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EZRA POUND 191
many of the Vivaldi manuscripts were destroyed by bombing and
by artillery fire. Today, musicians are performing from copies
made from Pound's microfilms. He refers to this episode in Section:
Rock-Drill:
Bottai also phoned Torino
instanter, to dig out Vivaldi, 44 [.]
Varied though Pound's interests might be, he always managed
to link them in some way. Music, for him, was never very far from
poetry. He has said, "Put words to music and you'll soon find out
where you can whittle the words down."
In addition to poetry, music, and tennis, Pound's interest in
economics, evident before the First World War, and accelerated
by that catastrophe, had become more acute during the widespread
misery occasioned by the Great Depression. Almost everyone in
the world during the 1930s lived in the grim shadow of the Crash
of 1929 and its aftermath. The Second World War was eagerly
accepted by most people as an excuse to stop thinking about economics,
but Pound continued to talk on the "Sale and Manufacture
of War". As Renato Corsini wrote in Il Seculo d'ltalia, May 4,
1955, "For Pound economics starts from justice, and the study of
economics leads to the contemplation of justice."
Pound had been writing on economic problems since 1912,
when he was a columnist for A. E. Orage's New Age. His only
connection with the Fascist Party was based upon his hope, a
groundless one, it turned out, that the party leaders would accept
his economic doctrines. Desmond Chute writes,
"Economics, that was to cast so long and dark a shadow over
the next period. Asked once why he was so patient of the regime
(he never belonged to the party), he replied: 'as a platform for
monetary reform,' convinced of having converted the Duce to the
theories of Douglas and Gesell." 45
As the basis of his contemplation of economic justice, Pound
employed the Confucian ethic, which is divided into three parts—
the axis; the process; and sincerity, the perfect word, or the precise
word—as follows: