Pound and Eliot

i Ezra Pound

a. Politics

The title Ezra Pound’s Fascist Propaganda, 1935–45 (Palgrave) is bound to raise some dust among Poundians. Matthew Feldman’s important book is a short work from the newly launched Palgrave Pivot series, dedicated to monographs exploring the archives of the modernists. Feldman is an expert on fascisms, not Pound; for him this is a case study in an important propagandist for fascism, not the study of a great poet. Feldman is only concerned with Pound’s anglophone writings and broadcasts; the poet’s work in Italian and other languages would require another volume, but altogether Pound may have produced thousands of items on behalf of the Kingdom of Italy and the Republic of Salò between 1935 and 1945 for the nominally independent German condominium in northern Italy. They include articles, radio speeches delivered by Pound or others, squibs, and odd bits. Feldman’s method is empirical but he has taken some criticism for failing to specify the exact number of Pound’s contributions. It would be nice to know precisely, but the upshot of Feldman’s research is that over a decade Pound produced numberless items for fascist and later Nazi-controlled radio, to say nothing of his articles, pamphlets, and Cantos 72 and 73 (Feldman does not discuss these) that are openly propagandistic. Far from an eccentric broadcaster, Feldman’s Pound is an ideologue closely in touch with the regime with which he coordinated his typically untiring efforts. Feldman uses MI5 and FBI files but relies mainly on the eight underexploited boxes bulging with material at the Beinecke. It appears that the Department of Justice had virtually all of this on hand had Pound come to trial for treason in the winter of 1945–46. Those comforted by the thought that Pound could have won acquittal had he ever been tried for treason should think again. Of course, none of the 65 articles Pound published without payment for British outlets before the war are treasonous, nor is anything Pound wrote until December 1941 and the Italian declaration of war against the United States. Afterward things are different. Feldman shows that there was no hiatus as Pound meditated on his options in the month after war was declared; he kept right on working.

After learning of his indictment for treason in the summer of 1943, just as Mussolini was sacked and Italy surrendered to the allies, Pound did not hesitate to resume his propaganda work as soon as the Salò government was ready for it. He even had a regular show, Jerry’s Front, on German-controlled Radio Milan until April 1945. Pound was well paid for his work too. Thanks to Feldman, we now know how Pound survived during the war years even if Salò lire became worthless as the end approached. Overall, Pound’s decade of propaganda work stands as his longest period of steady employment since his New Age days in London.

David Bradshaw and James Smith’s “Ezra Pound, James Strachey Barnes (‘The Italian Lord Haw-Haw’) and Italian Fascism” (RES 64: 672–93) provides biographical detail supplementing Feldman’s book. Pound was good friends with Jim “Giacomo” Barnes and stayed with him in Rome while making his propaganda recordings. Barnes was a well-bred Englishman, a cousin of the Stracheys and brother to Mary Hutchinson, T. S. Eliot’s friend. Married to an Italian woman, Barnes became an Italian citizen and, like Pound, was an ardent believer in Mussolini. Barnes wrote books on fascism and during the war worked for Minicultpop, which also employed Pound. Like Pound, he was a radio voice of the Italian government. Barnes compared himself to his counterpart in Berlin, William “Lord Haw-Haw” Joyce. Barnes’s diary of 1943 sheds light on the confusing period following the Italian surrender in 1943 as both he and Pound sought ways to retreat into areas under Axis control. Evidently false passports were arranged through the German Embassy but, if so, Pound never got his. In the event, both men got out to reunite later as comrades under the Salò republic, where they resumed their...