I, too, like Bill Freind do not want to "sanityze" Pound's poltics
though I porbably wouldn't have chosen this term from newspeak. I also
wantto make it clear that to my mind Pound is first an foremost a poet
and secondarliy an historical figure. I think Mr. Freind also makes this
clear in his remarks on reading Pound.

I also have borrowed Pound's poetic method, albeit incorporating many
ideas that would have infuriated Pound and delight En Lin Wei. My
politics and En Lin Wei's are very similar though I'm not accustomed to
dealing in the abstract the way En Lin Wei is.

As far as appropriating Pound's style; it always makes me think of that
great line in the Lenny Bruce routine called the Sound. The protagonist
is trying to score from the elder statesman horn player, Buck, and he
pleads his sincerity by saying "I wouldn't come on corny to the man who
gave me the sound."

Also, I encourage people to read En Lin Wei's essays only to see how
tenuous and contradictory much of his statements to the list are when
compared to his written texts. The essays could use some work too. In
his emails he implies that Pound 'chose' consciously the most
conservative strain of Confusionism out of Legge, but in his final essay
he implies that Pound probably was not sophisticated enough as regards
Confucious to make this very distinction. He also states that he cannot
find any evidence that Pound consciously chose the most reactionary form
of Confucianism by design. Of course, now I must face En Lin Wei's
denial that characteristically will not speak to the point.

Another great Bruce line apropo of Pound and my work: "I haven't heard a
sound like that since Lip Flap Clayton." Carlo Parcelli


Bill Freind wrote:
>
> This list has seen a number of threads on Pound's politics, but I have to say that
> I've been more than a little surprised by some of the recent claims. Yes, Pound
> praised Thomas Jefferson and said he believed in the Constitution. In itself that
> means nothing: the ACLU, Pat Buchanan, the students at Tiananmen Square and
> Timothy McVeigh have all done the same. Lester Bangs once said all speed freaks
> are liars, because anyone who talks that much can't tell the truth all the time. A
> similar situation obtains in Pound's work: he wrote so much that through selective
> quotation one could construct any number of political positions for him.
>
> It seems absolutely clear to me that (as En Lin Wei as suggested) the key to
> Pound's political beliefs is his Confucianism, and that this Confucianism is
> deeply skeptical of representative democracy and deeply sympathetic to powerful
> and even totalitarian individuals and elites. That's why Pound could
> simultaneously praise Malatesta, Jefferson, Bronson Cutting, Lenin, Huey Long
> (whose economic views were wildly at odd with Pound's), Mussolini and Coughlin. As
> Leon Surette has stated, Pound was not an ideologue and with the exception of
> economics and a handful of idiosyncratic interests, he didn't really care about
> the specifics of government. Power and "insight" were enough. Even results
> (sometimes) don't matter that much: Pound admits Malatesta's tempio is a jumble
> and a junkshop, but praises it because it "registers a concept." Likewise, he
> admits that Mussolini is full of contradictions, then insists those are irrelevant
> if one treats him as an "artifex." (Talk about transference.)
>
> Contrary to what a number of people have claimed, this is not somehow extraneous
> to the Cantos; it is absolutely central to it. Additionally, I say that neither
> because I'm an academic looking to further my career by trampling on Pound, nor
> because I'm indifferent to the poetry. I think Pound is perhaps the most
> extraordinary poet of the 20th century. That doesn't mean I'm going to sanitize
> his politics.
>
> Bill Freind