The Jewish influence produces decay, going far beyond mere parasitism, because it accepts the death of its host. Interestingly, Yggdrasil takes the body imagery, as in the poem it is the Jewish body being spawned, blistered, patched and peeled, and applies it to culture.  Moreover, Yggdrasil has now made the jump from the metaphorical noplace of the poem, although Yggdrasil read it as the Western white world, which in combination with the Great War would suggest Europe, to the very concrete 'East Side of Manhattan', yet another anti-Semitic cliché. While one could deplore that Yggdrasil's reading regularly incorporates conventional anti-Semitic clichés, this is exactly what the poem offers. 'Gerontion' taps into the anti-Semitic discourse of the 20th century and Yggdrasil's reading shows quite well that this discourse is still alive and meaningful to a right-wing audience of the 21st century.

Yggdrasil continues and reads lines 11 to 14 as an image of perseverance in times of 'decay and the devastation of war', perhaps suggesting that the woman tending the household offers a quasi-nostalgic glance at a world of clearly defined gender roles. By calling it a 'timeless routine of daily life' Yggdrasil suggests that this is, and should be, the normal and natural way of being. In this way, the traditional household becomes the root of resistance against the modern world. This reading is supported by the shift in mood Yggdrasil perceives in the following lines culminating in 'Came Christ the tiger' (line 20). Yggdrasil writes:

In the first two and one half lines [17-19] we see an allusion to the loss of faith and confusion of the modern era with its endless attempts to reconcile science with faith, but also with our self-imposed suffocating tolerance demanded by the emergence of civil society, in which everything that really matters must be compromised away or forgotten.

While the imagery of the poem remains vague, Yggdrasil's reading brings in issues of science, faith, tolerance demanded by civil society and a sense of loss of identity. Especially the latter two are common themes in right-wing discourse, yet it takes a certain interpretative effort to read the highly allusive lines 'Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign": / The word within a word, unable to speak a word, / Swaddled with darkness…' as 'self-imposed suffocating tolerance demanded by civil society'. What should be noted though is how similar Yggdrasil's words are to Eliot's own description of modern (in Eliot's case, 1930s) society from *After Strange Gods*: 'where two or more cultures exist in the same place they are likely either to be fiercely selfconscious or both to become adulterate. [...] And a spirit of excessive tolerance is to be deprecated'. 981 Both share the same discourse. This also holds true for the issue of religion, in this case Christianity. Yggdrasil notes of lines 19-20: 'And then comes the lighting bolt out of our vigorous past', namely 'Christ the tiger'. This image stands in stark contrast to the eponymous old man of the poem who is 'dull' (l. 16) and has never fought (l. 4). Though the comparison between both figures is not made explicit, Yggdrasil here finds a metaphor for the degradation of the 'European race':

The poetic image of Christ the Tiger jolts us into recognition of how far we have fallen from the roots of our European race, fallen so far in fact that we are no longer able to embrace Christ the Tiger as our ancestors instinctively did over 1000 years ago. We are fascinated and yet repelled.

Christ the tiger is a reminder of the once glorious past that is associated with strength and a certain wildness compared to weakness and passivity. At the same time Yggdrasil seems to find hope in these lines as they seem to spell out the possibility of a rebirth, and thus a reawakening of white identity and the societal shifts this would supposedly entail.

Here ends Yggdrasil's reading of the poem, and despite the note 'to be continued', nothing has been added to it within the last four years. It nevertheless offers a glimpse into a specifically right-wing reading of Eliot's 'Gerontion'. What it demonstrates is that the poem offers its right-wing audience a wealth of specifically right-wing discourses. Moreover, these discourses have remained remarkably stable, so that even when the poem is put into a historical frame, for example, read in the context of the Great War, it can still be used as a powerful commentary on today's society. Yggdrasil's reading proves just how politically potent Eliot's poetry still is for the Right of the 21st century. However, Yggdrasil's comment as a whole also betrays the lack of interaction with or interest for (high) culture among the New Far Right.982

#### *Sezession*

*Sezession* is a German far right magazine published by the Institut für Staatspolitik (IfS), which was founded by Götz Kubitschek, Karlheinz Weißmann and five other undisclosed members in May 2000.983 Its first number was issued in April 2003 with Kubitschek as editor-in-chief. It is nowadays considered to be the successor to *Criticón*, formally the major magazine of and for (German) right-wing intellectuals, which folded in 2007.984 *Sezession* describes itself as 'the major right-wing intellectual magazine in Germany'.985 It explicitly targets a self-proclaimed elite of readers who are able to grasp the complexity of the world and the nuances of right-wing, conservative thought.986 Moreover, the authors consider themselves as part of the metapolitical project, stating that *Sezession* has been responsible for thinking out, formulating and inserting into the discourse many of the things that seem or are elemental, uncompromising, non-negotiable and aggressive in the AfD or other projects of the 'national resistance'.987 For this project I will examine an article called 'Faschismus und Avantgarde' [Fascism and the Avant-garde], by Götz Kubitschek from *Sezession* 34 from February 2010.

 In his article Kubitschek describes the 'convergences and intertwining' of the avant-garde and fascism.988 What differentiates his article from Bowden and Bolton's engagements is not only its broader scope, but the fact that Kubitschek makes an earnest attempt to approach the avant-garde as political art and not just as an assortment of artists interested in politics. He begins his piece with a strong statement: 'Those who speak of fascism, must not be silent about the artistic and literary avant-garde'. This establishes a clear link between political and artistic movement. What is interesting is that the wording is not 'those who speak of the avant-garde, must not remain silent about fascism' but rather the other way around. While the alternate version postulates that the avant-garde can only be grasped by looking at its connection to fascism, Kubitschek seems to suggest that fascism always has to be thought of in conjunction with the avant-garde. Moreover, there seems to be an implicit acknowledgment that fascism has brought forth these artistic movements: a thought that emerges when Kubitschek muses that it would have been strange if art had revolutionised itself without coming into contact with the political revolution at hand.989 When he boils down the avant-garde to five key characteristics – provocation, innovation, authority, pathos and selfreflexivity990 – they appear oddly ambiguous and could just as well describe a political movement, specifically the fascist movement as it was emerging in the early 20th century. In this light it is not surprising that Kubitschek finds the avant-garde to be an inherently authoritarian movement: 'The exclusion and discrimination as part of the agon between rivalling artists makes the avant-garde an authoritarian movement: they were not interested in reaching consensus, but acted in a manly, hard, aggressive as well as arrogant fashion and against everything out of pure joy in enmity'.991 It seems here that Kubitschek too easily conflates the avant-garde and fascism and thereby leaves some of the complexities and internal contradictions unmentioned. Similar to Bowden and Bolton, Kubitschek seems to be primarily drawn to the avantgarde because of their similarity to an authoritarian movement, and especially their hard, manly, and aggressive stance, and only secondary due to the actual art they produced. Even though Kubitschek, in the course of his essay, touches upon different artworks/literary works of different authors his interest seems to be based on their proximity to fascism. Thus the opening suggest that it was the avant-garde that bestowed positive value upon fascism, later it is the avant-garde that becomes commendable because of its inherent authoritarian character. This would also explain why Kubitschek feels comfortable to include Pierre Drieu la Rochelle and Robert Brasillach, who were indeed fascists and collaborators, but do not really represent the French avant-garde. The same holds true for the inclusion of Yeats, Lawrence and to a lesser degree Eliot: while all three of them can be considered important voices of the right-wing canon, which Kubitschek tries to construct here, they cannot really be considered avant-garde. Kubitschek tries to consciously blur the association between these three writers and the avant-garde when he introduces them as 'rallying around the avant-garde intersection [i.e. the Vorticist movement]'.992 While this might be true for Eliot, as part of his 'Preludes' were published in *BLAST 2*, Kubitschek's claim that Eliot 'between the wars was sympathetic to fascism and National Socialism',993 is an exaggeration at best. Here Kubitschek seems to shy away from the finer nuances of political allegiance – seeing that Eliot does not fit into Kubitschek's earlier categories and moreover with Eliot being a conservative close to fascist ideology but growing sceptical of any of the fascist permutations – in favour of keeping his central narrative intact. Yeats had little to no connection to Vorticism, despite Pound being his secretary. Lawrence was not only Lewis's literary nemesis, but his distinct literary style placed him far away from the Vorticist and the avant-garde in general. Kubitschek's article once more demonstrates the pitfalls of exclusively relying on the concept of fascism for classifying the political allegiances of the avant-garde and modernism.

What makes Kubitschek's essay additionally interesting for this project, especially seeing that it was published in a German magazine, is his focus on Vorticism, which not only receives more space in the text than Futurism, but also has four separate pages devoted to its art. While a short introductory text explains Vorticism, nine illustrations adorn these pages including the covers of *BLAST 1* and 2 as well as a sample page from the manifesto. This 'special feature', which disrupts the corresponding essay – it is inserted between pages 30 and 31 – seems to suggest an earnest interest in avant-garde art and not only the biographies of its artists. But this feature also betrays a certain sense of educational mission, informing the magazine's audience of this rather more obscure avant-garde movement. The virtue of Vorticism being little-known is that it can be reclaimed without much resistance. Kubitschek can direct readers to only one German language secondary source on Vorticism: an exhibition catalogue edited by Karin Orchard and published in 1996. The special feature on Vorticism can therefore also be read as an attempt to popularise this specific avant-garde movement. Embedded in an article on fascism and the avant-garde, however, it becomes clear that it is also presented as a specific right-wing art movement. What makes this even more interesting is that the small introductory text seems to agree with the Vorticists that their avantgarde movement was superior to Futurism: 'Rightly the Vorticists refused to be considered the English offshoot of the anarchic and expansive Italian Futurism'.994 It is suggested that the Vorticist 'concentration of energies around a shared core'995 surpasses the chaotic Futurism, and maybe more importantly, that the strong national sentiment of Vorticism is to be preferred over the expansive, and thus equalising, Futurism. In this light it seems rather curious that Kubitschek decided to include a painting by C. R. W. Nevinson, a selfavowed Futurist.996 In general the feature contains very little information on the art and artists included. It also fully neglects Vorticist literature (apart from the reproduction from the manifesto), which seems odd, given that Pound is frequently brought up in both texts. This is not to deride what seems to be an earnest effort to introduce the largely unknown Vorticism to a German audience. Yet the way it is done – constructed in a way that seems to be professional while it is actually superficial and displaying a certain lack of understanding – seems to suggest less of an interest in Vorticism as art, but rather, yet again, as politics. Vorticism is important, and therefore should be known to the readers of *Sezession*, not because it was the only avant-garde movement England ever saw, but because it can be considered a right-wing avant-garde movement.

Kubitschek's piece on fascism and the avant-garde shows that there is an interest in revealing the 'ideological allegiances' of artists and art movements. While Kubitschek does not – in contrast to Johnson, Bowden, and Bolton – explicitly counteract left-wing/liberal/mainstream discourse, his article nevertheless constitutes an example of re-claiming the avant-garde for the Right. Although Kubitschek never specifically lauds fascism, his insistence about the connection between the avant-garde and fascism, while omitting the avant-garde's relation to other and previous art-movements, seems to be an attempt to attach some positive value to fascism at the detriment of democracy. These artists' reaction against democracy as well as the values of the Enlightenment, and the fact that they turned this reaction into great art, support this narrative and Kubitschek concludes: 'It [fascism] presented itself up until the late twenties not as a totalitarian – and this always means an exclusionary997 and exterminating – threat but as an attractive alternative to (the failed) democracy: attractive at least for artists due to its hierarchical structure and acceptable because it had not yet, in contrast to Bolshevism, committed genocide'.998 This conclusion conveniently ends before fascism turned its words into deeds. Kubitschek thereby normalises and rationalises fascism as acceptable and attractive in theory. Democracy, so Kubitschek almost casually notes, has already failed by the 1920s, a claim that seemingly does not need to be corroborated as it possibly functions as a premise among his readership. His inclusion of Bolshevism as the other non-democratic but unacceptable choice consciously ignores the large number of artists in favour of Bolshevism/communism and maybe unconsciously overlooks artists like Lewis who was in the beginning torn between communism and fascism. In this way, fascism was not only attractive and acceptable for artists but the connection between fascism and the avant-garde becomes a quasi-natural and logical given.

#### *CasaPound*

All the examples I have discussed so far followed a particular strategy: against the stereotype of the 'uneducated, violent males sporting swastikas and missing a couple of teeth'999 they have cultivated brands that offer right-wing ideology in an intellectual and respectable format. They specifically target an intelligent and educated far right-wing audience. When addressing literature and the arts as part of the metapolitical project, there seems to be mostly an inward projection, i.e. the conversation remains among themselves. Even though the supposedly liberal mainstream discourse is often explicitly addressed they do not engage with it, and there seems to be little interest in engaging, with a liberal or mainstream audience. Thus the (re-)claiming of the authors discussed above is done for the benefit of their own group – aiming at identity formation, forging of a cultural consciousness, establishment of a right-wing intellectual tradition to name but a few of the possible benefits – and not (yet) as a direct challenge of the political adversary or the mainstream. There are, of course, other different engagements with literature that can be found among the New Far Right. With the rise of new media, online communities and online activism became an important element in the recent growth of the New Far Right. Social media offer the possibility not only to address a large international audience but also to connect real-life forms of protest with online forms of engagement: in this way, what would be a small local event in real life can be blown out of proportion and immortalised online. Moreover, the internet's own special forms of communication, for example internet meme culture,1000 has in recent years greatly shaped the way the Right, or more precisely different groups on the right-wing spectrum, present themselves and interact with others. The most famous example at present is Pepe the frog, which has been seized primarily by American right-wing groups, especially the Alt Right, as a symbol and humorous online-ego, and then later merged with Kek, an Egyptian frog-shaped deity.1001 Even something as innocuous as cat memes can be 'intellectualised' and given a right-

**A meme featuring Ezra Pound and cats**

wing spin, as the example, pictured here, shows. What makes this meme noteworthy is the way it relies on a certain amount of inside knowledge. For the slogan 'love animals – hate usury' only fully makes sense to those who can identify Ezra Pound and can contextualise 'hate usury' in Pound's writings that explicitly connect usury with Jews. In this light, the slogan quickly morphs into 'love animals – hate Jews'. This illustrates that memes can successfully be used to transgress boundaries of the sayable. At present it seems that exactly those movements that combine 'online culture' with intellectual content not only garner the most attention, but are also most successful in their metapolitical aims targeting the discourse with

pop and high culture. How these strategies – the inclusion of subcultures or subcultural forms of communication, pop-cultural aesthetics and a carefully curated performance and appearance – can be used to advance a successful and exceptional real-life far right movement is demonstrated by the Italian *CasaPound* (*CPI*). Exuding from its core, the eponymous Casa Pound – a formerly squatted building in the centre of Rome, which is now owned by the movement as it was gifted to them by the then major of Rome, Giovanni Alemanno1002 – *CasaPound* has established a network of social, cultural and political locations and activities to unleash 'fascism for the third millennium'. There is no space here to analyse *CasaPound* in more detail.1003 Instead I wish to take a closer look at the role Pound the poet plays in and for the movement.

One has to admit, that at first glance it seems to be an odd choice that an Italian neo-fascist movement should name itself after the American poet Pound, seeing that they would have had plenty of possible Italian 'patrons' available. When Colin Liddell interviewed *CPI* leader Gianluca Iannone for the now defunct *Alternativeright.com*, Iannone explains the choice thusly:

Ezra Pound was a poet, an economist and an artist. Ezra Pound was a revolutionary and a fascist. Ezra Pound had to suffer for his ideas, he was sent to jail for ten years to make him stop speaking. We see in Ezra Pound a free man that paid for his ideas; he is a symbol of the "democratic views" of the winners.1004

What becomes apparent is that Pound was chosen because his person and life

story resonated with the founders and leader of *CasaPound*; the man as artist, revolutionary and fascist again overrides the art that he produced. His being incarcerated by a democratic government makes him a doubly useful martyr figure as he (not only fought but also) suffered for his ideas and moreover his treatment at the hand of the US government seems to lay bare the nefarious duplicity of the supposedly tolerant democracy.1005 When Iannone speaks of 'the "democratic views" of the winners', he not only points to the adage that 'history is written by the winner' with an implicit suggestion that it can therefore also be falsified by the winners, but also implies that democracy itself is a sham. In this way, Pound constitutes the ideal figure for identification – more so than artists like Marinetti or D'Annunzio – since the backlash, persecution and condemnation he faced seem to mirror the experiences and selfperception of the far right in 21st century democratic societies. What is also important is Pound's high status as an internationally recognised poet and significant figure of Modernism. There is, however, one thing that tarnishes this image, and that is the matter of anti-Semitism. Liddell asks Iannone: 'Ezra Pound is also a name routinely associated with Anti-Semitism. Some will automatically see the invocation of his name as a rallying cry for Anti-Semitism. Could you clarify *CasaPound'*s position with regard to the Jews and Israel?' To which Iannone answers: 'To associate Ezra Pound and anti-Semitism is an absolute twist. It is the same for *CasaPound*, it has no sense'. Similar to other right-wing responses to Pound the issue of anti-Semitism is either shirked or denied, even though Pound's ideas on the Jews would probably find many sympathetic listeners among the New Far Right. Iannone uses the familiar strategy here of turning the narrative around to make the criticism of anti-Semitism a quasi-conspiracy theory. Curiously the one central idea that *CasaPound* has adopted from the writings of Pound is his stance on usury, which they, similarly to Pound, condemn in all its forms.1006 As I have explained above for Pound usury and the Jews were inextricably linked, and thus *CasaPound's* adoption of Pound's anti-usury stance seems to imply that they are at least aware of the connection. On their website, *CasaPound* has a page devoted to the poet, yet here again it is exclusively his life that is covered with the exception of a paragraph on Pound's ideas on usury (describing it as 'the root of modern wars and the strangulation of peoples').1007 The connection between usury and the Jews is conveniently left out. Instead it is highlighted that Pound considered Fascist Italy as the only country taking a stand against international usurocracy ('l'usurocrazia internazionale'). Moreover Mussolini is portrayed as a supporter of Pound and his ideas: '"Il mio amico Pound ha ragione. La rivoluzione è guerra all'usura"' ('My friend Pound is right. Revolution is war on usury.').1008 *CasaPound's* fight against usury is presented as the continuation of Pound's (and Mussolini's) struggle, for which both had to pay dearly.

Despite *CasaPound* being an exceptional right-wing movement by addressing all spheres of private and public life, their engagement with Pound does not radically differ from the other intellectual right-wing groups. Pound is primarily presented through his life story and it is Pound the man who is celebrated rather than his artistic output. Although Pound is frequently presented as a poet, the poetry itself does not seem to matter. Despite this the reclaiming of Pound relies heavily on his being perceived as a great artist not only by the Right, but by the mainstream. His high status and international recognition matters because it seems to bestow authority and validity to his ideas. The fact that Pound had to suffer (at the hands of democracy and liberalism) for spreading his ideas but nevertheless persisted, makes him an ideal figure of identification for the New Far Right, which sees itself stigmatised, marginalised and oppressed by the same forces. Hence the narrative of Pound *CasaPound* offers seems to be effectively a narrative of themselves.

#### Final thoughts

The reception of literature among the New Far Right is admittedly a niche topic, although there is an awareness among parts of the New Far Right that this issue matters. In an interview with Alex Kurtagic, Johnson said that:

...we need to expose young, racially-conscious white artists to the great exemplars of the past. You don't have to go back too far before one discovers that practically all great thinkers and artists are "right wing extremists" by present-day standards. Beyond that, many of the greatest artists of the 20th century were on our side as well. That is a tradition that we need to recover.1009

Similarly, Andrew Joyce closes his article 'T.S. Eliot and the Culture of Critique' with the words:

While politics is crucial, we neglect the cultural war at our peril. To paraphrase the conclusion of my treatment of the campaign against Ezra Pound: Civilization, for all its greatness, is ultimately a fragile entity. It requires care, conservation, and occasional pruning. If our culture loses sight of its geniuses, we will be all the poorer for it — ideologically, spiritually, tactically, and culturally. We all have a duty to keep these figures and their work alive. Our ability to do so will ultimately determine whether there is life in our civilization yet, or whether we may be as Eliot's 'Hollow Men,' our voices forever "quiet and meaningless."1010

Yet while metapolitics are central to the New Far Right's self-perception, the

realm of culture, in which the metapolitical project operates, is so wide and diffuse that almost every subject can be accommodated under its header. It might also be due to the growing ascendancy of right-wing (populist) forces in Europe and the U.S. in recent years, that the New Far Right has partly shifted back its attention to actual (parliamentary) politics. Cultural hegemony becomes a secondary goal, when actual hegemony seems closer at hand. However, what remains a major issue for the New Far Right is the matter of respectability. The stereotype of the uneducated and unintelligent rightwinger proves to be surprisingly persistent. What makes the matter even more complicated for the New Far Right is that among its own kind intellectuality clashes with right-wing notions about such things as masculinity. It is not surprising that in right-wing portraits of artists, especially in my case of Pound and Lewis, their combativeness, aggressiveness, and sexual prowess are frequently evoked in conjunction with their intellectual and artistic capabilities. The right-wing avant-gardes (i.e. Futurism and Vorticism), with their performative competition, hardness, and virility become the ideal representative of a decidedly right-wing intellectual tradition into which the New Far Right likes to inscribe itself. The (re-)claiming of these artists by and for the Right still largely happens within the Right's own echo-chambers. The resistance against the mainstream discourse becomes a central tenet in the Right's narrative about literature, yet this narrative is rarely brought into actual mainstream discourse. Challenging the existing cultural hegemony remains thus a performative act and is not translated into an actual confrontation. What makes this rather puzzling is that in the specific field of Modernist literature, the mainstream discourse would actually be quite vulnerable to a sophisticated attack from the Right. Yet I could not find one instance where the liberal mainstream or the Left were directly challenged by the Right with the dilemma of having a high regard for art, which opposes their fundamental values. It seems that the Right's inward gaze fulfils a different function than simply reclaiming 'their' artists from a hostile hegemonic discourse. What almost all of my examples had in common was a preoccupation with Pound, Eliot, and Lewis as artists, thinkers, or simply intellectual men of the Right, and less a concern for the actual products of their labour.1011 Maybe what these men's biographies offer are positive narratives of right-wing intellectual life, which so crucially seems to be lacking from mainstream discourse. During a time when the New Far Right consider the concept of identity as the prime target of attack every re-telling of these artists' lives becomes a re-telling of who they, the New Far Right, are, how they perceive themselves and how they want to be perceived.

#### 7. DO CIVILIZED PEOPLES EXECUTE THEIR POETS?

When Robert Brasillach was put on trial for treason, his artistic ability and intellectual capabilities very much dominated the debate. For some his outstanding literary merit should have guarded him from accusations and punishment; others thought his superior intellect had made collusion with the National Socialists a more serious kind of treason. 'Do civilized peoples execute their poets?', Brasillach's lawyer invoked. In the case of Brasillach they did.1012 A number of artists and intellectuals across the political spectrum had petitioned to save Brasillach to no avail. Pound escaped a similar fate, and in his case an initiative by artists across the political spectrum proved successful, effecting his release from St Elizabeths. At the heart of both cases was the question of the responsibility of the artist in a political context. With the death of the author (in both ways) the focus can now be shifted onto the ideological structures in the literary work itself, asking in how far literature draws from right-wing discourses and, in turn, feeds back into them. Yet many critical readings of literature are often misconstrued as attacks on the (reputation of) deceased authors. This straw man argument obfuscates the more challenging questions such endeavour raises. If literature embraces and promotes right-wing ideology, if it is the locus of discursive violence, one should ask what the most appropriate response needs to be, especially in times when the political climate is veering to the Right. Criticising Bolton's book *Artists of the Right* I wrote that addressing these artists' right-wing ideology is in itself nothing that has not been done before, what matters is *how* their ideology is addressed. Since cultural practices are always inevitably political, it follows that not only is the literature itself political, but our handling of it is as well. I criticised literary scholars in this book, sometimes harshly, not merely because I disagree with their reading, but because their performative refusal to take ideological criticism seriously upholds a hegemonic system that constructs a supposedly neutral standpoint from which to assess these texts. As I made quite clear in the beginning, this neutral standpoint does not exist. Pretending that it does, demotes dissenting views into the realm of activism. This is not a critique of activism, but a critique of the problematic binary that pitches activism against supposedly objective scholarship. There is a place in the debate for those scholars who want to emphasise the complexity, polyphony, and textual 'openness' of these Modernist texts. This does neither contradict nor invalidate readings that stress how these texts lend themselves to ideological

readings. Modernist texts wrote themselves into right-wing discourses, but they are more than right-wing literature.

Nevertheless, right-wing reception of Modernist literature should not be too hastily dismissed as trivial. The popularity of some Modernist writers, especially Pound, among the New Far Right should give pause to those scholars, who see little need to address the ideological structures in these texts. The fact that representatives of the New Far Right actively promote Pound's writings as political inspiration – for example Martin Sellner, Austrian head of the Identitäre Bewegung or Sam Woodward, member of the American terrorist organisation Atomwaffen Division and currently on trial for murder1013 – should warrant a more serious approach than simply asking whether they actually read Pound's writings. I would argue that the answer does not really matter and this is the wrong question to ask in the first place. What this question implies, however, is the assumption that this reception by the far right stands in contradiction to what Pound actually wrote. This is not the case. The *Cantos* and Pound's essays are congruent with many political ideas and actions embraced by today's far right, something they are aware of, whether they have read him or not. Pound, the writer as well as his writings, functions as a code for the necessity but also the dangers of fighting against a hostile system. An interpretation a close reading of the *Cantos* would corroborate. What makes Pound so popular among the New Far Right is that his story serves their particular narratives. The *Cantos*, although being extremely dense, complicated, and sometimes near unintelligible, can be read as a retelling of history with the individual resisting a system in crisis. The story of how the *Cantos* was written becomes part of the epic but also part of its myth.1014 A myth that has been in the making by multiple generations of right-wing readers. In this way Pound, but also writers like Lewis and Eliot, become part of an intellectual tradition of the Right, stylised as forerunners of today's right-wing resistance. Engaging with right-wing responses to these Modernist writers makes the ideological content of the literature palpable, but it also highlights the consequences and sometimes even complicity of inadequate and apologist approaches.

The legacy of right-wing ideology runs deep in the fabric of Western societies and some of its extreme forms dominate our collective memory. The appeal of fascism to writers and intellectuals has repeatedly come under scrutiny, but did not always lead to valuable insights into the matter. As argued above, the concept of fascism as an analytical category is often to blame due to its inherent flaws. Moreover, by treating it not only as the political other, but also quite often as a historical movement with a set end, the focus on fascism has obscured other more pertinent issues. Situating Pound, Eliot, and Lewis in the broad spectrum of the Right draws out the interconnectedness between writers, audience, and scholars. The reason these writers could be celebrated for racial and class cultural appropriation as well as for revelling in the strategic 'othering' of marginalised groups is that they wrote from the dominant position in a society where these aspects not only firmly belonged to the sayable but which functioned on similar paradigms. Furthermore, these writers' relevance to the New Far Right shows that the ideological potency of these texts outlived the era they were written in; the right-wing discourses, into which they inscribed themselves, remain largely accessible to today's Right. This has rarely been the focus of scholarly analysis possibly indicating the unwillingness to locate Pound, Eliot, and Lewis within a movement that is frequently imagined as the very antithesis of high culture. Yet with the birth and growth of the so-called New Right, i.e. the right-wing strand targeting cultural hegemony and cultural change, the relationship between today's far right and their right-wing intellectual ancestry has to be taken into account. Central to the reception of the New Far Right is their narrative of 'mainstream' academia as unwilling or unable to engage with these authors' ideology, enabling them to portray their reception as an act of performative resistance to academic orthodoxy. While the Right presents an overly simplified version of the scholarly debate surrounding the subject, they do point to a central dilemma. How should the presence of right-wing structures in a literature so central to modern literary history be handled? Focussing on the poetics while evading the politics risks complicity; focussing on the politics is often accused of sacrificing the complexity of the poetics. What is needed is a conversation that can acknowledge these authors' artistic achievements while still problematizing and challenging the inherent promotion of inequality and discursive violence. For in our failure to adequately address right-wing ideology, we will only give power to those who wish to see it thrive.

#### **NOTES**

#### **Introduction**

1 Cf. for example Anne Bowler; 'Politics as Art: Italian Futurism and Fascism' and Ehrlicher, Hanno; *Die Kunst der Zerstörung: Gewaltphantasien und Manifestationspraktiken europäischer Avantgarden*, especially pages 69-72. Already Walter Benjamin had written about Futurism's allegiance to Fascism in his seminal study *Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit*, first published in 1936.

#### 2 Cf. Jay W. Baird; *Hitler's War Poets: Literature and Politics in the Third Reich*.

3 The 'Konservative Revolution' is an umbrella term for various right-wing groups, who existed during the time of the Weimar Republic. They rejected concepts such as liberalism, democracy and egalitarianism, but also distanced themselves from the then existing traditional Right in Germany. Their ideological proximity to National Socialism remains a contested issue: while some see them as 'ideological trailblazer' for National Socialism, others, notably the German New Right, emphasise the autonomy of the Konservative Revolution. The self-perception of the German New Right is closely linked to the Konservative Revolution, as evidenced by the fact that some of the definite books on the topic have been written my members of the Right, such as Mohler, Armin and Karlheinz Weissmann; *Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932: Ein Handbuch*.

4 In his study *Die Brücke ins Geisterreich: Künstlerische Avantgarde zwischen Kulturkritik und Faschismus*, Peter Ulrich Hein demonstrates the compatibility of avant-garde ideas with National Socialist ideology in matters such as ideas about masculinity, mysticism, cultural rebirth as well as the belief in Nordic or Germanic superiority. Some artists endorsed National Socialism well beyond its establishment. Consider for example Kirchner's reply when he was asked to leave the academy: 'For thirty years I have been fighting with my work for a new, strong, and authentic German art and will continue for as long as I live' ['Seit nun bald dreißig Jahren kämpfe ich durch meine Arbeit für eine neue, starke und echte deutsche Kunst und werde das tun, solange ich lebe.'] quoted in Hein, 250.

5 In a recent retrospective 'Emil Nolde – Eine deutsche Legende. Der Künstler im Nationalsozialismus', Nolde's ideological commitment and his subsequent 'selfexpurgation and legend creation' ['Selbstsäuberung und Legendenbildung', text from the exhibition] were explicitly addressed. In 1933 he denounced fellow artist Max Pechstein to an official of the Propaganda Ministry, worked on a 'de-Jewification plan', and his memoir *Years of Struggle* [*Jahre der Kämpfe*] contained various anti-Semitic passages. After the war, Nolde destroyed papers with political content and began to fashion himself into an artist persecuted by the Nazis, a narrative that remained unchallenged for many decades. When the exhibition was opened in April 2019, Angela Merkel chose to return the two Nolde paintings, which had adorned her office.

6 Heidegger's *Schwarze Hefte* (Black Notebooks) are his collection of journals, in which he collected thoughts and observations. Written between 1931 and 1951, they were published in instalments in 2014, 2015, and 2018.

7 Cf. Reed Way Dasenbrock; 'Paul de Man, the Modernist as Fascist'.

8 This not only holds true for the Left but also for the Right, which I will discuss in more detail below when looking at the influence of Antonio Gramsci's theories on the New Right.

9 David Carroll has written a detailed and comprehensive study on the French Right titled *French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and the Ideology of Culture*.

10 Julius, Anthony; *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form,* 35.

11 Eagleton, Terry; *Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory*, 148.

12 Consider for example the writers of the so-called 'Auden Group', i.e. W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood among others, who cultivated a seemingly benign representation of the lower classes. However, on closer inspection the lower classes in the works of these authors might be championed for their simplicity and principles, but at the same time they are objects of condescension, pity and desire rather than fully-rounded subjects with agency.

#### 2. Looking at the F-Word and Beyond

13 Despite its promising title, Hamilton study is deeply flawed. While it offers an overview that intellectuals' allegiance to fascism was a European wide phenomenon, he makes little effort to grasp the underlying motivations of the intellectuals involved. Thus he concludes: 'For most of the writers who were attracted by Fascism it was an amusing means of provocation, a feather with which to tickle the throats of the English liberals. Yet it must also be admitted that surprisingly few of these writers were English themselves' (268). Hamilton is unable to explain fascism's appeal apart from its shock value. This does not only betray Hamilton's lack of knowledge of the given context, in which these men wrote, but it also shows his general dismissiveness of the issue, given his study an apologist stance especially when it deals with intellectuals from England.

14 Griffin, Roger; *The Nature of Fascism*, 2.

15 Payne, Stanley; *A History of Fascism*, page x.

16 Eagleton, Terry; *Ideology. An Introduction*, xiii.

17 Robert Eccleshall, Alan Finlayson et al.; *Political Ideologies. An Introduction*, 3.

18 Ibid, 1-2.

19 Bell, Daniel; *The End of Ideology*. Despite its title, the focus of Bell's study is an analysis of the social changes and structures in the USA of the 1950s. Moreover, the main target of his attack seems to be Marxism and the intellectuals devoted to it.

20 Cf. Bell 419.

21 Bell, 437.

22 Bell, 437.

23 Emphasis in the original. Bell, 419. Bell notes that this view is 'mistakenly called pragmatism in politics'. Thus a key element of ideologies for Bell is their emotional aspect: 'the most important, latent, funcion [sic] of ideology is to tap emotion' (400). This clearly makes them inferior compared to the prudent and rational civil politics he advocates.

24 Bell, 16. Curiously, although Bell explicitly rejects more inclusive concepts of ideology, some of his characterisations of ideology do fit into my perspective on ideology. For example, he writes that '[i]deology is the conversion of ideas into social levers' (400), which I would consider an apt description of the creative role of ideologies. Moreover, he states, while criticising too vague concepts of ideology, that 'ideology connotes a "myth" rather than just a set of values' (399). Ideologies, I would argue, are both.

25 Eatwell, Roger and Anthony Wright (eds.) – *Contemporary Political Ideologies*, 11.

26 Barry Spurr in his book *'Anglo-Catholic in Religion': T.S. Eliot and Christianity* offers a good example when he pitches Denis Donoghue and Anthony Julius against each other: 'The Irish critic, Denis Donoghue rejects the charge, commenting that to call Eliot anti-Irish is 'as specious' as to call him anti-Semitic. Julius, in turn, rebukes Donoghue, accusing him of not 'caring' about anti-Semitism (p.40). One suspects that what Donoghue cares about is the truth' (260). A few pages later Spurr adds in an even more condescending tone: 'A self-proclaimed 'liberal' (see, for example, p.116), Julius, like so many of that paradoxical breed, extends his liberality only so far as you are prepared to agree with him.' (265).

27 Freeden, Michael; *Ideology: A Very Short Introduction*, 2. Eatwell and Wright offer a very similar definition when they write that 'ideology provide[s] an ordered system of symbols which help[s] people understand life in terms of meaningful patterns, and help[s] give their behavior purpose' (10).

28 Hulme, T. E.; *Selected Writings*, 175.

29 In: Eagleton; *Ideology: An Introduction,* 48. Freeden writes: 'Ideologies need, after all, to straddle the world of political thought and political action, for one of their central functions is to link the two.' (Ideologies and Political Theory, 76).

30 Eagleton; *Ideology: An Introduction,* 45. Eagleton brings in 6 features ideologies are thought to possess: they are *unifying*, *action-oriented*, *rationalizing*, *legitimating*, *universalizing* and *naturalizing.*

31 Backes, Uwe; *Politische Extreme: Eine Wort- und Begriffsgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart*, 101.

32 Consider, for example, Andreas Pečar, Damien Tricoire; *Falsche Freunde: War die Aufklärung wirklich die Geburtsstunde der Moderne?*

33 *Querfront* strategies also became popular again in Germany after 1945. The Russian National Bolshevik Party, founded in 1993 and banned in 2007, might be another contender. Very often the common ideological core of these groups is the rejection of the democratic bourgeois order. However, it is debatable whether these examples constitute a true overcoming of the left/right dichotomy, as they very often are initiated on the political Right, and mostly embrace right-wing ideological elements.

34 Bobbio, Norberto; *Left and Right,* 7.

35 Van Dijk, Teun A.; *Ideology: a Multidisciplinary Approach,* 203.

36 Freeden, *Ideology: A Very Short Introduction*, 64.

37 The horseshow model emphasises the resemblance of the extreme Left and Right, and is especially popular in the field of extremist theory. Imagining the left/right binary as a horseshoe brings the extreme Left and Right together in their rejection of the dominant society and equates their means employed to achieve their political goal. One of the most prominent representatives of the extremist theory in Germany is Eckhard Jesse. What is problematic about the horseshow model is that it disregards power imbalances and too readily equates different forms of violence. Statistically, right-wing extremists not only employ more serious violent behaviour but they also frequently target already marginalised groups or individuals. Therefore, it might not be too surprising that many adherents of the horseshoe model come from a privileged position (they are usually white male and middle-class) who, above all, see extremist violence as disturbing the status quo.

38 Ibid Backes; *Rechtsextreme Ideologien in Geschichte und Gegenwart,* 48-51; Downs, William M.; *Political Extremism in Democracies: Combating Intolerance*, 14; Caiani, Manuela et al.; *Mobilizing on the Extreme Right: Germany, Italy, and the Unites States*, 5.

39 In right-wing ideology power distribution can be a highly ambivalent and controversial concept as perceived power distribution often differs from real power distribution. Moreover, power distribution can be subject to great flux even within one single strand of right-wing ideology, Nazism for example. Although power is a crucial concept in right-wing ideology, I would argue that power (distribution) is not the core by itself but part of the concept of inequality.

40 Griffin, for examples, uses both terms as modes of action: 'ideology can assume a reactionary, progressive or revolutionary aspect according to whether it acts in a given situation as (a) a conformist, conservative, hegemonic force, (b) an idealistic, reforming, but 'systemic' force or (c) a utopian, subversive, 'extra-systemic' one' (Griffin, *Nature of Fascism*, 15).

41 Morrison, 9.

42 Morrison, *The Poetics of Fascism*, 44.

43 As Payne put it in his list of the main interpretations of fascism: Payne, *Fascism*, 178, and 190.

44 The signifier 'fascism' refers to the Latin word *fasces*, meaning literally 'a bundle of sticks'. The *fasces*, even in ancient Roman times, have always been a symbol more than an actual object of utility. Thus, if one attempts to define fascism by referring back to the *fasces* one has simply substituted one signifier for another, since the underlying concept/signified for the term '*fasces*' is equally unstable and dependent on interpretation.

45 Even looking to the far right for a definition of fascism does not bring vastly different results: According to my research, the majority of the German New Right reject the term as a self-description. Instead, it is mainly used as designating the historical phenomenon, often limited to Italian Fascism, or ahistorically as a term of critique against anyone viewed as a political antagonist, for example, 'left-wing fascism'. Compare, for example, the entries for 'fascism' in *Metapedia* (a right-wing Wikipedia) and in *Staatspolitisches Handbuch* from the Institut für Staatspolitik, a far right-wing think-tank I discuss in chapter 6.

46 Sternhell, *The Birth of Fascist Ideology*, 3.

47 All ibid, 3.

48 Sternhell, *Birth of Fascist Ideology*, 4.

49 Griffin, *The Nature of Fascism*, 14.

50 Paxton, 219, and Griffin, *The Nature of Fascism*, 14.

51 Cf. Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, 14.

52 Ibid., 14

53 Sternhell, *Birth of Fascist Ideology*, 3.

54 The term Anti-Enlightenment is problematic here since it again re-enforces the pattern of constructing fascism and its predecessors as the other. A number of right-wing thinkers of the 20th century (especially Hulme and his contemporaries) have replaced Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment with Romantic and Classical. I will adopt part of this classification, using Classical together with the more conventional Enlightenment as its opposite in an attempt to avoid term-based bias.

55 Cf. Payne, *Fascism: Comparison and Definition*, 7, and Paxton, 219-220. Payne's three categories are 1) Fascist Negations, 2) Ideology and Goals, and 3) Style and Organization. In the first category he puts the familiar triad of antiliberalism, anticommunism and anticonservatism; the second focuses on the re-organisation of the state and society; the third emphasises aesthetics and mass-mobilisation as well as the veneration of masculinity, youth and the staging of the *Führerprinzip*. Paxton admits that his mobilizing passions 'belong more to the realm of visceral feelings than to the realm of reasoned propositions' (219). Again one finds emphasis on violence, the *Führerprinzip* and masculinity, but Paxton also stresses more complex elements, which I think really get at the core of fascist ideology, namely the belief in supremacy, perceived victimhood and a sense of decline and crisis. At the heart of these we find a core of inequality and thus it is these 'passions' we still find in contemporary right-wing movements.

56 Italics in the original, Griffin, *The Nature of Fascism*, 26. He specifies palingenesis as a 'new birth occurring after a period of perceived decadence' (36).

57 Consider such quotes as 'Er [der Jude] ist und bleibt ein Parasit, ein Schmarotzer, der wie ein schädlicher Bazillus sich immer mehr ausbreitet, so wie nur ein günstiger Nährboden dazu einlädt. Die Wirkung seines Daseins aber gleicht ebenfalls der von Schmarotzern: wo er auftritt, stirbt das Wirtsvolk nach kürzer oder längerer Zeit ab' (quoted in: Zentner, Christian; *Hitlers Mein Kampf: Eine Kommentierte Auswahl*; 150). Zentner maintains that in *Mein Kampf*, Hitler never talks about the annihilation of all the Jews in their physical existence. However, Hitler's determined stance on the parasitical and alien character of the Jews, can lead the reader to no other conclusion that for a thriving of the 'Arian race' the elimination of the Jews, in whatever form, was paramount. That this was intentional can be inferred from an early letter from Hitler from 1919 in which he muses that '[d]er Antisemitismus der Vernunft … muß führen zur planmäßigen gesetzlichen Bekämpfung und Beseitigung der Vorrechte des Juden […].  This plan was ultimately made public in Hitler's *Reichstagsrede* on 30th January 1939: 'Ich will heute wieder ein Prophet sein: Wenn es dem internationalen Finanzjudentum innerhalb und außerhalb Europas gelingen sollte, die Völker noch einmal in einen Weltkrieg zu stürzen, dann wird das Ergebnis nicht die Bolschewisierung der Erde und damit der Sieg des Judentums sein, sondern die Vernichtung der jüdischen Rasse in Europa!' (ibid, 168).

58 Hitler's *Mein Kampf* was the most widely distributed book in Germany during the late thirties and early forties. It is still a matter of debate whether it was also the most widely read. Especially after the war many people claimed that they owned a copy but have never read it. However, this debate reflects the defects of the German *Aufarbeitung* more than the actual matter at stake. Interestingly, non-German research was always more cautious when it came to assessing how widely read *Mein Kampf* really was, whereas German scholars usually followed the myth of the unread and unreadable bestseller. This myth, according to Othmar Plöckinger, was already started during the 1930s by no other than the Strasser movement, famous National Socialists who opposed Hitler. Plöckinger's study on Hitler's book opposes the idea of the unread book, evaluating, for example, library catalogues to show that it was indeed widely known and read. (cf. Plöckinger, Othmar; *Adolf Hitlers "Mein Kampf",* especially 356 – 362 and 419 – 429. He goes on to state that due to the equation of *Mein Kampf* with national-socialist practice, not having read the book was interpreted as an act of resistance and thus the myth of the unread bestseller was fostered especially in Germany after 1945 (cf. 405).

59 Cf., for example, Stone, Dan; *Breeding Superman* on eugenics and lethal chambers.

60 These claims have been repeatedly challenged. The latest research done by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a catalogue listing all physical sites of the Holocaust in the German Reich and German-controlled areas, corroborates the argument that even if people did not actively participate in the Holocaust they were very often passive collaborators aware of what was going on. With 42,500 facilities in total (and over 3000 in Berlin alone), 'the findings [leave] no doubt […] that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.' (Quoted in Lichtblau, Eric. 'The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking').

61 Consider for example, the debate over whether Britain had done all it could to save the Jews, as claimed by William D. Rubinstein in *The Myth of Rescue*, or whether it had either failed to help or even refused to help, as argued by Julius *Trials of the Diaspora*.

62 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora*, xlviii.

63 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora*, 5.

64 According to Julius rational enemies comprise those opponents who 'find themselves in conflict with a genuine Jewish project or stance' (3), which can be further differentiated into the involuntary rational type 'for whom the enmity is implicit in the given circumstances of his material existence' and the voluntary rational type 'for whom the enmity is a free choice' (3). The opportunistic enemies 'do not oppose Jewish projects [but] exploit Jewish weakness' (4). Included in this category are writers who 'exploit anti-Semitism for literary effect' (5).

65 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora*, 5.

66 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora,* 5.

67 Also sometimes called *The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion* is a forged document that purports to be the factual minutes of the meeting of the Jewish elders while they discuss their plans for world domination. First published in Russia in 1903 it was quickly translated and published in many European countries. While it was soon exposed to be a forgery it continued to dominate anti-Semitic discourses in the Western world as it seemed to confirm conspiracy theories about Jewish strategies for global hegemony. It is still peddled in some right-wing circles as a factual document with the forgery claims seen as further proof of the Jewish conspiracy.

68 Julius; *Trials of the Diaspora*, 53.

69 Julius; *Trials of the Diaspora* , 5.

70 Baumann, Zygmunt; *Modernity and the Holocaust*, 34.

71 Cf. Julius; *Trials of the Diaspora*, 53.

72 In fact, as Julius writes: 'In modern times, and until 1936, it was Italy and not England that had the mildest, in the sense of the least, anti-Semitism of the Western democracies.' (*Trials of the Diaspora*, 242).

73 Consider, for example, the following excerpt from a text by Mussolini, in which he deplores the numerical decrease of the white race: '...while the Whites in the USA have a miserable birth-rate—which would be even more so if it were not for the injection of more fertile races such as Irish, the Jews and the Italians—the Negroes are extremely fertile,...' (in Griffin, Roger (ed.); *Fascism*, 59). Here the Jews are not only classified as part of the white race but are also mentioned in conjunction with Italians without any indication of inequality.

74 As suggested by Aly, Götz; *Warum die Deutschen?  Gleichheit, Neid und Rassenhass 1800-1939.*

75 Cf. Julius; *Trials of the Diaspora*, 140.

76 Cf Julius; *Trials of the Diaspora*, 248.

77 In: Kushner, Tony and Kenneth Lunn, *Traditions of Intolerance: Historical perspectives on fascism and race discourse in Britain,* 12-13. Cheyette is not alone in this analysis: '[Tony] Kushner writes that the dominant discourse regarding Jews in Britain was 'a liberal discourse demanding that the Jew should assimilate totally into British society'. Whilst one can also identify extreme, 'exclusionary anti-Semitism' – which argues that the Jews will always be alien and a threat to the British way of life – and 'social anti-Semitism' – typified by genteel golf club prejudice – it is 'assimilationist anti-Semitism' that derives most clearly from the British liberal tradition.' This is a tradition that does not tolerate violence against minorities, but in return demands their adoption of British ways' (Stone, Dan; *Responses to Nazism in Britain, 1933- 1939: Before War and Holocaust,* 79-80).

78 Kushner; Tony and Kenneth Lunn, 13.

79 Stone; *Responses to Nazism in Britain, 1933-1939: Before War and Holocaust*, 80.

80 ['…einer 'primitive' Ideologie und 'barbarischen' Praxis…'] Cf. Geulen, Christian; *Geschichte des Rassismus*, 11. To clarify, Geulen rejects this simplified characterization of and sets out to demonstrate the complex interplay between racism and Western history.

81 Institutional racism plays a role during the time a particular work is written and published, but also in later stages when it is reviewed, canonised, included in syllabi or not.

82 Which, as if to stress this point, is also the name of a right-wing fashion brand.

83 Cf. Geulen, 32-38.

84 Geulen, 35.

85 cf. Geulen, 71.

86 As well as by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, author of *Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts* (*The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century*), which was based on Gobineau's book, with the alteration that while Gobineau only had positive things to say about Jews, Chamberlain introduced a significant anti-Semitic element.

87 Cf. Geulen, 74-75, and 92; also Stone, *Breeding Superman*, 95.

88 One could argue, however, that eugenic practices are still very much alive. Debates around abortion (also especially late-term abortion) and reproduction are still very much influenced by discourses on race, class, and ability.

89 Sternhell, Zeev; *The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition*, 8.

90 Sorel, 209. On the topic of myths, compare this to a speech by Mussolini: 'We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. It is a reality in the sense that it is a stimulus, is hope, is faith, is courage. Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, we subordinate everything else.' (In: Griffin, *Fascism*, 44). The similarity is no coincidence, as Mussolini had read Sorel closely.

91 Both, Sorel, 171.

92 quoted in Sternhell; *Birth of Fascist Ideology*, 153.

93 'Futurist Manifesto' from 1909, in: Asholt, Wolfgang and Walter Fähnders (eds.); *Manifeste und Proklamationen der europäischen Avantgarde*, 5.

94 The SS constitutes a good example: it was stylised as an elite unit 'which was not only communicated by its internal ideology and hierarchy, but also by the social structure of its members, its visual and public appearance' (Reichel, Peter; *Der schöne Schein des Dritten Reiches: Faszination und Gewalt des Faschismus*, 224). At the end of the 1930s it boasted 10-20 % nobility among its members, 30 & of the SS had a university degree (compared to 3 % of the general public) (cf. Reichel, 225), although a considerable amount of its members were also drafted from the working class (Hein, Bastian; *Die SS: Geschichte und Verbrechen;* 37). Moreover its members also had to fulfil certain physical qualities, such as being from Aryan, ideally, Nordic stock, at least 1.70m in height (above average height for men during these times) as well as being in a good bodily disposition (cf. Hein; *Die SS: Geschichte und Verbrechen;* 30- 32). The final mark of distinction came in the form of the famous black uniforms designed by Hugo Boss, to visually separate them from the more plebeian brown and grey uniforms of the SA and Wehrmacht (cf. Koop, Andreas; *NSCI: Das visuelle Erscheinungsbild der Nationalsozialisten 1920-1945*, 134-135).

95 This observation resembles Walter Benjamin's idea of fascism as the aesthetisation of politics that offers the populace a part in the spectacle of politics instead of real political participation (cf. Benjamin, 47-50).

96 One could even go further and see the democratic state as 'a synthesis of monarchical, aristocratic and democratic elements' (Backes; *Politische Extreme: Eine Wortund Begriffsgeschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart*, 241).

97 Julius, Anthony; *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*, 33.

98 Pounds famous retraction from anti-Semitism, which, for good reasons, is still debated. See for example Stoicheff, Peter; *The Hall of Mirrors: Drafts &Fragments and the End of Ezra Pound's Cantos,* 136.

99 Farr, Barbara Storm; *The Development and Impact of Right-Wing Politics in Britain, 1903-1932,* 54.

100 Stone; *Responses to Nazism in Britain, 1933-1939,* 6-7.

101 Pugh, Martin; *Hurrah for the Blackshirts!': Fascists and Fascism in Britain between the Wars*, 2.

102 Pugh, 56.

103 Both quotes: Pugh 56 and 57.

104 Both quoted in Stone, *Responses to Nazism in Britain, 1933-1939,* 80.

106 Pugh, 28.

107 British immigration policy described in Pugh, 232-233 and Julius, Anthony; *Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England*, 318-320. A.J.P. Taylor has argued that '[e]ven England's anti-Semites [...] were offended by what the Nazis were doing to German Jewry' (quoted in Julius; *Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England*; 303).

108 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England*, 303-304. Cf. also: Bauerkämper, Arnd; *Die »radikale Rechte« in Großbritannien* ;191 and Julius, Trials, 276 – 328.

109 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England*, 470.

105 Pugh, 13.

110 Eksteins, Modris; *Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age*, 119.

111 Ibid. Morgan, Kenneth O.; *The Oxford History of Britain,* 592.

112 Cf. Thorpe, Andrew; *Britain in the 1930s: The Deceptive Decade,* 109.

113 Cf. Surette, Leon; *Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia: Literary Modernism and Politics,* 106.

114 Especially in the case of Pound, there are many studies that would probably disagree, citing his confinement and the hostility Pound received. Eliot tried to make a similar claim for Lewis. As a matter of fact, Lewis came under patronage of the BBC and saw a great retrospective of Vorticism. Thus while he partially lived precariously, he was not shunned from the cultural scene. The same holds true for Pound: many artists rallied for his liberation, his writings and translation found an avid circle of readers and a number of laudatory studies about him were written already during his lifetime.

115 Cf. Pugh, 287-319.

116 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora*, 330.

117 Stone; *Responses to Nazism in Britain, 1933-1939,* 82.

118 Equally ambivalent as the concept of power and arguably also linked to it is discrimination: who is using prejudice and who is being prejudiced? Who is entitled to privileges and who is not?

119 'Settings and allies' are an analytical filter from Paxton's study on fascism, in which he urged not to look at fascism in isolation but at it in its environment (both contextual as well as ideological) (cf. Paxton, 206-207).

120 This pattern of explanation seems to be quite popular in the assessment of rightwing people in general (not only artists and writer but also other political figures). This myth of right-wing pathology, as I would call it, very often tries to find causal links between the political opinions held by a person and their respective personality and biographical background. I use the word pathology, because it hints at the fact that often a supposed personal or biographical anomaly is seen as responsible for certain ideological positions. Adorno's research into the authoritarian personality might be one of the reasons for the popularity of this approach. However, the myth of right-wing pathology shows significant internal contradictions and it ignores the larger right-wing discourse from which many writers drew.

121 In: Hamilton, Alastair; *The Appeal of Fascism: A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism, 1919 – 1945,* xiii.

122 Ibid., xiii. An argument very reminiscent of Walter Benjamin.

#### 3. The Poem as Propaganda – Ezra Pound

123 Gross, Andrew S.; *The Pound Reaction: Liberalism and Lyricism in Midcentury American Literature*, 1.

124 Quoted in: Morrison, Paul; *The Poetics of Fascism: Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Paul de Man*, 44. For those interested in the individual responses of the jury members to the controversy the study by Gross is likely the best source.

125 This is based on the 'mere words' rule used in treason trials: '"That is true in the sense that the mere utterance of disloyal sentiments is not treason; aid and comfort must be given to the enemy. But the communication of an idea, whether by speech or writing, is as much an act as is throwing a brick, though different muscles are used to achieve different effects."' (Rushing, Conrad L.; '"Mere Words": The Trial of Ezra Pound', 130).

126 Italics in the original, Barnhisel, Gregory; *James Laughlin, New Directions, and the Remaking of Ezra Pound*, 6.

127 In order as stated: Feldman, Matthew; 'The Pound-Case in Historical Perspective: An Overview'; Parker, Andrew; 'Ezra Pound and the Economy of Anti-Semitism'; Lauber, John; 'Pound's "Cantos": A Fascist Epic'; Dasenbrock, Reed Way; Jefferson and/or Adams: A Shifting Mirror for Mussolini in the Middle Cantos'; Ferkiss, Victor; 'Ezra Pound and American Fascism'; and Goldblatt, Eli; 'Gender Matters in Pound's "Cantos"'.

128 Quoted in Homberger, Eric (ed.); *Ezra Pound: The Critical Heritage*, 375.

129 For my project I am using: Pound, Ezra; *The Cantos of Ezra Pound* (1970), New York: New Directions, 1993. All citations from the *Cantos* come from this edition and will be given in the form of (number of canto/page number). For sake of brevity I will use Arabic numerals for the individual cantos.

130 Stock, Noel; *Reading the Cantos: A Study of Meaning in Ezra Pound*, 29.

131 Makin, Peter; *Pound's Cantos*, 212.

132 Wieland Schmied opens his book *Ezra Pound: Ein Leben zwischen Kunst und Politik* with a meditation on 'the tragic fate of the poet, interned under unbearable conditions in an American asylum (an obvious prototype for the future Soviet practice of isolating dissidents in sanatoriums)' [...tragischen Schicksal des unter unwürdigsten Bedingungen in einem amerikanischen Irrenhaus Internierten (offenbares Vorbild für die spätere sowjetische Praxis, Dissidenten in Nervenkliniken zu isolieren)], 7. Also compare Stock, 91-92.

133 Chace, *The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot*, 37.

134 Barnhisel, 108.

135 Lauber, 3.

136 Thus I agree with Feldman stating: 'It also, in my view, suggests that a neat demarcation between propaganda, on the one hand, and poetry on the other, was not a distinction born of the war itself — let alone Pound's conception of his work but of Pound criticism after it. In February 1942, for example, Pound read two Cantos over the air — the second specifically referred to as Canto 46, which includes some of Pound's anti-Semitic conspiracy theories:' (93).

137 Cf. Starkulla, Heinz W.; *Propaganda: Begriffe, Typen, Phänomene*, 59.

138 Cf. Starkulla, 60-61.

139 Cf. Starkulla, 70.

140 'I remember him speaking in all seriousness of the Cantos as a 'political weapon'. (Stock, 91).

141 ['Er sah in der Gesellschaft also schon vorab den Feind seines Schaffens, während er sich andererseits als ihr Sprachrohr verstand. Der feine Unterschied, den er in seinen Werken zwischen der »Menschheit« und der »Masse« macht, spiegelt diese Sinnespaltung:...'] Hesse, *Ezra Pound: Von Sinn und Wahnsinn,* 340.

142 Carey, John; *The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1800-1939,* 16-17 and cf. Hesse; *Ezra Pound: Von Sinn und Wahnsinn*: 'Nothing is more evident than the fact that their works are conceived out of the intellectual alienation of their times, coming from a privileged standpoint in terms of education, which reproduces the existing class structure again in their literature and which is embodied in the stylistic devices of intellectual alienation, i. e. being individualist and not wishing to be understood by all' ['Nichts ist offenkundiger, als daß ihre Werke aus der geistigen Entfremdung von ihrer Zeit konzipiert sind, von einem Bildungsprivileg her, das die Klassenstruktur in der Literatur noch einmal reproduziert und sich durch die Stilmittel der geistigen Distanzierung ausdruckt, d. h. individualistisch unter Verzicht auf kollektives Gehör'] (349).

143 Quoted in Heymann, 63.

144 Consider his reply from 1933 to D. G. Bridson, who had suggested that '[Pound] has far too much of importance to say for him to rest content in the appreciation of a few. Human nature and intelligence being what it is, he would have been well advised to compromise by meeting his audience half way'; Pound answered: 'Perhaps Mr. Bridson would be generous enough to explain WHAT audience I ought to 'meet halfway. London, is, as you know, full of pimps who do not want to look either facts or ideas in the face. […] Are these the vermin for whom one should write footnotes?' (Both quoted in: Homberger, 268).

145 Emphasis in the original. ['Wenn er kraft seiner höheren Sensibilität »für« alle spricht, so spricht er doch beileibe nicht »zu« allen, sondern zur Minderheit der Begabten und Kultivierten, die sich hoch über das Niveau der unmündigen Masse erhebt und ihr politische und geistige Führung bietet.'] Hesse; *Ezra Pound: Von Sinn und Wahnsinn*, 186.

146 Cf. Hesse: '"Gli uomini vivoni in pochi« (Machiavelli), [Pound] liked to quote, humanity only comes alive in a few superior individuals, while the rest stumbles through life in a semi-conscious state. Art and politics depend on these few, who in themselves concentrate the dull will of the people'. ['»Gli uomini vivoni in pochi« (Machiavelli), zitiert [Pound] mit Vorliebe, die Menschheit ist nur in ganz wenigen überdurchschnittlichen Exemplaren lebendig, alle andern dämmern bewußtseinsblind vor sich hin. Auf diese wenigen, in denen sich der dumpfe Mehrheitswille verdichtet, kommt es in der Politik wie in der Kunst allein an (Hesse, Von Sinn und Wahnsinn, 184).

147 Quoted in Heymann, David C.; *Ezra Pound. The Last Rower: A Political Profile*, 63.

148 Marsh, Alec; *John Kasper and Ezra Pound: Saving the Republic*, 159.

149 Chace, xiii.

150 Desai, Meghnad; *The Route of All Evil: The Political Economy of Ezra Pound*, 48.

151 Quoted in Desai, 78.

152 Cf. Chace, 33.

153 Sieburth, Richard; 'In Pound We Trust: The Economy of Poetry/The Poetry of Economics', 166.

154 Chace, *The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot*, 33.

155 Lauber, 14-15.

156 Pound, Ezra; *Selected Poems of Ezra Pound*, 64.

157 The 'Hell Cantos' do not spell out the names of the people they attack; substituting them with a dotted line instead, in which each dot stands for one letter, and only the final letter of each name given.

158 Cf. Edwards, John Hamilton and William W. Vasse; *Annotated Index to the Cantos of Ezra Pound*, 254.

159 As he writes in his short biography that prefaces: Pound; *Selected Poems of Ezra Pound*, viii.

160 Pound, Ezra; *Guide to Kulchur*; 62. It should be noted that this reasoning, with an anti-Semitic twist added to it, is still fairly common in the right-wing scene.

161 Cf. Alighieri, Dante; *The Inferno of Dante Alighieri*; Canto 12-30.

162 The draining of the marshes also had symbolic value for Mussolini, who linked it to the Fascist repopulation efforts, the fertility of the land assuring sustenance to the growing population, while also serving as a metaphor: 'In a Fascist Italy where marshes have been drained, the land has been irrigated and cultivated; where life has become disciplined, there is space and food for another 10 million men.' (In: Griffin, Roger; *Fascism*, 59).

163 Desai, 41. Williams sheds some more light on why the Middle Ages served as positive example from history: 'Thus the Middle Ages had much that was missing from the contemporary world. The governments were strong and stable, and provided firm, but fair economic and political direction without interfering unnecessarily in people's lives. They, plus the absence of a middle class, ensured that society was unified and all members cared for. The medieval period had a few other features the Modernists liked; it was spiritually fulfilled, morally healthy, and aesthetically pleasing' (86).

164 For example in Canto 38, 41, 87, 97, 100 as well as Canto 74 and 80. Most of the time, there are only short references to each economist's name or a quote. Douglas is sometimes only alluded to by the initials of his first name. In canto 41, which also prominently features Pound's meeting with Mussolini, a mention of Douglas is followed by ' "To strangle the bankers…?" / And Woergl in our time?' (41/205). Wörgl, a small town in Tyrol, started issuing stamp scrip during the Great Depression, effectively implementing Gesell's theory. It increased employment and revived the economy. Despite its success it was terminated after one year.

165 North, Michael; *The Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound,* 151.

166 Casillo, *Genealogy of Demons*, 221.

167 Cf. Casillo, *Genealogy of Demons*, 70.

168 Catherine Paul also remarks how Pound must have found the Fascist calendar appealing as it coincided with the birth year of English Modernism due to the publication of *Ulysses* and *The Waste Land* ('Italian Fascist Exhibitions and Ezra Pound's Move to the Imperial', 66).

169 This is in tune with Pound's earlier pamphlets on money and economy, 'Social Credit: An Impact' and 'What Is Money For', written in 1935 and 1939 respectively, showing the poet's changing attitude towards German economic policies. In the former he criticises Schacht and has little to say about Germany in general; in the latter, Germany and National Socialism are linked to Fascist Italy. In fact, 'What Is Money For' with its focus on China, Western usury as well as its antidotes in the form of Douglas theory and fascist systems, reads like the companion piece to Canto 52.

170 The Mefo bills, named after the 'Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft', were promissory notes to facilitate the financing of public expenditures without having to rely on banks. As with the 'New Plan' the Mefo bills served as a means to conceal Germany's re-armament. In Pound's eyes, the Mefo bills might have seemed like a blow at banking and usury as well as the *Finanzjudentum*, which might further explain Schacht's presence in Canto 52.

171 The plan, which was named Schacht-Rublee plan, was never successfully implemented. Shortly after negotiations began, Schacht was laid off as finance minister. Schacht was replaced by Helmuth Wohlthat and the negotiations (which had been unpopular with some Nazi officials to begin with) were interrupted by the Second World War and Germany's exterminatory practices. Schacht had been dismissed because he had criticised Hitler's policies on armament and finance. This shows that Schacht was difficult to place in terms of political policies. He abhorred the *Reichspogromnacht* and also helped a number of resistance fighters. At the same time he massively helped Hitler's government to battle inflation. His plan on Jewish property was both welcomed and rejected by the Jewish community. While it would have helped Jews emigrate it was also put in place to boost German export (cf. Schacht; *The Magic of Money*, 59-60).

172 Buss, Claude; *War and Diplomacy in Eastern Asia*, 405.

173 Quoted in Redman, 252.

174 Cf. Casillo, Robert; *The Genealogy of Demons: Anti-Semitism, Fascism, and the Myths of Ezra Pound*, 260.

175 Cf. for example, Casillo; *The Genealogy of Demons, 5-7,* or Desai, 116.

176 Cf. Desai, 96.

177 Casillo; *Genealogy of Demons*, 5.

178 Terrell, 200.

179 Parker, 111.

180 Doob, Leonard (ed.); *Ezra Pound Speaking: Radio Speeches of World War II*, 133, 44, and 38.

181 Terrell, 724. James Wilhelm reads this canto in a similar vein, even detecting a sense of irony on Pound's part: 'By noting that the crime is "beyond race," Pound specifically shows that it is not limited to Jews, who were forced in the Middle Ages to assume the profession of moneylender because they were denied the ownership of land. The double standard of using the Jews for a condemned service and then blaming them for performing that service did not escape Pound's keen sense of irony' (*The Later Cantos of Ezra Pound*, 182). While the phrase 'beyond race' does indeed indicate that usury is not limited to Jews, this canto still seems to suggest that it was the Jews who brought this evil into the world. Moreover the phrase 'against race' seems to imply that usury is a crime that targets not people but races, an interpretation that fits a world-view that sees struggle between races as the core of history.

182 Doob, 51. It is probably unnecessary to add that these remarks by Pound bear a striking resemblance to official NS propaganda.

183 The inclusion of Eustace Clarence Mullins, who can be considered part of the Far Right, is not random but indicates a greater issue in Pound studies, namely the fact that many early Pound scholars did not only belong to his inner circle of acquaintances but also shared his ideology. I discuss Mullins and his relationship with Pound in chapter 6.

184 Quotes are taken from Parker, 109-110. Parker considers himself part of the third group.

185 Parker, 109.

186 Desai, 1.

187 Flory, 299.

188 Lauber, 14.

189 Casillo; *Genealogy of Demons*, 17.

190 Julius, 53.

191 Casillo; 'Plastic Demons: The Scapegoating Process in Ezra Pound', 358.

192 Casillo; 'Plastic Demons: The Scapegoating Process in Ezra Pound', 359.

193 Pound also saw this ideal in the Axis, as shown by an early copy of his translation of Confucius: 'By way of example, the FBI files show that Pound's Confucian translation into English, "The Unwobbling Pivot" from 1947, was originally published by the Saló Republic under the title L'Asse che non vacilla [The Axis Will Not Waiver]' (Feldman, 92).

194 Cf. Edwards and Vasse, 45.

195 Compare this passage from Weininger, which shares with Pound's *Cantos* the exact same imagery and prejudices concerning Jews and women: 'Men who are match-makers are always inherently Jewish; and here lies the **greatest** congruence between womanhood and Jewry. The Jew is always more lecherous, lewd, but also curiously, maybe in connection to his not really amoral nature, sexually less potent than the Aryan. Only Jews are real match-makers, and nowhere is match-making by men so popular as among the Jews. Admittedly match making is of great necessity among the Jews as there exists no other people who marry less for love: yet another proof for the soullessness of the absolute Jew. [Männer, die kuppeln, haben immer Judentum in sich; und damit ist der Punkt der **stärksten** Übereinstimmung zwischen Weiblichkeit und Judentum erreicht. Der Jude ist stets lüsterner, geiler, wenn auch merkwürdigerweise, vielleicht im Zusammenhange mit seiner nicht eigentlich antimoralischen Natur, sexuell weniger potent als der arische Mann. Nur Juden sind echte Heiratsvermittler, und nirgends erfreut sich Ehevermittlung durch Männer einer so ausgedehnten Verbreitung wie unter den Juden. Freilich ist eine Tätigkeit nach dieser Richtung hier dringender als sonst vonnöten; denn es gibt, wessen schon einmal gedacht wurde, kein Volk der Welt, in dem so wenig aus Liebe geheiratet würde wie unter ihnen: ein Beweis mehr für die Seelenlosigkeit des absoluten Juden.]', (emphasis in the original; *Geschlecht und Charakter*; 417).

196 Quoted in Torrey, E. Fuller; *The Roots of Treason: Ezra Pound and the Secret of St. Elizabeths;* 143.

197 Casillo; *Genealogy of Demons*; 7.

198 Pound was connected in differing degrees to people like John Kasper, David Horton, Eustace Mullins, Admiral John Crommelin and Pedro del Valle. It is difficult to establish the precise nature of their relationships: from what can be gathered Pound encouraged some of their actions and at least approved of others. Marsh has done an admirable job of analysing the Pound-Kasper relationship in his study *John Kasper and Ezra Pound: Saving the Republic*, which also shows that Pound was more than just a passive bystander.

199 See for example, Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora*, 123-128.

200 Lauber, 13.

201 Doob, 146.

202 Compare Pound's Geryon to this part from the *Protocols*: 'These learned men decided by peaceful means to conquer the world for Zion with the slyness of the Symbolic Snake, whose head was to represent those who have been initiated into the plans of the Jewish administration, and the body of the Snake to represent the Jewish people…'. (140).

203 Lauber, 12-13.

204 Ferrall, Charles; *Modernist Writings and Reactionary Politics;* 68.

205 This passage is a reference to Matthew 5.13 'Ye are the salt of the earth' and can also be read in combination with a statement from one of Pound's letters: 'New York is ganz verjudet' (Redman, 177).

206 Commenting on the *Protocols*, Henry Ford, who had an English translation distributed in America, said: '…they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. THEY FIT IT NOW.' (All caps in the original; quoted in: *Protocols*, 136).

207 There is, in fact, a debate about how much Pound knew and cared about the plight of the Jews in Europe. Some letters reveal that he received information about the events in the German *Reich*, yet his replies show that this did not lead to a change of heart on his part nor to a re-evaluation of his convictions (cf., e.g. Redman, 178 and Marsh, 82).

208 Redman, 178.

209 A fact that becomes apparent when we consider the epic's popularity among the New Far Right.

210 I do not read his famous statement that he regretted his anti-Semitism as 'a stupid suburban prejudice' as a sincere reflection of his anti-Semitism. In fact, I agree with Peter Stoicheff that the regret seems as much about 'the conformity of antiSemitism, its "suburban" aspect, as […] with its racial intolerance' (*The Hall of Mirrors: Drafts &Fragments and the End of Ezra Pound's Cantos,* 136). Stoicheff also details how Pound saw no need to edit out the anti-Semitism of his essays, which were reprinted in the 1960s.

211 Pound; *Guide to Kulchur*; 16.

212 Casillo; 'Anti-Semitism, Castration, and Usury in Ezra Pound'; 248.

213 Doob, 70.

214 Desai, 122.

215 Julius, Anthony; *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*; xiii.

216 Julius, Anthony; *Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England*; 184.

217 '…it is his singing of Pisa and his re-singing of the political themes that have dominated the poem' (Selby, Nick; *Poetics of Loss in The Cantos of Ezra Pound*; 193).

218 Quoted in: Cookson, William; *A Guide to the Cantos of Ezra Pound*; xxviii.

219 Casillo; *Genealogy of Demons*, 144.

220 Casillo; *Genealogy of Demons*, 145.

221 Quoted in Desai, 116.

222 Casillo; *Genealogy of Demons*, 145.

223 Cookson, 57-58.

224 Pound; *Jefferson and/or Mussolini*, 91.

225 Discussing Pound's indebtedness to the American tradition, Marsh sees in Pound an advocate of Jeffersonianism, which he defines as follows: 'Jeffersonianism is a belief in the independent producer as the model of citizenship and artistic integrity. It envisions history as a class-struggle between debtors and creditors, or otherwise put, "producers"—farmers, craftsmen, artists and small capitalists, and "exploiters"—invariably banks and financiers' (9). This could easily be linked to Mussolini's syndicalism-turned-fascism.

226 Ten Eyck, David; *Ezra Pound's Adams Cantos,* 132.

227 Ten Eyck*,* 132.

228 Pound; *Jefferson and/or Mussolini*, 34.

229 Wyndham Lewis has suggested something similar in *The Art of Being Ruled*, 93.

230 Some scholars, for example Philip Bishop, have suggested that Mussolini was also 'the Cantos' ideal audience and the historical agent who would put their ideas into action' (539). While this is a tantalising idea, I would suggest from the trajectory of the *Cantos* that the ideal audience are the yet uninitiated but eager to learn:

thus the *Cantos* shows what is going wrong, how it can be solved and who, at the moment of composition, is likely to solve it.

231 The fact that the anecdote is said to be 'told by the mezzo-yit (i.e. half-Jew)', suggests that the financiers involved are also Jewish.

232 Lawrence Rainey in his article 'Between Mussolini and Me' suggests that it was Pound's fascination for the emotional aspects of fascism that initially attracted him: The blind devotion ('If we take Pound's later recollection at face value, we can only feel that what impressed him about Marchetti was the intensity of his 'devotion' to Mussolini (10)) coupled with authoritarian violence ('And it was terror – the allure, the thrill, the prospect of terror – that attracted Ezra Pound to Fascism' (11)).

233 Pound, Ezra; *Jefferson and/or Mussolini*, 113.

234 I will be using the translation by Richard Reid, which can be found in Cookson, 117-126.

235 Interestingly, in Pounds 'official' translation of canto 72 the lines about the Moroccans as well as the term 'abortion' were left out, effectively toning down some of the vitriol of the attack.

236 Cf., for example, Doob, 15, 38, 59 and 153.

237 Doob, 51.

238 Pound had picked up this tale from the Italian newspaper *Corriere*, which ran a story about this incident on 1 October 1944. Rainey concludes that the news report coincides 'in so many details as to leave no doubt that it was Pound's source. It is, of course, a transparent fabrication; no such incident ever occurred' (Rainey, Lawrence; *Ezra Pound and the Monument of Culture: Text, History, and the Malatesta,* 216).

239 Selby, 192.

240 Bush, Ronald; 'Modernism, Fascism, and the Composition of Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos', 81.

241 Ecbatana, capital of the Median empire (geographically located in today's Iran), was founded by the first king of Medes, Deïoces in the 6th century BCE; Wagadu was the name of the Ghanese empire, which lasted from ca. 300 to 1200 CE. The *Cantos* also mentions Gassir (actually Gassire), son of the king of the Fasa, the regional tribe, who becomes a bard, leading to the destruction of Wagadu (which was then rebuilt, hence '4 times was the city rebuilded, Hoo Fasa / now in the mind indestructible, Gassir, Hoooo Fasa' (74/450) in the *Cantos* (cf. Edwards and Vasse, 67, 76, and 241). Pound learnt about Wagadu and its history from Leo Frobenius, a German archaeologist and anthropologist, whose *Erlebte Erdteile* Pound read and recommended.

242 Selby, 213.

243 The name 'Rock-Drill' is also telling. It is not only a reference to Jacob Epstein's famous sculpture of the same name, which embodied maybe more than any other artwork the tenets of Vorticism, but the name also suggests that the contents of this sections should be hammered into the heads of its readers.

244 Demeter as the goddess for agriculture links back to the grain pools repeatedly introduced in the 'China Cantos' and the draining of the swamps to convert them into arable land.

245 Cf. Houen, Alex; *Terrorism and Modern Literature: From Joseph Conrad to Ciaran Carson,* 172 -184 and Marsh's afore-mentioned study for a detailed reading of the Kasper-Pound correspondence. Also consider Marsh who writes that 'the fact that he [Pound] could have stopped Kasper, who worshipped the poet as a father, teacher, and Master, at any time had he thought that his young protégé had gone too far is hard to bear. But to scholars of Pound, the poet's support of Kasper and the racial politics they both espoused, the one as activist and the other as theorist, must be accepted…' (xv).

246 Both quoted in Houen, 179.

247 Quoted in Houen, 190. Marsh writes that 'we can read the canto [105] as Pound's heavily coded response to what he considered the judicial usurpations of the Warren Court and renewed "northern aggression" against the South. For at least in part, the poem responds to a specific request from Kasper for propaganda material to use in Crommelin's Alabama campaign dated April 10 [see Kasper's letter in the text above]' (Marsh, 126).

248 Marsh, 128.

249 '[Pound] neatly summarised this attitude in 'A Visiting Card' (1942) when he held up the material construction of the Roman state as being valuable because it was the concrete form to which divine 'armor' clung:

 R O M A O M M O A M O R

Above all this, the substantiality of the soul, and the substantiality of the gods. (*SP*, 327)' (Ten Eyck, 37).

250 Selby, 226.

251 Stoicheff, 5 and 65.

252 Ferrall*,* 67.

253 Quoted in: Casillo; *Genealogy of Demons*, 328.

254 ['Avantgarde-Macho als ein internationaler Typ'] Hesse, Eva; *Die Achse Avantgarde-Faschismus: Reflexionen über Filipo Tommaso Marinetti und Ezra Pound*, 173.

255 Cary Wolfe has also argued that despite some earlier poems in which Pound seems to challenge some normative gender ideals especially concerning masculinity his poetry in general showcases a 'reproduction of a structure of gender built upon an unequal, hierarchical dichotomy, *regardless* of which side of that dichotomy Pound may align himself with at any given moment' (*The Limits of American Ideology,* 96). Thus she summarises: 'what is most ideologically significant in Pound's politics of gender […] is not so much his positioning of himself in particular poems as either masculine or feminine but rather his reproduction of the gender system itself, which structures, organizes, and contains those positions and sustains the mechanism of patriarchal power even where it seems most disowned' (13). The same holds true for the *Cantos*.

262 Cf. Casillo, 'Anti-Semitism, Castration, and Usury in Ezra Pound', 248.

263 How important Pound deemed the foreskin can be deduced from a letter to William Carlos Williams: 'What the hell / history is written and character is made by whether and HOW the male foreskin produces a [sic!] effect of glorious sunrise or of annoyance in slipping backward. Someone diagnosed Shaw years ago by saying he had a tight foreskin / the whole of puritan idiocy is produced by badly built foreskin' (Quoted in Torrey, 144).

264 Goldblatt, 44.

265 Although, as the 'China Cantos' makes clear, Taoists and Buddhist are also often to blame. Hence they are likewise presented as effeminate.

266 Goldblatt, 41.

267 Goldblatt notes that 'Most of the other women who are mentioned in Cantos VIII through XI are victims' (42).

268 James Wilhelm study *The Later Cantos of Ezra Pound* offers an interesting insight into Pound criticism which tries to tackle the problematic gender dynamics in the *Cantos*, but does not evolve beyond its good intentions. Wilhelm is trying to reveal the sexism in the *Cantos*, while – unconsciously and completely without irony – he also reproduces the sexism. Consider, for example, the following passages: 'The troubadours here are more the makers of poems than the seducers of women, and

the ladies are raised up a step by being the sources of much of their inspiration' (22) and 'Throughout the *Pisan Cantos*, Pound mentions temples, rivers, mountains, and cities, and he adds a vast list of the names of the artists whom he had known in Paris and London, along with their attractive women friends' (17). While Wilhelm tries to prove with these passages that the *Cantos* also present women in a favourable light, he does not seem to realize that these women still remain little more than attractive appendages.

269 Cf. Durant, Alan; *Ezra Pound: Identity in Crisis*, 97.

270 Makin, Peter (ed.); *Ezra Pound's Cantos: A Casebook*, 105.

271 Gourmont, 208.

272 Casillo, *Genealogy of Demons*, 212. Unintentionally Wilhelm subtly proves Casillo's point when he writes that: 'If Pound sees woman as truly infernal in any lasting sense, it is only woman as whore. […] The worst females are the prostitutes mentioned obliquely in Cantos 19/88 and 22/105-6, or perhaps those stiff, wooden, un-sensual American-Puritan women of Canto 28/135, women who have a "ligneous solidness" that is not a part of the easy, flowing activity that Pound most admires. The prostitute, who lives and loves for gold, is cursed by Pound, although the woman who lives for love is not' (24-25). Wilhelm tries to show that it is not woman per se whom Pound dismisses but only certain types of women. Interestingly the women described here rival the Jews in description (either too sexual or asexual) or attributes (the love for gold), proving Casillo's point.

273 Again Wilhelm's reading proves unintentionally revealing: 'Pound is forcing the reader to see the Greek [Helen] and the south French woman [Eleanor] as one. They are both seductive forces with "naked beauty" and "tropic skin" (7/26), objects which may lure men to their destruction. Helen of Troy caused the Trojan War, and Eleanor's marriage to Henry II of England after her divorce from Louis VII of France led to that interminable series of wars that plagued the two countries. The Greek verb *helein* (destroy) is a part of their names and also one side of their characters, although just one side' (21).   Hesse, Eva; *Ezra Pound: Von Sinn und Wahnsinn*, (298-299).

276 Goldblatt, 43. In this way Pound as writer of the *Cantos* can align himself with the league of extraordinary men, like Malatesta or Mussolini, he singles out for praise in his epic.

277 Both Goldblatt, 51.

278 Le Bon, Gustave; *The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,* 17.

279 [...daß W seelenlos ist, daß es kein Ich und keine Individualität, keine Persönlichkeit und keine Freiheit, keinen Charakter und keinen Willen hat.]; my translation (Weininger 269).

280 Cf. Weininger, 401. Weininger even goes so far as to deny women of their subjectivitiy, arguing that women revel in their status as coveted objects (391).

281 Dennis, 281.

282 In: Lusty, Natalya and Julian Murphet (eds.); *Modernism and Masculinity*, 235.

283 Quoted in: Sieburth, 164.

284 Which, as all people the poet persona meets in these *Cantos* are spirits of the dead could as well been herself. Yet by letting a man retell her story the woman again becomes the fabric of poetry; the muse but not the creator.

285 Stoicheff, 5.

286 Quoted in Feldman, 97.

287 Terrell, 200. I am aware that not all the glosses are written by Terrell, yet as he oversaw the compilation I will exclusively refer to him to avoid confusion.

288 Terrell, 724.

289 Cf.: Urban, Thomas; Katyn 1940: Geschichte eines Verbrechen, 69-112.

290 Finaldi, Giuseppe; *Mussolini and Italian Fascism* 107.

291 The *BBC*, the British Press and *Time Magazine* published the official Soviet version (Urban, 133-134).

292 Cf. for example, Makin, *Pound's Cantos*, 114. As an interesting side note, Robert Brasillach published numerous articles on the massacre of Katyn, highlighting the Soviet perpetrators. Thus there were numerous sources where Pound could have learned about Katyn without having to rely on inside information.

293 As Cookson rejects the label 'fascist' as too broad, the term 'Fascist', designating the supporters of Fascist Italy, is a precise term that basically follows the selfdenomination of the *fascisti*.

294 Both quotes Cookson, 57-58.

295 Cookson, 114.

296 Cookson, 126. He might have also overlooked that the O.E.D. notes this usage of the word as 'offensive'.

297 This is supported by a quote from Pound biographer A. David Moody saying that 'Pound came to his anti-Semitism by way of his economics, more exactly through his war on usury … but when not engaged in that war Pound was not anti-Semitic. Hence our persistent difficulty: Pound was anti-Semitic; but at the same time he was not.' Firstly, it seems debatable whether Pound's anti-Semitism is limited to the realm of economics. Secondly, Moody's claim that Pound was at once anti-Semitic and not anti-Semitic seems to be mere wordplay to deflect from the issue. One wonders whether Moody would write the same about other anti-Semites.

#### 4. T. S. Eliot – The Conservative Collaborator

305 Cf. Chinitz, David E.; *T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide*.

306 In: Cheyette, Bryan; *Race and Culture: Representations of "the Jew" in English and American Literature;* 84)

307. Shusterman even suggests that relegating Eliot to the realm of the past is a way for critics to boast their own undertaking, 'especially when doing so makes our own critical and theoretical enterprises seem all the more novel and impressive' (both Shusterman; *T. S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism;* 156). Shusterman exhibits three of the common misunderstandings of studies on Eliot and ideology: namely, the inherent paradox of conservatism and poetic innovation, the lumping together of conservatism and a simple yearning for the past, and the idea that an assessment of Eliot's politics results from personal misgivings against the poet or some narcissistic reasons.

308 Eagleton, *Criticism and Ideology*, 150.

309 When it was first published, the title was misspelled as *Ara Vos Prec*, yet it is commonly referred to by its corrected title. The American edition was simply named *Poems.*

310 For example, the Stalinist Wroclaw Congress of Intellectuals (cf. Habedank, Klaus; *Kultur- und Sozialkritik bei T. S. Eliot: Eine Untersuchung der Werke Eliots 1909- 39;* 199-200). Also Rossel Hope Robbins in the *T. S. Eliot Myth* considers Eliot's later essays 'an intellectual blueprint for clerico-fascism' (184)

311 Most of these points can be found in his Virginia lectures published as *After Strange Gods*. Herein he states that '[t]he population should be homogeneous; where two or more cultures exist in the same place they are likely either to be fiercely selfconscious or both to become adulterate. What is still more important is unity of religious background; and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.' (19-20). Moreover, he claims that tradition 'represent[s] the blood kinship of "the same people living in the same place"' (18) and deprecates the society he lives in as 'wormeaten with Liberalism' (13). Anthony Julius has noted Eliot's use of the pronoun 'we', thereby effectively excluding Jews from his addressees (cf. Julius, 1-2). Although Eliot later regretted *After Strange Gods* and did not allow it to be reprinted, similar convictions can be found in most of his other writings, as will be shown in this chapter.

312 Harding, Jason; *The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain*, 181-182.

313 ['Eliot, dessen oft wiederholter Grundsatz lautet, er sei "interested in political ideas, but not in politics", ist wie kein zweiter den Lockungen dieses "escapism" erlegen. "Politics" kann nur eines bedeuten, nämlich politische Praxis. In der politischen Praxis aber spielt gerade jenes Problem der Gewalttätigkeit eine entscheidene [sic] Rolle, mit dem er sich absolut nicht auseinandersetzen will. "Political ideas" aber können losgelöst von jeder Realität diskutiert werden, in einer höchst reinlichen intellektuellen Sphäre, unbeschmutzt von irgendwelchen praktischen Tatsachen oder Erwägungen.'] Beer, 173.

314 Quoted in Beer, 177. Italics in Beer.

315 Quoted in Chace, 146.

316 Quoted in Beer, 172, who also emphasises the incomprehensible choice on Eliot's part of the word benevolent to describe the actions of fascist regimes in 1928. Also notice Eliot's choice to use the first person plural.

317 Eliot, T. S.; *The Idea of a Christian Society*, 20.

318 Tonning, Erik; *Modernism and Christianity*, 67.

319 Ibid., 67.

320 Quoted in Asher, Kenneth; *T. S. Eliot and Ideology*, 88.

321 This would also explain why Eliot's loyalty for Maurras, who was Catholic, remained unbroken. Eliot's Christianity also played a role in his evasion of accusation of anti-Semitism. One incident showing Eliot's rejection of the label anti-Semite is quoted by Robert Fleissner, who is quick to add his agreement and approval: 'When asked pointblank if he was intentionally anti-Semitic, he matter-of-factly replied that, no, he was "not an anti-Semite" […]. Bravo. True, the reason he gave was only that he was instead a Christian, and to some subtle minds such an elementary reasoning looks like a non-sequitur, but it was not so in terms of intent.' (*T. S. Eliot and the Heritage of Africa: The Magus and the Moor as Metaphor*; 97). It seems that Eliot consciously overlooks the centuries-old history of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, see for example Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora*.

322 Eliot, *The Idea of a Christian Society*, 20.

323 Harrison, John R.; *The Reactionaries,* 149.

324 Surette, 161.

325 When the Vatican condemned Maurras, Eliot came to his defence and wrote in the Criterion in 1928: 'I have been a reader of the work of Maurras for eighteen years…' Quoted in: Ferrall, 98.

326 Villis, Tom; *Reaction and the Avant-Garde: The Revolt against Liberal Democracy in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,* 3.

327 Tonning, 67.

328 Tonning's use of the terms 'radical' and 'reactionary' are decidedly different from my understanding of the terms. He probably associates 'radical' with 'progressive' (just as Eliot's poetic form is seen as radically experimental and therefore progressive) and 'reactionary' with 'fascist'.

329 Harding; *The Criterion*, 182.

330 Quoted in Beer, 172.

331 Quoted in Robbins, 66.

332 Eliot, *The Idea of a Christian Society* , 15. The connection between an increased suffrage and oligarchy may seem perplexing at first, but they have to be understood in the light of right-wing logic. According to this logic, if suffrage is increased, many people become eligible to vote without being capable to understand and thus meaningfully engage in political participation (i.e. they are inherently *unmündig*). This in turn would increase the power of the wealthy few, who control the media, education and industry, as they would essentially 'instruct' the masses which way to vote. In this way the votes of the masses only amplifies the voices of a rich minority effectively creating a system similar to oligarchy.

333 Eliot, *The Idea of a Christian Society*, 63.

334 Surette, 188.

335 Asher, 23.

336 Chace, 160.

337 Eliot, T. S.; *Notes towards the Definition of Culture,* 52

338 Surette, 253.

339 Quoted in Kojecky, Roger; *T. S- Eliot's Social Criticism*, 148.

340 Kojecky, 200.

341 Robbins, 69.

342 Eliot, *Notes towards the Definition of Culture,* 103-104.

343 Kojecky, 216.

344 Eliot, *Notes towards the Definition of Culture,* 48.

345 Ibid.; 48.

346 Eliot, *The Idea of a Christian Society,* 40.

347 Robbins, 134.

348 Chinitz, *T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide*, 63.

349 Eliot, *Notes towards the Definition of Culture,* 16.

350 Harrison, 160.

351 Studies discussing Eliot and anti-Semitism are plenty: Chace, *The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T. S: Eliot*, Cheyette, Brian; *Constructions of 'The Jew' in English Literature and Society*; Cooper, John Xiros; 'Anti-Semitism'; In: Jason Harding (ed.) – *T. S. Eliot in Context;* Craig, Cairns; *Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry: Richest to the Richest*; DuPlessis, Rachel Blau; *Genders, Races and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry*; Harding, *The Criterion*; Julius, *T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form*; Morse, Jonathan; 'T. S. Eliot Says Jew'; Ricks, Christopher; *T. S. Eliot and Prejudice*; Robbins, *The T. S. Eliot Myth*; Sloane, *T. S. Eliot's Bleistein Poems: Uses of Literary Allusion in "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar" and "Dirge"*; Strauss, Walter; 'The Merchant of Venom?: T. S. Eliot and Anti-Semitism'; and Surette, *Dreams of a Totalitarian Utopia*.

352 The main culprits are 'Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar', 'Gerontion' and the deleted instalment from *The Waste Land* called 'Dirge'; but also 'A Cooking Egg' and the little known 'King Bolo' verses.

353 Julius, *Trials of the Diaspora*, 53.

354 'Of course you can find what would now be called antisemitic remarks in his early work, but who didn't say such things at that time? One has to draw a distinction between what was said before and after 1934. Of course all these nationalistic prejudices are ridiculous, but disliking Jews isn't intrinsically worse than disliking Negroes or Americans or any other block of people. In the early twenties, Eliot's antisemitic remarks were about on a par with the automatic sneer one casts at Anglo-Indian colonels in boarding houses' (Quoted in Ricks, 64).

355 Julius; *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*, viii.

356 Julius; *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*, 35.

357 I discussed this in my Pound chapter, noting that, for example, Cookson who continually downplays Pound's anti-Semitism, seems to find Eliot's rather disgusting (cf. Cookson, 114-115).

358 See Ricks, 52 and Julius, *T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form*, 168-171 for the details.

359 Baumann, 32.

360 Craig, 287. Even more condensed is Chace's verdict when he states that '[c]oncerned though he was with the reality of political forces, Eliot felt compelled to transcend those forces, to walk alone, to be suprapolitical.' (109)

361 In Chinitz, David; *A Companion to T. S. Eliot*, 381.

362 I am using Surette's description here, who writes: 'As is well known, Eliot became a diligent opponent of humanism, but – as we will see – only a lukewarm opponent of fascism.' (41).

363 His *Four Quartets* seem almost obsessed with an idealised past, so much so that he re-introduced archaic language. In Eliot's essays the careful reader notices that the word 'maintain' is one of the more frequently used verbs.

364 Ellman, Maud; *The Poetics of Impersonality*, 92.

365 The motif of death was also present in the initial but then discarded epigraph, an extract from Joseph Conrad's *Heart of Darkness* would have introduced the motif of death.

366 Ellmann, 94.

367 Harrison, 147.

368 Miller, William Ian; *The Anatomy of Disgust,* 8-9.

369 Miller; *The Anatomy of Disgust,* 206.

370 Miller; *The Anatomy of Disgust,* 251. Compare this to Miller's analysis of the role of contempt in democracy: 'Contempt, it turns out, was assimilable to democracy. In fact, rather than subverting democracy, it assisted it by making generally available to the low as well as to the high a strategy of indifference in the treatment of others. Contempt thus came to underwrite the basic minimal respect for persons so crucial to democracy, the style of tolerance captured by the saying "live and let live"' (206).

371 Sianne Ngai reaches a similar, albeit a bit different, verdict writing: 'But perhaps the more obvious explanation for the asymmetrical attention to desire and disgust in literary and cultural theory is the latter's more spectacular appropriation by the political right throughout history as a means of reinforcing the boundaries between self and "contaminating" others that has perpetuated racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and misogyny.' (*Ugly Feelings*, 338-9). Ngai goes on to argue that the Left should not be shy in mobilizing disgust against such things as racism and misogyny. I am not quite convinced that the disgust inherent in such concepts as anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, and misogyny is the same feeling as the strong objection against those concepts.

372 All quotations from *The Waste Land* are taken from: Eliot, T. S.; *The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts*. When a quotation in the text is followed by the lines in brackets it refers to the first published version of the poem, pages 133-149 in the Facsimile edition. Quotations from the earlier manuscripts are footnoted, with the page number referring to the transcribed version of the manuscript.

373 Cooper, John Xiros; *T. S. Eliot and the Ideology of Four Quartets,* 32.

374 And in line 66 flows 'up the hill and down king William street'.

375 During the time of composition 'the church had already become a relic, isolated and dwarfed by the larger office blocks of the City's banks, since people no longer resided within the City and the church had lost its parishioners.' (Rainey, Lawrence; *The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose*, 85).

376 Asher, 40-41.

377 Eliot, *After Strange Gods*, 43, emphasis in the original.

378 Ferrall identifies the speaker of those lines to be Marie based on the conjunction 'and', which gives it an 'affectless or monotonal quality' (94). Rainey links this passage to Dante's *Inferno*, when Dante first lays eyes on Satan. (Rainey, *The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose*, 79).

379 Normand, Tom; *Wyndham Lewis the Artist: Holding the mirror up to politics,* 81.

380 Part V of *The Waste Land* still contains water, there is rain and the shore, but this water is no longer a threat and there is no danger of drowning.

381 Cf. Beer, 126-127.

382 Drowning is the most common form of death in *The Waste Land*. Already the evocation of the Starnberger See in line 8, the site of the mysterious drowning of King Ludwig II, hints at this recurring theme.

383 Trexler, Adam; 'Economics'; In Jason Harding (ed.) – *T. S. Eliot in Context*, 279. The dangers of plenitude are also already apparent in the poem's epigraph, as North observed: 'In the story of the sybil, who asks for as many years of life as there are grains of sand in a handful, plenitude turns into a curse, because she forgets to ask for eternal youth as well' (101).

384 Kristeva, Julia; *Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection*; 96. Moreover, Kristeva relates these notions to anthropologist findings from Sir George James Frazer and other, which produces yet another link to *The Waste Land*. Compare the following section: 'In a number of primitive societies religious rites are purification rites whose function is to separate this or that social, sexual, or age group from another one, by means of prohibiting a filthy, defiling element. It is as if dividing lines were built up between society and a certain nature, as well as within the social aggregate, on the basis of the simple logic of *excluding filth*, which, promoted to the ritual level of *defilement*, founded the "self and clean" of each social group if not of each subject' (65).

385 'The water quality of the estuary dramatically improved, with increased levels of dissolved oxygen that were now being measured. Fish populations, such as sprat, returned and people even bathed in the Thames off the Tower of London. [...] Following WWI there was a massive increase in the population of London, but conditions in the Thames remained reasonably healthy due to the overcapacity built into the sewage system by the Victorians' (Martin Attrill, 'How clean is the Thames?').

386 Eliot, T. S.; *Collected Poems and Plays 1909-1962*; 177-178, ll. 27-9. However, the tradition he advocates in *Four Quartets* is, similarly to his idea that people should live where they are born, directed at other people, mostly the unconscious masses (Cf. Schmidthorst; Burkhard; *Mythos und Primitivismus in der Lyrik von T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats und Ezra Pound: Zur Kulturkritik in der klassischen Moderne;* 125-126). Schmidthorst concludes that 'this borderline-cynical elitist arrogance is undeniably a part of the intellectual profile of the poet, and coincides with Eliot's belief that the mass of humanity possesses only a minor capacity for reflexion as well as moral responsibility' ['Die an Zynismus grenzende elitäre Arroganz in dieser Äußerung ist ein aus dem intellektuellem Profil des Dichters nicht auszublendendes Element, das mit der Auffassung einhergeht, die Masse der Menschen besitze nur eine äußerst geringe Reflexionsfähigkeit und moralische Verantwortlichkeit'] (126).

387 Eliot, *The Idea of a Christian Society*, 21.

388 Brooker, Jewel Spears; 'Mimetic desire and the return to origins in *The Waste Land*' in Laity, Cassandra and Nacy K. Gish (eds.); *Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot*, 144-145.

389 Or as Patrick Query sums it up: 'Corruption, indifference, disappointment, violence and again bodies as mere collection of parts: this is the sexual palette of *The Waste Land*.' In: Chinitz, *A Companion to T. S. Eliot*, 355.

390 Asher is one critic who gives 'cunts' as the original meaning (Asher, 44). As Sweeney has featured in a number of highly sexually charged works, two of which are set in a brothel, it makes the reading credible that the feet are a stand-in for vaginas. Rainey mentions that there is no evidence for this claim, cf. *The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose,* 105.

391 Cf. Smith, Grover; *The Waste Land,* 128.

392 Eliot; *The Waste Land;* 23, 39.

393 There is one female figure, but it is suggested that she is no longer sexually active and/or able to reproduce.

394 Ellmann, 93.

395 Again a topic not limited to *The Waste Land*: 'In a revealing letter to the play's [*The Family Reunion*] director, E. Martin Browne, Eliot explained that Harry's attraction to a particular woman wars with his general idea that all women are unclean creatures.' (18). Also consider that this can be found in other right-wing art, such as Futurism: 'For it is not only the body in Futurist theory but, specifically, the female body that forms the landscape of decay and dis- order that afflicts Italian culture. Most critically, it is through the appropriation of specifically gendered metaphors of decadence and depravity that Futurism constructs the feminized Italian corpus as the site of both physical and moral contamination' (Bowler, 771).

396 Lewis, Wyndham; *Time and Western Man,* 89.

397 Barry, John; '"The Waste Land": A Possible German Source', 429.

398 Cf. Barry, 431.

399 Eliot, *The Waste Land*, 148.

400 Eliot, *The Waste Land*, 148.

401 Pondrom, Cyrena; 'Conflict and Concealment: Eliot's Approach to Women and Gender', In: Chinitz, *A Companion to T. S. Eliot*, 329.

402 Eliot, T. S.; *Complete Poems and Plays*, 124.

403 Michael Tratner argues similarly: 'Women "are suspect, thought to be in league," perhaps united with the animal powers in a conspiracy to overthrow the cultural super-ego: in "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," the icon of masculine power, Agamemnon, lies dead, killed not merely by Clytemnestra but by a whole mob of nightingales, who drop "liquid siftings" on the shrouded corpse, an image of the triumph of the disgusting over the noble, of female over male, and of amorphous liquid mass over the leader's body.' (*Modernism and Mass Politics: Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats;* 105).

404 Who could be read as Jewish; Cf. DuPlessis, 146 and 148.

405 As DuPlessis has noted, he uses a similar strategy for *Sweeney Agonistes*: 'Eliot uses race and gender as unifiers for the disparate classes (and intelligence levels) of his (presumed) audience. In "Sweeney," the gender narrative of mordant misogyny, the racial-sexual narrative of cannibals (with a kind of swinging ragtime self-parody), and the racialized primitivism of the "HOO HOO HO" are put at the service of a cross-class address about guilt and horror lurking under normalcy.' (101).

406 Eliot, *The Waste Land*, 39.

407 Cf. Miller, *Anatomy of Disgust*; for example 68-70 and 154. In fact, as Miller stresses, all groups that usually fall under the category of the other are linked to bad odours: 'Christians, whites, the upper classes, and men have all complained through the centuries, often obsessively, about the smells of Jews, nonwhites, workers, and women' (245).

408 Cf. Monroe, Jonathan; 'Idiom and Cliché in T. S. Eliot and John Ashbery'.

409 The scene includes no explicit gender marker for both persons. If one includes the intertextual elements the picture remains ambiguous: The reference to Shakespeare's *The Tempest* might indicate a male speaker, while the eponymous game of chess is taken from Thomas Middleton's *Women Beware Women*, where it is two women playing the game. In the Editorial Notes of the transcript edition, Valerie Eliot notes that the middle scene of 'A Game of Chess' alludes to Dante's Paolo and Franscesca in Hell (Eliot, *The Waste Land*, 126). I have incorporated both possible readings.

410 Laurie MacDiarmid reads this scene entirely differently, although as she admits she is influenced by autobiographical details of the Eliot marriage: 'His refusals to speak only spur her into a frenzy of asking. The entire tableau, paired with the image of Philomel, suggests the emotional (if not physical) rape of the husband' (*T. S. Eliot's Civilized Savage: Religious Eroticism and Poetics;* 160).

411 Morrison, 92. Their names also sound vaguely similar and Morrison adds that Lil looking 'so antique' ties her to Philomel, whose rape is displayed 'above the antique mantel'.

412 Again MacDiarmid sees the women here as potential aggressors against men: 'They use sex and sexuality to exchange men like commodities, to fight for dominance amongst themselves. "He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time," says the scheming woman. "And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said" (CPP 41)' (30). It is rather odd that MacDiarmid sees Lil, who is in danger of being left by Albert, and her acquaintance as scheming and exchanging men like commodities while they are obviously restricted by gender norms that dictate the rules of marriage and motherhood. In any case *The Waste Land* portrays men and women engaged in a perpetual gender war.

413 Using his typical elusiveness to navigate the question, he asks if it would not be preferable if their husbands earned enough so that women would not have the need to work in *The Idea of a Christian Society*: ''Incidentally, the term 'relegation of women' prejudices the issue. Might one suggest that the kitchen, the children and the church could be considered to have a claim upon the attention of married women? or that no normal married woman would prefer to be a wage-earner if she could help it? What is miserable is a system that makes the dual wage necessary' (70).

414 Tratner, 170-171.

415 Compare, for example, Allen Tate's – a prominent member of the strongly conservative group Southern Agrarians and New Critic – reading of the scene: 'the seer presents the bankruptcy of the modern formula as this is acted out in that most terrible scene in modern poetry—the brutally indifferent seduction of the typist by the "small house-agent's clerk." The seduction "works"; it works perfectly, too well; but the very working testifies to its failure. It can only be mechanically repeated over again and again' (in: 12 Southerners; *I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition*; 159).

416 Rainey, *The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose*, 108.

417 The only other working woman is the clairvoyante, and she is both incompetent and a hoax.

418 Rainey, *The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose*, 109. It also proves that Eliot's inclusion of the typist and her portrayal is far from innovative. It also shows that Rainey unwittingly disproves his earlier claims about the typist.

419 Eliot; *The Waste Land*, 33 and 45.

420 Compare to this observation by Rachel Potter: 'In the absence of authority, [Eliot] concludes, art is rejected in favour of a debased culture: "[The] aversion for the work of art, [the] preference for the derivative, the marginal, is an aspect of the modern democracy of culture."' ('T. S. Eliot, women, and democracy'; In: Laity, 227-228).

421 This holds true for Eliot's *oeuvre* as a whole as Rachel Potter concludes, writing: 'However, Eliot's depiction of women as a shifting vehicle for his evolving political critique, initially of an individualistic liberal humanism, and later of mass democracy, recurs throughout his poetry and criticism (In Laity, 215).

422 DuPlessis, Rachel Blau; 'Gender'; In: Harding, *T. S. Eliot in Context*; 298.

423 Rainey, *The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot's Contemporary Prose*, 101-102.

424 Arguably, there is only one non-threatening woman and that is Marie.

425 Smith, 106-107.

426 In Bush, Ronald; *T. S. Eliot: The Modernist in History*, 34.

427 Tratner, 105.

428 In: Laity, 225.

429 In: Harding, *T. S. Eliot in Context*, 296.

430 Eliot; T. S.; 'Marie Lloyd'; In: Eliot, T. S.; *Selected Essays 1917-1932*, 407.

431 Cf. Monroe, 20.

432 Monroe, 21.