Abstract
Critiquing the traditional readings and frequent assumptions surrounding Pound’s wartime propaganda, this chapter revisits the expansive historiographical discussion on the content, extent and dating of Pound’s World War II activities. By returning to neglected archival holdings in Britain and the US, this chapter also makes clear that a great deal of the critical literature on Pound’s work for the Axis during World War II needs to be reconsidered; not least as Pound’s wartime role has been marginalized or written-off for too long, despite his relative importance to World War II on the fourth front’: radio broadcasting.
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Notes
Yong Woo Kim, “From ‘Consensus Studies’ to History of Subjectivity: Some Considerations on Recent Historiography on Italian Fascism”, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 10/3–4 (2009), 328.
See Lea Baechler et al., eds., Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose, 11 volumes (Garland, London: 1991), VIII: 460–475; hereafter EPPP, and EPPP/VIII, 1–253.
Pound, cited in Noel Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound (Routledge and Kegan Paul: 1970), 393;
hereafter Stock/LEP; and Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound (Faber, London: 1988), 569; hereafter Carpenter/ASC.
John Tytell, Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano (Bloomsbury, London: 1987), 262. Apparently internal objections had been raised by Pound’s “southern accent” at EIAR; Pound to San Faustino, 19 Sep. 1941, YBL 43/2020.
David Heymann, Ezra Pound, The Last Rower: A Political Profile (Seaver Books, New York: 1976), 105–106; hereafter Heymann/LR.
“Round the Microphone”, 5 May 1943, excerpted in Mary de Rachewiltz, “Fragments of an Atmosphere”; Agenda 21 17/2–3–18/1 (1980), 167;
untitled program of 12 May 1943 [“Round the Microphone”?], cited in Charles Norman, The Case of Ezra Pound (Funk and Wagnalls, New York: 1968 [1948]), 55ff; and “Round the Microphone”, 30 June 1943, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, FCC transcriptions of Pound speeches.
Gibran van Ert, “Empty Air: Ezra Pound’s World War Two Radio Broadcasts”, Past Imperfect 3 (1994), 56.
Pound to Ungaro, 5 August 1942, YBL 53/2409. Employing Pound’s FBI file, Tim Redman’s Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1992), 87, cites all but the last sentence presented here, 222; hereafter Redman/EPIF.
Pound, “Continuity”, 6 July 1942; Pound, “That Illusion; 19 February 1943”, and Pound, “To Consolidate”, 1942, Leonard Doob, ed., “Ezra Pound Speaking”: Radio Speeches of WWII (Greenwood Press, Westport, CN: 1978), #52, #61 and #115, respectively; hereafter Doob/EPS.
George Orwell, The War Broadcasts (Penguin Books, London: 1987), 225;
and George Orwell, Keeping out Little Corner Clean: 1942–1943, ed., Peter Davison (Secker & Warburg, London: 2001), 132.
Pound, “If This Be Treason –”, ed., Olga Rudge (Venice: Tipo-Litografia Armena: 1948);
Pound, Certain Radio Speeches of Ezra Pound: From the Recordings and Transcriptions of His Wartime Broadcasts, Rome, 1941–1943, ed., William P. Levy (Rotterdam, Cold Turkey Press: 1976); and Doob/EPS, xii.
Robert Corrigan, “Ezra Pound and the Ministry for Popular Culture”, Journal of Popular Culture 5/4 (1972), 771, 780, 775; italics in original.
Pound, cited in Anne Conover, Olga Rudge and Ezra Pound: “What Thou Lovest Well…” (Yale University Press, London: 2001), 140.
Pound, “A Word to the Rabbis”, 1 November 1941, BBC/SWB.
W. Vincent Arnold, The Illusion of Victory: Fascist Propaganda and the Second World War (Peter Lang, New York: 1998), 143.
J.J. Wilhelm, Ezra Pound: The Tragic Years, 1925–1972 (Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park: 1994), 184.
Pound, “Announcements by RAI after Pearl Harbour [sic]: typescript”, January 1942, YBL 128/5292.
Pound, “Delbene: ‘Dichotomy’: Typescript”, 26 December [1941?], YBL 127/5246.
Redman, “The Repatriation of Ezra Pound, 1939–1942: A View from the Archive”, Paideuma 8/3 (1979), 443; and Redman/EPIF, 197.
Pound, “News from Nowhere”, 18 December 1941, YBL 132/5597.
Reich Press Office, Periodical Service, 8 August 1941; and Germany Has Entered the Fight to the Finish with the Jewish-Bolshevik System of Murder, Reich Propaganda Directorate, 21 July 1941, both cited in Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, London: 2008), 155, 99—loi, respectively.
E. Fuller Torrey, The Roots of Treason: Ezra Pound and the Secrets of St Elizabeths (Sidgwick and Jackson, London: 1984), 164–165.
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© 2013 Matthew Feldman
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Feldman, M. (2013). Pound’s Radio Propaganda: Revisiting the Critical Literature, 1940–43. In: Ezra Pound’s Fascist Propaganda, 1935–45. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137345516_5
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