether he means this meta- phorically is unclear; he certainly tended towards idealistic pacifism) by targeting what he called “big Jews”—the financiers Radio( Speeches 115). He said that a “pogrom” against “little jews,” or ordinary Jewish people, would be a mistake. Daniel Pearlman, reviewing the publication of Pound’s radio speeches in 1981, asked with particular force, “is the incitement to kill Jews any less ‘anti-Semitic’ simply because small Jews are to be exempted…or because the number suggested is limited?” (108). In a sense, whether or not this passage belongs to the same anti-Semitism as that which carried out actual, larger scale “pogroms” is not the matter at hand. Rather, it is significant because it is indicative of the extent to which Pound believed in the conspiracy theory he is articulating in this broadcast. Pound is here delineating a solution, pure rhetoric as it may well be, to the “crime” his poem attempts to explore. The implication of all this is that Pound’s anti-Semitism forms a central part of the presentation of humanity in The Cantos. At least in this strain of historical narrative, the poem hinges on notorious aspects of a Jewish conspiracy to exploit international relations. The Pisan Cantos are the most celebrated pieces of the entire poem. Some of Pound’s most beloved, poignant, touching and hauntingly beautiful lines are contained in these pieces, and for both their music and their literary history they are an extraordinary contribution to human culture. Similarly, although Pound is unrepentant about his actions—the poem’s famous opening lines lament the fall of Mussolini—and he does not waver too greatly from the positions he adopted during his propagandising for the Fascist regime, there is an element of apology that is lacking elsewhere. The memorable affirmation of Pound’s values in Canto LXXXI demonstrates the balanced tone of the Pisan sequences: To have gathered from the air a live tradition or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame This is not vanity. Here error is all in the not done, all in the diffidence that faltered (LXXXI. 542) This is perhaps a natural result of his confinement and imprisonment, but it is a striking change all the same. While anti-Semitic sentiment remains, Pound makes a concerted effort to engage in discussions about the future of the Jewish people. For all of the critical treatments of Pound’s views, this contradiction seems to me to need a resolution. In Canto LXXIV, for example, we find one of the most striking remarks on Jewishness in the entire poem: At 35 instead of 21.65 doubtless conditioned by what his father heard in Byzantium doubtless conditioned by the spawn of the gt. Meyer Anselm That old H. had heard from the ass eared militarist in Byzantium: “Why stop?” “To begin again when we are stronger.” and young H/ the tip from the augean stables in Paris 432 James Dowthwaite

with Sieff in attendance, or not, as the case may have been, thus conditioning. Meyer Anselm, a rrromance, yes, yes certainly But more fool you if you fall for it two centuries later … From their seats the blond bastards, and cast ’em the yidd is a stimulant, and the goyim are cattle in gt/ proportion and go to saleable slaughter with the maximum of docility. but if a place be versalzen…? With justice, by the law, from the law or it is not in the contract (LXXIV. 459-60)

Pound here repeats the suggestions that he made in the “Zion” broadcast but with more concrete examples: namely, that a cabal of bankers, predominantly Jewish (or described as so even if not), manipulate war for economic gain. This passage begins with Pound registering his disapproval of President Roosevelt’s Gold Re- serve Act 1934, which devalued the dollar by changing the value of gold from $20.65 (Pound was slightly mistaken) to $35 dollars. The possessive “his” here refers to Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who was Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasury, and whose economic policies and reforms Pound consistently disparaged. Mor- genthau was from one of American politics’ most prominent Jewish families and instrumental in refuge and relief efforts for European Jews. For Pound, the Gold Reserve Act was not simply an economic mistake, but was a calculated ploy resulting from sinister forces working on Morgenthau’s policies. Pound’s genealogy of this ploy is particularly interesting: Morgenthau’s dis- pensation toward corrupt economics was the result of “conditioning” from his father, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., who was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., in turn, Pound guesses, must have received this corruption from the “spawn” of “Meyer Anselm,” who is a thinly veiled replacement for Meyer Anshelm Rothschild, the founder of the great banking dynasty. Notice the combination of family connections and Jewish ethnicity: Pound repeats the focus on the “intramural,” familial closeness of Jewish identity established in Canto XXXV, although this time it is inflected with more explicit suspicions. I am not clear to what the line “the tip from the augean stables in Paris” refers, although Terrell is certain that “young H/” is Morgenthau, Jr., and “Sieff” is Israel Moses Sieff, the Manchester-based businessman and Zionist (379). The reference to Sieff would seem to imply that “Paris” refers to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, in which provisional plans for a Jewish state and an Arab state in the Middle East were agreed. As Pound seems to have known, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. did attend the Paris Peace Conference, although he was in fact opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state (whether or not Pound knew of his opposition to the creation of Israel is unclear and perhaps not particularly relevant to the argument). The in- ference seems to be that the Paris Peace Conference, during which the Treaty of Versailles was agreed upon, was the site of a concerted plan by the Allied powers, as well as by major Jewish interests, to develop a mutually beneficial world order. CRIME Ov two CENturies 433

The plan to unseat “the blond bastards” is again unclear, but following the implications of the references, we can read “blond” as a kind of populist shorthand for “Aryan.” Thus we see in the centre of The Pisan Cantos, the site of Pound’s supposed self-reflection and castigation, the manifestation of a crass version of anti-Semitic propaganda. Where Pound differs significantly, of course, is in his call for any crimes to be dealt with by the processes of law and justice, rather than political violence. Pound continues by invoking a biblical rule of law, relying on Leviticus in particular to suggest that Jewish culture has deviated from a noble tradition. He makes this point most forcefully in Canto LXXVI, recalling his experiences in the Gibraltar synagogue described in Canto XX.

So that in the synagogue in Gibraltar the sense of humour seemed to prevail during the preliminary parts of the whatever but they respected at least the scrolls of law from it, by it, redemption @ $8.50, @ $8.67 buy the field with good money no unrighteousness in meteyard or measure (of prices) and there is no need for Xtns to pretend that they wrote Leviticus chapter XIX in particular with justice Zion not by cheating the eye-teeth out of Don Fulano or of Caio e Tizio Why not rebuild it? (LXXVI. 474)

“It” in this case refers to the Temple of Jerusalem, but given that temples are an extended metaphor for the civic representation of Divine, or abstract, laws in The Cantos, it is unclear whether Pound intends this to be taken literally. Although Pound described himself as essentially “Zionist” in a letter from January 21, 1946 to his lawyer during his trial, he rarely turned this into a programmatic formulation (Cornell 77). Certainly, he made few pronouncements on the creation of Israel, and so the rebuilding of the Temple may be a metaphor for the re-establishment of what Pound sees as the ancient, Biblical Jewish tradition of justice, fairness, and measurement. In doing so, he offers a path to redemption from the corrupt activities of those whom he refers to as “big Jews.” Either way, this does not lessen the depth of Pound’s conspiratorial interpretations.

The Extent to Which Anti-Semitism was a Factor in The Cantos

The Cantos are not about anti-Semitism, and this conspiracy theory forms one strand amongst a rich and varied tapestry. It is not my intention to argue that it constitutes the entirety of the poem’s vision, but rather that is a powerful and con- stituent part of the poem’s historical and narrative structures during the crucial middle period of Pound’s career. It is clear that from around 1930 until at least 434 James Dowthwaite the conclusion of The Pisan Cantos, Pound pursues a narrative arc which alleges the following: for the last two centuries, from the establishment of the Rothschild banking dynasty onwards, the economic interests of financiers and international capitalists—who were primarily Jewish—have been the driving factor behind international conflicts. After Pound’s arrest and internment after the war, there is a notable decrease in political extremism in his published work. Pound’s politics in general become less pronounced, and the remaining three sections of The Cantos focus on the historical and cultural concerns of the poem. However, recent scholarship continues to show that Pound’s engagement with the far right continued after his internment, and his private correspondence is still inflected with prejudice. In his Ezra Pound and Fascist Propaganda (2013), Matthew Feldman explores the great depth to which Pound was embedded in the Fascist state. Feldman concludes that Pound “took fascist ideology seriously, and was thus taken seriously by leading activists in several far-right movements” (6). This conclusion is demonstrated in Alec Marsh’s Saving the Republic (2015), in which Marsh details Pound’s correspondence with John Kasper, an acolyte and publisher whose politics were inflected with anti-Semitic conspiracy and sympathy for the Ku Klux Klan. Never- theless, his public commentary on Jewish issues became less prominent, and he spent a great deal of the rest of his life answering charges of anti-Semitism. Pound’s worldview, as delineated in The Cantos, is one in which humanity needs to recover from a state of political and cultural corruption. The root cause of this, Pound believed, was usury, an activity permitted only of Jewish people in western society until the foundation of non-Jewish European banks. It is Jewish- ness that is used as a marker for those who belong to this supposed elite world order, and it is this antipathy towards Jewishness (and its association with under- hand conspiracy theory) that upholds the narrative of the conspiracy theory that Pound employs. It structures both history and text; these figures become concrete markers of an otherwise transcendent issue. It focuses the argument of the poem, and brings its political force to bear on individual “criminals.” In terms of Pound’s epic poem, the poet’s task is both to expose history’s villains and to chart humanity’s path to cultural recovery. In many ways, the reliance of the former on a historical campaign of forgery, prejudice, misidentification and fabrication set in motion a conspiracy which obfuscated and ultimately belied the latter. We can see that Pound reflects as much as he instigates, particularly in exploring the origins of his ideas and then tracing the development of conspiracy theory through the narrative mode of The Cantos. Anti-Semitism was commonplace in the early twentieth century, and it is perhaps to be expected that a poem which allied itself so fixedly to an axis power would reflect aspects of this widespread belief. The judicial matter of Pound’s wartime activities has now closed, and its literary and cultural legacy has been explored in great detail in Andrew Gross’s The Pound Reaction (2015). In many ways, The Cantos themselves teach us that our relationship with history is contingent; just as people are the products of their time, history is the product of people. This continuum is an essential aspect to be considered. While it is true, as Wendy Flory so carefully urges us, to bear in mind that Pound’s was one voice amongst many, it is also true that his work in its rhe- CRIME Ov two CENturies 435 torical force demands greater attention than most. If poetry is to be afforded the exalted societal place that Pound wished it to have, then it is not only fair but right that we explore the historical and political theories at the heart of The Cantos. That Pound has received greater attention for his relationship to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories than others at the time is a reaction to the gravity of his literary output, rather than the severity of his beliefs. However impenetrable and intractable it may seem, The Cantos is one of the great chronicles of twentieth-century literature and as a result its partial argument that certain Jewish figures have corrupted civilization must be explored not for Pound’s sake, but for the humanities in general. This is not to make an example of Pound, but rather to show that even the most cultured visions of human history can become inflected with an conspiracy theory that remains powerful to this day. In order to undo this conspiracy theory’s political and cultural force effectively, it is important to explore where it has appeared before most significantly and where it has formed a powerful narrative; there are fewer literary cases so pertinent as Pound’s Cantos.

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