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| Ezra Pound |
"The power of putrefaction aims at the obfuscation of history; it seeks to destroy not one but every religion, by destroying the symbols, by leading off into theoretical argument. Theological disputes take the place of contemplation. Disputation destroys faith, and interest in theology eventually goes out of fashion: not even theologians themselves take any more interest in it.
"The power of putrefaction would destroy all intrinsic beauty. It is spread like the bacilli of typhus or bubonic plague, carried by rats wholly unconscious of their role.
"Suspect anyone who destroys an image, or wants to suppress a page of history.
"Latin is sacred, grain is sacred. Who destroyed the mystery of fecundity, bringing in the cult of sterility? Who set the Church against the Empire? Who destroyed the unity of the Catholic Church with this mud-wallow that serves the Protestants in the place of contemplation? Who decided to destroy the mysteries within the Church so as to be able to destroy the Church itself by schism? Who has wiped the consciousness of the greatest mystery out of the mind of Europe, to arrive at an atheism proclaimed by Bolshevism?
"Who has received honours by putting argumentation where before had been faith?" (pp. 54-55)
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"It must be understood that the whole of current taste in literature and the entire journalistic system are controlled by the international usurocracy, which aims at preserving intact the public's ignorance of the usurocratic system and its workings.
"Liberalism and Bolshevism are in intimate agreement in their fundamental contempt for the human personality. Stalin 'disposes' of forty truckloads of human 'material' for work on a canal. We find the liberals talking about the export of 'labour.'
"Liberalism conceals its baneful economics under two pre-texts: the freedom of the spoken and written word, and the freedom of the individual, protected, in theory, by trial in open court, guaranteed by the formula of habeas corpus. Enquire in India, or in England, to what extent these pretexts are respected. Ask any American journalist what freedom of expression is left him by the big advertisers. (p. 106)
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"Usury and sodomy, the Church condemned as a pair, to one hell, the same for one reason, namely that they are both against natural increase." (p. 144)
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"Today the whole Occident is bathed daily in mental detritus, that is, the 'morning paper' in ten millions of copies rouses the Western brain daily. Bunkus is called a philosopher, Puley an economist, and a hundred lesser specimens swarm daily over acres of print." (p. 199)
Reprinted from Impact: Essays on Ignorance and the Decline of American Civilization by Ezra Pound, Henry Regency Company, 1960
