chant; reputed
anonymous
owner of the London tabloid the Daily Mirror during the late 1930s.
A-Companion-to-the-Cantos-of-Ezra-Pound-II
.
'E8WKEV: "she had given them dreadful drugs" [39:7].
Circe bewitched the "mountain wolves and lions" with her potions.
269. veleno: I, "poison. "
270. Predappio: Town in NE Italy where Mussolini was born, the son of a blacksmith. The several lines ending here concern usury as a disease that infects the whole social fabric. Said Pound: "When a given hormone defects, it will defect throughout the whole system" [GK,60].
271. Upward . . . bank: [cf. 275 below]. In a poem entitled "The Discarded Imagist" [The Egotist, June 1, 1915; rpt. Poetry,
Vol. 6, no. 6, 1915], Upward wrote: "I withstood the savages of the Niger with a revolver: / I withstood the savages of the Thames with a printingpress" [EP, GE, 118]. In 1901 as British Resident in Nigeria h e s t o o d o n " t h e blood~stained s t o n e o f Somarika, with a revolver in his hand, and three human skulls at his feet" and faced "an ogre, whose boast it is that he never had to strike more than one blow to cut off a human head. " [Some Personalities, London, 1912. ] Later he started a publishing venture in London which became "The Wisdom of the East" series.
278. Babylon: Prob. the owner of Babylon, suggesting the confusion o f voices from which the work of Matteo and Pisanello rescued the 15th century.
279. nox animae magna: L, "great night of the soul" [cf. "Dark Night of the Soul," St. John of the Cross; cf. variant "nux" in 249 above ] .
280. Taishan: [cf. 46 above].
281. To study . . . untrumpeted: Pound translates the opening lines of the Analects thus: "1. He said: Study with the seasons winging past, is not this pleasant? 2. To have friends coming in from far quarters, not a delight? 3. Unruffled by men's ingnoring him, also indicative of high breed" [CON, 195].
248. pouvrette
never did I read a letter" [Villon, Testament, "Ballade Pour Prier Nostre Dame"]. Pound was impressed with this Villon ballad early on and discusses it in a chapter entitled, "Montcorbier, alias Villon" [SR, 166-178].
F,
"poor and old
282. filial . . . process:
Analects I, II, 2 thus: "2. The real gentleman goes for the root, when the root is solid the (beneficent) process starts growing, filiality and brotherliness are the root of manhood, increasing with it" [ibid. ].
283. nor . . . alacrity: Analects I, III: "He said: Elaborate phrasing about correct appearances seldom means manhood"
272. Sitalkas: The
[~[7&AK<>S] , "Prohibitor of Corn-Growing. "
Upward bought at Corfu an ancient Greek gem that seemed to represent John Barley- corn with a seed basket on his arm and three spikes rising from his cap. Upward seems to have had a seal ring made out of the gem: "a sardonyx or blood-stone, green with red spots. " An impression of the seal is used on the cover of Upward's book The Divine Mystery [Moody,Pai, 4-1, 56-57; 78/479].
273. Niger: River in W Africa.
274. Thomas bank: The Thames River bank.
. . . shot
1863-1926, cultural anthropologist, student
o f primitive religions, world traveler and friend of many people around Pound (1911- 21), including G. R. S. Mead and A. R. Drage. Pound's idea of the Eleusinian mysteries were seen through such books as Upward's The Divine Mystery, 1910 [Knox, Pai, 3-1, 71-83]. Upward committed suicide in 1926.
276. Matteo: M. da Pasti, d. 1468. Vero- nese sculptor and medalist. Made intaglio medallions of Sigismundo Malatesta, Isotra, etc. [264].
277. Pisanello: Antonio Pisano, 11397- 1455, V eronese painter and medalist. Made medals of Sigismundo, his brother Novello, etc. [26 :78].
. . . . . . respect
275.
Upward
himself:
Allen U. ,
harvest: Analects I, V: "He what you do and keep your . . . be friendly to others, employ the people in season. [Prob. meaning public works are not to interfere with agricultural production. ]" Pound's brackets and italics
[ibid. ].
285. E al Triedro . . . la Luna: I, "And at the trihedral corner, Cunizza/and the other woman: 'I am the moon'" [6:34].
286. Cunizza: Cunizza da Romano [6: 34] . Here the image of the compassionate woman.
287. Nv~ animae: H, "night," animae: L, "of the soul. "
288. San Juan . . . ad posteros: L, "St. John. . . . to posterity. " The Spanish mystic Juan de Yepis y Alvarez, 1542-1591, known
Delphian
Apollo
[ibid. ].
284. employ
said: word
Pound renders
,
? ? ? I I,
378
74/438-439
74/439-440
379
as St. John of the Cross. He wrote of "the Dark Night of the Soul" as a stage in the mystic way.
289. Ugolino: [cf. 240 above] .
290. la vieille de Candide: F, "Candide's old
woman" [Voltaire, Candide, XI-XII].
291. Corporal Casey: Soldier in cadre of the
DTC.
303. olivi: I, "olive trees. "
304. Boreas Apeliota libeccio: Seriatim: "North Wind, East Wind, South Wind. "
305. "C'e il babao": [babau]. I, "there's the bugbear. "
306. i1 Pozzetto/al Tigullio: I, "the Little Well/at Tigullio. " The beach on the Bay of Tigullio, near Rapallo, where Pound lived in 1930s.
307. Oedipus: Greek hero who inadver? tently murdered his father and married his mother [Sophocles, Oedipus Rex].
308. nepotes Remi magnanimi: L, "grand? sons (descendants) of the great-souled Remus. "
309. Mr. Bullington: Prob. inmate at DTC.
310. Lady be good: Popular song of the 30s.
use in Japan? " "Hawk's eye," above, and "hawk's wing" in next line prob. recalled the Yeats play.
318. babao: I, "bugbear" [cf. 305 above].
319. no fortune . . . : [1/4].
320. J. Adams: [31: 15] Pound several times refers to the statement Adams often made: "every bank of discount . . . is down- right corruption" [71 :35; 76:113].
321. at 35 . . . 21. 65: Roosevelt's change of the value of gold.
322. Byzantium: Ancient city on the Bosphorus; site of modern Istanbul.
323. Meyer Anselm: Mayer Amschel Roths? child, 1743-1812, usually considered to be the founder of the House of Rothschild.
324. old H. : Henry Morgenthau, Sr. [DG/RO].
325. young H/: Henry Morgenthau, Jr. [DG/RO].
326. Sieff: Israel Moses S. , British mer?
chant; reputed anonymous owner of the London tabloid the Daily Mirror during the late 1930s.
327. a rrromance: Idea that money, "high finance," and international money opera- tions were Ha great romance" was current during the 1930s.
328. yidd: [yitt, yit]: Yiddish dialect, "Jew. " G, Jude. A term of approbrium first applied by wealthy German Jews to low? class "ghetto" Jews from central European countries when they began migrating west. Pound associated "the blond bastards" with The Magnificat based on Luke 1. 52: "He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree" [DG/RO].
329. goyim: Yiddish, "gentiles. " A term used by Jews for non-Jews. In context, it can be pejorative or not.
330. versalzen: G, "to oversalt; to spoil. " Derived from Christ's remarks at the end of the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew 5. 13] : "Ye are the salt of the earth. " Pound said
Christ was addressing the Jews (not the gentiles) and refers at them as "oversalted"
[HK].
331. With justice: "Redeem Zion with justice" [cf. 99 above].
332. Yu: [53:15] Emperor after Shun. The laws of Jehovah on money and control of usury are better than those of the early Chinese emperors.
333. sha-o: The succession dance, which mimed the peaceful accession of Emperor Chun [Shun]. Analects III, XXV [CON, 205].
334. XIXth Leviticus: Verse 35: "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. "
335. Jeremiah: Major Hebrew prophet: "the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin" [Jer. 1. 1].
336. tower of Hananel: In the north corner of Jerusalem on the wall. The data concerns directions for building the city [Jer. 31. 38? 40].
337. Goah: Goath: "And the measuring line shall yet go forth . . . and shall compass about to Goath" [ibid. ].
338. Anatoth: A city of Benjamin where Jeremiah was born. The value of its currency was slightly different from that of Jerusalem: one-half of 17shekels was $8. 50 there: "And I bought the field of Hanameel my uncle's son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver" [Jer. 32. 6? 1O].
339. Benjamin: The plateau of E central Palestine, near the Jordan River, between Jerusalem and Bethel.
340. Chocorua: Mount Chocorua, E New Hampshire, in the Sandwich Range of the White Mountains.
341. meteyard and measure: [cf. 334 above ] .
342. cornman': Sound of "corps man," for soldiers from the medical corps.
Paradis . . .
is not
292. Le
artificial" [ef. Baudelaire, Les Paradis Artificiels] .
293. spezzato: I, "broken,"
294. mint: One of the hieratic herbs related to the vision of paradise.
295. Ladro: I, "thief, rogue. " Reference to acatintheDTC [MdeR].
296. Nemi: Lake Nemi, a small crater lake in the Alban Hills of Latium, Italy; here were the sacred grove and the temple of Diana, guarded by a priest who held the post until he was killed by another who sought the office [Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3].
297. Zarathustra: Zoroaster, fl. 5th century B. C. , a religious teacher of ancient Persia; founder of Zoroastrianism, originally a kind of fertility religion which later developed a more complex cosmogony and eschatology deriving from the struggle of the Zoroastrian supernatural spirits.
298. desuete: F, "obsolete, out of date. "
. . .
300. castellaro: [Poss. castello] : I, "castle. " Prob. here "small castle. " A place near Sant Ambrogio, near Rapallo [EH].
301. sa&ulorum Athf. Jlae: L, "immemorial of Athena. "
302. 'YAc>"t 'YAC>VKW7n~: H, "little owl, with gleaming eyes. " Note in context that the olive is sacred to Athena, who created it, and that 'YAC>VKC", like 'YAC>VKO, is used to de? scribe the sheen of the olive [79: 60] .
: F,
"Paradise
299. Jupiter
the train of thought evoked by the idea of paradise as not artificial.
that no Chinese philologist sees anything of the kind [Fang IV, 74]. )
314. Chi: [Ch'i], principality in Shensi Province; ruled by Wen Wang.
315. Shun:
[M5936]. Pound calls him Chun [53:23].
316. AL"jVP': H, "clear, shrill. "
317. tanka: The Japanese verse form of five
lines; the first and third have five syllables, the others seven. Memory of "A Shadow," tanka by Katue Kitasono. Pound once asked him, "Did you see the Hawk's Well-is it any
Hermes: Major
deities in
311. in harum . . . : [haram]: L, "into pig? sty I too have gone" [ef. 260 above].
a
312. three months . . . : Pound translates Analects VII, XIII: "In Ch'i he heard the 'Shao' sung, and for three months did not know the taste of meat; said: didn't figure the performance of music had attained to
that summit" [CON,220].
313. song . . . radiance: Pound's
visual
tion to the ideogram for "the name of the music of the legendary Emperor Shun. " Shao [M5691]. In the left component he sees the sun under an image of rays. (Note
Legendary
Chinese
ruler
reac-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 380
343. METATHEMENON . . . : H, "if those who use a currency give it up in favour of another. " From Aristotle,Politics 1275b, 16
[53:157; 77:67; 97:77].
344. Salamis fleet: [cf. 110 above] .
345. Worgl: (Woergl), a small town in the Austrian Tyrol which in the early 1930s issued its own money, a form of the stamp script [41:44]. The new money created prosperity: "The town had been bankrupt: the citizens had not been able to pay their
74/440-442
74/442
381
rates . . . etc.
everything had been put right. . . . All went well until an ill-starred Wergl note was presented at the counter of an Innsbruck bank. . . . The burgomaster was deprived of his office, but the ideological war had been won" [SP,314].
346. Gedichte: G, "Poems. "
347. Heine: Heinrich H. , 1797-1856, Ger- man lyric poet and critic.
348. Tyrol: i. e. , N Tyrol, Austria.
349. Innsbruck: Capitol of N Tyrol, W Austria.
350. N. E. P. : "New Economic Policy. " The
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 left the "tountry in an economic doldrums that it could not get out of. Marx had provided an
analysis of the workings and functions of "capital," but he provided no economic program for a socialist state, The country continued in a state of shock while the people suffered terribly. Lenin finally created the N. E. P. as a temporary five-year plan. It was a capitalist economic device that was criticized by a number of Marxist purists, but Lenin conceived it to be a temporary transitional economic device between the former bourgeoiS system of exploitation and the dictatorship of the proletariat, in whicl an economic paradise would be created. Pound's theory here is
that all Lenin needed to have done was issue certificates to the workers for work done, which could have been used as money and thus have created the kind of prosperity had by Wergl. Instead, the N. E. P. was
But in
less than two
years
started by borrowing money at high interest rates, which kept the people enslaved in the same old way [103:6].
351. canal work: The Soviets used forced labor (nearly 300,000 prisoners from labor camps) to build the White Sea-Baltic Canal, begun in 1931 and completed in 1933-34. David J. Dallin, in his book The Real Soviet Russia [Yale University Press, 1947], quotes '"a French engineer . . . sentenced to forced labor," who "managed to escape across the Finnish border": "More than 50,000 [pris- oners] died during a period of a year and a
half" [po 242].
352. dumping: PlaCing large quantities of a basic commodity on the market at a price less than the cost of producing it. Pound wrote: "The Roman Empire was ruined by the dumping of cheap grain from Egypt, which sold at an unjustly low price. And usury corrodes" [SP, 316].
269. veleno: I, "poison. "
270. Predappio: Town in NE Italy where Mussolini was born, the son of a blacksmith. The several lines ending here concern usury as a disease that infects the whole social fabric. Said Pound: "When a given hormone defects, it will defect throughout the whole system" [GK,60].
271. Upward . . . bank: [cf. 275 below]. In a poem entitled "The Discarded Imagist" [The Egotist, June 1, 1915; rpt. Poetry,
Vol. 6, no. 6, 1915], Upward wrote: "I withstood the savages of the Niger with a revolver: / I withstood the savages of the Thames with a printingpress" [EP, GE, 118]. In 1901 as British Resident in Nigeria h e s t o o d o n " t h e blood~stained s t o n e o f Somarika, with a revolver in his hand, and three human skulls at his feet" and faced "an ogre, whose boast it is that he never had to strike more than one blow to cut off a human head. " [Some Personalities, London, 1912. ] Later he started a publishing venture in London which became "The Wisdom of the East" series.
278. Babylon: Prob. the owner of Babylon, suggesting the confusion o f voices from which the work of Matteo and Pisanello rescued the 15th century.
279. nox animae magna: L, "great night of the soul" [cf. "Dark Night of the Soul," St. John of the Cross; cf. variant "nux" in 249 above ] .
280. Taishan: [cf. 46 above].
281. To study . . . untrumpeted: Pound translates the opening lines of the Analects thus: "1. He said: Study with the seasons winging past, is not this pleasant? 2. To have friends coming in from far quarters, not a delight? 3. Unruffled by men's ingnoring him, also indicative of high breed" [CON, 195].
248. pouvrette
never did I read a letter" [Villon, Testament, "Ballade Pour Prier Nostre Dame"]. Pound was impressed with this Villon ballad early on and discusses it in a chapter entitled, "Montcorbier, alias Villon" [SR, 166-178].
F,
"poor and old
282. filial . . . process:
Analects I, II, 2 thus: "2. The real gentleman goes for the root, when the root is solid the (beneficent) process starts growing, filiality and brotherliness are the root of manhood, increasing with it" [ibid. ].
283. nor . . . alacrity: Analects I, III: "He said: Elaborate phrasing about correct appearances seldom means manhood"
272. Sitalkas: The
[~[7&AK<>S] , "Prohibitor of Corn-Growing. "
Upward bought at Corfu an ancient Greek gem that seemed to represent John Barley- corn with a seed basket on his arm and three spikes rising from his cap. Upward seems to have had a seal ring made out of the gem: "a sardonyx or blood-stone, green with red spots. " An impression of the seal is used on the cover of Upward's book The Divine Mystery [Moody,Pai, 4-1, 56-57; 78/479].
273. Niger: River in W Africa.
274. Thomas bank: The Thames River bank.
. . . shot
1863-1926, cultural anthropologist, student
o f primitive religions, world traveler and friend of many people around Pound (1911- 21), including G. R. S. Mead and A. R. Drage. Pound's idea of the Eleusinian mysteries were seen through such books as Upward's The Divine Mystery, 1910 [Knox, Pai, 3-1, 71-83]. Upward committed suicide in 1926.
276. Matteo: M. da Pasti, d. 1468. Vero- nese sculptor and medalist. Made intaglio medallions of Sigismundo Malatesta, Isotra, etc. [264].
277. Pisanello: Antonio Pisano, 11397- 1455, V eronese painter and medalist. Made medals of Sigismundo, his brother Novello, etc. [26 :78].
. . . . . . respect
275.
Upward
himself:
Allen U. ,
harvest: Analects I, V: "He what you do and keep your . . . be friendly to others, employ the people in season. [Prob. meaning public works are not to interfere with agricultural production. ]" Pound's brackets and italics
[ibid. ].
285. E al Triedro . . . la Luna: I, "And at the trihedral corner, Cunizza/and the other woman: 'I am the moon'" [6:34].
286. Cunizza: Cunizza da Romano [6: 34] . Here the image of the compassionate woman.
287. Nv~ animae: H, "night," animae: L, "of the soul. "
288. San Juan . . . ad posteros: L, "St. John. . . . to posterity. " The Spanish mystic Juan de Yepis y Alvarez, 1542-1591, known
Delphian
Apollo
[ibid. ].
284. employ
said: word
Pound renders
,
? ? ? I I,
378
74/438-439
74/439-440
379
as St. John of the Cross. He wrote of "the Dark Night of the Soul" as a stage in the mystic way.
289. Ugolino: [cf. 240 above] .
290. la vieille de Candide: F, "Candide's old
woman" [Voltaire, Candide, XI-XII].
291. Corporal Casey: Soldier in cadre of the
DTC.
303. olivi: I, "olive trees. "
304. Boreas Apeliota libeccio: Seriatim: "North Wind, East Wind, South Wind. "
305. "C'e il babao": [babau]. I, "there's the bugbear. "
306. i1 Pozzetto/al Tigullio: I, "the Little Well/at Tigullio. " The beach on the Bay of Tigullio, near Rapallo, where Pound lived in 1930s.
307. Oedipus: Greek hero who inadver? tently murdered his father and married his mother [Sophocles, Oedipus Rex].
308. nepotes Remi magnanimi: L, "grand? sons (descendants) of the great-souled Remus. "
309. Mr. Bullington: Prob. inmate at DTC.
310. Lady be good: Popular song of the 30s.
use in Japan? " "Hawk's eye," above, and "hawk's wing" in next line prob. recalled the Yeats play.
318. babao: I, "bugbear" [cf. 305 above].
319. no fortune . . . : [1/4].
320. J. Adams: [31: 15] Pound several times refers to the statement Adams often made: "every bank of discount . . . is down- right corruption" [71 :35; 76:113].
321. at 35 . . . 21. 65: Roosevelt's change of the value of gold.
322. Byzantium: Ancient city on the Bosphorus; site of modern Istanbul.
323. Meyer Anselm: Mayer Amschel Roths? child, 1743-1812, usually considered to be the founder of the House of Rothschild.
324. old H. : Henry Morgenthau, Sr. [DG/RO].
325. young H/: Henry Morgenthau, Jr. [DG/RO].
326. Sieff: Israel Moses S. , British mer?
chant; reputed anonymous owner of the London tabloid the Daily Mirror during the late 1930s.
327. a rrromance: Idea that money, "high finance," and international money opera- tions were Ha great romance" was current during the 1930s.
328. yidd: [yitt, yit]: Yiddish dialect, "Jew. " G, Jude. A term of approbrium first applied by wealthy German Jews to low? class "ghetto" Jews from central European countries when they began migrating west. Pound associated "the blond bastards" with The Magnificat based on Luke 1. 52: "He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree" [DG/RO].
329. goyim: Yiddish, "gentiles. " A term used by Jews for non-Jews. In context, it can be pejorative or not.
330. versalzen: G, "to oversalt; to spoil. " Derived from Christ's remarks at the end of the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew 5. 13] : "Ye are the salt of the earth. " Pound said
Christ was addressing the Jews (not the gentiles) and refers at them as "oversalted"
[HK].
331. With justice: "Redeem Zion with justice" [cf. 99 above].
332. Yu: [53:15] Emperor after Shun. The laws of Jehovah on money and control of usury are better than those of the early Chinese emperors.
333. sha-o: The succession dance, which mimed the peaceful accession of Emperor Chun [Shun]. Analects III, XXV [CON, 205].
334. XIXth Leviticus: Verse 35: "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. "
335. Jeremiah: Major Hebrew prophet: "the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin" [Jer. 1. 1].
336. tower of Hananel: In the north corner of Jerusalem on the wall. The data concerns directions for building the city [Jer. 31. 38? 40].
337. Goah: Goath: "And the measuring line shall yet go forth . . . and shall compass about to Goath" [ibid. ].
338. Anatoth: A city of Benjamin where Jeremiah was born. The value of its currency was slightly different from that of Jerusalem: one-half of 17shekels was $8. 50 there: "And I bought the field of Hanameel my uncle's son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver" [Jer. 32. 6? 1O].
339. Benjamin: The plateau of E central Palestine, near the Jordan River, between Jerusalem and Bethel.
340. Chocorua: Mount Chocorua, E New Hampshire, in the Sandwich Range of the White Mountains.
341. meteyard and measure: [cf. 334 above ] .
342. cornman': Sound of "corps man," for soldiers from the medical corps.
Paradis . . .
is not
292. Le
artificial" [ef. Baudelaire, Les Paradis Artificiels] .
293. spezzato: I, "broken,"
294. mint: One of the hieratic herbs related to the vision of paradise.
295. Ladro: I, "thief, rogue. " Reference to acatintheDTC [MdeR].
296. Nemi: Lake Nemi, a small crater lake in the Alban Hills of Latium, Italy; here were the sacred grove and the temple of Diana, guarded by a priest who held the post until he was killed by another who sought the office [Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3].
297. Zarathustra: Zoroaster, fl. 5th century B. C. , a religious teacher of ancient Persia; founder of Zoroastrianism, originally a kind of fertility religion which later developed a more complex cosmogony and eschatology deriving from the struggle of the Zoroastrian supernatural spirits.
298. desuete: F, "obsolete, out of date. "
. . .
300. castellaro: [Poss. castello] : I, "castle. " Prob. here "small castle. " A place near Sant Ambrogio, near Rapallo [EH].
301. sa&ulorum Athf. Jlae: L, "immemorial of Athena. "
302. 'YAc>"t 'YAC>VKW7n~: H, "little owl, with gleaming eyes. " Note in context that the olive is sacred to Athena, who created it, and that 'YAC>VKC", like 'YAC>VKO, is used to de? scribe the sheen of the olive [79: 60] .
: F,
"Paradise
299. Jupiter
the train of thought evoked by the idea of paradise as not artificial.
that no Chinese philologist sees anything of the kind [Fang IV, 74]. )
314. Chi: [Ch'i], principality in Shensi Province; ruled by Wen Wang.
315. Shun:
[M5936]. Pound calls him Chun [53:23].
316. AL"jVP': H, "clear, shrill. "
317. tanka: The Japanese verse form of five
lines; the first and third have five syllables, the others seven. Memory of "A Shadow," tanka by Katue Kitasono. Pound once asked him, "Did you see the Hawk's Well-is it any
Hermes: Major
deities in
311. in harum . . . : [haram]: L, "into pig? sty I too have gone" [ef. 260 above].
a
312. three months . . . : Pound translates Analects VII, XIII: "In Ch'i he heard the 'Shao' sung, and for three months did not know the taste of meat; said: didn't figure the performance of music had attained to
that summit" [CON,220].
313. song . . . radiance: Pound's
visual
tion to the ideogram for "the name of the music of the legendary Emperor Shun. " Shao [M5691]. In the left component he sees the sun under an image of rays. (Note
Legendary
Chinese
ruler
reac-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 380
343. METATHEMENON . . . : H, "if those who use a currency give it up in favour of another. " From Aristotle,Politics 1275b, 16
[53:157; 77:67; 97:77].
344. Salamis fleet: [cf. 110 above] .
345. Worgl: (Woergl), a small town in the Austrian Tyrol which in the early 1930s issued its own money, a form of the stamp script [41:44]. The new money created prosperity: "The town had been bankrupt: the citizens had not been able to pay their
74/440-442
74/442
381
rates . . . etc.
everything had been put right. . . . All went well until an ill-starred Wergl note was presented at the counter of an Innsbruck bank. . . . The burgomaster was deprived of his office, but the ideological war had been won" [SP,314].
346. Gedichte: G, "Poems. "
347. Heine: Heinrich H. , 1797-1856, Ger- man lyric poet and critic.
348. Tyrol: i. e. , N Tyrol, Austria.
349. Innsbruck: Capitol of N Tyrol, W Austria.
350. N. E. P. : "New Economic Policy. " The
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 left the "tountry in an economic doldrums that it could not get out of. Marx had provided an
analysis of the workings and functions of "capital," but he provided no economic program for a socialist state, The country continued in a state of shock while the people suffered terribly. Lenin finally created the N. E. P. as a temporary five-year plan. It was a capitalist economic device that was criticized by a number of Marxist purists, but Lenin conceived it to be a temporary transitional economic device between the former bourgeoiS system of exploitation and the dictatorship of the proletariat, in whicl an economic paradise would be created. Pound's theory here is
that all Lenin needed to have done was issue certificates to the workers for work done, which could have been used as money and thus have created the kind of prosperity had by Wergl. Instead, the N. E. P. was
But in
less than two
years
started by borrowing money at high interest rates, which kept the people enslaved in the same old way [103:6].
351. canal work: The Soviets used forced labor (nearly 300,000 prisoners from labor camps) to build the White Sea-Baltic Canal, begun in 1931 and completed in 1933-34. David J. Dallin, in his book The Real Soviet Russia [Yale University Press, 1947], quotes '"a French engineer . . . sentenced to forced labor," who "managed to escape across the Finnish border": "More than 50,000 [pris- oners] died during a period of a year and a
half" [po 242].
352. dumping: PlaCing large quantities of a basic commodity on the market at a price less than the cost of producing it. Pound wrote: "The Roman Empire was ruined by the dumping of cheap grain from Egypt, which sold at an unjustly low price. And usury corrodes" [SP, 316].
