You're right to point out that Pound is not a pacifist and that he
distinguishes between what is worth fighting for and what is not; Pound
does indeed praise Sigismundo for his valor in arms and for the respect and
love he wins from the men in his command. Yet the poet is not
"intoxicated"  by warfare and does not glorify it as a way of life. The
soldiers are "poor devils dying of cold" and Sigismundo is depicted as a
bold and honest man who fights to *defend* values under attack from the
conniving, slippery (their rhetoric is "bear-greased"), deceitful,
slanderous "papishes" who are jealous of their own power and always greedy
for more.
Tim Romano

At 11:04 PM 1/13/03 -0500, bob scheetz wrote:
>Tim,
>      Is the complaint in Mauberley against war?  or,  this war?  waged by
>this "tawdry," "old bitch"(Victorian-Edwardian) regnum?  there's a genuine
>pathos/reverence for the myriad "daring", fortitude", "frankness as never
>before", who went out, died, or returned, "disillusioned as never before",
>no?
>      And in contrast to vapid victorian whiggery, in the Cantos, is there
>any other character, tableau, theme,... can match the presence of the image
>of the warlord Sigismundo, the great-souled warrior hero, and Rimini?  and
>don't we see here pound's ideal polis/regnum?  and in Il Duce, the return?
>Isn't it the old wagnerian/nietzschean intoxication?
>
>
>bob
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Monday, January 13, 2003 8:48 AM
>Subject: Re: Emerson- Pound
>
>
> > An interesting post, bob.  Could you describe what you mean by 'the
> > military ethos' and say why you think Pound found it irresistible?   Are
> > there places in his work where Pound reveals himself to be drawn to the
> > military ethos? How would you assimilate into this view poems from the WWI
> > period, such as Hugh Selwyn Mauberley iv. "These fought in any case..."
>and
> > v. "There died a myriad..."? Did Pound's anti-war attitudes undergo a
> > sea-change in the 1920s and '30s?
> > Tim Romano
> >
> > At 10:59 PM 1/12/03 -0500, bob scheetz wrote:
> > >  And presumably, since the latter's [populism's] reactionism harked back
> > > principally to military ethos, Pound was irresistably drawn.