Neither of these two gentlemen look too terribly happy, do they. They both believed themselves to be a bit (ok, a whole hell of a lot) of a cut above the average fellow. They were geniuses you see, so much more so for their lack of foolish sentimentality about what latter became the euphemism known as collateral damage. They were both well read and travelled. Literate, articulate, and intelligent, they drew swarms of admiring females, for what girl can resist a visionary, if perhaps psychopathic polyglot with facial hair.
Now the fellow on the right everyone knows, courtesy of the nice police officer who was thoughtful enough to label the portrait. Yes of course, that's old Ezra Pound, mug shot for his treason charges. The great literary giant had just been arraigned for conspiring to commit the ultimate crime against his own country, and the cause of freedom, by helping the Italian fascists in World War Two.
Ezra had a bit of a problem with the uh, Jews, and thought that if only reasonable men of government would adopt his theories on Semitic usurpers and transliterated Jeffersonian economic principles, then everything would be just fine, and the world could return to fawning over the Cantos.
Now, lots of people do still fawn over the Cantos of Ezra Pound, finding great meaning where I confess I find only puerile and disorganized bullshit. He is still a hero of 20th century English Literature, and required reading in most, if not all undergraduate programs. He was so well regarded in his day that many of the West's other literary figures swarmed to his defence, made apologies for his wartime behaviour and successfully ameliorated the charges against him. Government prosecutors blinked and let an insanity plea spare Ezra from the hangman's noose, and off he was sent to a psychiatric hospital to continue his literary greatness.
Pound received a steady stream of well wishers and literary admirers while getting better as it were, and had fascinating and intriguing bedfellows in St. Elizabeth's, like Augustus Owsley Stanley, the patron saint of LSD trafficking, and a nice cross section of insanity plea murderers and rapists.
In a move eerily prescient of today's Congress, Pound was in 1949 awarded the first Bolligen Prize in Poetry by the Library of Congress, from a fund established by the Mellon family. The prize was subsequently awarded to such august luminaries as Wallace Stevens, e.e. Cummings, Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren and W.H. Auden. The award was for Pound's "Pisan Cantos", started in about 1925, and continued while he was supposed to be too crazy to stand trial for betraying his own country. No one in the Justice Department seemed to mind the juxtaposition too much, although some academics did take exception with a traitorous, Jew baiting megalomaniac being so honoured by Congress. As they were just fuzzy headed professors, probably in the pay of the "Cartel", they were dismissed out of hand.
So all was well that ended well, and Pound was eventually released, when the boys at Justice and State thought the coast was clear. Off Pound went to Italy, looking to relive his youthful days of trains running on time.
Now the other fellow at the top of the page is a bit more obscure. He was immortalized in Dostoevsky's novel "The Possessed", which has been alternatively published under the title "The Demon". Revolutionary, anarchist, murderer and erstwhile poet himself, Sergey Nechayev is to the root cause of collectivist terror what the Koran is to today's Islamic genocidal aspirations.
Born in 1847 to poor parents, Nechayev first tried his hand at teaching(which will seem all too familiar momentarily). Unsatisfied with that sort of life, Sergey decided to act upon the resentment he had always felt for the rich, and decided to become a revolutionary, in the mold of those who took up the mantle of anarchy in 1848. Financed by romantic and intellectual liaisons of various hetero and homo varieties, Nechayev led student movements, and worked in the formation of the International Working Man's Association, which had its 1864 congress in St. Martin's Hall, in London. That of course was sponsored by the British Labor Party.
Nachayev made a great many friends along the way with his fervent beliefs and fiery speeches, and in 1869 he co-wrote with his elder mentor/lover Bakunin a program of Revolutionary Articles that has come to be known as "Natchayev's Catechism". In 1969, The Black Panthers republished the catechism in honor of the 100th anniversary of its original publication.
As his popularity grew, Nachayev grew more sure of his views, and speaking truth to power, became rigidly intolerant of differing interpretations within the 'umbrella' movement of collectivist anarchy. An unfortunate fellow traveller by the name of Ivan Ivanov dared to disagree with the inner circle's more robust methods, so in 1872 Nachayev and a few of his fellows beat, shot and strangled poor Ivanov to death.
Nachayev was soon caught and convicted, and he too was sent off to prison with a sentence of twenty years labor. Like Ezra Pound, Nachayev had a devoted following, and in early 1881 an old female admirer, Vera Zasulich walked into the office of the prison commandant and shot him. She was acquitted at her trial because the jury sympathised with her motives. Nachayev did die the next year in his cell, so he didn't get to retire to an Italian villa, but he has lived on in the hearts and minds of the dark cohort to this day.
Dostoevsky's novel was a fictionalized account of the psychology of the Anarchist mindset, with Nachayev represented by the character Pyotr Verkhovensky, and the hapless Ivanov by the character Ivan Shatov.
Most important is the legacy Nachayev left behind. His was a philosophy of destruction and carnage, a hate filled credo that still has enormous currency today.
Read it and know the mother's milk those who would destroy western civilization have been raised on. Google Nechayev's Catechism, it will startle you.
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