{{Short description|1948 book by Ezra Pound}} {{italic title}} {{Infobox book | author = Olga Rudge | pub_date = 1948 | media_type = Booklet | caption = Original booklet | pages = 33 | oclc = 318182831 | image = If This Be Treason.jpg }} '''''If This Be Treason&nbsp;...''''' is a 33-page booklet published privately in Italy in early 1948 by Olga Rudge, mistress of the American poet Ezra Pound.<ref>{{cite web |title=If This Be Treason |url=https://www.lebookiniste.com/pages/books/1468/ezra-pound/if-this-be-treason |website=Le Bookiniste |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201017001756/https://www.lebookiniste.com/pages/books/1468/ezra-pound/if-this-be-treason |archive-date=17 October 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>Tytell, John (1987). [https://archive.org/details/ezrapoundsolitar00tyte_0 ''Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano'']. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 305. {{isbn|0-385-19694-6}}</ref> Pound, who lived in Italy with his wife from 1924 to 1945, was indicted ''in absentia'' for treason in 1943 by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after he made hundreds of radio broadcasts, pro-Axis and deeply antisemitic, on behalf of Fascist Italy during World War II and the Holocaust in Italy.<ref>Tytell 1987, 269.</ref> The title phrase had previously been used in a speech by Patrick Henry in 1765.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Today in History - May 29 |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/may-29/ |access-date=2022-10-19 |website=Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA}}</ref>

The booklet, 300 copies of which were printed, contains six of Pound's cultural broadcasts:<!--Note: examind and french are not typos.--> "e.&nbsp;e. cummings," "e.&nbsp;e. cummings/examind", "James Joyce: to his memory", "A french accent", "Canto 45", and "Blast." It was the first time any of Pound's broadcasts had been published. The publication was an attempt by Rudge to exonerate Pound of the charges.<ref>Gill, Jonathan P. (2005). "If This Be Treason&nbsp;...". In Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos and Stephen Adams (eds.). [https://archive.org/details/ezrapoundencyclo0000unse ''The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia'']. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 155. {{ISBN|978-0-313-30448-4}}</ref>

Pound continued to broadcast for the fascists until he was arrested by American forces in Italy in May 1945.<ref>Tytell 1987, 273–274.</ref> He spent 13 years in custody, including over 12 years in St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. When he was released in May 1958, he returned to live in Italy, where he died and was buried in 1972.<ref>Swift, Daniel (2017). ''The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra Pound''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 245–247, 251, 255–256. {{isbn|978-0-374-28404-6}}</ref>

==Publication details== *Pound, Ezra (1948). ''If This Be Treason&nbsp;...''. Edited by and printed for Olga Rudge. Siena: Tip. Nuova. {{oclc|318182831}} Venice: Tip Litographia Armena, 1983. {{oclc|20649673}}

==References== {{reflist}}

==Further reading== * {{cite book |editor-last1=Doob |editor-first1=Leonard W. |title='Ezra Pound Speaking': Radio Speeches of World War II |url=https://archive.org/details/ezrapoundspeakin0000poun |date=1978 |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Westport, CT and London|isbn=0-313-20057-2}} * Feldman, Matthew (2013). ''Ezra Pound's Fascist Propaganda, 1935–45''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. {{isbn|978-1-137-34551-6}} * {{cite book |last1=Houen |first1=Alex |title=Terrorism and Modern Literature: From Joseph Conrad to Ciaran Carson |date=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0191541988 |chapter=Ezra Pound: Anti-Semitism, Segregationism, and the 'Arsenal of Live Thought'|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=agIiGSVyhN4C&pg=PA143}} * Redman, Tim (1991). ''Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-521-37305-0}} * {{cite book |last1=Surrette |first1=Leon |title=Pound in Purgatory: From Economic Radicalism to Anti-Semitism |date=1999 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Urbana, IL |isbn=978-0-252-02498-6}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:If This Be Treason}} Category:1948 non-fiction books Category:Books by Ezra Pound