No More Learning

I suggest yet again that you look at the way the WAR, this war, has been wangled. And HOW it has been conducted. FIRST, the American people were SANE enough to see that the war was phony. DANZIG, Poland, and all the rest of it, COOKED and the American people KNEW it was cooked. Second, England's offensives effective against neutrals and Allies. Third, the United States offensives effective against England, Iceland, and Venezuela, at the cost of losin' the Philippines. Well, damn the Philippines. We promised 'em independence, and the dirt in our national makeup prevented our keepin' the promise. Our conduct as a nation to various is lands, let alone to South American republics, is NOT our title to glory. And Aguinaldo has as good a right to the Philippines as any God damn Jew in Roosevelt's family caballa. I do hate to see Hawaii endangered. We got the Sandwich Islands more or less decently, and they could have been held as a defensive position.
The Philippines WERE NOT, they were an offensive position, and the conduct of Roosevelt's government was plain downright silly, not to say nasty, not to say mean, not to say stinkin', it was all of these things put together.
Anyhow, one of the LIES of this war is the LIE about the anti-Axis alliances. Russia is NOT Britain's ally but her enemy, America is NOT Britain's ally but her enemy.
Chiang Kike Chek is the prize buyer of gold bricks, and where did Soong git his money ? Mrs. Chiang Kike is always flittin' and floatin' in Semite entourages. If Charlie Soong warn't staked out by kikedom, you
? come here and tell papa. I can't prove this assertion, but I await any disproof, and I don't expect it to be forthcomin'.
The phrase, cut off the NOSE to spite the face, may seem invidious and SUGgestive. "Wasn't she a silly slut, to sell her bed and lie in dirt? " Yaas, SHE was, Margery Daw or Columbia, Solomon's jewel. You have cut your nose off to the extent of three summer vacations in Europe. You have cut your nose off to the extent of what you haven't had in those three years in the way of cultural contacts and the amenities. Whatever is happening in the way of BASHING abundance INSIDE the United State of America you know better than I do, and I am not going to tell you about Cincinnati. I have heard British fools talk about Italy which they had not visited. I have seen men get het up about what happens in other countries, meaning what is SAID to happen in other countries. And what they have read in the noozwypers, and I am not going to participate in that form of foolery.
YOU TELL ME about what is going on in the United States of America and I'll tell you what I see here in Italy. That will be fair exchange and no kikery.
I do NOT admire your making war on Finland, Iceland and Venezuela, on the pretense that you don't like Hitler's municipal government.
Or that you steal from other countries because they are incapable of governing themselves, or because their governors are incapable of stealing from them. Neither, I think, do you.
EIGHTY years peace for England would have been useful to England. Thirty years peace for the United State of America would have been useful to YOU. It would have meant a whole generation.
I don't know how long the Pacific would have maintained its status quo, but I am right, downright certain that I could have done BETTER in
? dealin' with Japan than any of Mr. Roosevelt's lowbrow assistants, among whom I know of none who was fit for the Japanese mission.
England was bilked, and that was NOT done without United States assistance. Well, I don't admire the men who assisted. And neither, I think, do YOU.
As to what you can do to get out of it, that is another story. Haven't you got any folks at home who can tell you ? After all my mission in life had been rather special. Maybe that was my error, but one can't be in ten places at once. I believe, like bed rock, I believe, that if the American people had been consulted in 1938-39 and 40 and 41 NINETY percent of the American people would have been content to have the American government stick to its best traditions, to stay OUT of international shindies, and to USE the United States prestige. (We HAD some prestige in those days. ) And the American people would have wanted used to get a SANE, peaceful arrangement of the problems of Europe. And a clean government in Washington would have aimed at that target. When, before Gawd, are we going to get a clean government ? It is time for the American people to start gettin' ready to think about that.
Whether Frankie is a gook or a kike, I don't think the American people LIKE him. I don't think they wanted him back in the White House. And the election figures don't prove it. They may possibly prove the DEFECTS of the American electoral system and the power of bribery and corruption. And then again they may not. The only excuse of most voters was "you don't vote against Santa Claus. " Look what Santa has brought you now. Waaal ole Franklin Kris Kingle, Sant Nicalaus, ain't got any live children back out of the pork barrel. If that is too mixed a metaphor, let me remind you of the old French chanson, about St. Nicholas. Frankie looks to me more like gettin' the live young INTO the salt pork barrel than rescuing the little dears out of it.
? As for the English, nine of 'em out of ten do NOT believe they ought to be fighting the Germans. And that goes a long way to explain why a lot of them don't seem anxious to do it. They don't like their empire being ruined. They don't want their island invaded.
But nine of 'em out of TEN do NOT believe they ought to be fighting the Germans. That is, down there under their skulls, down under their thick bully hides they DO NOT think they ought to be fightin' the Germans. They DO not believe in Bolshevik methods, or in the Bolshevik propaganda. None of it is spontaneous in England, and a lot of British KNOW the Bolos are HIRED.
Some of 'em, not the nicest among 'em, think, oh yes, they OUGHT to fight Italy cause Italy is small on the map, and the small ought to be jumped on. That is British tradition. But they do NOT think they ought to be fighting the Germans, and they do NOT want to see geography books with England's empire reduced to probable figures: but they do NOT think they ought to be fighting the Germans.
Well, think it over.
#27 (April 19, 1942) U. K. (B29) TO SOCIAL CREDITORS
Last Sunday I came on some typed pages signed "W. A. Nyland," Secretary pro tem. That seems all a long way back in faded lavender. A time like this gives one time to go thru quite a lot [of] postal matter that one hadn't time to look at very thoroughly when it arrived.
A time like this, when the postal service with the Western Hemisphere is somewhat reduced. Result, so far as my private life is concerned, is that not bein' able to continue private correspondence by letter with the more lively American youth, gentry and professoriate, I had to stir round and git onto the air, only line [left] me.
? Now I ask Social Creditors if anyone of 'em except Major Douglas gave in the old days--the dim and distant 20s or the almost as dim 1830 and 35s--ANY thought as to the sort of paralysis that allus seemed to creep into the Social Credit movement, about as soon as it got near action.
I have told you of Senator Cutting's hope, and his disappointment. Aberhart may for all I know still rule in Calgarry, like Brian Duff in -- --still. The jewbrew and rabbinical stations do NOT stress either present or past of Alberta province.
Mebbe no one has told 'em you OUGHT, you really ought NOT to ask the pliant public to put a stamp on its stamp scrip once a WEEK. Lord knows I have tried in my time to stop a fairly wide set of foolishnesses on [the] part of people who LACK historic perspective, or who failed to grasp the inner workin's of economic mechanisms, and the relations between one expression of monetary honesty and another.
I am not concerned with the merits of particular bills, I am not concerned with the injected paralysis that has stopped any and all bills having economic basis in honesty since 1873, or say since 1863, gettin' back to the start of the present phase of the unending swindle. Is that paralysis due to the Talmud ? Or to the spieir [? ] whereof the Talmud is the most complete (and dirty) and thorough verbal manifestation extant?
There is no doubt that C. H. Douglas began to notice some years ago that certain elements, call 'em elements, seemed to penetrate into the works of the Social Creditors' movement just about the time it seemed to be about to be real. In fact his writin's during the three years precedin' Mr. Churchill's new war were largely spent in lookin' for the source of these penetrations, these injections of paralysis. He left off his a plus b, or left it in the background and got right out with Henry Ford in IDENTIFYIN' the Hebrews as a possible source of infection. And the circulatability of his publications got lower and lower.
? Now what do you think causes that? And what do you think you can or could do to UNcause it, not necessarily re the a plus b theorem but in the case of ANY and every economic reform or basic reorganization that you chose to believe in ?
You say: change in direction of will. All right, say you had wild imagination. Say you had guts enough to IMAGINE a man you really would like to see in the White House: I mean would REALLY think ought to be in the White House.
What would you DO ? Would you communicate your thought to your neighbor ? What would he do ? What effect would it have on the oncomin' elections, 1942, 19447 Has anybody but the present speaker had any such flight of poetic fancy dunn' the past 20 years ? You can't tell me that Harding or Coolidge or any of 'em were chosen, nominated because anybody really felt: well now, that is what we need in the White House.
Wouldn't that fellow just add to the American tradition ?
Well what about it ? What would happen IF every American over the age of 21 suddenly voted for what he wanted ? I don't mean, for just what he felt to be the lesser evil, the less rotten apple ? Now just think a minute; supposin' you went down to Washington and walked up the front path to the White House. What would you like to find sittin' in a rockin' chair on the lawn, or find inside in a drawin' room, to greet you as the American President ?
Just what qualifications ought the fellow to have whom you would like to find in there? Who would make you feel that his presence added, yes, I say, added to the joy of bein' alive ?
Yes, I know it is a vision. I never had it but once. Nobody ever told me I was wrong; in fact nobody ever said while I was in America three years ago, nobody said I was foolish, they just thought it impractical. They
? didn't think he could get there. Or mebbe that was the trouble; mebbe they DID think he could get there.
Of course the nomination has sometimes been quite within reach of almost impecunious people. I have been given extremely low figures as to the bottom price for the ante, which depends of course on the year, and the state of the political market. But mebbe those low figures only apply to duds, whom the wise guys just KNOW won't be elected.
Such I suppose is democracy. Or perhaps such is the modesty of political parties.
Well, up in BREMEN they seem to have decided that you folks can't keep your minds on any one thing more'n about three minutes. I used to listen to their Mirror, now I hear their magazine. Three minutes talk, then a gigue tune. Mebbe Rome would give me with music included if I put up a howl. Not every topic NEEDS 12 and 21/2 minutes. Sometime I feel just like askin' a string of questions; as fer example: WHY do you Yanks fall for the FOREIGN or exotic wheeze? I mean Jews from all over Europe come to America, and you think they are Frenchmen and Dutchmen. Now why is that ?
And then this appointin' ambassadors to imaginary unlanded governments? Ought I to get ambassadors appointed every time one of my Italian friends wants to ask me what time is it or whether Faulkner is better'n Caldwell, and WHICH Caidwell or whether Josh Bathos writes better'n Bromfield, or what's become of that refined almost writer Mr. Thornton Wilder ? Do you dare fall for it ? I mean this elevated from rank of minister to that of dambastador, in order to treat with the government of Ruthenia, at 29 Wardour Street, third floor back, W. C. in London ?
I should like to see that subject treated in Puck or Judge, if those monuments of the ash-barrel era still flourish. Puck used to be Democrat
? and Judge Republican, back in 1892. Have they conserved their old sense of coarse humor, coarse but robust and healthy, or are they all peter'd out ? I mean Arno'ed.
Lookin' back and rememberin' my far distant childhood on the corner of 47th and Madison Avenue where there is now such [a? ] sumptuous Hotel Accommodation Thinkin', thinkin of my Great Aunt's family furniture, moved a few blocks up the street. I wonder if the ole grand piano is still workin' for the folks that took over, foreclosed the mortgage, or something, anyhow, sold the old lady up.
And Mr. Fouquet, and pop Quackenbush, all that generation that remembered the Civil War. All gone with the ash barrels. Think of swell ballroom, right where my Great Uncle used to keep his bunch of bananas, and I used to play chequers with him; my old Great Aunt's black man of general all work, or rather any work, some work, that he used to dodge to play chequers on top of the apple barrel, before the days of the Windsor Fire, Two Hotels, Windsor and Buckingham, ornament of Fifth Avenue, back before you kids remember.
An' yaller Martha. She used to take snuff. That's a long time before the great night life of Harlem. Back when Owen Wister, it may have been, wrote "Philosophy 4"--now why do I think of that ? And why did that darkie porter in Grand Central Station look at the E. initial before my name on my suitcase in 1939 and say: Now how do I come to know that, that E. stands for Ezra? Sort of nearly undersized porter.
My mind goes back to before the invasion. I mean I suppose that is what is occurrin' in my psychology leadin' me up to the question: Have you GAINED by the interval ? WHAT have you gained by the interval, from 4 to 8 million invaders, all part of a widely distributed RACE, that has a radio out by San Diego or somewhere, known as the universal world Jewry station, or some similar title, and does a HIGHLY organized 7 to 7 to 7 [for] 6 or 8 million people of a decidedly OTHER
? race; in the midst of 100 million or so assorted descendents of people racially European, MEAN anything for the welfare or illfare of the UNorganized 100 million ? And if so, how so ? And sailors don't care? Whalers don't care, landlubbers seem fairly indifferent.
Ernest Poole might write a book on the subject. Another bloke whose name I forget might write a book on the subject. Wrote a novel I rather liked, about a New England family goin' to seed on a farm that was like a white elephant. I mentioned it and was promptly reproved by a highbrow friend (not a professor) who assured me that that novelist would never write a somethin' or other. Marquand, that's the fellow's name, Marquand the novelist.
Well, I don't take such high ground. I think all those American novelists who try to set down a slice of history ought to get credit for it. Even if they go a bit heavy, or leave in 40 pages in 3 or 4 hundred that just aren't quite book-writin'. But still you get a bit of Van Buren, or a bit of some epoch that young America OUGHT to know more of; 1830 or 1930, but at least tryin' to peg down some part of our white man's heritage and tradition. Not bein' cute and cunnin', but trying to tell the next generation at least part of what ought to be known.
That's why I keep on hammerin' on the disgrace to the nation implicit in not printin' Joe Gould. I mean that is one why. And Mr. McAlmon always printed in Paris. Two sets of men, tryin' to put down American history, one doin' it in meritorious novels, that the highbrows niff at snobistically, one set or a few scattered fragments doing impractical stuff, lack of national discipline, lack of civic responsibility.
Workin' in BOTH these branches of United States incompetence. Oh, little things, here and there, just a straw shows how the wind blows. And then the United States gets bumped OFF, like the frogs did. After more 50 years warnin'. And the frogs sellin' 15 thousand copies, a whole
? series of editions (Flammarion editions) where American author wouldn't sell 1500.
Mebbe that is part of the national trouble, part of the great American bellyache, part of the American IMMATURITY; to call it by no more harsh name.
And then the omissions, the things Mr.
Dewey, Professor Davis Rich Dewey leaves OUT of his Financial History.
Well that's all for this spasm. Ezra Pound at the microphone. Why not have a real President ?
#28 (April 20, 1942) U. S. (B34) ABERRATION
The Daily Mail of London got round a few weeks ago to reprinting one of those libelous photographs that were shot on board the REX last time I came into New York harbor.
Well, that did not harm, unless it cast a little indirect discredit on the capacity of American press photographers. The Daily Mail seemed to be followin' in the wake of the Sunday Times. The Mail contented itself to saying my admiration for fascism was notorious.
The "Special Correspondent" (address not given) of the Sunday Times, apart from an erroneous statement as to my views of the American President, used a qualifying statement saying that "Among Pound's many eccentricities and aberrations, his admiration of the Fascist regime in Italy has long been notorious. " Both papers neglected to tell their British readers that I broadcast to ENGLAND now and again. That is not the point either.
? What I am a lookm' at is this word ABERRATION. They call it an aberration for me to admire or whatever the present Italian system of government. Has a fascist government itself ABerrated, or has it aberred? Firstly, if it aberred, it aberred into drainin' a powerful lot of swamp land which OTHER Italian governments had been lookin' at since the time of Tiberius Caesar and signally failed to get DRY. Those swamps had been lying thaaar breedin' malaria for over two thousand years, sometimes a bright boy would take a smack at 'em and dry up a bit or a corner. But the FASCIST regime lit in and got quite a lot of [it] dried, and under healthy cultivation.
Secondly, if I aberr, it [is] in the aberration of admirin' the increase of grain yielded in Italy.
Thirdly, fourthly, and etceterarialy, there is the question of national health, bein' improved, there is the question of the increase in living quarters for the NOT-rich sectors of the nation's community, there is the question of water supply.
Sixthly, etc. there is the question of electric power. So as they don't have [to] waste their substance buying dirty old smoke coal from England. Petrified frogs, Frenchies, biologically fixed, had been yapping about la hOOOOOOuille blanche for decades. Well, the Fascist REGIME got the Italian railway runnin' by electricity. That is by lettin' water flow down wards, OVER some selected turbines. All of which is notorious, if it an't just a little bit more than! I
But it is merely material and my respect for the Fascist Regime, for FASCISM in fact, goes a bit further. Along about the time Tony tin-toes Eden was tellin' Italy where to get off at, and she did NOT GIT. There came a day when Italy sat up sassy and defied fifty-two so-called nations, England among 'em. That required something more than mere itch toward luxury economics. And the idea of having an airplane crash onto a battle ship did not START in Japan. About the time Tony's
? England was trying to bully NEW Italy, there was something here in this peninsula.
Do I aberr in admiring it? I think I do not.
And at England's present condition, I wonder if the Sunday Timesers and their parishioners aren't mebby ready to wish some of their bosses had aberrated in similar manner. The aberration of an alliance with Japan, now wouldn't England have done better to aberr into an alliance with Japan, rather than being hoffed out of Shonanko, Hong Kong, and Rangoon? An alliance with Germany, rather than with a paralytic Jewed France?
Let us say the British Foreign office had committed a few aberrations along my line, would England be today a brighter and happier country? Instead of droppin' so many old naval bases and stations into Frank Roosenstein's pocket? I don't say Washington would have welcomed these moves, but I am opening up a line of Enquiry, about the word ABERRATION.
Perhaps I should also open up a line about representation. An Italian said to me yesterday, "But so many people in England have NO representation, you could have a party of a million people in England, and it might not have even ONE member in Parliament? " Here EVERY man of what ever trade or profession has the OPTION of joining up with his sindacato; he don't have to, but if he wants to be represented directly, that is the method. If he don't join up, his interests are nevertheless looked after, cause if he is a carpenter, or a rice grower, or a field worker, or a fellow that trims olive trees, there is the UNION, the sindacato, working up to the confederazione. It's thaaar to represent the interest of peasant, or carpenter, or dentist, or whatsoever. All of which may be notorious, at least plenty of people here know it, and nothing has
? been concealed. No secret back of the curtain conspiracies. No trade union leader can sell out to the employers, nor blackmail employees.
I, for example, would come under the confederation of artists and professional men, painters, doctors, writers, dentists, etc. WHAT Congressional representation or parliamentary representation have the professional classes had in the United States or England since the beginning of their government system?
Aberration? If this be an aberration, let me aberr. What bloody chance has the stray man, the individual in old style so-called democratic organization, in comparison to what he has in a corporate system, EMBODIED system?
Every peasant in Italy knows where to go and KICK if something ain't done to suit 'em. And my Gawd they DO kick. Sometimes in the most silly manner. Like as I said in Rapallo, when they wouldn't have tubercle bugs taken out of their milk. The Italians are the greatest kickers on earth. Started back in the Quattrocento. Eyetalian individualism, development of the personality, raised to point of exaggeration, but enlightened the world.
Nothing less than the Fascist system would keep these people together. Some of the kickin' is aimless, but the mass of it keeps things movin' for ward. If! got a kick, I know where to take it. I take it to my confederazione. If I were part of a more numerous category, I would take it to the local agricultural centre; if I had any land whaar I could grow seed, I would go to the local agrario something or other, known to me as the florist's shop on the road to the station.
Who would [have] (and has, when I got inquisitive) gone up to the cattedra ambulante (which don't mean ambulatin' cathedral) but the traveling or mobile means of agricultural and horticultural education?
? Yes, we HAVE in the United States state legislatures, etc. DO they cut any ice?
The American system was GOOD for 80 years, after which it was betrayed and defiled AT THE CENTRE, and the outlying parts grew steadily less efficient, and still less efficient.
I would like to see a little blood, or oxygen infused back into 'em. Any how, whatever kind of a MESS you are in in America, with your farms mortgaged to milk trusts, England is in a worse mess. I'll say a worse mess. And I reckon even the Sunday Times is about ready to wish some of the stuffed British shirts had aberrated more in my fashion. Or to see that England would have been happier had she puked out the stuffed shirts and put in some fellows capable of similar ABERRATIONS. Similar I mean to what they call my aberrations.
#29 (April 23, 1942) U. S. (B35) MacLEISH
American news items, and the utterances of prominent Americans reach me, often with lamentable delays, and often I have to grope for the possible or probable original text, through an Italian translation.
Nevertheless the drift of Mr. MacLeish's remarks toward the end of March seems fairly clear. He has been given a gangster's brief; that is, he has been entrusted with the defense of a gang of criminals, and he is doin' his damndest.
I object, and have objected to the CRIME, regardless of who may be related to the men who have committed it. And I accept the conditions of the debate, namely that the Morgenthau-Lehman gang control 99% of ALL means of communication inside the U. S. A. and that they can drown out and buy out nearly all opposition. On top of which Roosevelt has, characteristically, resorted to blackmail. ANY man who does not accept
? the gigantic frauds perpetrated by the Morgenthau-Roosevelt treasury is to be held up as a traitor to the U. S. A.
The reply is, that any man who submits to Roosevelt's treason to the Republic commits breech of citizen's duty. There is NO connection between submitting to the Morgenthau-Roosevelt and winning this war or any other. There is NO patriotism in submitting to the prolonged and multiple frauds of the Roosevelt administration. And to try to make the present support of these frauds figure as LOYALTY to the American union, to the American Constitution, to the American heritage is just so much dirt, or buncomb. Doubtless the tactics of EVASION will be used to the utmost. Blackmail will be used to the utmost. But if the American people submit to either or both of these wheezes, the American people will be MUGS.
There are several historic facts which the opponents of the Morgenthau Lehmans would do well to dig up. Mr. MacLeish has not gone all out for the printing of the key facts of American history, in handy and available volumes. There are several historic facts which the opponents of the Morgenthau swindles would be well advised to extract and USE. Of course for you to look for my points, points of my biweekly talks in the maze of Jew covered American radio transmissions, is like lookin' fer one needle in a whole flock of hay stacks. And your press is NOT very open. However, if some lone watcher, or ascoltator or listener on Back Bay, or the top of the Blue Ridge DOES hear me, I suggest he make note and ask advocate Archibald whether it helps win ANYTHING to have the people pay two dollars for every dollar spent by the government. I ask whether the spirit of 76 is helped by flooding the lower ranks of the navy with street sweepings, whether war is won by mercantilist ethics, and in any case whether men like Knox, and Stimson, and Morgenthau can be expected to fill the heart of youth with martial ardor and the spirit of sacrifice. I ask Archie to say OPENLY why handing out four billion in excess profits on the gold wheeze, between 1932 and '40, handing it to a dirty gang of kike and hyper kikes
? on the London gold exchange, six firms, is expected to HELP Americanism, or why it should be regarded as a model of devotion to the American spirit. Or why ANY honest American should vote for the continuance of that swindle, or for keepin' in office the men and kikes who were responsible for puttin' it over the people.
And that of course is NOT the whole story of the Roosevelt, Lehman, Baruch, Morgenthau dippings. Dippings into the country's resources.
The break with our traditions exemplified by Donovan's intrigues in Yugoslavia is no Cornelia's jewel. In fact the MacLeish, Roosevelt yawp about patriotism is nothing but the gilding on the outside of the brick of base metal. Keeping Roosevelt in the White House is not essential to winning the war. The two things can be considered QUITE apart one from the other. Had you had the sense to ELIMINATE Roosevelt and his Jews, or the Jews and THEIR Mr. Roosevelt at the last elections you would not now be at war. That is one point. BUT to suppose that you will win the war by GOING ON being mugs in any and EVERY internal conflict, to suppose that you will strengthen the U. S. abroad by submitting to continued internal bleeding and swindling, is just so much nonsense or hoakum.
The first step toward a bright new world, so far as the rising American generation is concerned, is to get ONTO Roosevelt and all his works, and the second is to ELIMINATE him and all his damn gang from public life in America. The alternative is annihilation for the youth of America, and the END of everything decent the U. S. ever stood for. If you allow yourselves to be dazzled, if you are persuaded to identify the Morgenthau Baruch control of the U. S. by secret committees, or the Warburg bank wheeze with VICTORY, you are mugs. If you confuse these things and the profits on Army contracts even with national defense, you are plain downright suckers. I shall be highly interested to see whether Archibald takes up any of the points of this discourse. If he don't, some bright lad ought to help him. Someone ought to pick up a
? point here and there, over some faint lonely wave-length, and apply it right in the home, right in the home town or village. Your employers are said to be going over to Russia, to git red points on the sweat shop system. That don't mean liberty in the home village EITHER. Mess, fraud, and the destruction of national well-being INSIDE the nation are no proofs of fitness to extend the nation's power abroad, nor indicate [the] likelihood of so doing. Of course if the billions of dollars diddled out of the people by Roosevelt's faction are used in an election, they may win yet ANOTHER election. But that will not be equivalent to winning the war. NOR of course will it be equivalent to maintaining or rather restoring the American system of government, which is the last thing Roosevelt has ever appeared to desire, or the Jew's Mr. Wilson before him.
If Stalin's Russia is the ideal Trotsky and F. Delano version of paradise, then that is what they are headin' for. Archie among 'em. But if the American people lie down yet again and take it, it will be a long time before plenty blooms on the American mountains. The bright new world will be a long, long time reachin' the Blue Ridge. Ask Archibald why he AVOIDS so many topics of interest.
Keep Roosevelt's gang in office and you will not ONLY lose the war abroad in both oceans but you will LOSE everything worth having at home. Ask Archie why don't he use his prestige and position in the cause of ENlightenment ?
#30 (April 26, 1942)U. K. (B31) BLAST
It is gettin' on to be nigh thirty years since Mr. Wyndham Lewis, the vorticist painter, began rootin' round and prospectin' the publication of an art magazine called BLAST, the word meaning commonly explosion of dynamite, etc. , but connected in the arcane recesses of Mr. Lewis's
? mind with blastoderms and sources of life. And this magazine or manifesto was in its way a harbinger (I am never quite sure about that word harbinger), but it does seem to be generally accepted as meaning a sign of something about to come. Well, the other war came and prevented its being a periodical or annual publication, got out a second number in 1915 and that ended it, Gaudier-Brzeska the sculptor havin' been killed in the interim.
And that manifesto was the best we could then do toward assertin' what has now become known to the world, or at least to the European continent as the crisis OF the system. Crisis OF, not IN the system; not a crisis in side the system. But of the SYSTEM, crisis OF the system, DEL sistema, not merely nel sistema.
Now the particulars about the art movement, insofar as they affect merely painting and sculpture may not much matter in themselves, you will say. But the point is these things ONLY occur, changes like that in art and writin' ONLY occur when something moves deeper down, some thing gets going, something is workin' inside, and the LIVE artists, as distinct from exploiters and deadheads, get the itch to DO something about it, itch to do something LIKEWISE.
Anyhow, Blast appeared, and somewhere inside it or in some contemporary explosion of Wyndham's there was the statement: "MATTER when there is not certain amount of intelligence INSIDE it, decays and rots. " It would have been a happier day for all England, if all England had looked at that sentence. Which marks the end of an era, marks the end of the Marxist era (if there was a Marxist era), marks the end of the XIXth century usurocracy and mercantilism. Matter in which there is not a certain amount of intelligence decays and ROTS.
Waal, Blast made a bit of a stir, mebbe on the surface. It penetrated into society circles, etc. , New Zealand attacked it. The stinking old Manchester Guardian took six months to discover that Blast was satiric.
? BLAST could have been RECONSTITUTIVE, if the body of England hadn't been too far gone, too far descended into a state of flaccidity to be able to react to the medicine.
A copy of Blast penetrated into the lofty purlieuws of the Beerbohm Tree family.
Yes, Blast was out for publicity, it was not hidin' its head like a violet. It was made to be seen; it was said to be two foot square; which it wasn't but it was as large, and its typographic display was as impressive as Mr. Leveridge, the printer, could be induced to give credit for. And the STAGE in those days, as I suppose it still is in England, was esteemed far more than mere art, or mere intellect; so for an ART paper to penetrate into the upper reaches, as it were, of SIR Herbert's ambience, was already a proof of something or other, I won't say vitality, but at least visibility. Cause Herb, SIR Herb, was not only IN the limelight, but OF it, he was as you might say, built out of limelight, constructed of limelight, made out of limelight, as stuff and substance.
Waaal, the Tree[s] and their circle were havin' tea on the lawn; as one did in the upper reaches, with due paraphernalia, large silver tea urns, etc. and up come a storm, thunder and lightenin', and the family naturally plunged indoors, and one of Sir Herbert's nieces described to me the scene, possibly prophetic scene that resulted.
Blast had been left solitary there on the lawn, and the niece and Sir Herbert gazed elegiacally from the drawingroom window on the scene of grass and wet dampness. A FLASH of lightening lit up the lawn. There in its solitude, huge on the flaring magenta cover, the black letters vivid, the word BLAST was written. Possibly someone ventured out to rescue the treasure, now valued of second hand book sellers, but more probably no one did. It was in many ways a languid era, so few DID.
? I take it in retrospect that my tendency to action had effects, people who were bored with stagnation, and were relieved at the sight of ANY vitality, this must have been a TINY minority, and the vast majority of the small minority into contact with which I came, was uneasy, disturbed, horrified in fact: for that sign of action was also some sort of a harbinger.
SOMETHING was going on, or if not actually going ON, something might occur somewhere.
And DID.
Not only one war, but another, and the END of the materialist Era. The end of that particularly dirty Anschauung. Not merely the change of an IDEA, not the change of ONE idea, or notion, but the change of a WHOLE disposition toward life. Sloth, laziness, snobbishness, greed or whatever prevented the English from seeing what the change was to be, or what it was when it hit 'em. Also ignorance, also that part of the constructed snobishness which had helped to blot out historic sense.