Differentia: Review of Italian Thought

Number 6 Combined Issue 6-7 Spring/Autumn Article 39

1994

Idee Fondamentali by Erza Pound

Robert Casillo

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Recommended Citation Casillo, Robert (1994) "Idee Fondamentali by Erza Pound," Differentia: Review of Italian Thought: Vol. 6 , Article 39. Available at: https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/differentia/vol6/iss1/39

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/dee Fondamentali racy with a new economy. No longer Ezra Pound valuable in itself, money will serve Edited by Caterina Ricciardi primarily as a means of exchange and Rome: Lucarini, 1991 pricing instrument; the government will regulate the just price; grain and the plough will supplant unproduc­ While it is well known that Ezra tive, parasitic gold and usury; and an Pound broadcast for the Axis over "ideologiacontadina" will be established Rome Radio during World War II, it is through a revival of the agrarian and little known that during the later 1930s erotic cults of the ancient Mediter­ and early 1940s he wrote approximate­ ranean (xviii). For Ricciardi, Pound ly 90 articles for the Meridiano di Roma, categorically espouses anti-militarism, a fascist-sponsored publication. Apart denouncing usurers who create wars from rare archival copies in the United in order to profit from war debts (xii). States, these works have been largely Like other apologists, she claims inaccessible, and so Caterina Ricciar­ Pound supported fascism solely out of di's edition of 42 of the Meridiano arti­ the mistaken notion that he and cles will be welcome to American Mussolini shared the same monetary Pound scholars. She provides a 15- and economic objectives. Ricciardi page introduction, a bibliographical describes Pound as a "pseudo-fascist," note, textual commentary, and a a political visionary and utopian who detailed index. The collection is misunderstood fascist ideology as important to Pound studies, at once much as the fascists misunderstood supplementing his broadcasts and him (xiii). Noting that Pound saw him­ clarifying our comprehension of his self as a political eccentric and that fas­ politics and ideology. cist ministers considered his economic Nonetheless, Ricciardi's editing is proposals bizarre, she observes that flawed. Her textual notes should have been more informative at points, and Fino alla fine Pound continuera ad her introduction, makes little use of attribuire al fascismo cio che nel fascismo the studies listed in her bibliography, non c'era e non ci sarebbe mai stato, ben treats Pound's politics misleadingly. convinto che gli levitavano gli elementi col­ Instead of standing outside Pound's limanti con una sua visione dello stato ide­ ideology to analyze it in terms other ale. (xiii) than his, Ricciardi duplicates rather than explains it. Failing to add up her Ricciardi dismisses his fascism as a evidence, and repeating the discredit­ "cliche" (xxiv), since an immense dis­ ed apologetic strategies of Pound criti­ tance separates him from true fascism cism, she minimizes Pound's fascism (xiii). There is no truth to the claim and anti-Semitism, even denies their that Pound ignores fascist ideology existence. while pursuing an independent uto­ Ricciardi sees these articles' domi­ pian agenda. Far from being a cliche, nant theme as an attack on an interna­ his fascism is easily demonstrable, tional financial conspiracy, or partly and abundantly by the evidence "usurocrazia" (xxiv, 10). As she notes, Ricciardi has collected. She assesses it he advertises major works of incorrectly and proves her ignorance American, English, and French litera­ of the typology of Italian Fascism. Idee ture to widen Italian taste and to break fondamentali reveals that Pound's con­ the usurers' stranglehold over publish­ nection with Italian Fascism (and ing and radio (xi). In her view, Nazism) is more intimate than some Pound's chief aim is to replace usuroc- recent scholars have found. REVIEWS 365

Pound's knowledge of and alle­ cist theorists on the pragmatic necessi­ giance to fascism, as well as his com­ ty of actualizing ideas, Pound praises mitment to an Axis victory, are Mussolini's writings as atti (137). He unmistakable in these articles. Like resembles other fascists in arguing for other fascists, he conceives of fascism the historical necessity of fascism and as a faith (jede) or quasi-religion (84), the superiority of its historical sense, and he recommends Hitler's Mein or senso storico: Kampf and Mussolini's Scritti for a library of fascist classics (122). Besides Anzi, ii fascismo fu ed e la forma piu inten­ accepting Italian Fascism's primarily sa della comprensione del momenta stori­ co. E questa comprensione caratterizza ii repressive and exploitative labor poli­ grande valore storico e rivoluzionario del cies, Pound backs the fascists over the fascismo. (165) Communists in the Spanish Civil War (98). He is also impressed by the For all this concern for contempo­ Italian Fascist minister Giuseppe raneity, Pound has his own version of Bottai's proposal to unite humanistic fascist Romanita, linking fascism and and practical education, a character­ Roman imperialism while calling for a istically fascist pedagogical agenda return to the purity and clarity of Lat­ (101). Apparently sensing Italy's in as an antidote to usury (65-66, 85). diminishing hopes in World War II, These articles also show Pound's Pound endorses the fascist slogan embrace of Italian Fascism's totalitari­ Credere, Ubbidire, Combattere-empha­ an political program. Just as he sizing credere (165). To this end he defends fascism's division of society defends Mussolini's propaganda poli­ into corporate economic groupings cies and strongly recommends Gioac­ and the supposed "harmonization" of chino Volpe's official History of the their interests by the centralized state Fascist Movem ent (137-140). Like (44-45), so he justifies the subordina­ Mussolini, Pound realizes that tion of individual rights to the corpo­ Fascism's "seconda ondata" is ration and those of both to the state: doomed unless the younger genera­ "Lo stato deve assorbire TUTTA tion is indoctrinated (137-40). The l'energia, e tutte le energie dell'uomo" same anxiety per vades Pound's propa­ (146, 123). Pound advocates as an gandistic Cantos 72 and 73, the Italian alternative to parliamentarianism the Cantos, which he wrote in Italian and fascist system of representation by published in a fascist naval journal occupational groups (44-45), accepts toward the end of the war, and which, the fascist system of state censorship inexplicably, Ricciardi never mentions. (121, 127), and recommends as an anti­ This collection shows that Pound dote to liberalism the fascist concept of shares many basic assumptions of fas­ rights and duties, whereby the state cist ideology. He confirms Zeev Stern­ can command people to perform cer­ hell's recent argument that the tain duties for the social good (27, 32). attraction of fascism lay in its idealist, Like the Italian Fascists, Pound com­ spiritual, voluntarist, communal, and bines statist totalitarianism with a anti-materialist values. Hence Pound's patriarchal and agrarian ideology that characteristically fascist attack on emphasizes sexual hierarchy. Denoun­ European "decadence," sexual corrup­ cing effeminizing influences as deca­ tion, and selfish individualism (9-10, dent, Pound insists that Italy is a 33, 139, 153). Hence too his detestation "civilta maschile ," a fatherland not a of Marx's historical materialism and '"motherland"' (139). Although Ricci­ determinism (128). Agreeing with fas- ardi discusses the Circe episode in REVIEWS 367

Cantos 39 and 47, she does not show Jews with nomadism, anti-sociality, that they implicate fascist agrarianism abstraction, sadism, usury, and other and anti-feminism. Nor does she men­ negatives opposed to his pagan, agrar­ tion that Pound, as in the Ita Iian ian, and Catholic values. And, as in Cantos, accepts the standard Italian the broadcasts, Pound refers to Jewish Fascist view that the Catholic Church, conspiracies secreted in the Kahal and in owing its existence to the Roman the Protocolsof the Elders of Zion (29-31, state, should render homage to the 111). But the collection also contains "Imperatore," currently incarnated in what are for Pound unusual anti­ Mussolini (59, 132). Semitic allegations: that the Jews As against Ricciardi's inter­ killed Christ (135); that Adam and Eve pretation, Pound's economics is thor­ is an anti-usury parable (90); that the oughly compatible with fascism . She story of Cain and Abel is the origin of should have emphasized that Pound's the Jews' supposed hatred of agricul­ ideologia contadina, focusing on the ture and practice of vendetta (xxii); establishment of homesteads and the and that the Jews are infiltrating the increase of grain production, is typi­ Church to undermine it, a fascist cally fascist. Does not Pound endorse extremist theme also present in the the fascist slogan la battaglia de/ grano Italian Cantos (134). To be sure, in plac­ (xx)? He stresses food production part­ ing anti-Semitism at the center of his ly because he endorses the fascist goal political ideology and agenda, Pound of autarchy-adding eccentrically that resembles the Nazis more than the the cultivation of soy beans and espe­ majority of Italian Fascists . Yet in this cially peanuts (arachidi) will help to he also shows his affinity for some provide Italy with the self-sufficiency radical right-wing fascists, for instance necessary to defeat Jewish usurers (84, Roberto Farinacci, who appears heroi­ 96-99). Ricciardi ignores that Pound's cally in Canto 72, and who trafficked anti-Marxist dissociation of "capital" in racial, economic, and cultural anti­ from "property," in isolating usury Semitism. rather than capitalism per se as the The chief error of Ricciardi's intro­ cause of economic exploitation (xvii), duction, then, is the failure to state has numerous analogues among fas­ that Pound's "idee fondamentali" are cist writers, including Hitler, whom largely fascist ideas. One hopes her Pound cites on the evils of "loan capi­ soft and sanitized portrayal of Pound tal" (xvii, 106). does not impede understanding of his As for Pound's anti-Semitism, works in Italy. Another Italian scholar, Ricciardi falls into the old extenuating Massimo Bacigalupo, whose Formed apologetics. She contends that Pound's Trace (Italian ed., L'Ultimo Pound) anti-Semitism, like Voltaire's, is Ricciardi cites yet has not absorbed, ambiguous, for in claiming that has stated succinctly that The Cantos usurers "non hanno razza," Pound are the "sacred poem" of the fascist implicates Gentiles in usury (xxi, xxii). era. Yet in these pages as in his other writ­ ROBERT CASILLO ings of this period, Pound consistently University of Mia111i,FL regards Jews as "patologia incarnata" (100), the ultimate source of the evils afflicting Gentiles. These articles deep­ en our sense of Pound's cultural and racial anti-Semitism. Many repeat familiar accusations associating the