4pQonT

EZRA POUND 319
occasioned by my wistful desire to attract some of the gold in Chicago,
one of the wealthiest cities in the world, to the support of a
useful magazine of modern poetry. As he suggested in his reply,
something always intervenes to prevent the plutocracy from doing
anything useful with their money, on the rare occasions when they
evince a desire to do so.
A first glance at a letter from Ezra is sufficient to convince anyone
that the writer is indeed a madman. He throws in words, symbols,
abbreviations, obscure names and references, with much more
freedom than he does in the Cantos. Since he carries on an immense
correspondence, all of which is intended to edify the receiver,
he does not bother with punctuation, sentence structure, or
other amenities of polite communication. Nevertheless, he communicates,
as witness the howls of rage from some of the recipients
of these letters. His outspokenness has always offended the plutocrats,
as well as his ability to get things done without basing everything
on an expenditure of money.
On the several occasions when I tried to interest plutocrats in his
work, they shocked me by dismissing him as "obviously mad". The
first time this occurred was at the estate of one of the more august
names on Wall Street. My host said, "Your friend can very well
remain where he is."
The intense dislike that Ezra has engendered in the foundations
and the millionaires who support them is not accidental. After all,
his career consistently downgrades most of the folktales without
which they suppose they cannot continue to exist.
He once told me that the wealthy were always intensely irritated
by the fact that he could do things without money, such as
starting literary movements, founding magazines, and instructing
his disciples. There is a type of plutocrat who regards wealth and
power purely as force, as Aristotle's "prime mover". He does not
expect personal obeisance as much as he expects homage to his
millions, to the capital or reserve energy that he controls. And on
this ground, the artist always offends him, or should offend him.
His favorite hobbies which currently are socialism, psychiatry,
and the superior attributes of money—these shibboleths came
under Pound's merciless scrutiny. Instead of socialism, Pound
suggested a Confucian society in which men respect one another