(continued from previous post)

>It is part of the lust for order that infiltrates
>modern
>thought and feeling as the analogical order (the visible social relations
>of
>feudal hierarchy which Dante projects into the cosmos) breaks up. Pound,
>I've always thought, was more conscious of this development than some
>(many) of his predecessors and contemporaries -- which was perhaps one
>of the reasons he went rummaging through history as he did. He was engaged
>in a salvage endeavor -- finding in history a pattern of that old order
>which
>would allow its reassertion within a historical movement antithetical to
>it.

Here I thoroughly concur with Carrol Cox.  Pound perhaps mistook the
mystical Absolute, that which is changeless in eternity, for the notion of
an eternal temporal social order.  This is a somewhat unusual procedure for
a mystic.  For this reason I hold that Pound is what Kerenyi calls a
semi-mystic.  His mistake may have been to seek the Absolute in the purely
temporal, in the purely historical (hence his “rummaging through history”),
and once he convinces himself that he has found the “paradiso terrestre” in
the historical record, he tries to impose it in the present.  At the very
least he urges its imposition (hence his support for Mussolini).

>I simplly  don't believe in archetypes (either in Jung's sense or in
>Frye's).
>Often it seems to me that critics use "archetype" to describe a successful
>reinvigoration of a cliche or dead metaphor: Make it new.
>

Maybe your analysis was appropriate for Pound.  He tried to “make new” old
social forms, medieval hierarchy and Confucian authoritarianism, by seeing
their contemporary fulfillment in the anticipated success of fascsim.
Dead metaphors and dead social systems glide in and out of Pound’s work,
side by side with genuine poetic innovations and praiseworthy visions of
beauty.   Whatever we make of Pound, I do not think that his alleged
failures invalidate the existence of true archetypes, which animate all
great religions, mythologies which still give us inspiration, and primal
beliefs which stand at the root of great philosophical and metaphysical
systems.

>Humanity (or the
>individual human) does not *have* a history, it *is* its history (or an
>ensemble
>of social relations, prior to and independently of which "I" simply have
>no existence). . . . .
>
>Pound breaks free from his world in his first line (And then went down to
>the sea) so that he  can then reenter it, over and over again, as a free
>act of the mind. I think that's what you are calling an archetype.
>

I think that you are correct here.  Pound (along with Mussolini and most
fascists) were what some Marxists call  “voluntarists.”   They stress the
autonomy of the “great man” as supreme over historical and economic
circumstance which play a role in determining their actions.

However, Marx, as he himself said, was not a “Marxist.”  He also said, quite
correctly that “history makes men and men make history”.  He did not believe
that role of the individual should be minimized or negated; he believed that
the role of economic and historical factors should be studied carefully
since only by studying the material factors can we “free ourselves from
necessity.”  Unfortunately many of Marx’s successors have exagerated and
emphasized his attention to material economic relations and reduced man to
the status of a puppet.

Mussolini criticized Marxism on this basis; both Mussolini and Pound went to
the other extreme of believing man could impose, by sheer acts of will, a
social order of his own choosing, regardless of the historical
circumstances.  Such beliefs are reflected in Pound’s translations of Odon
Por’s economic works on “Autarchy.”

Returning to the subject of “objective experience of eternal states of
mind”,  you write:


>But everything
>we (any of us, including the poets among us) "recognize" or experience is
>not for that reason anything beyond an experience.

Yes, but most people recognize a wide spectrum of experiences, as they
recognize that certain perceptions are erroneous, and that certain states of
mind are impartial and lacking.  At the same time other states of mind are
said to be clear (or luminous).  Everyone believes, do they not, that an
experience of the real as Real, differs from an experience of believing the
unreal the be real (whatever one might conceive reality to be).


>In other words: the
>vividness or power of the recognition does not give assurance (or even
>probability) to the theoretical claim that the experience links to some
>eternal state.
>

Vividness DOES help us distinguish the real from the unreal.  The perception
of a bright object in the sunlight differs from the perception (or lack of
perception ) of an object in a dark room.  This obvious physical truth has
spiritual implications:  Thus the Rig Veda contains one of the oldest and
most venerated prayers:  “Lead me from darkness into light; lead me from the
unreal to the Real”.

If we concede even the POSSIBILITY of an ETERNAL BEING, then we might
entertain the notion that a certain state of mind could enable a person to
apprehend eternity. The significance of such states of mind lie precisely in
the fact that (to the poet, or the mystic, or the philosopher, or to the
simple lay person) such states of mind DO give assurance of the presence of
the Eternal.

Regards,

Wei


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