Guide to Kulchur explained

Guide to Kulchur is a non-fiction book by the American poet Ezra Pound. Published in London in July 1938 by Faber & Faber,^[1] the book examines 2,500 years of cultural history, beginning with the Analects of Confucius.^[2] The first chapter was published in Milan in June 1937 as a pamphlet, Confucius/Digest of the Analects, by Giovanni Scheiwiller.^[3]

A supporter of Benito Mussolini, Pound congratulates his friend Wyndham Lewis in the book for having "discovered" Adolf Hitler. "I hand it to him as a superior perception," he wrote. "Superior in relation to my own discovery of Mussolini."^[4] Lewis later rejected fascism.^[5]

Publication details

• Pound, Ezra (1938). Guide to Kulchur. London: Faber & Faber.

Works cited

• Araujo, Anderson (2018). A Companion to Ezra Pound’s Guide to Kulchur. Clemson University Press.
• Web site: Hitchens . Christopher . Christopher Hitchens . A Revolutionary Simpleton . The Atlantic . April 2008 . https://archive.today/20200906021257/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/04/a-revolutionary-simpleton/306701/ . 6 September 2020 . live.
• Moody, A. David (2014). Ezra Pound: Poet. A Portrait of the Man and His Work. II: The Epic Years 1921–1939. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Pound, Ezra (1966) [1938]. Guide to Kulchur. London: Peter Owen.
• Redman, Tim (1991). Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Notes and References

1. Moody 2014, xvi.
2. Redman 1991, 180.
3. Moody 2014, xvi, 247.
4. Pound 1966, 134; Moody 2014, 237.
5. Hitchens 2008.