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EZRA POUND 277
was writing the Cantos, which contain supposedly "anti-Semitic"
passages. At the time that the Jewish artist Modigliani died, he
was very little known, but Pound, in response to a query from
John Scheiwiller, contributed the following statement, on November
29, 1929: "Premature death of Modigliani removed a definite,
valuable and emotive force from the contemporary world." 17
It has been noted that the more cultured members of minority
groups seldom have a chip on their shoulder about their ethnic
origin, but less educated members are quite aggressive on this
point. Race is the hobgoblin of little minds, and my Jewish friends
have often expressed their embarrassment at the antics of selfstyled
"defense" organizations, which pretend to speak for the
entire Jewish community. Stephen Spender, the English poet, and
of Jewish origins, is typical of the more civilized strata among the
Jews. On December 5 and 8, 1955, the Yale University radio
station, WYBC, broadcast an hour-long program, "A Tribute to
Ezra Pound", in which Spender said,
"Today I would, in greeting Ezra Pound, like to thank him,
to thank him for the tremendous example he has been to other
poets as a technician and as a translator, and to thank him for the
hundreds of acts of generosity by which he has been able to help
other poets. Without this great generosity of his, without this
great illumination, the whole situation of English literature today
would be quite different."
Spender is one of many Jews who visited Ezra during his thirteen
years of imprisonment. In citing the number of Jews whom
Pound aided in one way or another, I should not like to convey the
impression that he ever helped anyone because he was Jewish or
because he was not Jewish. When Pound was considering the
merits of young artists, their race, color or creed simply did not
enter into the picture.
I suggested to E. E. Cummings in 1950 that because of the
impression of Washington political figures many Jews favored
keeping Pound in prison, Jewish intellectuals could strike an impressive
blow for freedom by starting a drive to release him. Such
an effort would have reflected great credit on the Jewish community,
at no risk or cost to themselves, and would have been a