Premonizioni letterarie: il debito a Siena. Sulla quinta decade dei Cantos di Ezra Pound (Cantos, XLII - LI)

In this short essay the a., starting from a strict analysis of Ezra Pound's Fifth Decad of Cantos, tries to point out the reasons of Pound's criticism against “Usury” and State's debts, contracted with banks and with the whole financial system, showing how the bank “hath benefit of interest on all the moneys which itself [= the bank] creates out of nothing” (Cantos, XLV). The a. deems Pound's criticism (conceived in 1937, more than seventy years ago!) as a true premonition of the most recent usury-events in Siena (Monte dei Paschi), looking – with Pound – at usury as “a charge for the use of purchasing power, levied without regard to production; often without regard to the possibilities of production” (Cantos, XLV).