Pound in Purgatory: From Economic Radicalism to Anti-Semitism by Leon Surette (review)

320 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 Leon Surette. Pound in Purgatory: From Economic Radicalism to Anti-Semitism University of Illinois Press 1999. 314. US $39.95 Ezra Pound=s fascism and anti-Semitism have been the focus of numerous studies over the last four decades. These have tended towards denunciation or apology, often with some agenda or other in tow. Despite all the attention to Pound=s politics and racism, though, there is still >no consensus on how they fit into his work as a whole or how they relate to his economic radicalism,= as Surette argues in Pound and Purgatory. Focusing on some of Pound=s hitherto unstudied correspondence and on his other published writing and journalistic prose, Surette closely examines Pound=s troubled exploration of economic theory between 1931 and 1936. He concludes that Pound was a >babe in the woods in his engagement with economics and politics= and that he erroneously >imagined that sound aesthetic perceptions could be mapped straightforwardly onto the practical world of politics and economics.= Pound=s interest in economics was apparently stimulated by a desire to improve the conditions of mankind, but his readings in economics, Surette shows, became increasingly confused. This was partly because economic theory itself had no consensus during this period, partly because Pound was otherwise uninformed in the area, and partly because he was influenced by incompetent mentors such as A.R. Orage and Major C.H. Douglas. To this familiar inventory Surette adds a fine analysis of the influence on Pound of the Prodhonian Arthur Kitson and the Gesellite Hugh Fack. Both were anti-Semitic, and Fack in particular was instrumental in pushing Pound in that direction. The rather sudden emergence of antiSemitism in Pound=s 1930s prose and poetry, Surette illustrates, occurs only after correspondence with them. Pound=s loyalty to Mussolini during the 1930s was unshakeable; so was his commitment to Social Credit. Mussolini=s economic policies, however, were not commensurate with those of Social Credit. Pound also became entranced by Gesellite policies that fitted neither with Mussolini=s nor with Social Credit=s. One reason for the impossible mix was that >Pound rejected all overtures from competent academics and economists while responding favorably to the more crankish speculation of Social Crediters and Gesellites.= As a result, there was no consistency in Pounds= politics, racism and economics; for Surette >they are more like a snowball picking up bits of detritus and dropping other bits as it rolls along.= The result was an irresolvable confusion that Pound tried unsuccessfully to cut through. For Surette, Pound=s >descent into the paranoia of the conspiracy theory and anti-Semitism was in great part a consequence of this muddle.= Pound was not always an anti-Semite, according to Surette, but became one as a result HUMANITIES 321 of these tangled forces. Pound=s anti-Semitism was more a result of conspiracy theory than >simple racism or even an antipathy for Hebraic religion and culture.= This finding >in no way excuses it= but >reveals it as an intellectual failure rather than some mental tic or emotional aberration.= Here Surette distinguishes his view from those of Wendy Flory, who regards Pound as >genuinely psychotic = in The American Ezra Pound, from those of New Critics, who (erroneously ) dismiss the racism as beyond the texts, from those of Hugh Kenner, who recently resurrected the >I never heard him make either a political statement or a racist one= defence, and from those of Robert Casillo, who argues in The Genealogy of Demons that Pound=s anti-Semitism was a product of childhood influences. While others like Yeats and Shelley have managed an intersection of the political and the aesthetic less infamously, Pound=s confused engagement with politics and economics in the early 1930s changes the purpose of The Cantos >to serve [his] economic and political agenda rather than merely being informed by it.= In a study that is otherwise informative, new and balanced, Surette goes too far when he opines that Pound=s >cautionary tale= reminds us >there is too much at stake to give artists a license to preach vicious nonsense just because they are a precious adornment to society.= Pound was never given such...