Ezra Pound and the Republican Tradition

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.