The Ugliness in Pound's Poetry:  A Matter of Style or Ideological Content?

Permit me to compliment Donald Wellman on the issues he raises regarding the
rather complex relationship between the beauty and ugliness of Pound's
poetry, in relation to its content and form.  I think Mr. Wellman raises
some extremely important points, and offers encouragement to those of us who
hope that the general tone of our discussion can be placed a more elevated
plane, freed from some of our older recriminations.  I greatly appreciate
his perspective, his mode of analysis, and his determination to concentrate
on what appears to be a very subtle and difficult issue.



D Wellman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

<<Subject: Re: "Something all too beautifully real . . . " delayed response

<<I wrote this a couple of days ago in response to some questions that Wei
raised about a post of mine:

<<What EP does quite unlike anyone before or since is the art of putting
the act of the mind into words. I rephrase here 40 volumes of aesthetic
criticism i suppose, the cue is "direct perception of form" --something
he learned from artists like Gaudier-Brzeska (as EP tells it).>>


The "direct perception of form" is of course easier with sculpture and
painting than in the verbal arts; and I would even venture to say that the
direct perception of form is easier (or at least, more immediate) with
regards to music than it is with poetry.  Would you agree?  I think the
issue is going to prove relevant to our conclusions regarding Pound.

<<So when Wei writes: "[So the "ugliness" comes in part from the content,
and the ideas expressed, I take it.  May the same be said of the
beauty?  I ask this in anticipation of another question, which I ask
below]," I can only respond, "No, the beauty does not come from the
sunset but from the perception of form. EP requires a different
distinction between content and form than is normal for literary
analysis. To remind us of that I chose my second quote concerning an
"ant." When the mind swings by a grass-blade / an ant's forefoot shall
save you / the clover leaf smells and tastes as its flower" (LXXXIII
553). Here is direct perception, that is all, beautifully all, because
of its power to transport the mind. Everything that most readers will
need in terms of content is here. Volumes have been written on the
relation of 'is' and 'as' of metaphor and concretion.

I would similarly argue that the ugliness of the Cantos is an ugliness
of language rather than polemics (not that the polemics themselves
aren't ugly too).>>

This is, I think, an EXTREMELY important distinction.  I agree with you.  If
you will permit me a musical analogy.  There are certain "dissonances" in
twentieth century music (in Prokofiev, Bartok, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and
Ives) which are deliberately contrived to shock, or in the better cases,
which are woven into works, interspersed so as to produce sensations of
(previously) inconceivable dramatic and emotional tension which can be (but
just as often is NOT) relieved, or followed by passage of lyrical, or almost
romantic beauty.  In Prokofiev (and sometimes in Russian literature, Gogol,
for instance), this dissonance can be called "grotesque" as he denominated
it; yet it is beautiful, in a paradoxical sort of way.  It is a unique
aesthetic sensation (one finds it in Prokofiev's "The Buffoon,"  "Pas
d'Acier," the "Scythian Suite", even in "Romeo and Juliet", and in most of
the symphonies; one also finds it in Stravinksy's "Rite of Spring" though
there it is harsh without being humorous, barbaric, without any apparent
sensible civilized veneer).  My question stemming from these observations
is, do you think this is what is happening in much of Pound's poetry?  He
embraces what could sometimes be termed "ugliness" because he sees it as
necessary to his larger aesthetic, which he knows to be beautiful.  (In
theology, God is sometimes said to allow the existence of evil, because with
it, and the freedom which permits the individual to commit evil, comes a
greater good.  In great art, does not the artist allow ugliness to creep in,
so as to produce, overall, something which in its totality will be more
beautiful than it otherwise would have been)?


<<I suppose I could justify what I have just said with
some post-structural bon mots. Still it seems eveident that an an ugly
polemical cast of mind made him incapable of editing or constructing the
ugliness of his text with aesthetic feeling.>>

An interesting observation indeed.  But could it be that Pound's "ugly
polemics" are for him essential, just as "dissonances" are necessary to
modern composers, such as Prokofiev and Bartok.  In some cases, such as the
first movement of his second symphony, dissonance is the very quintessence
of the project.  If Pound is an artist first, and if his polemics are seen
as a portion of his art, then did he perhaps seek out what was ugliest in
ideology, and ugliest in philosophy; in  the same way that Prokofiev sought
out was ugliest in harmony (namely, extreme polytonality, the use of utterly
unrelated keys, and the employment of such intervals as the diminished
seventh?)


<<I might also agree that is some overarching way Confuscianism and
fascism are layers of a palimpsestic entity that EP uniquely perceived
and found to be beautiful, although Wei finds it ugly.>>

What I find ugly are the ideas themselves, not necessarily the form they are
placed in.

<<Therefore, in my
last post I raised the question, here rephrased, does this percpetion on
EP's part have any world historical signifigance? I think not. If it
did, EP's historical position as the Vergil of Fascism would be well
established.>>

A point well worth considering.  But was there ever any possiblity of there
ever arising a "Vergil of Fasicsm"?  Is it the case that Pound is not the
Vergil of Fascism, simply because the history of literature, and of Western
Civilization, cannot allow such a figure to exist?  OR to put the question
another way, is a "Vergil of Fascism" impossible because Fascism itself is
so ridiculously fraught with contradictions, so hopelessly at odds with the
basic ethos of civilization, or so antithetical to any meaningful attempt to
reconstruct society--- that the existence of such a figure amounts to almost
a sheer LOGICAL impossibility?

You have probably heard Karl Marx's saying, history repeats itself, first as
tragedy then as farce.  If the collapse of the Roman Empire was Western
civilization's greatest tragedy, then the most energetic effort to
reconstruct Rome---Mussolini's effort-- was its greatest farce.  By
implication, Vergil (and Gibbon) give us tragedy; while Pound
(inadvertantly, perhaps) gives us farce.


(continued)



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