CHARLES BEREZIN
279
ness. Chamberlain is enraged by the Jewish belief that the Kingdom of
God would be a historical, earthly kingdom:
But the Jew lived only in history, ... and so he judges a phenom–
enon like the revelation of Christ from a purely historical stand–
point, and became justly [jlled with fury, when the promised
kingdom, to win which he had suffered and endured for centuries–
for the sake of possessing which he had separated himself from all
people on the earth, and had become hated and despised of all–
when this kingdom, in which he hoped to see all nations in fetters
and all princes upon their knees "licking the dust", was all at once
transformed in to one "not of t.his world."
The belief that the Kingdom of God is not entailed in the Jewish Law
results from an inability to see a causal relationship, one that takes
place in time.
The point of confluence of anti-Semitism, fascism, and Social
Credit occupies the center of Pound's consciousness, and that center is
the attitude toward history and time just delineated.
It
is not a new idea
to
suggest that Pound had an overarching concern with time. Daniel
Pearlman has said:
Pound was setting himself the considerable task of discovering the
first principles of human behavior.
If,
in working toward this goal,
he felt with greater and greater urgency the need to determine the
.nature of time, it is probable that he felt it to be a question of
fundamental importance, not on ly to the poet but to humanity at
large.
Pearlman feels that Pound's attitude towards time resulted from his
creative methods and intentions. On the contrary, I would suggest that
Pound's understanding of time is the
a priori
element in his thought
and colors those methods and intentions.
It
is discernible in every
aspect of Pound's creative work from his poetic syntax to his theory of
culture. Understanding Pound's attitude towards time is not simply a
noncontroversial tool for evaluating those equally noncontroversial
methods and intentions, but is itself a method for questioning those
methods and intentions and for examining the social role of the poet
and poetry.
