Just one comment to set the record straight. I only suggested the New
Critical approach as a desparate corrective to what I and many others on
this list and elsewhere percieve as zealous and contrived excesses as
regards some Pound scholarship. I am not an advocate of the New Critical
approach over any other. Carlo Parcelli

 [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> 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)
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------------
> 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.)