4pQonT

206 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
14 and 15. Some of your philosophists and fancy thinkers would
have called it the spiritual side of England. I undertook to say
state of mind.
"I can't say my remarks were heeded. I thought I got 'em simple
enough. In fact, some people complained that several of the words
contained no more than four or five letters, some six. Now I hold
that no Catholic has ever been or ever will be puzzled by what I
said in those Cantos. I have, however, never asked for any sympathy
when misunderstood. I go on, try to make my meaning clear
and then clearer, and in the long run, people who listen to me,
very few of 'em do, but the members of that small and select
minority do know more in the long run than those who listen to
say, H. G. (Chubby) Wells and the liberal stooges. What I am
getting at is, a friend said to me the other day that he was glad I
had the politics I have got but that he didn't understand how I, as
a North American United Stateser, could have it. Well, that looks
simple to me. Things often do look simple to me. On the Confucian
system, very few start right and then go on, start at the roots and
move upwards. The pattern often is simple. Whereas, if you
start constructing from the twig downwards, you get into a
muddle. My politics seem to me simple. My idea of a state or
empire is more like a hedgehog or porcupine—chunky and welldefended.
I don't cotton to the idea o' my country bein' an octopus,
weak in the tentacles and suffering from stomach ulcers and colic
gastritis."
There were no further broadcasts until January 29, 1942, when
Pound persuaded the Italian government to let him return to the
air.
January 29, 1942:
"And then there was my old dad in bed with a broken hip.
Lord knows who's going to mend it or when it is going to mend.
So I read him a few pages of Aristotle in the Loeb [low, according
to the transcription] Classical Library, as diversion to take his
mind off it. Also to keep my own work in progress progressing; and
because for some time I had in mind the need of comparing the