En Lin Wei wrote:

> Carlo wrote:
>
> >My post was 'perhaps', Wei, more geared to prompt some recognition on
> >your part of your Pollyannish views on democracy--Athenian and American.
>
> What were Pollyanna's views on democracy?

Pollyanna is a famous children's book of the early 20th century. Pollyanna,
the young heroine, always saw the very best side of everything. She made
the OED, where you can look her up. So Carlo is suggesting that you
see "democracy" (both Athenian and U.S.) as much more ideal than they
are/were. I agree with him on U.S. democracy. From *inside* the U.S.
the US today is incomparably a better place (for a majority but *not*
all of its population) to live than was Hitler's Germany. From the viewpoint
of the *rest* of the world, the U.S. today is a far greater threat to
human happiness, even to human survival, than ever Hitler's Germany was.
So one definitely should not take a Pollyanna view of u.s. democracy.

>  I could possibly determine the
> precise meaning of your statement if you could specify which aspect of my
> view clashes with yours.
>
> Of course the main issue might be why Pound rejected democracy?

I think Wei is correct to ask this question, and I think answering it helps
understand, even "appreciate," the Cantos, but I also think that Wei too
much assumes what an idiot at Brown University (now at Harvard) argued
25 years ago, claiming that (quoted from memory) "the great poets are
usually right about the most important things." She was writing of Milton
but she would be equally wrong about Pound. In the first place, the
epistemology of the proposition is bizarre: it claims an infallible guide
to what "the most important questions" are. But in fact it is only through
protracted struggle (intellectual, political, military) that such a decision
is to be arrived at. A more limited claim, however, would be possible
and defensible: Reading, thinking, and talking about the great poems
(and many of the lesser ones) may be part of the dialogue that
contributes to identifying the "most important" questions -- and for a
poem to provide that service the poet need not be right, he/she can
be profoundly wrong and still make a great contribution to human
thought.

> Inevitably
> our personal views of such issues become enmeshed in the analysis.  But am I
> to infer from your remarks that you despair of any possibility of democracy
> working; that you do not believe that the Athenian contribution to the
> development of representative government was consequential, and that America
> has nothing to learn from studying it?

The Athenian contribution to *representative* democracy was non-existent. But
the very real success of Athenian democracy (nearly 200 years was an
astounding length of time for a social system to survive) does still constitute
a useful source of inspiration. See Ellen Meiksins Wood, *Peasant-Citizen and
Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy*.

> I gather you are highly critical of American democracy in its current form
> (I certainly am, and we may share certain convictions on this point).
> Pound's solution was to reject the US system in favor of a LESS, rather than
> a MORE, democratic form?  In what senses might you agree with Pound, and in
> what ways might you suggest that the problems facing the US system are
> remediable?

This begins to lead away from Pound's poem. I am *not* invoking the criterion
of "What is [a given topic's] relevance to the poem" -- the proper question more

often is what is the poem's relevance to [some topic]. The Cantos *are*
relevant to understanding the U.S., its history, its social system, etc., but
they
are *not* relevant to discussing how that system's "problems" are remediable
(or not). One can ask of a poem that it make one think -- but one ought not
to ask "Is the poem correct?" The question really does not (as Sir Philip
Sidney pointed out) make sense.

Carrol Cox

P.S. So far as I know, most of Pound's direct references to Plato are
dismissive -- but I think it could be argued that the Cantos almost
constitute a 20th century rewrite of the *Republic*.

>
> Regards,
>
> Wei
>
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