The Bughouse: "Coming to terms with Ezra Pound’s politics."

Every now and then, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) bobs to the blog's surface, as in these three posts from 2016 and 2017.

"Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano," a biography by John Tytell.

Shane's Excellent New Words: Autodidacticism ... and a biography of the poet Ezra Pound.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Effluvium or effluent? Ezra's tree needs to know.

In one of them I wrote: "It is fascinating to contemplate a time when an artist could proclaim that poetry would change the world, and be taken seriously."

According to Evan Kindley at The Nation, such a time hasn't yet passed, and Pound continues to have an influence on the nation's discourse, although this fact owes to Pound's fascist politics more than his poetry -- and at any rate, these factors were intertwined from the very start.

The Insanity Defense

Coming to terms with Ezra Pound’s politics.

In December 1945, Ezra Pound was committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC. He was then 60 years old, internationally famous, and under indictment for treason against the United States. In an infamous series of broadcasts made on Italian radio between 1941 and 1943, Pound had declared his support for Mussolini’s regime and his contempt for the Allied forces. He parroted fascist talking points but also added a layer of byzantine anti-Semitic conspiracy theory all his own. “You let in the Jew and the Jew rotted your empire, and you yourselves out-Jewed the Jew,” he admonished the British on March 15, 1942. In other broadcasts, Pound spoke of “Jew slime,” warned of the white race “going toward total extinction,” suggested hanging President Roosevelt (“if you can do it by due legal process”), praised Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and urged his listeners to familiarize themselves with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Pound had arrived at this vicious ideological position gradually. His early work, while always concerned with the relations between art and society, had rarely been political per se. Over the years, though, his long poem The Cantos, started in 1915, had drifted from a preoccupation with mythological subjects to an investigation of economics and governance, influenced by heterodox economists like C.H. Douglas and Silvio Gesell. By the time the Second World War began, Pound had come to blame the practice of usury, propagated by a secret network of nefarious Jewish bankers, for all the evils afflicting the world ...

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Effluvium or effluent? Ezra's tree needs to know.

Humanity is the rich effluvium, it is the waste and the manure and the soil, and from it grows the tree of the arts.
-- Ezra Pound

Resisting the temptation to reformat Pound's quote to suit local conditions, let's take a look at two variants of the same root word.

effluvium
[ih-floo-vee-uh m]

noun, plural effluvia [ih-floo-vee-uh], effluviums.

1. a slight or invisible exhalation or vapor, especially one that is disagreeable or noxious.

Origin of effluvium

1640-50; < Latin, equivalent to ef- ef- + fluv-, base of fluere to flow (see effluent ) + -ium -ium Related forms: effluvial, adjective

Many a sewage treatment discussion has prompted the word effluent.

effluent
[ef-loo-uh nt]

adjective

1. flowing out or forth.

noun

2. something that flows out or forth; outflow; effluence.
3. a stream flowing out of a lake, reservoir, etc.
4. sewage that has been treated in a septic tank or sewage treatment plant.
5. sewage or other liquid waste that is discharged into a body of water, etc.

Origin of effluent

Latin 1720-30; < Latin effluent- (stem of effluēns flowing out, present participle of effluere), equivalent to ef- ef- + flu- flow + -ent- -ent

So, which word actually works best as Pound's source for the tree of the arts?

Effluvium denotes a noxious odor or discharge, while effluent works better as a synonym for fertilizer. It would seem that odor wouldn't be a sufficient source of (shall we say) enrichment, but my guess is that effluvium simply sounded better to Pound.

The man was a poet, after all ... and poets seldom administer sewage treatment plants.

Shane's Excellent New Words: Autodidacticism ... and a biography of the poet Ezra Pound.

"Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano," a biography by John Tytell.

Considering my glacial reading norms, five weeks to read a book isn't too bad.

As noted previously, there was a pause along the way to view supplementary video, and follow other leads suggested by John Tytell's biography, Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano.  I now know far more about the poet's life and times than I did before, fulfilling one mandate of Why Roger Reads. 

It is fascinating to contemplate a time when an artist could proclaim that poetry would change the world, and be taken seriously. Pound did, and at times, the intensity of his commitment reminds me of a youthful Publican sure that he could do the same with better beer.

Poetry changing the world? For a time, perhaps rock and roll lyrics filled a similar slot, though now, I'm not sure Twitter is up to the task. I'm no poet -- and know it, all too well. As for the beer, well, the new boss is much the same as the old.

Pound's early career as an expatriate in London and Paris was seminal, less so for his own poetry than his championing of other writers, including T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. He had an eye for talent, and often sacrificed his own prospects to espouse it.

Pound was an advocate of modernism in poetry, and for a time, an exponent of it in his own poems. His reputation was such that later in life, overdue recognition came his way.

At some juncture, perhaps in his late thirties, Pound's train left the rails. He became obsessed with right-wing politics and crackpot economics, and apparently began viewing himself as a latter-day Confucius, or a philosopher chosen to impart wisdom to a ruler.

His choice of ruler was unfortunate. Having taken up residence in Italy, Pound's delusions came to be centered on Benito Mussolini's formless fascist doctrine of power. When America entered World War II against Italy, Pound might have returned home or moved to a neutral country like Switzerland.

Instead, he remained in Italy and recorded regular radio messages composed of his mostly incoherent political and economic rantings, which were aired on state radio in spite of misgivings in Mussolini's ruling circle; apparently they realized that the only script Pound would follow was his own.

In 1944, now almost 60, Pound was arrested by the victorious Americans, tossed into a wire cage at the detention camp, and the debate began: Was the poet's wartime behavior treasonable on the part of a man with a sound mind, or was he simply crazy?

Pound was brought to Washington D.C. to stand trial, but friends and lawyers successfully intervened, and he was sent instead to a mental hospital, where he remained for 13 years, finally to be released when the post-war climate changed, and it became less about the war against fascism and one old man's part in it, and more about the ongoing "cold" war with communism.

Returning to Italy and an uneventful 15-year-long postscript, Pound was transformed into an elder statesman, although it wasn't clear at the time what his legacy would be. Was he famous for poetry, midwifery or treason? Was he insane? Had he been sane, but lost the plot during his incarceration?

Until close to the end, Pound continued to write editions of what he called The Cantos, poetry as personal diary, stretching off to the horizon and never completed before his death in 1972.

Tytell's biography was published in the late 1980s. I found it serviceable and worth the time, though perhaps not memorable. It would be interesting to know how the study of Pound has progressed over the past 30 years, but for now, it's enough for me.

Next?

Shane's Excellent New Words: Autodidacticism ... and a biography of the poet Ezra Pound.

Pound with fascist kitty. Cribbed on-line.

Yesterday was the "regularly scheduled" debut of a weekly column written by Nick Vaughn.

Vaughn Within City Limits: Episode I, The Phantom Menace.

"Shane's Excellent New Words" also will be a regular weekly feature at NA Confidential. That's because a healthy vocabulary isn't about trying to show you're smarter than the rest. To the contrary, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

This week's word is autodidacticism.

Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education is the act of self-directed learning about a subject or subjects in which one has had little to no formal education. Many notable contributions have been made by autodidacts.

I'll use it in a sentence: "My autodidacticism often flares up in winter, and as a result, lately I've been studying the lives of poets."

One of them is genius-cum-fascist Ezra Pound, and tonight I'll begin reading a biography by John Tytell, called Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano.

To prepare for the book, I viewed an hour-long documentary film, which can be viewed via this link,

Ezra Pound: American Odyssey

Odd; I just searched the poems of Ezra Pound for the words "lawyer" and "attorney," but could not find a single reference to either.