Ezra Pound Controversy | William M. Chace (essay date 1973)
William M. Chace (essay date 1973)
SOURCE: Chace, William M. “A Guide to Culture: Anti-Semitism.” In The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, pp. 71-85. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973.
[In the following essay, Chace analyzes Pound's 1938 prose treatise A Guide to Kulchur, particularly its anti-Semitism.]
And if you will say that this tale teaches … a lesson, or that the Reverend Eliot has found a more natural language … you who think you will get through hell in a hurry …
These words open Canto 46. Written in late 1935 or early 1936, the canto is at once a short review of Ezra Pound's beliefs up to that time and an announcement that the modern Inferno in which he as a poet has dwelt has not yet ended. The grasp of history is strong. The test of a man is his ability to endure the contemporary hell contrived by usurers and, moreover, to so describe its shape and feel that the...
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