This article has been brought to our attention, which as Catholics we can only agree with. Obviously it is not our intent to say that Ezra Pound did not write good poems or other good things about politics. Certainly, as with many other writers, that we could define “in the area” some discernment must be used. In the present case, pay attention to the background indicated, which is not compatible with the Faith. (n.d.r.)
Reporting of Federici Studies Center
Ezra Pound and Theosophy, by Don Francesco Ricossa (from the magazine “Sodalitium”, n. 67, December 2015)
Just one look is enough. The noble figure of the poet Ezra Pound commands respect from those who look at his features. His chains deserve even more respect. The poet who sang the beauty of Italy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and who condemned usury, the man who remained faithful despite knowing he was facing human defeat, can only arouse instinctive admiration. Precisely for this reason I thought it was my duty to warn Catholics faithful to tradition, so that respect for man does not turn into adherence to the thoughts of Ezra Pound. The Catholic militant must be Catholic: nor liberal, huh, socialist. And if some - in economic matters - are tempted by the principles of liberalism, others do not avoid the mistakes of socialism, even when they delude themselves into thinking they are following a "third way" which is not the case, but, that indicated by the magisterium of the Church (which is not third, but well before the other two). Among them, there are many who refer to themselves explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly, to the thought, or the name of Ezra Pound. That's not my intention, here, examine this thought. I will limit myself exclusively to informing our readers about the environments in which this thought found its cultural origins, so that from the source we can better evaluate the watercourse from which we should - according to some - drink. For this purpose, Luca Gallese's volume will guide me, The Origins of Fascism by Ezra Pound (Ares Editions, Milano, 2005), which can be supplemented by Ezra Pound's The God. Catholicism & mystery religions (Ares Editions, Milano, 2011), by Andrea Colombo. The Ares publishing house is, as they say, “close to Opus Dei”, and has a “Poundian” necklace. And the authors are both admirers of Ezra Pound, so much so that Gallese's volume is honored with a preface by Giano Accame, and that of Columbus with an introduction by Mary de Rachewiltz, the poet's daughter. What emerges from the two volumes cited, particularly from Gallese's, it therefore does not come from sources hostile to Catholicism, nor from sources hostile to Pound. Nevertheless, the cultural debt that Pound has towards the Theosophical movement of Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatski is evident, and therefore with the Masonic and occult world. Hence the title of our article.
Pound's religion Ezra Pound was never Catholic.
Born in the United States, il 30 October 1885, from a Protestant family (“a lineage of pioneers, Puritans and Quakers” Colombo, p. 17), Presbyterian mother, Quaker father for social reasons active in the Baptist church (p. 127), Pound died in Venice on 1 November 1972 without adhering to any religious denomination, even though he considered himself Confucian. The daughter testifies: “I have never seen him cross himself” (Colombo, p. 121). Colombo's book insists a lot on the points of contact between Pound and Catholicism, but despite all his efforts he must finish: "in taking into consideration the hypothesis of a 'Catholic' Pound it must be specified that the poet is attracted more by aesthetic elements, philosophical and social policy of Christianity, than from the religious message itself" (p. 119).
Pound in England (1908-1920)
It is about the period that Pound spends in England – from 1908 al 1920 – which Gallesi's research focuses on. It's there, in the environment of the magazine The New Age that Pound adheres to the economic theories of guild socialism (guild socialism) by director A. R. Thunderstorm, and then to Major C's Social Credit. H. Douglas. Pound himself recognized Proudhon's thinking, Orage and Douglas are the strands that contributed most to its formation (Welsh, p. 28). Pound arrives in London in 1908 with letters of introduction “provided to him by his friend Katherine Ruth Heyman, pianist and passionate occultist" and wishes to meet what he considers the greatest living poet, William Butler Yeats, as happened the following year (p. 29). Demeters Tryphonopoulos (Pound and the occult. The esoteric roots of the Cantos. Mediterranean, 1998) it brings up (pp. 83 ss) Pound's interest in the occult al 1903-1904, when the very young poet met his "Beatrice" in the person of the musician Katherine Ruth Heyman (1874-1944), daughter of the Jewish violinist Arnold Heyman and a Christian mother. Heyman was theosophy, an astrologer, occultist, passionate about Zen and I Ching, as well as “high priestess of the cult of Scriabin”, that is, the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) another follower of Madame Blavatski's theories. Already in the USA, Therefore, Pound became passionate about a world that he then frequented closely in London.
Yeats and Shakespeare
Pound wants to meet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939): but Yeats was not only "the greatest living poet" and future Nobel Prize winner, singer of Irish nationalism and Celtic myths. Yeats, that in 1888 he had joined the Theosophical Society, it was also, at least since 1890, an adept of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) where in the 1898 the magician Aleister Crowley was initiated. In the 1900, Yeats was Magister Templi of the Golden Dawn with the initiatory name of Frater D.E.D.I. (The devil is God inverted): a whole program! Yeats non fu, per Pound, a superficial or passing acquaintance. Pound is introduced to Yeats by Olivia Shakespear (1863-1938, nata Tucker), that she had been Yeats's lover and that for Pound she was "the most fascinating woman in London". Olivia is also an occultist initiated into the Golden Dawn, and she will become Pound's mother-in-law, as the young American married his daughter Dorothy (She is also passionate about palmistry and astrology). After their meeting in England in 1909, Yeats and Pound increasingly formed a partnership that culminated over the years 1913-1916, during which the two poets lived together at Stone Cottage. We know that Pound did not share Yeats's theurgic practices; but it is difficult to imagine that such close proximity did not have a profound influence on Pound.
I due Bergson
With Moina Bergson, sister of the most famous philosopher Henri Bergson, we remain within the Golden Dawn. On the contrary, in the heart of that magical and esoteric society. My Bergsons (1865-1928), this Moina, Indeed, was initiated into the Golden Dawn in 1888 and married one of its founders, the Rosicrucian Freemason Samuel Liddell “McGregor” Mathers (1854-1918) In the 1890, becoming Moina Mathers. Moina was an artist and an actress, but also a sorceress, to the point that she was suspected of carrying out ad-mortem spells against colleagues. More prosaically she dressed up as a priestess of Isis for her husband's Egyptian masses, author of the work The Kabbalah Revealed. Moina and her philosopher brother belonged to the Polish Jewish Bereksohn family (before the surname was changed to Bergson). Apparently, nothing in common between the life of her sister and that of her brother Henri Bergson (1859-1941), the austere philosopher of "creative evolution" and "vital impetus" who declared his conversion to Catholicism (in a modernist version) renouncing baptism only out of solidarity with his persecuted people. Yet Gallesi (pp. 31- 34) he sees this something in common. And also with Pound: for it is the mutual friend Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883-1917) – common to Bergson and Pound – which introduces Pound in the magazine The New Age, who introduces him to Orage, and inspired the name of his literary movement, l'Imagism. Hulme is a Bergsonian, and the theories of the French philosopher "were very fashionable in those years in intellectual circles, radical and esoteric. (…) And again to Bergsonian philosophy, according to G.D. H. Cole, we owe the inspiration to the rise and spread of feminism, trade unionism, industrial unionism and guild socialism”. Pound and Hulme attend G.'s Quest Society. R. S. Mead (1863-1933), another occultist, passionate scholar of Gnosticism, of Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, member since 1884 of the Theosophical Society. Mead left the Theosophical Society, but not his theories, to found the Quest Society, which brought together two other Nobel Prize winners, Tagore e Yeats, e il noto cabalista Gershom Scholem (p. 36). Reviewing a lecture by Hulme at the Quest Society, Pound scrive: “The introduction of spirits, tribal deities, fetishes etc. in the arts it is therefore a happy omen... Let's look back, we artists, towards the powers of the air, the spirits who were our allies, to the spirits of our ancestors. It is through them that we have governed and will govern again (…). Modern civilization has bred a race with rabbit brains and us, that we are the heirs of sorcerers and voodoo, We artists who have long been despised are about to take power." (pp. 36-37).
A. R. Orage and “Guild Socialism”
Ezra Pound's economic thought is indebted to Orage's “Guild Socialism”., and of Douglas’s “Social Credit”. The forum for these theories was the newspaper The New Age. Let's find out more, starting with Alfred Richard Orage (1873-1934). In the 1894 become a socialist, joining the Independent Labor Party. In the 1896 proposed Jeanne Walzer, thanks to which he affiliated with the Leeds Lodge of the Theosophical Society and approached Hindu spirituality: the epic poem Mahabharata became for him "one of the fundamental texts - together with the work of Plato and Nietzsche - of his entire life" (Welsh, p. 117). In the same years he became friends with A. J. Pentas († 1937) e Holbroock Jackson, they are also theosophists and socialists. The three founded the Leeds Art Club, which simultaneously hosts the Fabian Society and the Theosophical Society (p. 77). It is Jackson who introduces Orage to Nietzsche's thought, while Penty dreams of a return to medieval guilds and corporations, which are of interest to Theosophists (and the Freemasons, who call themselves heirs of the ancient corporations) (pp. 7 e 118). In the 1906, in London, Penty and Orage found the Guild Restoration League and in 1907, Storm ass Jackson, he founded Fabian Arts Group. It is the moment where the two Nietzscheans, Jackson and Storm, take over the socialist newspaper The New Age. The financiers are the writer George Bernard Shaw and the banker Lewis Fallace, also affiliated with the Theosophical Society. He's not the only one: other theosophists such as Florence Farr collaborate (1860-1917, adept of the Golden Dawn from 1890 following Yeats), P. D. Ouspensky (correspondent from Russia and the 1915 Gurdjieff's disciple), L. Haden Guest, “Beatrice Hastings” (Emily Haig 1879-1943), lover of Modigliani and Katherine Mansfield, but also of Orage, whose practices of black magic he will later denounce (pp. 128-129) and his dependence on Aleister Crowley. Katherine Mansfield herself wrote in The New Age: for her Orage is the one who "taught her to write and think" and "showed her what should be done and what should be avoided" (p. 161). La Mansfield, also a famous writer, he met Crowley – experimenting with his drugs – as John Symonds attests (Aleister Crowley. The Beast 666. Ed. Mediterranean, p. 258), ma, above all, followed the Wizard Gurdjieff, dying in 1928 at Avon Priory, presso Fontainebleau, headquarters of his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in 1928. Reed Storm, after the experience of The New Age, he became Gurdjieff's avowed and enthusiastic disciple for a long time (1872-1949), known through the aforementioned Piotr D. Ouspensky (cf Paul Beekman Taylor, Gurdjieff and Orage, Brothers in Elysium, ed. Mediterranean), moving specifically to France. “Pound had a good opinion of Gurdjieff, who would become Orage's spiritual Master" (p. 129). Gianfranco De Turris, in the Italian introduction to Taylor's book (p. 10), writes: "Thunderstorm, through Major Douglas' theories of Social Credit, it was a sort of hinge between Pound's economic ideas and Gurdjieff's esotericism. (…) Taylor demonstrates how the search for an economic 'third way' and the propensity for esotericism were widespread in that intellectual environment...". Not by chance, still to this day, the journalist and essayist Maurizio Blondet, which updates Pound's thought, does not hide the role of the writings of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff in his "conversion" (Gurgjieff and the moon). As, from Theosophy to Gurdjieff, Orage's whole life and thought passed under the star of esotericism and occultism. Pound collaborated on Orage's magazine, The New Age, for ten years, dal 1911 al 1921, almost publishing you 300 articles (p. 159).
C. H. Douglas and Social Credit
Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952) he is the main exponent of the economic theories on "Social Credit", which were made public for the first time, In the 1919, right in A.'s magazine. R. Thunderstorm, The New Age. Sia Storm, both Pound, they adhere to the economic theories of Major Douglas, which Pound will recall several times in the Cantos. But in the figure of Douglas they saw and admired only the economist, or not rather the "religious and political reformer" (p. 246)? Major Douglas was also an occultist. Write Demetres Tryphonopoulos in Pound e l'occulto. The esoteric roots of the Cantos (Mediterranean Editions, 1998, introduction by Luca Gallesi) : “Even if Pound wasn't interested, someone else, whose name is closely linked to that of Pound and Orage, he was attracted to Mitrinovic's form of occultism. I am referring to Major Douglas. When, at the beginning of the thirties, Mitrinovic founded the New Britain movement (“committed to a functional society, guild, social credit, welfare system, a European federation, Rudolph Steiner's Triple Commonwealth, and a restoration of Christianity”) Major Douglas was one of the people involved." (p. 123, use 99). The reference is to the Bosnian esotericist Demetrio Mitrinovic (1887-1953), him too, among other things, contributor to The New Age.
The Theosophical Society
At this point, for those who don't have the slightest idea of what the Theosophical Society is that we have seen appearing everywhere in the environment frequented by Pound, it is inevitable to say a few words about the aforementioned. The Theosophical Society was founded in New York, In the 1875, and 17 founding members, all linked in some way to Freemasonry and esoteric studies. Among them, two Americans, the first president of the Society, Colonel Henri Steel Olcott (1832-1907) e William Quan Judge (1851-1896), and the Russian noblewoman Helena Petrovna von Hahn, known – after her husband – as Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891). Leading the esoteric section, happens to Blavatsky, In the 1891, the English Annie Besant (1847-1933) That, upon Olcott's death, he became the second president of the Society. The “high priestess” of the Theosophists, Annie Besant, she had been a member of the Fabian Society, and is one of the main exponents of the feminist movement. The president of the German section separated from the Theosophical Society, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of Anthroposophy. Theosophy refers in its name to Neoplatonic philosophy and Gnosticism, as well as ancient mystery religions; but from the beginning he was oriented towards eastern religions, spreading the craze for India and Tibet. Olcott and Blavatsky said they were Buddhists but, as Besant recalls, 'The bond of union between the members of the Theosophical Society is not a common belief, but rather a common search for the truth" (it seems like the program of Ratzinger's meeting of 'pilgrims of truth' in Assisi!). Important, in Theosophy, the female role and the Anglo-Indian imprint. The underlying idea is that of the esoteric unity of all religions, prerogative of the initiated. This, at least, the facade. The reality, it is found, for example, in these words of Blavatsky: “The great Deceiver” is not the “much maligned Satan” but “the anthropomorphized Demiurge, the Creator of Heaven and Earth” (cit. by Roberto Hack – Margherita Hack's theosophist father – The origins of the Theosophical movement, Trieste, 1971, pp. 216-217).
Theosophy, Fascism and Anti-Fascism
Ezra Pound's adherence to Fascism followed his association with theosophical circles. At first glance, the support for Fascism from those who have frequented esoteric circles so closely might seem contradictory.
Mussolini, effectively, he first supported the incompatibility between belonging to Freemasonry and that of the Socialist Party. Afterwards, In the 1923, the Grand Council of Fascism - at the urging of the Nationalists - decreed the incompatibility between membership of Freemasonry and that of the Fascist Party. In the 1925 the Law on Associations (which prohibited secret societies) it effectively led to the dissolution of the two main Masonic obediences: that of Palazzo Giustiniani, which he organized abroad, especially in France, anti-fascism and that of Piazza del Gesù (who declared that Fascism, achieving their goals, had made their society useless). In Italy, Freemasonry was only able to reorganize itself after the fall of Fascism, favored by the English and American winners. Between the 1925 e 1926 there were four attempts on Mussolini's life: that of Zaniboni, in which the freemason General Capello was involved, that of the English anthroposophist Violet Gibson, and those of Lucetti and Zamboni; in all there is an esoteric trace and, it seems that the anthroposophist ex-minister Duke Giovanni Antonio Colonna di Cesarò was involved in Gibson's case (son of Emmelina Sonnino De Renzis, she is also a theosophist, sister of Sidney Sonnino, and member of the Ur Group of Evola and Reghini). Colonna di Cesarò was one of the protagonists of the Aventine. On the other hand, fascist squads struck in 1925 the anti-fascist politician Giovanni Amendola – theosophist and freemason – who died the following year following beatings. Nor did the Italian government certainly have respect for the Wizard Crowley when, In the 1923, he expelled him from Cefalù and sent him back to his homeland. That homeland, England, where the 'high priestess' of Theosophy, Annie Besant, he attacked the Mussolini regime as an enemy of democracy. Nevertheless, There is also the other aspect, for which I refer the reader to two significant works: Masonry, Fascism and the Catholic Church by Gianni Vannoni (ed. Laterza, 1980) and Esotericism and Fascism, edited by Gianfranco de Turris (ed. Mediterranean, 2006). The historian of Freemasonry, Aldo Alessandro Mola, he lists the names of bricklayer brothers who were also fascist exponents: Giacomo Acerbo, Michele Bianchi, Alessandro Dudan, Italo Balbo, Achille Starace, Giovanni Marinelli and probably Emilio De Bono (who used the freemason Dùmini for the Matteotti crime), Cesare Rossi, Edmondo Rossoni, Roberto Farinacci, maybe Dino Grandi (Vannoni is certain of it, as well as for De Bono, Cesare Maria De Vecchi and Giuseppe Bottai), Massimo Rocca, Alberto Beneduce and many others elsewhere. All of these remained - asleep - at the top of the new regime, to then choose who will cause the fall of the Duce, in '43 (like Greats, Bonus, Marinelli, De Vecchi), who the adventure of CSR, like Farinacci. And let's not talk about the military... Freemasons are abundant among the revolutionary trade unionists and the Fiume D'Annunzio supporters (including the “Vate”) which prepared both Fascism and anti-fascism (as in the case of the freemason Alceste De Ambris), as well as among the futurists (not least the Pythagorean theosophist Freemason Arturo Reghini, belonging to the O.T.O.). The self-dissolution of the Masonic Lodges did not involve the service clubs, like Rotary, nor the Theosophical Societies (until 1939), nor Anthroposophy (until 1941). The fight against Freemasonry was therefore superficial, without going back to the principles, and this also in the case of the former priest Giovanni Preziosi - the most hostile to Freemasonry - who however had the esotericists René Guénon collaborate on his magazine Vita italiana, Julius Evola, Massimo Scaligero (alias Antonio Massimo Sgabelloni, anthroposopho, disciple of Giovanni Colazza, who attended the same Theosophical Lodge of Amendola and Colonna di Cesarò) and Guido De Giorgio. Preziosi's anti-Masonry, Therefore, it cannot be confused with that of integral Catholics, come Mons. Benign, who always opposed every type of sect and esotericism.
By way of conclusion
With this little article I certainly do not intend to side with Ezra Pound's jailers... However, I believe - as said at the beginning - that the militant Catholic must not allow himself to be carried away by dangerous doctrinal syncretisms. There are those who think that the "free thinkers" of Casa Pound (to whom perhaps, as the Freemason Reghini said about other Freemasons, What is missing is being free and being thinkers) they boast abusively of the name of Pound; Perhaps, Instead, They are not the ones who are wrong on this point, but Poundian Catholics! In social matters (and Pound would not have objected) good basic training can be found in the pontifical encyclicals, come - tra le altre - Rerum novarum di Leo XIII e Lentagesimo anno di Pio XI; for those who have the ability and interest in more in-depth training, the Church indicates the road of San Tommaso: Go to Thomas. Let us instead beware of doctors who have drank from the enchanting sources of the murky world of initiatory sects (be they Anglo-Saxon – as in our case – or indigenous).
In the photo: la copertina de The Political Economy of Social Credit and Guild Socialism, in Frances Hutchinson e Brian Burkitt.
To read, we discover a murky world of philosophies far from Christianity and of density’ incredible for the wealth of member poets and artists ! All of these adherents or followers , as long as I don't live in the most’ simple reality’ Christian.
E’ It's true that the twisted attracts …the twisted, that is, the non-simple.