Das Verbindende der Kulturen

SEKTION:

Exil und Literatur

Alan Kelly (Millersville University, Pennsylvania)
The Importance of Cultural Learning in The Cantos of Ezra Pound

While I have heard Ezra Pound, the self-exiled American poet, described as one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century because he influenced so many other authors and poets, he has not been universally admired because of the perception that he was just a fascist and anti-Semite. A colleague recently read me quotations saying that Pound's Cantos is so flawed by the poet's anti-Semitism that the work is unworthy of being read. The Cantos is eight hundred pages long, and Pound spent more than fifty years of his life composing it. To characterize a work as complex and rich as the Cantos as merely anti-Semitic is grossly inaccurate.

As Katherine Anne Porter once pointed out, Pound was anti-Jewish, but he was also anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant, anti-Taoist, anti-Buddhist--in fact, anti-all-religions. Pound felt that all religions had failed after centuries to make the world a better place, and it was time to look elsewhere for guidance. My paper will examine one theme of many in the Cantos that illustrate Pound wanted to increase his readers' appreciation of past and present cultural accomplishments throughout the world. I will focus on passages that argue for increased knowledge and education and that promote heroes who serve as positive intellectual models. These heroes of the Cantos include an assortment of famous and obscure figures from different times and places such as Confucius, President John Quincy Adams, Lorenzo de'Medici, Gemisthus Plethon, Queen Elizabeth I, and even Pound's own uncle. My goal is to demonstrate that Pound is not a destructive literary force, but rather a great advocate of culture and that one may sometimes be rewarded for looking beyond surface images of artists.

DAS VERBINDENDE DER KULTUREN