>From: Dirk Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>    <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Mr. Davis Once More
>Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 17:34:31 -0800
>
>Mr. Davis:
>
>You say: "Never have I encountered so many questions begged, so
>many assertions substituted for proof, so many denials supplied instead of
>demonstration."
>
>Hmmmmm.
>
>Within your original message: "The Cantos is "responsible" for the other
>unreadable long
>poems of the Modernist era--like Olson's Maximus or Merrill's The Changing
>Light at Sandover."
>
>Was this meant as a paradigm for your later (in time) statement?  You did
>not prove that Maximus or Sandover is unreadable.  I found Maximus readable
>in high-school and Sandover readable a couple of years ago.  You have not
>only made an assertion into a proof, you have done so in such an oblique
>way
>that it can't be untangled into more than air. Then you attacked other
>people for not giving this air a full analysis with proofs and
>demonstrations.
>
>Would you also assert, without proof, that, since the Cantos were
>"responsible" for their own greatest achievements, Olson and Merrill found
>the Cantos to be unreadable?
>
>My goodness!
>
>I prefer to refer to them , i.e., the Cantos, as plural description (there
>are how many Cantos?) rather than as a singular title - yet this does not
>lead to your reductio of either "one thing or a miscellany"/ "great epic
>poem of the 20th century or a complete mess ".  In fact, this
>black-and-white way of thinking you employ toward poetry will merely lead
>you into binary structures that shrink to infinity without arriving at
>anything; cf Zeno. (By the way, you don't think that Zeno's Paradox is a
>mooring on the Adriatic, do you?).  You may have missed your calling as a
>computer BIOS programmer, the realm of the pure binary.
>
>My goodness!
>
>Do your really expect to be given complete analyses by those responding to
>your suggestions when you have either failed or refused to give complete
>analyses yourself?  Refer back to your original missive: "... the Cantos is
>a failure according to any critical measure we wish to use."
>
>In light of your animadversions concerning the quality of the responses to
>this statement by some of the esteemed members of this list (of whom I am
>not one, that is, esteemed or OneHavingResponded), one must conclude that
>you were merely jesting.  Surely a jest employing such broad-ranging
>generalities doesn't require a lengthy and detailed response from critics
>whose published work on the subject is readily available. (I don't know
>whether or not you've read, e.g., Mr. Pearlman's Barb of Time or not, but
>if
>you wish to engage him, you might at least give the man some respect by
>countering assertions he has made there or elsewhere rather than expecting
>him to give detailed responses to vague assertions you put forth as fact.)
>
>You proffer as evidence of this failure (that is, Pound's, not Pearlman's)
>something slightly more specific: "...a small army of scholars has gained
>tenure by annotating its [the Cantos] lines, and that enterprise has taken
>fifty years."
>
>Is this the same charge you level at the Iliad to prove that it's a
>failure?
>Virtually every word of the Iliad was annotated by Hellenistic times - by
>the time of Plato it had already been worked over more than the Cantos
>have.
>By your reckoning, the Iliad must have been (must be) even more obscure
>than
>the Cantos - people STILL get tenure annotating it -- and it's been nearly
>3,000 years since it came to be!
>
>My goodness!  Could this not be a result of people finding the poem
>fascinating?
>
>And William Blake?  (My goodness, that wasn't a sentence, was it?) Can you
>read him (Blake, that is)?  Since you seem to insist that a long poem be
>digestible by some kind of rationalistic system before it can be deemed
>readable, I suppose that you would find his e.g., i.e. Blake's, Milton
>impossible to read, er, ah.... unreadable.  In this you are in the company
>of virtually every critic (with the exception of Swinburne, and even he
>found them difficult) before the 20th Century. But I find Blake's Milton
>charming and entertaining as well as very clear and - My goodness! -
>coherent.  Look under the microscope too long and you may not be able to
>identify anything at all (that was a joke for fans of Swinburne's
>criticism).
>
>Do you insist that art follow criticism?  Shall we condemn Shakespeare for
>having humor in his tragedies?  Must a 20th Century poet conform to "unity,
>wholeness, and variety"?  Come to think of it, you haven't proven that the
>Cantos don't fit these criteria which linger in the background of all of
>your remarks.  In fact, you seem most put out by the variety of the Cantos.
>The gist of your position seems to be: "Since there is too much variety in
>the Cantos, there can't be unity or wholeness [coherence, I am not a
>demigod, I can not make it cohere]."  But since, due to the teeming variety
>of the Cantos, you find them unreadable, why would you even care if they
>did
>match the other two criteria?  Would being supplied with a proof of their
>unity and/or wholeness make them readable to you?
>
>And is it that, when you sought to apply the criticism of Horace (perhaps
>unconsciously and in varied terminology), you forgot the third term
>(variety) while asserting "... the Cantos is a failure according to any
>critical measure we wish to use."?
>
>And.... Self-sufficient work of art? Before attacking the Cantos for not
>being one, please give me an example of a poem that IS a "self-sufficient
>work of art".  Does that mean it doesn't need to be read?  Or does it mean
>that it has no direct ties to or dependencies on the culture in which it
>arises?  Really, I'd be thrilled to encounter one of these "self-sufficient
>work of art".  They must really be something! Is that sort of like a....
>like an...  um, er....  I admit it.  I'm at a loss.  I can't think of a
>single referent in the universe that is "self-sufficient".  Wow!!
>Self-sufficient art!!!! These must be great works indeed!!  Please let me
>know what they are so I can encounter them!!!
>
>My goodness!  Can a self-sufficient work of art actually BE encountered?
>
>Regards,
>
>Dirk Johnson
>Assistant Vice President
>Kelling, Northcross & Nobriga
>A Division of Zions First National Bank


It is one thing to accuse Mr Pound of anti-Semitism ...
another to accuse him of treason ...
but to blame him for Olson --
well, that, ladies and gentlemen,
is going too far

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