Avant-garde and Modernism, War and Fascism

A thematic and comparative analysis of “Cantos” LXXII and LXXIII

Abstract

The aim of this article is to offer, through a reading of Ezra Pound’s so-called “Italian Cantos”, a coherent overview of the poet’s harsh critique of war and its roots. The analysis is originated by the poetic, ideological, and biographical intersections between Pound’s experience, the figure of the Futurist leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the legacy of the Italian poetic tradition. The article adopts a comparative approach to demonstrate how Pound’s historical opposition to conflict is shaped not only by his profound faith in Italian Fascism, but also by a complex interplay of themes. These themes confront, in the memory of Cavalcanti, the modernist sense of poetic-ethical Krisis with the avant-gardist voluntarism. The first part of the analysis explores the tension between Futurism’s militarist voluntarism and Pound’s intellectually and economically grounded poetic reflection. It then shows how Pound’s poetry ultimately considers itself as superior to the Futurist vision precisely through its sustained dialogue with the philosophical and linguistic legacy of the Italian Duecento. The starting point offered by the “Italian Cantos” and their specific thematic focus allows for a theoretical comparison between two ideological-linguistic systems which, though seemingly irreconcilable at the midpoint of the twentieth century, share at their core a common drive for cultural renewal.