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Tim Romano wrote:
>I believe it is one's obligation, when engaged in a public
>damnation of a dead poet for crimes against humanity, not to develop
>_shorthand_ ways of referring to the matters under discussion which might
>prejudice the outcome.
>
We all have the obligation to speak the truth as we see it, and to state the
truth as completely and as accurately as we can. I believe you are making a
sincere effort to do this, and I admire your striving to enter into aspects
of Pound’s mind set.
You are correct to point out that “shorthand” may “prejudice the outcome.”
However, language itself is a kind of shorthand, and all the statements made
on this forum represent abbreviated attempts to to deal with complex
literary, political, spiritual, and social realities.
You yourself use shorthand when you claim I am
>engaged in a public
>damnation of a dead poet for crimes against humanity
This cannot be a fully accurate characterization of my analysis of the
cultural implications of Pound’s work. First, I do not believe in the
concept of “damnation”, public, spiritual, or otherwise; and I do not
believe I have used words which are consistent with such a notion.
Second, I am not particularly interested in the notion that Pound was guilty
of “crimes as against humanity”. I have never argued that he was guilty of
crimes against humanity. Legally speaking, he may have been guilty of
treason, if defined as “giving aid and comfort to an enemy” of the US. But
I am often doubtful of that; and even if he were guilty of treason in that
sense, I do not equate that with “crimes against humanity”. Certainly not
in the sense used today, or in the sense of any equivalent notion used
during the Nuremburg trials.
On the one had, I have to agree with Daniel Pearlman when he says
> > Whether Pound wanted to remove only Jewish bankers, or all Jews,
> > it's still disgusting racism. And to keep Jews out of the Italian
> > gov't because they are presumed to be communists--again, a double
> > smear, completely racist.
But to go there, and only there, now, might be lose an opportunity which
you, Tim Romano are offering to us.
Let us try what may be a completely new approach. Instead of putting
ourselves into camps--- whereby one of us appears as simply a Pound
detractor (seeking only to point out the evil in Pound’s moral vision), and
the other appears as a Pound defender (seeking to “minimize” Pound’s
evils)--- let us instead move to higher ground if we can. I must say that I
do NOT believe that you are trying to minimize Pound’s evils. Allow me to
stress this point. Perhaps what you are doing is trying to enter into a
sort of Keatsian sympathy with Pound as a character and thinker, a sympathy
which implies neither judgement or approval of certain views, but which
seeks to see the person as a whole, in his milieu, expressing himself with
all his strengths and limitations.
The new approach I would suggest (for myself, at least, or for anyone who
might find it appealing) is this: try a Blakean methodology. You are
probably aware that Blake said Milton, in writing Paradise Lost was “of the
Devil’s part, without even knowing it.” What I understand Blake to have
meant was that Milton’s God is really a tyrant, while Satan, as depicted,
esp. in Books one and two, was a heroic rebel. (Byron and Shelley had
similar views on Milton’s Satan). Of course theologically, and rationally,
Milton sides with God against Satan. However, if Satan is seen as a
metaphor for the rebel (Cromwell) and God is seen as a metaphor for the
tyrant (the KIng), then the whole work is turned on its head.
We can take Blake's observation about Milton and apply it to Pound. So
while we might say that Milton was of the Devil’s part without really
knowing it, we can say of Pound, “He was of the Angels' part, without really
knowing it.”
What does this mean, precisely? For me it could signify that Pound, in
advocating race hatred, anti-semitism, hierarchical government, sexism,
fascist dictatorship, is setting these views up in the Cantos metaphorically
in such a way that (from a Blakean perspective) they become converted into
their opposites, despite Pound’s CONSCIOUS INTENTIONS.
It may be the case that Pound’s SUBCONSIOUS vision contains the advocacy of
love for all men, regardless of race; love for the Jew, egalitarianism and
democracy in the political sphere; equality between men and women, and
non-hierachical forms of social order.
Of course on the conscious level Pound is for fascism, just as on the
conscious level Milton is for the God of Book IV. But these conscious
advocacies are based on dogmatic conceptions, and their very extreme
forcefullness converts the anti-heroes (those who oppose Fascism or those
who oppose God) into actual heroes, by a necessary “equal and opposite”
reaction which can take place in the mind of the reader.
Blake experienced this sort of reversal of view when he read Paradise Lost,
and also when he read the Bible. He called it the "infernal reading" I
believe, in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." I must confess that this is
what happens to me when I read Ezra Pound’s Cantos: I feel compelled to
oppose overt content, and Pound’s consciously stated advocacies, esp those
in favor of historical strong men, and Confucian tyrants.
I am suggesting that this is one way to read the Cantos. It may a be a
useful way to read Pound, if one wishes to deal with the social, economic,
and political content of the work, and make sense of it psychologically.
Like most Freudian or Jungian approaches, it requires we look at the Cantos
more like a dream than as an “epic, ” more like fantasy than as a “poem
containing history”. The historical content, transformed by the creative
impulse becomes utterly different from concrete historical reality, and in
fact, enters into a compex relationship, where empirical data and symbols
collide. The Freudian approach involves the application of a form of
analysis in which images often symbolize their opposites, and conscious
intentions, are usually understood in relation to opposing sublimated
desires. The Jungian approach would reveal contradictions or tensions
between different “faculties”, such as intuition and sensation, reason and
feeling, contraries which are concealed from the conscious mind, and which
must be uncovered and used as keys in unraveling a complex weave of
historical events. These "events" in the Cantos are themselves symbols
which refer to anything other than their “obvious” overt “factual”
significance.
If I took such a premise, my personal conclusion would be that the stated
goals of the Cantos and of Pound’s political philosophy imply, by their very
vehemence, their exact opposites.
In this sense, Pound is a democrat, an apostle of liberty, a Franklinian
(not a follower of Adams), a Gramsci (not a follower of Mussolini), a
Taoist ( not a Confucian), and an Anarchist (not a Fascist).
----Wei (and wu wei)
"Notre revolution , etait dans la tete des penseurs lontemps avant 1789
comme Minerve dans la cerveau de Jupiter" ---Anacharsis Cloots
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