Issue:

№7 2019

УДК / UDK: 821.111, 329.23
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2019-7-414-439

Author: Rodion Yu. Belkovich
About the author:

Rodion Yu. Belkovich (PhD in Law, Associate Professor; National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia)

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract:

The topics of fascism and anti-Semitism constitute the core research problems of contemporary scholarship on the political ideas of Ezra Pound. This article shifts the research focus to the topic, which has attracted much less academic attention, namely – the influence of republican intellectual heritage on the peculiar style of Ezra Pound’s political thinking. The most crucial text in this regard is Jefferson and/or Mussolini, which contains the most consistent and extensive expression of poet’s views on authority and its relations to economics and culture. By drawing the direct parallels between the two revolutionary leaders, Pound provides us with an opportunity to unveil the elements of American political tradition, the identification with which made it possible for him to support the Axis powers in the course of World War II. The republicanism seems to be a paradigm capable of embodiment and explaining the whole range of seemingly contradictory poet’s ideas. Considered from this perspective, Pound does not anymore appear to be an eccentric artist, whose turn to radical politics is only a continuation of his poetic character, nor is he a provincial chauvinist, but reveals himself as an heir and a representative of the traditional system of values, which has been violently relocated to the margins of political life in the USA.

Keywords: Ezra Pound, republicanism, fascism, Thomas Jefferson, Benito Mussolini.
References:

Aristotle. Sochinenija: 4 vols. [Works: in 4 vols.] Vol. 4. Moscow: Mysl' Publ., 1987. (In Russ.)

Bejlin, B. Ideologicheskie istoki Amerikanskoj revoljucii. [The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution] Moscow: Novoe izdatel'stvo Publ., 2010. (In Russ.)

Cato, Marus Portius. Zemledelie. [On Farming] Moscow-Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR Publ., 1950. (In Russ.)

Cicero. Dialogi: O gosudarstve; O zakonakh. [Dialogues: On State; On Laws] Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1966. (In Russ.)

Cicero. O starosti. O druzhbe. Ob objazannostjah. [On Old Age. On Friendship.On Duties] Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1974. (In Russ.)

Colbourn, T. The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1965.

Cornell, S. The Other Founders. Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Dickinson, J. An Essay on the Constitutional Power of Great-Britain over the Colonies in America. Philadelphia, PA: W. Thomas Bradford, 1774.

Elkins, S., McKitrick, E. The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Ezra Pound's Chinese Friends. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Ezra Pound’s Economic Correspondence, 1933-1940. Gainesville, FL: Univer- sity of Florida Press, 2001.

Feldman, M. Ezra Pound’s Fascist Propaganda, 1935-45. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Fox-Genovese, E. The Origins of Physiocracy. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1976.

Fox-Genovese, E., Genovese, E. The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Gesell, S. The Natural Economic Order. London: Peter Owen Ltd., 1958.

Hofstadter, R. The Age of Reform: From Bryan to    F.D.R.  New York: Vintage Books, 1955.

I Cease Not to Yowl: Ezra Pound's Letters to Olivia Rossetti Agresti. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

Jefferson, T. Zametki o shtate Virginija. [Notes on the State of Virginia] Leningrad: Nauka Publ., 1990. (In Russ.)

Lanteri, A. “Douglas, Gesell and the Economic Ethics of Ezra Pound.” The History of Economic Ideas 19:1 (January 2011): 147-166.

Makiavelli      N.     Izbrannye     sochinenija.      [Selected      Works]     Moscow: Hudozhestvennaja literatura Publ., 1982. (In Russ.)

Marsh, A. John Kasper and Ezra Pound. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.

Marsh, A. Money and Modernity: Pound, Williams, and the Spirit of   Jefferson. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1998.

Marx, L. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

McDonald, F. The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1976.

Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton:, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.

Pound, E. The ABC of Economics. London: Faber and Faber, 1933.

Pound, E. Ezra Pound Speaking: Radio Speeches of World War II. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.

Pound, E. How to Read. London: D. Harmsworth, 1931.

Pound, E. Jefferson and/or Mussolini. London: Stanley Nott Ltd., 1935.

Pound, E. Kantos. [The Cantos] Saint-Petersburg: Nauka Publ., 2018. (In Russ.) Pound, E. Literary Essays of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions, 1968.

Pound,  E.  Pavannes  &  Divagations.  New York:  New  Directions Publishing, 1958.

Pound, E. Selected Prose. London: Faber and Faber, 1973.

Rabaté,  J.-M.  Language,  Sexuality,  and  Ideology  in  Ezra  Pound's   CantosAlbany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986.

Redman, T. Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Robbins, C. The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman. New York: Atheneum, 1968.

Rossiter, C. Seedtime of the Republic. New York: Hartcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1953.

Sekora, J. Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Selected Political Essays of James Wilson. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1930.

Stock, N. Reading The Cantos: A Study of Meaning in Ezra Pound. New  York: Pantheon Books, 1966.

Surette, L. Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia: Literary Modernism and   Politics. London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011.

Terrell, C.F. A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Vol. II. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984.

Thomas Jefferson: Writings. New York: The Library of America, 1984.

Wood, G. “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century.” The William and Mary Quarterly 39:3 (July, 1982): 401-444.

Wood, G. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

The Works  of John Adams. Vol.  X. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1856.

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. V. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1895.