Between Mussolini and Me

Lawrence Rainey traces Pound’s Fascism to the Palace Hotel, Rimini

Ezra Pound’s support for Italian Fascism has long been a contentious subject in modern literature. For some, it is merely a vivid instance of the uncritical acclaim that surrounded Mussolini well into the mid-Thirties. Others see it as evidence of a private pathology, a grotesque outgrowth of the virile posing that Pound sometimes indulged in. Still others have urged that it ‘arose from the great contempt he felt for the masses’, an avant-garde disdain that turned into a massive political delusion. Finally there are those who believe that Pound’s admiration originated in an essentially humane response to ‘the Great Depression and the economic chaos of the Thirties’: that his adherence to Fascism was the result of goodwill marred by naivety, of noble impulses that went astray.