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PARTISAN REVIEW
simple explanation in the Adams Cantos , perferring complexity to pat
generalization. " Clark Emery in
Ideas Into A ction: A Study of Pound's Cantos
explains: "The character of Adams emerges so clearly from these cantos that
they do not need annotation to register an effect."
So
lucid are they in fact,
that Emery does not find it necessary to make a single comment, offering
instead a page of "excerpts selected at random from the Adams cantos ."
More accurately, though still respectful of the method , Donald Davie writes
that "Pound's cuts and compressions and juxtapositions make a nonsensical
hurly-burly of Adam's life ." Equally unsubstantiated with the claim that
Pound discovered a new John Adams is William Vasse's claim that in the
Adams cantos and the other American history cantos "by selecting , remodel–
ing , and editing his material. . .Pound recreates from historical documents a
new interpretation of American history which is different from that of his
sources, and much different from the 'standard' history book. "
Pound wrote the American history cantos on Jefferson and Adams,
John Quincy Adams, and Martin Van Buren between 1933 and 1935, and
those on John Adams between 1937 and 1939 . The latter group coincided
with Pound's furthest remove from society, poetry, and humanism . In
1936 he began contributing to the
Fascist Quarterly .
By 1938, when most of
the John Adams cantos were being written, Pound was an enthusiastic
follower of Oswald Mosely, the English fascist, and of Benito Mussolini .
His essays had become a jumble of fascism, anti-Semitism, and the
economic theory of Major C.H. Douglas (whose initials Pound originally
attached to C.F. Adams). By this time modern criticism had established the
practice of separating the author from his work-an additional cir–
cumstance to help shield Pound from searching criticism. After all, one
could argue, he had continued to write coherent poetry in the 1920s when
already under the influence of Major Douglas. Critical theory seemed to
dictate that his ideas , however abhorrent, be kept strictly out of the
account.
While the critics were careful to maintain this separation , Pound
made no attempt to keep his prejudices out of his poetry. His few interpola–
tions among the quoted and paraphrased lines of the Adams cantos–
perhaps less than ten per-cent of the whole-have largely to do with his
personal obsessions. "Schicksal sagt der Fuhrer" (destiny says the Fuehrer) ,
comments Pound after a line which transcribes John Adams 's declaration of
his trust in providence. And while Pound exhibits no attempt to search out
Adams's economic ideas, he emphasizes those that he comes across by
means of heavy, black lines or else with anti-Semitic interpolations. In the
first Chinese history canto , quotations on money and the Jews falsely
attributed to Adams and Franklin ("better keep out the jews") are under-
r
