Observing the debate between Tim Romano and Carroll Cox has been very
instructive.  I find myself in strong agreement with Tim Romano’s
sympathetic account of Ezra Pound’s “Eternal states of Mind.”  On the issue
of the social, political, and economic implications of Pound’s work, I find
myself in agreement with Carroll Cox, who said:


>Whoa. You can't say leave metaphysics out of it -- and then proceed
>to use the key concept that distinguishes metaphysical thinking from
>historical thinking, "eternal states" (of anything). It may be (you are
>fairly convincing on this) that Pound *thought* the states of mind (or
>social relations) he was making manifest in his poems were eternal
>states . . . .

I think there is an important distinction between the main observation and
the parenthetic observation about “social relations”. 1)   Pound thought
that entry into “eternal states of mind” was possible.  I agree with Pound
here. 2)   Pound also thought that certain ancient social paradigms (the
Confucian model of political organization, for instance) were eternal and
universally applicable for the good of man.  I strongly DIS-agree with Pound
on this.

Most marxian thinkers would think that Pound was wrong on both counts,
arguing that all forms of religious consciousness are forms of false
consciousness.  However I have never seen a convincing explication of Marx’s
theory on this point, since Marx makes no distinction in his theory
(“religion is the opiate of the masses”)  to distinguish between the
exploitive nature of organized religion, and the dynamic activism of
religious revolutionaries, like Levellers, for instance.  The modern
“Liberation Theologians” make a meaningful distinction in this area.


>and one of the things certainly the Cantos do repeatedly is
>dramatize what it is *like* to project historical experience into eternity.

Pound does this over and over, in a very reactionary fashion.  But when his
social and political views are abstracted or divorced from his purely
religious experience, we get an inkling of what may legitimately called an
“eternal state of mind”.  I am not saying Pound does this perfectly, or as
well some other mystic poets (like Traherne or Blake), but does make an
attempt.

>But "eternal states of mind" as an ontological or historical actuality
>simply don't exist.
>

This is debateable, isn’t it?  Poets, mystics, philosophers, “saints,”
theologians, and many others (including some lumberjacks and janitors) have
spoken of and recorded accounts of the “eternal state of mind”.  Many Hindu
and Buddhist mystics go so far as to say that all mental experience is
eternal, and that the perception of reality itself as “non-eternal” is
merely a pervasive delusion.

Whether “eternal states” exist---as a “historical reality” or an
“ontological actuality” --- will remain an open question for most people.
Ontology itself was born in the West out of the strivings of Parmenides and
Zeno to prove that all perception of movement and plurality by the senses
was illusory, and to prove that if a person apprehended Being as a TOTALITY,
or as ONE, through the use of reason (logos, in the broades sense), then all
sense of non-eternity would cease.  Of course Parmenides and Zeno did not
conceive of Reason (Logos) as mere rationation as most of us do now.

The history of literature and philosophy reveals many records which show the
possibility of the mind’s encountering an “eternal state”.  One the best
records is that of Lao Tze, the archivist-historian who said (in the Tao te
ching)

The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao
The Name that can be named is not the eternal name
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The Named is the Mother of all things . . . .

I may well ask how it can be asserted that “eternal states of mind” do not
exist?  Can we conceive of them, or imagine them?  I side with William Blake
when he tells us:

“Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.”

Or perhaps more famously,

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, then everything would appear to
man as it is:  infinite.”





I would agree then with the observation that

>>. . .when the
> > poet says "I stood still and was a tree amid the wood"  he is having an
> > unmediated metamorphic EXPERIENCE of the same order as that undergone by
> > Yeats, who asks: "How can we tell the dancer from the dance?"
>


Carroll Cox goes on to ask,


>(On the side, I personally began to have trouble in various contexts when
>the
>either "mediated" or "unmediated" appears in a discourse. I'm never sure
>what
>they mean.) How can we tell the agent from the act?

In a genuinely unmediated experience, the distinction between the agent and
the act breaks down.   This experience is described by Lao Tze as follows:

We look at it and we do not see it;
It’s name is the Invisible.
We listen to it and we do not hear it;
Its name is the Inaudible.
We touch it and we do not find it;
Its name is the Formless.
These three cannot be futher inquired into
And hence merge into ONE.
(Tao te ching, ch. 14)

(continued in next post)
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