Jefferson and/or Mussolini: L'idea statale, Fascism as I Have Seen It

by Ezra Pound

"Questo manoscritto fu da me completato e lasciò le mie mani nel febbraio 1933. 40 editori l'hanno rifiutato. Nessun mio dattiloscritto è stato letto da tante persone, né mai mi procurò una corrispondenza tanto interessante. Viene qui stampato verbatim, inalterato. Non ho più visto il manoscritto da quando lasciò Rapallo, finché mi ritornò sotto forma di bozze di stampa. Viene edito come testimonianza di ciò che vidi nel 1933. La prefazione di settembre (1933) segnalava una eccitante attesa, che è diventata gradatamente più palpitante e meno promettente."

Genres: History, Political Science, Nonfiction, Politics, Poetry, Philosophy

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in early-to-mid 20th century poetry.

Pound's The Cantos contains music and bears a title that could be translated as The Songs—although it never is. Pound's ear was tuned to the motz et sons of troubadour poetry where, as musicologist John Stevens has noted, "melody and poem existed in a state of the closest symbiosis, obeying the same laws and striving in their different media for the same sound-ideal - armonia."

In his essays, Pound wrote of rhythm as "the hardest quality of a man's style to counterfeit." He challenged young poets to train their ear with translation work to learn how the choice of words and the movement of the words combined. But having translated texts from 10 different languages into English, Pound found that translation did not always serve the poetry: "The grand bogies for young men who want really to learn strophe writing are Catullus and François Villon. I personally have been reduced to setting them to music as I cannot translate them." While he habitually wrote out verse rhythms as musical lines, Pound did not set his own poetry to music.

Reviews

[Minotaurochs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found it very interesting. The way Pound writes is very speech like which is cool; feels like reading the transcript of someone talking.

[Catholicus Magus · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would've been more groundbreaking if it were read in 1934 as opposed to 2024, nevertheless much of this work falls into the category of "intuitively obvious" to anyone remotely familiar with the illiberal or anti-Marxian tradition of political theory. Pound's writing style is jovial, carefree, and indifferent to the social sensibilities of his predominantly Anglo-American audience; he will directly accost certain beliefs in order to emphasize the difference between the American liberalism of Thomas Jefferson, and that of Fordist-based party mendacity. Mussolini's project of "restoration" failed abysmally, and as the postscript alludes to, any potentiality he had towards modernizing Italy while accentuating its historical genius fell into nothing but pandering to the Roman aristocracy and trying to play gentle with a resentful Catholic Church. As a piece of history, this book is an excellent insight to Pound's way of thinking and the subtlety of his deeper ideological orientation.

As a matter of understanding either classical liberalism or fascism better, this is poor and demonstrates the abysmal nature of fascism's origins as a "vitalist reactionary modernism perpetually in nascence." It's better to consult the Guide to Kulchur or the Cantos for "a rightist artist straddling tradition and modernism," since this book is a veritable fossil which—although resplendent in humorous and witty polemics—does not contribute much beyond restating the obvious to any remotely contemplative artist.

[Fnaught · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picks up at the end, but besides that this is a great pool of hogwash I would not incline to jump in if it wasn't inhabited by such an interesting fish. Just read 'Guide to Kulchur' instead. This is only useful (really) for the kind of psychological profiling of Pound which the editor mentions on the back. Happily, since that's what I read this book for, I was decently satisfied with what I got out of it.

[Amnos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pound gutters toward senescence. More diary than treatise.

[Mitch · Rating 2 out of 5]

whoa! hows about some fascism with that poetics?Eek.