THE GOLDEN WEDDING #3 (November 4, 1941)
The sight of elderly wedded couples dwelling in mutual devotion sometimes impells one to think of their early loves. In the present case the spectacle of Mr. Churchill’s government wedded to Stalin’s , and Mr. Roosevelt’s inviolable word mixed into it; in short, this triangual Darby and Joan of the three hebraicized governments leads one to look back at the forgotten incidents of their courtship.
In particular, the love feasts between our American Reds and Moscow invite beautific contemplation. Our idealist loved Moscow while Mr. Churchill was still playing the bashful Swain. In fact he was scowling at Stalin, and from the incomprehension of his eternal love for the Muscovite he was being not only sulky, but insulting. So with true love. Never, Never, NEVER would he come and kiss the Russian Joan under the sickle and mistletoe.
Our own American Trande Unionists were more oncoming. They LIKED the bud of Russian promise. Ref. Worker’s Library No. 3 bearing the dim and lavender dated: Sept. 9, 1927.
Jay Lovestone (ne possibly Liebstein) on the first page of amorous paean inscribes the luminous words “THE establishment of the 7-hour day in Russia. “Well that’s far off enough and long enough before the Stakhelevites, and Mr. Lovestone is very hard on the American Federation of Labor. “Reactionary trade union bureaucrats” he call’s em.
And in that memorable day an’ year our dewey-eyed workers (trade unionist and idealists technical advisors they figger in the catalog, Brophy, R.W. [?] Dunn, C.H. Douglas, Rex Tugwell, Stuart Chase, a lot, as you see, of brawny fellows who had used either the hammer or sickle in daily life, went over to visit the Kumrad. And apart from the general, as opposed to the specific nature of the answers, the kumrad didn’t do so bad. The questions being rather more nebulous and UNspecific than the answers. How could the debonair murderer get down very near to brass tacks in his answer?
After all Marx was pretty good at history and diagnosis. Nobody on the Axis side denies that Marx discovered several genuine faults in the usury system.
All we ask is a way to CURE ‘em. And the torture chambers in most countries where Stalin’s power has reached, and in a few embassies where he had been unable to get control of the total police force, rather indicated that the Bolshie system never got UNIVERSAL approval from its victims.
However, when next dining with Rabbi Lehman, or Scholem Mosestha and the rest of the international bankers, spring a few pages of the kumrad’s answers between the caviar and the pheasant and see if it don’t enliven the dinner.
Sure Stalin approves of Marx and Engels wantin’ to take ECONOMIC, political, cultural and organizational measures. And seein’ as he put ‘em in that order, you would expect me to fall for it?
ECONOMIC first. Of course the Bolshies didn’t. Any party that comes into power, probably puts ORGANIZATIONAL measures first, and the economic belong, alas to the almost inaccessible part of culture. So FEW remarked, about three centuries delay.
Three centuries, to get people to understand anything about anything havin’ to do with money. An ‘ it is now demonstrated on the corpus vilis of British reformers’ hopes that very little economic reform gets into practice without precedent organizational and political measures of an almost earth shaking nature. A curious phrase about “reconstruct capitalist society” must belong to the translator. I don’t want to pin that on Joseph, tho’ mebbe that was part of his muddle. I am far less concerned with Joe’s lacunae than with a few clear positive statements. Joe said he was aware that “a number of capitalist governments are controlled by big banks,” notwithstanding the existence of “democratic” parliaments.
Not bad for a Georgian assassin. And possibly several decades ahead of the American public and professoriat. Not a single power in which the Cabinet can be formed in opposition to the will of the big financial magnates. I wonder: is that why they took Joe for a ride?
“it is sufficient to exert financial pressure to cause Cabinet Ministers to fall from their posts as if they were stunned.”
Joey was talkin’ of European cabinets; not of the so very different American DEMocracy (as they call it) etc. where, unless there is absolute surety that financial pressure won’t be used, the blighters seldom or never get in.
Joe SAID that the control of government by money-bags is inconceivable and absolutely excluded in the U.S.S.R. How different from the home life of our own DEMOCRACY (as they call it), etc. and how different from anything any British politician has ever encountered, and how different from any state of things that Churchill’s group would desire.
“Narrow circle” said Joe of individuals connected in one way or another with the large banks and because of that they strive to conceal the part they play in this from the people.
What a PERFECT ally for Churchill, Morgenthau, Lehman, and the present Anglo-Jewish regimes! Well, the starry eyed Mr. Tugwell, and the cautious Mr. Chase and Jim Maurer and Brophy took it all down hook, line and sinker. Seven hours day and the rest of it. It was a stirring occasion. The only thing is that the idealist’s ideals have got going so much faster and gone so much further. The Axis side of the present hard feelings.
Here the TRADE UNIONS, with their syndic. organization, and their recognized legal status whereby they propse, formulate, and GET what they want in Italy is really of so much MORE interest for any member of ANYtrade union, or for any leadaer of labor who cares a hang about the welfare of the led that one only hopes the American trade unionist wil someday red Por, or at least read something about Italian organizationsl measures.
The Stalin interview is a tough piece of reading, very hard to take hold of. That was probably the secret of his hold-plenty of people who KNOW Russia have been puzzled by the gap between their effective propaganda and their local failure in solving human problems. I believe the human material they had to work on explains part of the latter. I mean why they did NOT make a paradise, but mostly a sweat shop-machines before men-men as material. But the other side, the devilish efficiency of their propaganda, is worth study.
And it seems to be a variant on the old political wheeze of sticking to general statements that each auditor interprets to mean what HE would mean IF he said it.
And now for contrast, close harmony, let us look at a recent emission from Joe’s faithful companion, fellow idealist, and pledged ally, Mr. N.M. Butler. On June 3, 1941, year current, as delivered at the commencement of Columbia University, when Ole Nick was awaitin’ another Waterloo, and as is common with his kind, he wasn’t puttin’ it in the first person singular. Nick wanted Americans to go fight for the British exploiters; so he said
“THE WORLD” etc. In this case THE WORLD (meaning Nick and his paymaster). The World he sez, awaits another Waterloo. And on the fifth page it turns out he meant a defeat of Hitler!! Which might be called “metonomy" or takin’ a part for the “whole,” and not the better whole either.
Now the WORLD, as any college president ought to know, before the trestees pay him his fat annual salary, is spherical in form, and is composed of MORE than one continent, and not wholly and totally enraptured with the big usury central.
However let Nick Butler speak for himself, as he has never failed to do in all his oleaginous lifetime.
Several pages of the old scamp’s palaver contain statements by which no right thinking man would be offended. the slabs of print, the page undivided by paragraph divisions, tends to lull the reader or auditor into security.
Mr. Butler even disapproves (mildly, of course) of the “controlling desire for gain,” alias our old enemy the profit motive. Of course he keeps off the specific MEANS of gain, exercised by his owner. He then pays a delicate compliment to Lord Holy Fox, without committing himself, in fact nothing could be more downy.
The FIRST Lord Halifax, unaided by his charming and formidable Lady, said there were three hundred years ago many thing’s that riches cannot buy. Therefore the American boys should bleed for the present Lord Holy Fox. Now Ole Nick don’t go as far back as all that, he stops back in the 17th Century; before Robert Cecil was so vigorous in defense of the British OPIUM interests in Shanghai.
Victory for a moral ideal is not enough, according to Nicholas, because the “gain-seeking interest has control of so vast a proportion of mankind.” That is true enough, but it ain’t reduced the moral ideal to ABSOLUTE impotence. This is what was worrying Butler; but he hadn’t got down to bed rock. He said there was a time, back apparently when Mark Hanna was running the United State of America, when the moral ideal was to all appearances gainin’ ground.
Of course if by that he means that some empires were GAINING territory, he might have said so, only he didn’t. Ole Nicholas puts the rise of the triumph, real or apparent, the IDEAL, from the McKinley to the Wealsohn administration.
Note of HOpe and progress.
In 1910, the American Congress was unanimous for the moral principle (so long as no questions were asked about the privileges of the usury central). Nic complains that the moral ideal has disappeared in all that has to do with international relations.
Which shows the state of DEEP ignorance the WORLD; as distinct from Nicholas Butler’s circle or pot.
And lookin’ at dates, he must have been blurrin’ this blurb the same week that a Chinaman, not of Wang Ching Wei’s party, but of Chiang Kai-shek’s party, and FAITHFUL to Chiang, saying what Hitler’s justice in scuttling international affairs was such that the Chinese of the ANTI-JAP, anti-Wang party might accept Hitler’s arbitrage.
Mr. Butler then seems to fall into incoherence. He talks of a PLEDGE as something to be kept; what price, England, Churchill, and Roosevelt? He objects to having the savings of generations swept away; he asks what has become of the influence of and guidance of the great religion; Christian, Mosel, HEBREW, and Buddhist, and begorrah, of Plato, Aristotole, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, leaving out St. Ambrose and St. Antonio da Firenze, and graciously waivin’ a hand to the captions of the mind, Spanish, Italian, French, English, German. And of course Abraham Lincoln, not quoting old Abe on the currency issue. And then barbarous brutality, without mention of Esthonia, Finland, or places occupied by the –Bustin of churches and museums. Wot price Louvain and Cyrenaica? And all this “However dark the skies,” etc. ends up wiht a historic parallel; the WORLD waitin’ for a new Vaterloo; because Napolean Bonypart Y went into Russia, and if Hitler ain’t licked in Europe, it wil come in Asia or Africa. Well that is a bad slip, because Knox and Stimson, etc. are retching for to rape Africa. But at any rate you git a picture of Nicholas, and METONOMY or takin’ a part for the HOLE. A figger of Rhetorik sez Sam Johnson, whereby one word is put for another.
Now if Butler, the old goof, wants me to give him a clean bill of health, he can use the enormous power conferred on him by his position, to get Columbia University to issure a series of volumes containing the GIST of the beliefs and knowledge of John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, and Lincoln. NOT leaving out every phrase and paragraph which I, and men like me, consider vital to the understanding of American history.
BOOKS AND MUSIC – #2 OCTOBER 26, 1941
Mr. Churchill, EVEN Mr. Churchill hasn’t had the brass to tell the American people WHY he wants ‘em to die to save what.
He is fighting for the gold standard and MONOPOLY. Namely the power to starve the whole of mankind, and make it pay through the nose before it can eat the fruit of its own labor.
His gang, whether kike, gentile, or hybrid is not fit to govern. And the English OUGHT to be the only people ass enough, and brute enough to fight for him.
Now as to my personal habits, the few of you who know that I exist know that I have given most of my time to muggin’ up kulchur, that I have writ a few books, and spent my spare time trying to learn musical composition, or else playin’ tennis and floatin’ round the gulf of Tigullio, in which act I make, so far as I know,a nuisance of myself to no one whatever.
And in the mornings I write letters to and read letters from the most intelligent of my contemporaries, and Mr. Churchill and that brute Rosefield, and their kike postal spies and obstructors, kikarian and /or others annoy my by cuttin’ off my normal mental intercourse with my colleagues.
But I an NOT going to starve, I am not going to starve mentally. The culture of the Occident came out of Europe and a LOT of it is still right here in Europe, and I don’t mean archeology either.
So a few weeks ago Monotti sez: ever read Pea’s Moscardino? So I read it, and for the first time in your colloquitor’s life he wuz tempted t TRANSLATE novel, and did so. Ten years ago I had seen Enrico Pea passin’ along the sea front and Gino [Saviotto] seq: It’s a novelist. Having seen and known POLLON IDEN, some hundreds, or probably thousands I was not interested in its being a novelist. but the book must be good or I wouldn’t be more convinced of the fact AFTER having translated it, than I was before. Of course, my act was impractical so far as you are concerned. I haven’t the ghost of an idea how I am to get the manuscript to America or get it published. Pea has never made a cent out of the original. Well neither had Joyce nor Eliot when I started trying ot git someone to print’em.
What’s it like? Well if Tom Hardy had been born a lot later, and lived in the hills up back of Lunigiana, which is down along the coast here, and if Hardy hadn’t writ what ole Fordie used to call that “sort of small town paper journalese,” and if a lot of other things, includin’ temperament, had been different, and so forth… that might have been something like Pea’s writin’ – which I repeat is good writing – and was back in 1921 when Mosscardino was printed. Moscardino is the name of the kid who is tellin’ about his granpop, a nickname, like Buck.
As soon as the barriers are down I shall be sendin’ a copy along for the enlightenment of the American public.
In the meantime, if any one wants to learn how to write Italian let ‘em read the first chapter of Forastiero, or the couple of pages on the bloke who had been 20 years in jail. This is just announcin’ that Italy has a writer, and it is some time since I told anybody that ANY country on earth had a writer. Like Confucius, knocked ’round and done all sorts of jobs. Writes like a man who could make a good piece of mahogany furniture.
I sent in a hurry call from the Siena music week, but I reckon it was too late, not time to get retransmittal, but I wanted the clean and decent Americns to hear the Vivaldi Oratorio Juditha Truimphans; which makes ole pop Handel look like a cold poached egg what somebody dropped on the pavement.
Of course it’s not THAT kind of an oratorio, it is a musical whoop in two parts, to celebrate the retaking of Corfu from the Turks in 1715; and it was very timely and suitable as a bicentenary funeral wreath on red-head Vivaldi.
I got it once from the centre, and once in a box hangin’ over the orchestry, once for the whole and once for the details.
And I think it’s O.K. brother. You’d have to hear it alternate with Johnnie Back, say the Mathias, seven times over, at least I would, before I would think I was ready to say just HOW good it is.
There has been some good Vivaldi done for orchestra over Rome Radio, but I dunno whether it had been short-wave over to Amerika. There was some good Vivaldi done tow years ago, when the Chigi organization had the sense to devote the whole of the Sienese fest to Vivaldi, but he Juditha is one up on that. Better than the Olympiade, as then presented. In fact I think it is better built up as a whole, and you don’t have to be annoyed by gink walin’ about and doin’ stage actin’. Well some people kike their music with that distraction. When you stop pilin’ up profit for kikes by conveying their guns to the god damn English who ought to be spanked and put to bed by their nurses, you might be able to come over and HEAR IT.
That would be a saner way of passin’ the time than doublin’ our taxes and being robbed by the American treasury. God, my god, you folks are DUMB!!!
Now as to criticism of the Juditha; I affirm that Vivaldi knew more about using the human voice than Johnnie Bach ever discovered. That may sound like heresy. Waaal, you decide after you have listened to both of ‘em. And I affirm that Tony Vivaldi knocks the spots off of Handel.. I got no doubt on that point whatsoever. Very nice bit for viola d’amore and naturally it pleases me on account of a kink I had before I knew Vivaldi had done it. I have a high opinion of Rossini and Mozart. I.e., use of mandolin in serious orchestra. So has everyone who ain’t stark ravin’ goofy. But Mozart when he came down to Italy did NOT set the public crazy. And part of the reason was, as I conjecture, that the Italian had then had an earful of Tony Vivaldi. That is guess work. But there are things to set against Bach. In fact things Bach took hold of and rearranged; without as I think improvin”em.
I had a chance to hear both together two years ago in Siena, in a good orchestral concert, one up to Casella, the way that program was built.
Man named Guarnieri conduction’, been dong three years now in Siena, at this summer fest. And I would by god rather hear Guarnieri conductin’ Vivaldi than hear Toscannini conduction’ Beethoven in Salzburg. An idea which occureed to me, durin’ the Juditha performance.
I try to tell you that Italy is carryin’ ON. La rivoluzione continua. This is the kind of thing Italians go on dong, despite that dirty mugged bleeder and betrayer of his allies, Winston babyface Churchill.
And his gangsters. Those blighters have never done one damn thing for civilization. They have rotted their country, and should not be allowed to rot anyone elses. They didn’t start the process of corruption, but they have been, everyone of ‘em for it, all day and every day, and for the 24 hour period.
Di Marzio is runnin’ a paper. Vicari is runnin’ a monthly devoted to the “narrative” nothin’ but narrative or careful discussion of narrative, and how one should do it. Over in Barcelona, they are printin’ a series, Poesia en la Mano, bilingual editions of everyone from Villon to Mallarme and Rilke, and I am told, your present colloquitor is they can git anyone to translate me.
EUROPE is an organic body, its life continues, its life has components and nearly every damn thing that has made our lives worth livi’ up to this moment, has had its ORIGINS right here in Europe.
Yes, we HAD some colonial architectures and 30 pages of Whitman (Walt Whitman, not Whitemann) and then Whistler, and Henry James left the country. In fact it warn’t no bed of roses fer authors and painters. Though my generation allus thought we ought to plant something or other, and try to git a new crop of somethin’ or other. The idea of the Returnin’ Native was prevalent, except possibly to Thomas S., Eliot who saw from the start that you folks weren’t episcopal enough to suit his episcopal temperament, and he somewhat looked down on my pagan and evangelical tendencies. Waaal, frankly, I allus though it would be a good thing to come back and put some sort of college or university into shape to teach the young something. Not merely the god damn saw dust and substitutes for learnini’ and literature they git handed. However, can’t hold up the whole course of civilization. If you wanna line up with bone heads, you will line up with bone heads.
And you will go on having conductors instead of composers and European authors who have resigned.
But don’t get that Anglican attitude, of the old story, storm in the channel called by the English, the English channel-the straits between Calais and Dover-and the dirty old Times out with a headline “Continent isolated.” Nobody here is layin’ flowers on the tomb of Columbus, not this year.
But don’t go and run away with the idea that Europe is no longer here, or that books aren’t being written. I mean bein’ WRITTEN, and that we have no painters, or writer, or musicians.
I regret the personal correspondence of a small number of writer, who mostly don’t write to each other. And I would like to see what Hillaire Hiler is paintin’, and to git kumrad cumminkz’s last set of verses. Or to go on gettin’ Kiasono’s Japanese magazine. But I ain’t gittin’ weak and pindlin’ or goin’ into a pronounced and delicate melancholy fer the extinction of all human intercourse.
RADIO SPEECHES: LAST DITCH OF DEMOCRACY – OCT. 2, 1941
It’s a DITCH all right. Democracy has been LICKED in France. The frogs were chucked into a war AGAINST the Will of the people. Democracy has been licked to a frazzle in England where it never did get a look in ANY-HOW. But even pseudo-democracy breaks down when a people is chucked into war against its will, and the Brits, never VOTED Winston int the premiership. In fact WHEN DID they have an election?
Remember it is the government in England that decides WHEN to have an election. Think where we would be if Mr. Roosevelt could merely POSTPONE elections till he got ready to have one.
Well, democracy is in her last DITCH, and if she ain’t saved in America NO ONE is going to save her in her parliamentary form.
As to UNITING’ with England-taking on a lot of bad debts and new liabilities-one of the speakers on this radio was kind enough, that is , he showed respect enough for American intelligence (ye, eve today, he showed respect for American intelligence) by saying only Britons were rootin’ for the FEDERATION.
On Close examination the Brits, themselves don’t seem to be so numerous in the movement toward merger.
Horeb Eisha [Hor-Belisha], well IS he English? and Victor Sassoon, ALL for the merger.
Twenty percent capital to be paid by the English.
Twenty percent PAID capital to be paid by the United States of America. The balance of 60% UNPAID to remain in the hands of the promoter, probably ad PREFERRED stock, with board of directors ready to grant special bonuses to their friends at ANY and every moment.
Well, is Vic Sassoon, that Jew pseudo-parsee, head of the Shanghai rackets, opium, brothels in probability and so forth, night life of Shanghai? IS he OUR idea of David Copperfield and Mr. Pickwick?
And Mr. Streit? And of course there are MILLIONS behind it. Any one of 86 Jew millionaires can start a publishing firm and any one of the 4, 000 hired troops in the British Embassy can print all the crap he likes.
I dunno where the rugged American INDIVIDUAL is going to git FUNDS to combat’em
BUT, on the other hand, you can annex Canada without taking on liabilities. You can annex Newfoundland, and Jamaica and all the rest of it without either paying England OR paying Sir Victor.
Why this sixty percent cut to promoters who will do NOTHING for you? Yes, I know there is all the Sulgrave Manor association, all the glamour of cousinship; but it WAS cousinship with John Bull, in the old days, not with Bullesha, or Bullstein.
And Bullstein is apparently itchin’ to drop off the B and remain simple UlLLstein, by means of the merger.
The MILITARY situation? Conducing to UNION? The number of troops that can be supported, and fed, and supplied by ONE line of railway from ArcAngel-from Vladivostock or via Teheran-is considerably less than the TWELVE Million which the Russians set out with.
Thet Slavic fatalism which induced these troops to die in large numbers has in this war appeared quite ALIEN to the sensibilities of the fighting force put in the field by Mr. Churchill and Mr. Belisha.
I don’t see even Winston inventing and echelon system. I mean Tommy Atkins won’t shoot Tommy Atkins in the back on SYSTEM. He would feel something after doing it once.
Doubtless Belisha’s bright eye, and invigorating etc. will one day suggest that the Aussies could shoot the Sepoys and as the Pathans enjoy shooting anything, and would enjoy shooting Australians especially if invited to do so. And doubtless there could be found an even super-Slavic fatalism somewhere among the thousand alien races crushed by the Anglo-Jew empire. But it mighn’t take a very active military form. It might just sit down with a hand loom in face of the carnage.
but in ANY case it’s a question of QUANTITY. And WHAT support does the United States GET from Anglo-Judaea? Jus WHOM have the British supported in this so bloody series of swindles?
They have EVERY reason NOT to waste their forces in enforcing American trade in the Orient. They have every reason to leave America to pin up the diapers of their baby.
Except of course the feeling that the United States MIGHT take a leaf out of THEIR book, and grab this or that, as they have grabbed French possessions, and shot off remaining French combatants.
In Persia it becomes a question of QUANTITY. Walla walla, etc. Twelve Million Russians did NOT stop Von Rundstedt and Baron Keitel. They have not stopped ONE German army.
Nor have they reduced the German forces to a figure ANYwhere near the number of troops that England could maintain with SIX railways over the Caucasus.
So THAT is not exactly where the strategists expect YOU to help England win any wars. Whatever Growler, Mr. McGrump, sez on the B.B.C. liary [lie-ary].
Now when I was a kid Admiral DEWEY…that sounds like Napoleon at Moscow?
Yes, that sounds to ME like the story about the “Fifth element MUD, said Napoleon.”
There are millions of Chinamen. Many of them living on very short rations in the INTERIOR and about as much interested in Chiang Kai-Chek as they are in the White Socks and the Phillies. If there still are any Phillies. You could get more enthusiasm out of those Chinks for a hot Dog Championship on the Northside than you could for Chiang’s FOREIGN party in China.
A LOT of China is NOT pro-Kai-Chek. A lot of China is NOT FOR that gang of foreign investors. Then of course, you might rescue the de Gaulle interests. Namely you might go die in the GLORIOUS cause of the Band of the Paris Union, AGAINST General Petain, the victor of Verdun.
Do you thin the French people would thank you? Listen to the French RADIO, that is NOT paid by London; and ASK me.
Yes, the Vichy radio is twisty, it is trying to hold onto France, and double cross the Axis, and hold ONTO FRANCE, and hold or get every inch of French soil, and hang onto every French sou it can lay eye or hold on.
BUT it is NOT working for the famille de Gaulle.
AND it knows that Winston wanted Paris razed to the ground, as was Rotterdam, and as Leningrad either is being or has been.
And Pierre Laval was about all that stopped Winston from attaining that so desired result. Because “we as lenders of money” would be able to intervene and LEND money for reconstruction.
A lovely ambition. But will any born Frenchman thank you for exercising that at this moment, will any FRENCHMAN thank you for exercising that kind of ambition?
The French peasant wants his field for himself. He has a healthy MISTRUST of all mortgages.
As to the DATA whereon the American government bases its “judgment” (I believe they still call it judgment). Roosevelt is reported in the Herald Tribune of New York on August 17 as being in complete agreement with Churchill and saying Russia could fight all winter.
Mebbe he meant that Siberia could remain outside German protection during that period. He did go so far as saying that “events in Crete” had delayed his meeting with England’s public enemy Number 3. That was something but not quite enough to win the Ukraine campaign.
He might have told you that events in Russia had delayed my gettin’ the Japan Times. Copy for June 19th had just come. I suppose it was sittin’ at Kieff to git through. One Jap writer at that time allowed like as if Franklin was gettin’ you folks into the war. But it didn’t look to me as if he thought it was an act of idealism. He didn’t confuse it with savin’ democracy.
In the meantime do LOOK at Belisha’s Anglol-Saxon face, as reproduced in P.M. and other organs of similar nature.
That is what the American branch of Sulgrave Manor Association is asked to Unite with.
Elliott Carter rages at Aldeburgh Festival – June 28th 2009
June 28, 2009 at 1:04 pm (Commentary) (Writings)
Although 100, the composer’s On Conversing with Paradise is among most hard-hitting scores he’s ever produced
…The Pound piece was far from a seduction of this sort. “Why should not old men be mad?”, wrote Yeats, and On Conversing with Paradise seems to give expression at once to the luminous rantings of Yeats’s mentor, Pound — confined to a Pisan penitentiary when he wrote Canto 81, the bulk of the text set here — and to Carter’s own putative rage against mortality and folly. Fury and incarceration are conveyed by the very scoring — this chamber orchestra uses only four winds and a small string body, and a piano, but no fewer than 33 percussion, requiring five players, who loom like warders at the rear. We can imagine ourselves with Pound in his cage. The percussive furore running through the work, and the baritone’s nearly incessant hectoring, make for a disturbing rendition of Pound’s predicament. And though the close, marked by an eerily assuaging vibraphone, sounds a note of peace and even absolution — Carter takes words from the tiny fragment that is Canto 120 (“I have tried to write Paradise”) — this leads to something hardly precedented in his catalogue: an ending with a bang, rather than a whimper…
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/classical/article6571000.ece
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