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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The ghost of Ezra Pound



Mugshot of Ezra Pound taken in 1945.


By John Kaminski

The ghost of dead poet Ezra Pound bids us to peek into the misty library of our own minds, specifically into the section suppressed by public schools and TV channels, as well as by most progressive Internet websites.

Ezra who? Pound was the great teacher who mentored the leading lights of a generation of 20th century American literateurs: Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot and that bunch. During World War II Pound broadcast anti-American invective and railed against the world banking system. He was tried for treason and spent 13 years in an insane asylum. Today, his message is more prescient than ever.

Pound's ghost wafts down a cobwebbed corridor of musty tomes and settles upon a long-forgotten folio: "Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage from a Hieratic Papyrus in Leiden," translated by Alan H. Gardiner in 1909.

"Egypt was in distress; the social system had become disorganized; violence filled the land. Invaders preyed upon the defenseless population; the rich were stripped of everything and slept in the open, and the poor took their possessions. It is no local disturbance that is here described, but a great and overwhelming national disaster. The Pharaoh was strangely inactive."

Noting that Pharaoh's Jewish adviser interpreted his dreams, the ghost pulls out a dusty scroll, the famous Ipuwer Papyrus, and reads:

"The towns are destroyed ... years of noise. There is no end to noise. The fish in the lakes and rivers die, and worms, insects, and reptiles breed prolifically."

Pound's ghost comments: "What a strange occurrence! No battles are described; the empire was not attacked from without. The description is oddly like the French and Russian Communist Revolutions ... the rich were stripped of everything and slept in the open. There are also parallels to modern America ... the fish in the lakes and rivers die ... there is no end to noise."

He then reads a passage from the 5th century B.C. Egyptian historian Manetho:

"A people of ignoble origin from the East, who had the audacity to invade the country, which they mastered by main force, without difficulty, or even a battle."

“During this 511 year period, the Jews were princes in Egypt, taking what they wanted from the enslaved Egyptians, and incurring their enmity by their vicious arrogance over the betrayed population. At last, the native leaders of the Egyptians led a successful revolt, and expelled the Hyksos forever. Manetho writes that after the Hyksos were driven out, the Egyptians punished the Jews for their treachery, and enslaved them for life at hard labor.

read the rest on the site.