Dear Listmembers,
Does history repeat itself? On this listserver, any discussion of Pound's
political and social beliefs invariably leads to this impasse: two opposed
factions talking past each other. One side seeks to question Pound's
reputation in light of his questionable political/social beliefs. The other
faction opposes this approach, by insisting on the importance of the formal
qualities of his poetry.
What history is being repeated? Quite simply, we continue to play out the
debate surrounding The Bollingen Prize of 1949, which Pound won for his Pisan
Cantos. On one side were the New Critics (Eliot, Tate, Warren , etc.) who
voted for Pound; on the other side were an assortment of liberal poets and
critics who were uneasy about the content of The Cantos, among them Karl
Shapiro and the critics of the Partisan Review (including Clement Greenberg,
Robert Gorham Davis, and William Barrett.)
When, for example, Mr Wei writes:
"I would say, 'The Cantos," as a unitary work, is a magnficently failed
attempt
at a 20th century epic (failed in large part because of its political,
social, economic, and ethical vision)."
Mr. Wei is simply restating the objection of Mr. Shapiro who said, in his
report to the voting board:
"I voted against Pound in the belief that the poet's political and moral
philosophy ultimately vitiates his poetry and lowers its standard as literary
work."
When liberal critics attack Modernist authors (many of whom were
conservative/ reactionary politically), they often echo the question posed by
William Barrett in a 1949 issue of the Partisan Review:
"How far is it possible...for technical embellishments to transform vicious
and ugly matter into beautiful poetry?"
The result of the 1949 debate was that Pound received the award, but the New
Criticism was unfortunately labeled as a politically reactionary movement and
it began to decline as an influential force, at least in academic circles. I
should also add that much of the Politically Correct movement dates, or finds
its ancestry, from 1949. By this I mean that liberal critics (incorrectly I
believe) derided New Criticism for ignoring "content" in favor of "form."
These liberal critics then proceeded to talk exclusively about "content" and
finally ended by subjecting works of literature to crude examinations of
their political/social ramifications.
Ultimately, of course, there can be no agreement between Mr. Parcelli and Mr.
Wei (and the factions they represent) because their critical approaches are
opposed. In a sense, New Criticism and Political Correctness are modern
versions of, respectively, Aristotelianism and Platonism. The Politically
Correct crowd believe that Pound's social/political/racial views have
consequences and thus must be denounced/regulated/banned. The New Critics see
the work of art as autonomous, and therefore separable from even the views
which the work itself seems to assert or glorify.
Either art is influential (and bad art is dangerous), or art (as Auden said
of poetry) "makes nothing happen." I stand with the Aristotelians, of course,
and when I assert that Mr. Wei's (and his faction's) political approach to
Pound will fail, I do so in the knowledge that all such Platonic attempts are
not only crude and reductive to the works they claim to criticize, but are
also (by their very nature) antithetical to the liberal and democratic
traditions that Mr. Wei speaks so highly of. In this sense, Mr. Wei (along
with Mr. Surette, and a number of others) betrays his liberal convictions by
asserting an essential anti-liberal critical position. It was from this
demonstrable fact, the incoherence of their critical position, that I claimed
(and continue to claim) that Mr Wei, and the others, were unfit to be
critics.
Regards,
Garrick Davis
Contemporary Poetry Review
(www.cprw.com)
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The books to consult on this subject are:
MacLeish, Archibald. Poetry and Opinion. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1950.
(MacLeish wrote this book specifically to defend Pound and his poetry, in the
aftermath of the Bollingen affair. It is a neglected gem, in my opinion.)
Stone, Edward & O'Connor, William Von, eds. A Casebook on Ezra Pound. New
York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1959.
(This book contains the essential documents concerning the Bollingen Prize
and the subsequent debate, including the Partisan Review articles. Notice, in
particular, Auden's indefensible position. He voted for Pound, and then
attempted to defend his choice with Platonic/politically correct arguments.)
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