St. Joseph, Communism and the ‘Radio Tower of Babel’, by K.V. Turley

‘Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven, and let us make our name famous …’ (Genesis 11:4)

The American poet Ezra Pound declared 1922 “Year Zero.”

In the spring issue of that year’s avant-garde American literary journal Little Review, Pound, whose mantra was “Make It New,” published a calendar for this dawning epoch.

The months of the year were renamed after pagan deities, both Greek and Roman. More surprisingly, though, this new “Year Zero” had the letters “p.s.U” added to it. These letters stood for “post scriptum Ulysses,” or “after the writing of Ulysses.” This referred to the February 1922 publication in Paris of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. In renaming of the divisions of time, turning the clock to zero, and conflating this with the birth of literary modernism, Pound was indicating the type of world that was to come. …

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