(continued from previous post)

>What has been lacking all along in your
>analyses, in my opinion, is any sense of those things that Pound perceived
>as threatening and destructive of civilization.  What and whom did Pound
>see
>as The Enemy? Surely his mind --as evidenced by his writings, both poetry
>and prose--  cannot be reduced to a single motive:  "imperial drive".

To clarify:  I did not say that POUND’s ONLY motive was to support
imperialism.  I said, that the Axis powers were only united by this drive.
Of course while there are other factors which made Germany, Italy, and Japan
sympathetic to one another during the late 30’s, and early  40’s, it was the
imperial drive which CONSTITUTED their unity as members of the AXIS; it was
the imperial drive which served as the singular motive for their military
activities (Italy in Africa and Albania; Germany throughout Europe, and
Japan in China, Korea, and throughout the Pacific).  Pound supported without
qualification all these war aims.

>To
>balance your analysis, you need to address and assess the targets of
>Pound's
>animus.  You can call his enemies bogeymen if that is your conclusion.
>
>In Pound's mind:
>
>     -- What do the teachings of Confucius combat?
>     -- With what agenda does the fascist social agenda clash?
>     -- What does Pound think has been happening to the American "race" and
>to racial homogeneity in general?
>
These are excellent questions, which I have been trying to deal with.  I
have not ignored the issues by any means, although you may disagree with my
conclusions.  Nor do I deny that Confucians, racial puritarians, and
fascists have some legitimate concerns which they would share with Pound.
Pound had legitimate concerns, I have no doubt, but his enthusiastic
commitment to the worst of all possible solutions is what must be dealt with
and called into question.

The more one learns about fascism and the more one learns about Pound, the
more we must come face to face with this difficult problem:

How was Pound’s ideology or socio-political outlook substantively different
from that of his fascist exemplars?  Or to make the point more sharply, does
Pound’s profession of certain concerns differ substantially from  the
statements of similar concerns of fascists such as Mussolini and Hitler?
The same questions can and should be asked about Pound’s Confucianism and
the practices of the authoritarian Chinese Emperors for whom Pound expresses
such admiration.

>NEITHER HOWEVER SHOULD YOU MAKE
>THE LEAP FROM HERE TO PYSCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF IRRATIONAL MOTIVE WITHOUT
>FIRST NAMING AND CATALOGUING THOSE THINGS >HE CONSIDERED TO BE THREATS.

Granted, in theory at least (but I have named them before).  But again.  The
alleged threats--- are they any different from the threats which Mussolini
and Hitler put on the table as justifications for their political and social
programs?

>You
>need to stay above ground a little longer.  Perhaps you >can give us a
>brief
>catalog of those "threatening things" now?
>

We have done that in some detail before, I think.  On the socio-economic
front, if you want my detailed explanation of Pound’s perception of threats,
you can look at

http://www.geocities.com/weienlin/econ.html

If you want my explanation of Pound’s look at the threats on the racial and
imperial-political front, you can look at:

http://www.geocities.com/weienlin/raceandempire.html

The brief catalogue would be something like this:  Pound was worried about
threats to culture, the threat posed by capitalism to art and to
civilization, the threat of racial adulteration and heterogeneous racial
admixtures to the integrity of the what he considered to be the great
races---but Pound’s assessements of the threats was not entirely rational or
consistent: in fact, it was radically contradictory and irrational (in my
view), especially in light of his solutions and double standards.

I might add, in the context of this discussion , that going “below the
surface” might help to get Pound off the hook, so to speak.

-----------
3.

JB has said no one on the list, other than myself,

>has been so arrogant as to lay claim to an
>understanding of Pound's unconscious motives, no doubt because they do not
>feel competent to do so.

I am afraid JB takes me too literally.  I have said before that I DO NOT lay
claim to an understanding of Pound’s unconscious motives.  However, I may
speculate without doing harm.  And my speculations are not precisely
designed to play the same role as psycological analyses.  Psychoanalysis is
part of a process of healing, and possibly cure, of an individual who is
mentally ill.  Pound has passed on, and is beyond the need for cure or
healing as we understand it in this world.

What I am doing is using the metaphor of the pyschoanalytic model (which
even Freud admitted was not a precise construct).  The analysis of text and
subtext has become an important part of literary study, and it has its
analogue in the study of the relationship between the conscious and the
unconscious.  It helps to talk about the psyche of Pound, and to speculate
about its possible constitution, in order to elucidate certain aspects of
the texts themselves.

What I find puzzling about JB’s remarks is the refusal to address this (and
several other issues).  He wants to reject my approach without offering any
alternative.  Nor does he offer any coherent criticism of my arguments,
other than ad hominem attacks, which he should know, have no logical
validity.

Is it the case JB, that you do not believe that Pound has a subconsious, or
you do not believe that his texts contain a subtext, or you do not believe .
. . .   The list could go on.  What is it precisely you do believe?  Not
necessarily about me.  I am aware that you disagree with many of my
arguments.  But as to what you believe, with regard to Pound’s politics, his
religion, his artistic merit, his psyche, or any other issue, should be
clarified.

On the issue as to whether we should dare to probe any theoretical
construct, which we might call Pound’s psyche, I fail to see why we should
not speculate.  Is Pound a “sacred cow”?  Are his works “holy writ” such
that the probing of his psyche, or of the subtext of his work, would be
considered an act of sacrilege?
---------

Salut,

Wei

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