The Gates (1966) Riccardo Benedetti ‘ …

An incredible piece of surrealist art. Maybe it should be re-named ‘ Western enlightenment post Gaza 2024‘ ? It reminded me of many ‘images’ from the work of Ezra Pound (d 1972).

For all his failings, Ezra Pound was, in many respects, as well as a great poet, literary ‘agent’, a prophet out-of-his-time: He once wrote that ‘The ang-sax race as a whole or hole, very insensitive to mental rot and decomposition. Eng. much worse than U.S. – England insensitive to mental decay. U.S. silly, incomparable shallowness and triviality’. Ezra Pound. Letter to Homer Pound, May 1925. Letters to His Parents.

And the profound words from his ‘ Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920) also known as his ‘Farewell to London’, as he struggled to make sense of the Great War, a war that in many respects is still being fought today …

These fought in any case, and some believing, walked eye-deep in hell

believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie,

home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; usury age-old and age-thick

and liars in public places.

There died a myriad, And of the best, among them,

For an old bitch gone in the teeth,

For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,

Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

For two gross of broken statues,

For a few thousand battered books.

So, when Zionist Israel says it is fighting for Western civilization against barbarians, what kind of civilization is it really fighting for!