Olivia Rossetti Agresti - Fascism

Fascism

By 1921 Agresti's early anarchist leanings, further leavened by years of exposure to Lubin's theories concerning cooperative organization of society, had transformed her into an enthusiastic supporter of corporatism and, consequently, of Benito Mussolini's corporatist reorganization of the Italian economy. From 1921 to 1943 she edited the newsletter of the Associazione fra le Società per Azioni, a group then closely allied with the Fascists, and in 1938 co-authored the theoretical work The Organization of the Arts and Professions in the Fascist Guild State with the Fascist journalist Mario Missiroli.

In 1937, Agresti's editorship of economic journals brought her into professional contact with Ezra Pound, then residing in Italy and writing articles in Italian on economic topics. Thus began a long correspondence between the two which lasted until 1959, the year before Agresti's death. Interestingly, Agresti seems to have been unaware of Pound's fame as a poet, and Pound unaware of Agresti's family ties to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Ford, two of the most important influences on his poetry, until years into the correspondence. Portions of this correspondence were edited and published in 1998 by the University of Illinois Press.

Agresti became practically a member of Pound's extended family as the years progressed, and she and her two adopted Italian daughters were frequent guests at Schloss Brunnenburg. She was active for years in the international campaign to free Pound from his involuntary incarceration in a mental asylum by the government of the United States, and Pound in turn tried to assist her, then suffering from an impecunious old age, by finding a publisher for her memoirs. Pound refers to Agresti twice in his Cantos.