Wei,
Thank you for correcting me on the question put to Gandhi and amazing us
all by finding a positive statement in the Cantos. But it doesn't seem to
matter whether the subject is Western civilization, religion, or democracy,
the chasm between the ideal and the practice often makes the Grand Canyon
look like a drainage ditch.
Perhaps this accounts for the desire of some for what they perceive as
change for the better, and I stress "perceive". The call to the Germans in
the thirties to "ERWACHE" meant this, right or wrong. And at the advent of
the Anschluss the streets of Vienna were filled with thousands of cheering
Austrians. At the end of the war no one could remember being there.
I live near Akron, Ohio where the famous Goodyear Aerospace Co. is
located. Close by there is a huge housing project built in the forties which
opened up its doors to the first tenant the day before Pearl Harbor was
attacked which would result in a war which would fill this Project with
workers from West Virginia and other impoverished parts of the country etc.
etc. You figure it out.
But if you want to tell me that Pound was a warmonger, I will not buy
it.
I appreciate your exhortation of the truth, but I must ask you Pilot's
question he put to Christ, "What is truth?" You say, "Perhaps I am wrong",
but do you mean it? Nietzsche who seems to be too bitter for your palate
said, "We should never ask if truth is useful or a fatality". This is an
honest look into the face of philosophy, but you seem to have confused it
with your high ideals, admirable and noble, but damnably unforgiving and
inflexable albeit useful to the point ofdictating to you your active
crusade to make us all aware of what we already know, Pound's shortcomings.
As a result you see yourself as a correcting knight in literary armor who
will serve the noble pupose of showing us all with the courage we of course
lack "that some people are simply afraid of facing the deeper social and
moral issues; that some are upset simply because they dislike the
implications of certain questions". Once would have been sufficient for
this presumptuousness on your part, but then how can you say "I do not claim
that my answers are correct" and still keep up a steady barrage of them for
weeks? And look at your next sentence. You assume that You are the only one
who makes an attempt to answer your own questions, i.e. the only important
ones; and you tell us don't bother with questions about the placement of
commas or "certain obscure historical events". Only your questions have
relevancy.
These others are to you only evidence of burying one's "head in the
sand" while you celebrate with hosannas your own rhetorical inquireries, the
ones waiting in the ethereal clouds of literary truth. Sir, I think you
should reconsider your judgment about others and realize and contemplate
your own statement, "Perhaps I am wrong" or better yet, perhaps others also
could be right.
Finally, by your closing statement that " the point of any study of
literature and philosophy must, in my view, be the acquisition of knowledge
and wisdom regarding the eternal virtues; justice, ethical action,
committment to egalitarian values, a love of truth, and the pursuit of God,
however one attempts to comprehend that absolute first source of value" - we
are filled to the brim. I hope you have a long life in order to accomplish
all of this. But let me just interject one humanist barb in the form of a
question. Do you think it possible to do any of the above without pursuing
"God"? That is, do you think there could be eternal virtues without God?
Justice without God? Wisdom and knowledge without God? Ethical action and
egalitarian values, love of truth without God? Pound without God?
And today's quote is from Tom Paine.
"It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action; it begets a calamitous
necessity of going on".
This is how it seems you feel about Pound, but look a little deeper. He
is dead, but you are still alive.
CDM
p.s. The Twain quotes were great, but then how could Twain's not be?
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