Well, Tom, looks like I've come to reply to my own email and as for your
anticipation of participation in investigation of the original question
looks like the same thing happened again which always happens here. Every
time the jar of Pound ointment is opened one of the lurking list flies which
continually circle immediately dive into it and initiate the same reaction
from those who happen to like this brand of poetic unction.
    So let's forget Spengler for the moment, all sit quietly on our mortar
boards currently being used or not, and watch me try again just for the
benefit of all the flies who have missed their ointment opportunity up to
now.
    I went through "Impact", couldn't find a mention of Spengler, but found
the following in hope that it might be relevant to understanding Pound's
attitude toward America, America's own view of itself and how it relates to
the rest of the world, and possibly that it might still have some
significance even for today's ointment flies.
 From "Impact"- p.221

    "The drear horror of American life can be traced to two damnable roots,
or perhaps it is only one root: 1. The loss of all distinction between
public and private affairs. 2. The tendency to mess into other peoples'
affairs before establishing order in one's own affairs, and in one's
thought. To which one might perhaps add the lack in America of any habit of
connecting or correlating any act or thought to any main principle
whatsoever; the ineffable ruddderlessness of that people. The principle of
good is enunciated by Confucius; it consists in establishing order within
oneself. This order or harmony spreads by a sort of contagion without
specific effort. The principle of evil consists in messing into other
peoples'affairs. Against this principle of evil no adequate precaution is
taken by Christianity, Moslemism, Judaism, nor, so far as I know, by any
monotheistic religion."

Can't say this is not consistent with material in "The Cantos", for those
who like to stick to them in discussing Pound, and "The Cantos" are a sort
of journal in sea surge for P's trip through his ocean of time which is a
bit larger than most folks'. Still here in 2002 though. But is he relevant?
Does his message, "his principle of good" = "order in oneself" have any
value? Or should we be lead by another goose on the continued crusade
against the very thing of which we ourselves are guilty - "messing into the
affairs of others"? Those whose affairs you mess in never seem to believe
the reasons given are the real ones. Never can see that it is "for their own
good".
    Was Pound's mistake also America's - That he tried to make a terrestrial
paradise? Will people around the world some day say, "America went crazy"?
Are some saying it now?

Chas

 "Raise no longer an arm against them! Innumerable are they, and it is not
thy lot to be a fly-flap." -Nietzsche's "Zarathustra"


----------
>From: charles moyer <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Roma locuta, causa finite.
>Date: Fri, Dec 27, 2002, 12:39 PM
>

> ----------
>>From: Tom White <[log in to unmask]>
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: Re: Roma locuta, causa finite.
>>Date: Fri, Dec 27, 2002, 9:28 AM
>>
>
>> (I thought I sent this message way back in December but just discovered it
>> unsent in my drafts. Hope it's still pertinent.)
>>
>> My guess, off the top as they say, (and I have just read the essays in
>> Impact) is that Pound wouldn't (couldn't) fault much S. says as description,
>> but the underlying tone of exultation in the advance of the inevitable, in
>> triumphant "Destiny," etc., is the kind of thing he didn't like in S., whom
>> he someplace said wasn't a patch on Frobenius, at least when it came to
>> Germans. The most heartwarming thing about Pound (to me) is that he never
>> accepted anything as "inevitable" while breath lasted, in other words while
>> men of intelligence and good will could be energized to fight for the right.
>> This very much an instant reaction. Will be interested to see what others
>> say. Tom White
>
>     Agreed, Tom, I think you can make a good case that Pound held out hope
> to the very end. Ironically that would make him very American in the best of
> that naive Weltanschauung.
>     No index in my "IMPACT: Essays on Ignorance and the Decline of American
> Cilvilization". Here we go again to the bottom of the murky pond.
>
> Charles
>>
>>
>>
>>> From: charles moyer <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 08:34:05 -0500
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Roma locuta, causa finite.
>>>
>>> Just for the fun of discussion-
>>> Would Pound agree or disagree?
>>> What do you think?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "This is the end of Democracy. If in the world of truths it is proof
>>> that decides all, in that of facts it is success. Success means that one
>>> being triumphs over the others. Life has won through, and the dreams of the
>>> world-improvers have turned out to be but the tools of master-natures. In
>>> the Late Democracy, race bursts forth and either makes ideals its slaves or
>>> throws them scornfully into the pit. It was so, in Egyptian Thebes, in
>>> Rome, in China - but in no other Civilization has the will-to-power
>>> manifested itself in so inexorable a form as in this of ours. The
>>> thought, and consequently the action, of the mass are kept under iron
>>> pressure - for which reason, and for which reason only, men are permitted
>>> to be readers and voters - that is, in a dual slavery - while the parties
>>> become the obedient retinues of a few, and the shadow of coming Caesarism
>>> already touches them. As the English kingship became in the nineteenth
>>> century, so parliaments will become in the twentieth, a solemn and empty
>>> pageantry. As then sceptre and crown, so now peoples' rights are paraded
>>> for the multitude, and all the more punctiliously the less they really
>>> signify - it was for this reason that the cautious Augustus never let pass
>>> an opportunity of emphasizing old and venerated customs of Roman freedom.
>>> But the power is migrating even today, and correspondingly elections are
>>> degenerating for us into the farce that they were in Rome. Money organizes
>>> the process in the interests of those who possess it, and election affairs
>>> become a preconcerted game that is staged as popular self-determination. If
>>> election was originally 'revolution in legitimate forms', it has exhausted
>>> those forms, and what takes place is that mankind "elects" its Destiny
>>> again by the primitive methods of bloody violence when the politics of
>>> money become intolerable." -Spengler (1918) (2002)
>>>
>>> Chas