IMIA 2011 - Thousands of Torches and Flags are Marching!

IMIA 2011 - The Annual march organized by GOLDEN DAWN. A night dedicated to the fallen Heroes of Hellas.

Pics and video below from the march that took place in Satuday, 29th of January:

Ancient Corinth - Mycenae - Nafplion - Argos

28th of January , Friday

In the midst of the massive rainfall, very early in the morning a group of German/English/Irish and ofcourse Greek comrades started a trip to the south part of Hellas. The plan was to visit places and monuments that covering a big part of the Hellenic History & Culture through the centuries. From Ancient and Medieval times up to the 1800`s era (Greek wars against the Turks period).

First station was Ancient Corinth. Passing through Isthmus we headed towards the castle of Acrokorinth. Because of fog this was quite difficult to see it from distance so we had no other option than walking through the fog inside the castle.

Seconds station was the legendary Mycenae and its acropolis.

Third station was the historical city of Nafplio. One of the most beautiful Greek cities in my opinion.

Fourth station: With the help of a comrade that lives in the area we visited the ruins of a old pyramid in argolid

fifth station: Late afternoon, was one of the oldest European cities named Argos. Unfortunately it was quite difficult to take photos there because of the dark, rainfall and also huge traffic.

To write more in depth details about each place will take many hours. So i puted a link on some words or name of the places. Click it if you want more info.

A Photo Report follows below:


FRIST STATION: ANCIENT CORINTH

Acrocorinth castle

Castle in Fog

Walking up to the castle

Entrance to the castle

SECOND STATION - MYCENAE

The Treasure of Atreus - Tomb

Entrance to the Mycenaean Civilization

The Lions Gate

A View from Mycenaean Acropolis

Another View

Our Group walking down from the acropolis of Mycenae

Mycenae Museum

STATION THREE: NAFPLION

Nafplion Castle

Burtzi Castle - Executioners Residence

Bavarian Monument for the German volunteers in the Greek wars against the Turks

Bavarian Dedication

FOURTH STATION : RUINS OF ANCIENT PYRAMID

Ruins of the Pyramid

From Inside The Pyramid

Another view from the Pyramid

GOLDEN DAWN Activities

Saturday, 29th of January: IMIA Annual March - A Night for the Fallen Heroes of Hellas

Sunday, 30th of January : 7th Golden Dawn Congress

http://xryshaygh.wordpress.com/

An Interview With DISIPLIN ( Censored/banned from "Zero Tolerance" mag)

Ok, lets take it one by one. In this modern society that we are forced to live in, there is sheeps. The sheeps need a shepherd. Ok so far? More or less the same happens in modern metal scene (Underground or not). There is so called "extreme" bands , labels , magazines. Bullshit! All of them are walk in safe way and pretend the "extreme" to the herd that following them. Quite laughable indeed! "Zero Tolerance" magazine is the perfect example of a magazine who just use fancy word and mag name so to impress the sheeps that reading and oftenly involved in the pages on this mag. In reality they are nothing but ordinary people (Like the ones you use in the bus or your job. And thats not often. From time to time i met much more radical & extreme from this kind of people than the so called "Black Metal extremists-misanthropes" or whatever) dressed in wolfs clothes. Leftists oftenly dictate to them what they will use and what not. Thats why you`ll never see something truly dangerous ideologically (A band or label) amongst their pages. DISIPLIN is a band that exists for a decade now. They used to be in Moonfog , having distribution by all major labels around and also be presented in all Metal mags. Since 3-4 years now , their ideology changed and envolved. That was it, the metal music industry will never forget it. A band that decided to promote their Nordic Heritage, Culture and also the true European way of life. This is a thorn in the eye of the politically-correct music industry and its labels, mags and bands. To my opinion they must really proud of such boycotts cause it shows to them that they are on the right way. Below is the DISIPLIN interview that banned (Why they really asked it in the first place since they knew the nature of the band? Perhaps they were expecting "nice answers" to please the ears of the mob) from "Zero Tolerance" magazine. Used ofcourse by permission of the band. Support this band and the label that released their stuff. Its music that the politically correct metal establishment doesn`t want you to hear. Will you do their favour?

DISIPLIN Offical address : http://www.myspace.com/wolfaxis
ATMF (Disiplin`s label) official website : http://atmf.net/

Interview answered by Weltenfeind

1. Radikale Randgruppe has a strong identity and feeling throughout, is there a specific theme or concept behind all of the songs?

Ave,
Musically, the album’s intent is to inspire, motivate and charge likeminded individuals to continue the fight, to stand tall, in defiance against the Modern World!
Lyrically, as the album title suggest, it is an homage to all “fringe groups”. Such as The Pagan Front, Golden Dawn (Greece) as well as bands, musicians and individuals that stand proud and fearless!

2. A very basic question is ‘what has happened to Disiplin?’ Although your first couple of releases were strong albums, they were far more standard black metal than the music you make now, which is far more intense and unusual. Do you see your recent work as a natural evolution from your early work or is it a reinvention?

From the very beginning, I wanted to create black metal, and those albums are what came out of it (up until “Anti-Life“). I was extremely focused musically, and I am still today proud of those releases, though I of course find the lyrics and image childish and immature.
This evolution came more or less naturally, and was made possible by turning Disiplin into a one man band. No compromise!

3. A related question, did your experiences with Dissection have any impact on the music you now make with Disiplin?

Not directly. But I was of course inspired by Jon’s ambition, drive, musicianship and skills as a composer.

4. Norway obviously has a very strong tradition of black metal, does this mean there is more pressure to have a strong identity as a band and do something different?

In the past, with Myrkskog and the first Disiplin releases I perhaps thought about this, but not any longer. Earlier we were more tight knit (the black metal scene), and hung out and almost competed with each other musically. But these days, I create art that is meant for myself and my Kameraden to enjoy.

5. How do you look back on your time with Myrkskog? To me they always seemed like a great band who never quite fulfilled their potential.

Indeed. Fantastic musicians, and quite good song writers, but they did not have the necessary will, determination and focus to put into action all that they were and perhaps are capable of. For various reasons.

6. Whereas many black metal bands base their music in history and mythology your outlook feels very modern, do you think this is an important feature of your work?

I am inspired by history, but I focus on the present and the future. I am realistic and what I mirror is what I predict is reality, or will be. Although Disiplin feels modern, there is also a stream of something ancient and primordial flowing within the songs. An Ariosophic Current.

7. At times there was a kind of bleak beauty on Hostis Humani Generi but although traces of it still remain on Radikale Randgruppe, on the whole it is unremittingly brutal and harsh in comparison. Was this a direction you had planned for the album or did it naturally arise during the writing process?

It was more a result of the situation I was in when writing the material. Writing “Radikale Randgruppe” I just came out victorious of a long lasting struggle, and was energized and inspired. The brutality and harshness came naturally.

8. I have noticed that often Disiplin seem to project an image that seems extremely right wing but the lyrics etc do not seem as straightforwardly ideological/political as people might expect. Do you have any particular ‘agenda’ in your music?

Disiplin is NSBM, and has been for the last 6 years, and it can even be seen from the very beginning. National Socialism is far more than just a political ideology. For me National Socialsm goes hand in hand with Ariosophy. A worldview, a way of life, a religion, and a search and struggle for the Aryan/Noble to transcend and break his limitations and chains, and usher in the new Golden Age.

My agenda with Disiplin is simple. Inspiration and fuel to the few Noble left in this world, to not lose hope and stand tall in defiance against the crumbling and decadent Modern World. Continue to fight, and not be corrupted by the flood waves of the Kali Yuga.

9. Your involvement with the Pagan Front suggests that paganism is much more to you than just mythology or a subject for music, but how far does it affect your life outside of Disiplin?

I consider the Aryan Gods, the European gods and their respective religions to be pathways and tools to reach the same goal. Thus all tools for the Ariosophic Initiate to use in his work towards illumination.

10. Black metal is supposed to be about transcending rules, but has an audience that seems to demand that bands play a certain way, do you find that your fans have strong feelings about any changes in your style? Would you care if they did?

Some fans have cursed the direction Disiplin took after “Anti-Life”, while others have embraced it. It will always be this way. Although now there is more a love/hate attitude towards the band which I enjoy much more than something in the middle.

11. With every release, the band’s profile is higher, are Disiplin happy to be an ‘underground’ band or would you ultimately like to receive wider recognition?

I am very happy were Disiplin is a the moment. I am not in this for money or fame.

12. Would you ever bring non-metal element s into your music like many ‘post-BM’ bands do?

Whatever makes the final product sound the way I wish, I will do. I will not include stuff just for the sake of having something original there. It has to do something for the music, it has to lift it to a new level. Otherwise it is pointless.

13. Your music is heavier and more ‘metallic’ than some of your older work, do you think the metal part of ‘black metal’ is sometimes overlooked by bands (i.e.‘symphonic’ bands, folk BM etc)?

I think many people should reconsider what they call their music, yes. I think, true black metal’s most important ingredient is the spirit of revolt. The ambient albums of Burzum have more revolt in them than some of the most brutal black metal bands. In my book that is what counts.

14. What is next for Disiplin?

Getting “Radikale Randgruppe” out. Next is a split cd with Pantheon. Then a split cd with Absentia Lunae, and after that a new full-length.
Thanks a lot for the interview!

For Blood, Soil and the Gods!

Weltenfeind

Dr William Pierce - Tribal Thinking

PLATO`s Myth of the Cave

How many of you are truly familiar with the works of the divine Plato? Here is a part taken from his masterpiece "The Republic" (Or "The State").It says and reveals a lot for those with eyes to see. For those who dont know. Plato always writing his works in a form of a dialogue and he always speaks through Socrates. "The Myth of the Cave" is one of my fave parts. Another one is what happens in afterlife. If i`ll find a reliable traslation i`ll post it here in future. Till then , read CAREFULLY this one that follow...




The Myth of the Cave

The Republic
Book 7, section 7
Written 360 B.C.

[Socrates Speaking to Glaucon]

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:--Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

I see.

And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.


You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.


Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?


True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?


And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

Yes, he said.

And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?

Very true.

And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?

No question, he replied.

To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

That is certain.

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision,--what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them,--will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?

Far truer.

And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?

True, he said.

And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he is forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.

Not all in a moment, he said.

He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?

Certainly.

Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.

Certainly.

He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold?

Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.

And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?

Certainly, he would.

And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,

Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?

Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.

Imagine once more, I said, such a one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?

To be sure, he said.

And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable), would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.

No question, he said.


This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed--whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.

I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you.

Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell; which desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted.

Yes, very natural.

And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavoring to meet the conception of those who have never yet seen absolute justice?

Anything but surprising, he replied.

Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.

That, he said, is a very just distinction.

But then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes.

They undoubtedly say this, he replied.

Whereas our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

GOLDEN DAWN: Against Immigrants & Leftists - Against Cops & State - AGAINST ALL!

Saturday 16th of January
Since early in morning, members of the Golden Dawn answered to the call of help of the Greeks on the centre of Athens. A demonstration by leftists together with Asian and African immingrats was about to start and end in one of the squares of the centre of Athens. There, during the afternoon was about to make a concert for "Peace & Unity of the people" and similar bullshit. Ofcourse the real reason was to terrorize for one more time the remaining Greek families who still resist in the multi-racial tyrrany. Finally the concert was cancelled and the Golden Dawn together with the Greeks who live in the area kept the square. Below is a video with riots from the TV News (As usual accompanied with their usual lies and propaganda).

Burzum "Fallen" 2011

Official Statement from www.burzum.org

Burzum "Fallen" 2011
Byelobog Productions

Tracklist:

Title English
Fra Verdenstreet From The World Tree
Jeg Faller I Am Falling
Valen Fallen
Vanvidd Madness
Enhver Til Sitt Each Man To His Own, meaning "Each Man Gets What He Deserves"
Budstikken The Message
Til Hel Og Tilbake Igjen To Hel And Back Again

Musically "Fallen" is like a cross between "Belus" and something new, inspired more by the début album and "Det Som Engang Var" than by "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss" or "Filosofem". The sound is more dynamic – we mastered the album as if it was classical music – and I was more experimental than I was on "Belus" in all respects. Lyricwise it is similar to the début album, in the way that it is more personal and focuses on existential issues, but the mythological untertone known from "Belus" is still there. I have also included some ambient tracks – a short introduction and a longer conclusion.

"Fallen" was recorded and mixed during two weeks in Grieghallen studios, using a Spectar bass with alembic electronics on a VOX AC50 amp from 1965, a Ludwig drum kit (with a 26 inch kick) from 1975, a Neumann M149 microphone and stereo Schoeps CMTS 501 U microhpones for vocals, an OBH Nordica Harmony 6487, a custom Stig instrument and a Peavey 23 guitar on a Peavey 6505 (120 Watt) amp.

The picture on the front cover of "Fallen" is a part of a painting, "Élégie" (Eng. "Elegy"), by William Adolphe Bouguereau.

PS. Yes, both "Fallen" and "Valen" translates into English as "Fallen".

"Fallen" will be released worldwide on Byelobog Productions on the 7th March 2011.


OFFICIAL BURZUM WEBSITE : http://burzum.org/
BYELOBOG PRODUCTIONS: http://byelobog-productions.burzum.org/

THE MEDICI : Godfathers of The Renaissance

Now thats a excellent documentary! I had the chance to got this in my hands 3-4 years (And perhaps more) ago and to my always bad habit , i placed it somewhere and i almost forgot it completely (Same happened with the "Napoleon" series that i`ll write about in future posts). Months later, when i found it somewhere in my library i decided to give it a chance. Ok , i expected to be good , but not so damn good! Already saw it again 3-4 times since then. As the title say, its about the History of the Renaissance and the main family around it named "Medici". Its truly amazing the history of this family which most likely thanks to them the Renaissance happened in Italy. Excellent narration and more excellent musical background and overall a perfectly maded documentary/Epic drama in 4 parts (55 Min each). Really convincing! Below, i found all the 4 parts plus a description about it so to know better what you gonna see. Check it by yourself and you`ll understand my excitement.

"From a small Italian community in 15th-century Florence, the Medici family would rise to rule Europe in many ways. Using charm, patronage, skill, duplicity and ruthlessness, they would amass unparalleled wealth and unprecedented power.

They would also ignite the most important cultural and artistic revolution in Western history–the European Renaissance. But the forces of change the Medici helped unleash would one day topple their ordered world. An epic drama played out in the courts, cathedrals and palaces of Europe, this series is both the tale of one family’s powerful ambition and of Europe’s tortured struggle to emerge from the ravages of the dark ages.

A tale of one family’s powerful ambition and of Europe’s struggle to emerge from the ravages of the Dark Ages. Beginning in the 14th century, The Medici used charm, skill and ruthlessness to garner unparalleled wealth and power. Standing at the helm of the Renaissance, they ruled Europe for more than 300 years and inspired the great artists, scientists and thinkers who gave birth to the modern world.

The playlist bellow contains 4 episodes, each about 55 minutes long, in HD: Birth of a Dynasty, The Magnificent Medici, The Medici Pope and Power vs. Truth."

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

By KERRY BOLTON

Ezra Pound was born in a frontier town in Idaho, 1885, the son of an assistant assayer and the grandson of a Congressman. One could say that both economics and politics were in his blood. He enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1901. Pound was an avid reader of Anglo-Saxon, Classical and Medieval literature. In 1906 he gained his MA and had already started work on his most significant creation, The Cantos. He continued post-graduate work on the Provençal Troubadour poet-musicians, reinforcing his desire to go to Europe.

In 1908 Pound set sail for Venice. There he paid $8.00 for the printing of the first volume of his poetry. A Lume Spento (With Tapers Quenched). Pound then traveled to England to meet W.B. Yeats. He quickly became a literary success in London. The following year he met Yeats and became the dominant figure at Yeats' Monday evenings.

Pound also came into contact with The English Review, which was publishing works by new talents such as D.H. Lawrence, and the author, painter and critic Wyndham Lewis. In 1911 Pound launched his campaign for innovative writing in The New Age, edited by the monetary reformer A.R. Orage. To Pound the new poetry of the century would be "austere, direct, free from emotional slither."

The following year Pound founded the Imagist movement in literature. He was by this time already helping to launch the careers of William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway and James Joyce. He had also become the mentor of Yeats, 20 years Pound's senior and already world famed.

In 1914 Pound started another more enduring movement that was to have a lasting influence on English culture, the Vorticist movement. The impetus came originally from a young avant-garde sculptor, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Together with Wyndham Lewis and others they launched Blast as the journal of the movement. Fatefully, this was also the year of World War I which took its toll on many Vorticists [including Gaudier-Brzeska].

Vorticism was for Pound the first major experience in revolutionary propagandizing and the first cause that placed him beyond the pale of orthodoxy. Pound saw Vorticism as setting "the arts in their rightful place as the acknowledged guide and lamp of civilization." In this way the arts were welded in a mystical union with politics in the manner already envisaged by Yeats.

Pound saw commercialism as the force preventing the realization of his artistic-political ideal. In 1918 he met Maj. C.H. Douglas, the founder of Social Credit, whose theory of monetary reform explained that once money became a commodity instead of a measure of productivity and creativity then a nation and its culture would be sacrificed in the pursuit of commercial interests.





OCCULTISM

Pound embraced the Social Credit theory with enthusiasm. Here was the means by which the Money Power which corrupted culture could be overthrown. During the 1930's and 1940's Pound wrote a series of booklets on economics and politics, including his first "Social Credit: An Impact"(1935), "A Visiting Card" (1942), and in 1944 "Gold and Work" and "America, Roosevelt, and the Causes of the Present War," the latter three being published by Fascist Italy.

Pound came to his political and economic doctrines by the same esoteric path as Yeats. In 1913 Pound had become Yeats' secretary. Pound had been interested in Eastern religions, yoga, theosophy, and astrology from at least as far back as 1905. When Pound was introduced to Yeats he joined a small group Yeats was involved with, which was of a Gnostic nature. Prior to this Pound had written of his belief in a type of reincarnation of creative souls in terms similar to those expressed in Yeats' poetry.

Pound considered sex to be a sacrament and an esoteric tradition which had been preserved in the West by the Troubadours. He considered the only true religion to be "the revelation made in the arts." Rejecting Christianity, he described it as "a bastard faith designed for the purpose of making good Roman citizens slaves, and which is thoroughly different from that preached in Palestine. In this sense Christ is thoroughly dead." Pound found the Churches objectionable for having gained subsidies which should have gone to artists, philosophers and scientists.

Pound was inspired by the "love cult" of the Troubadours, which had been suppressed by the Church, and the Classical mystery religions. He considered the teachings of Confucius, which taught a civic religion that assigned everyone a social duty, from emperor to peasant, to be a means of achieving a balanced State. He later saw in Fascist Italy the attainment of such a State.

Like Yeats, Pound's concepts of esotericism and culture brought him up against liberal and democratic doctrines. Pound saw in Fascism the fulfillment of Social Credit monetary policy which would break the power of plutocracy. He considered artists to form a social elite "born to rule" but not as a part of a democratic mandate. "Artists are the antennae of the race but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists."

As far back as 1914 Pound had written that the artist "has had sense enough to know that humanity was unbearably stupid. But he has also tried to lead and persuade it, to save it from itself." He wrote in 1922 that the masses are malleable and that it is the arts which set the moulds to cast them.



FASCISM

To Pound Fascism was the culmination of an ancient tradition, continued in the personalities of Mussolini, Hitler, and the British Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley.

Pound had already studied the doctrines of the [German] ethnologist [Leo] Frobenius during the 1920's and gave a mystical interpretation of race. Cultures were the product of races, and each had its own soul, or "paideuma," of which the artist was the guardian.

In Mussolini, Pound saw not only a statesman who had overthrown plutocracy, but someone who had made politics an art form. Pound stated, "Mussolini has told his people that poetry is a necessity of State, and in this displayed a higher state of civilization in Rome than in London or Washington."

Writing in his 1935 book Jefferson and/or Mussolini, Pound explained: "I don't believe any estimate of Mussolini will be valid unless it starts from his passion for construction. Treat him as ARTIFEX and all the details fall into place ... The Fascist revolution was FOR the preservation of certain liberties and FOR the maintenance of a certain level of culture, certain standards of living ... "

Pound and his wife Dorothy settled in Italy in 1924. In 1933 he had a meeting with Mussolini, outlining his ideas for monetary reform.

He also became a regular contributor to the periodicals of Mosley's British Union of Fascists, met Mosley in 1936 and continued to correspond until 1959.

From the late 1930s he began to look increasingly toward the economic policies of Hitler and regarded the Rome-Berlin Axis as "the first serious attack on the usurocracy since the time of Lincoln."






In 1940, after having returned to Italy from a tour of the USA during which he attempted to oppose the move to war against the Axis, Pound offered his services as a radio broadcaster. The broadcasts called "The American Hour," began in January 1941. Pound considered himself to be a patriotic American. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he attempted to return to the USA, but the American Embassy refused him entry. With no means of livelihood, Pound resumed his broadcasts, attacking the Roosevelt administration and usury in a folksy, American style, with a mix of cultural criticism.

In 1943 Pound was indicted in the USA for treason. Hemingway, concerned at the fate of his old mentor after the war, suggested the possibility of an "insanity" plea and the idea caught on among some of Pound's and Hemingway's literary friends who had landed jobs in the US Government. Other interests were pressing for the death penalty for America's most eminent cultural figure.

Two days after Mussolini's murder Pound was taken at his home by Italian partisans after he had unsuccessfully attempted to turn himself over to American forces. Putting a book on Confucius in his pocket he went with the partisans expecting to be murdered. Instead he ended up at an American camp at Pisa constructed for the most vicious military prisoners. Pound was confined to a bare, concrete floored iron cage in the burning heat, lit continuously throughout the night. Pound had a physical breakdown and was transferred to a medical compound, where he got to work on the Pisan Cantos.


In November he was flown to Washington and jailed. He was declared insane and sent to a ward for the criminally insane at St. Elizabeth's. Here his literary output continued, and he translated 300 traditional Chinese poems, which were published by Harvard in 1954.



Among his many visitors he became mentor to John Kasper, a fiery young intellectual who toured the South agitating on behalf of racial segregation, causing the calling out of the National Guard in Tennessee.

By 1953 Pound had still not been formally diagnosed. Inquiries from the Justice Dept. solicited an admission that at most Pound had a "personality disorder." By the mid-1950's various influential figures and magazines were campaigning for Pound's release. After 13 years confinement, Pound's treason indictment was dismissed on 18 April 1958.

On 30 June he set sail for Italy, giving the Fascist salute to journalists when he reached Naples, and declaring "all America is an asylum." He continued with his Cantos and stayed in contact with political personalities such as Kasper and Mosley. He remained defiantly opposed to the American system in magazine interviews despite complaints from US diplomats. Because of his politics, Pound did not receive the honours due to him until after his death on 1 November 1972.

Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht

"Christmas 1871, Nietzsche had sent his new composition Nachklang einer Sylvesternacht (Reminiscence of a New Year's Eve) for which he had revised and re-shaped older material into a piano piece for four hands (which he played with his friend Overbeck) to Mme. Cosima Wagner. However, this time, he did not visit in person (perhaps weary of any comparison with Wagner's Tribschener Idyl that was lying under the Christmas tree the year before."

"To Mme Wagner whose birthday is on December 25th, I have dedicated my "Sylvesternacht" and am curious what I will come to hear about my musical work from there, since I have never heard anytying competent from there"
F.Nietzsche December 1871