Tim:

Your question cannot be answered without a clear understanding of what you
mean by Occult and what Surette means.  Surette spends almost 100 pages of
the book in a general academic discussion of the Occult.  If you believe
that Occult is simply dancing around a fire in fancy robes while intoning
mysterious formulas or conducting séances then Pound was not an Occultist
though Yeats probably was.  If you think that the Occult is a belief in
secret history/tradition/ritual then "The Birth of Modernism" will show that
Pound was an Occultist.

The purpose of "The Birth of Modernism" is to examine and discuss the
evidence for Occult ideas and tendencies in the work of the Modernists.

After stating that his book is not Post-Modernism or New Historical or a
neo-Marxist analyses Surette says; Page 6: "The rationale of this study is
much closer to the old method of the history of ideas.  My hope is to
identify both the nature and the provenance of a set of ideas, attitudes,
and concerns that are ubiquitous in modernism and are particularly strong in
William Butler Yeats, in his protégé, Ezra Pound, and, to a much lesser
extent, in Pound's sometime protégé, T.S. Eliot."

I am not trying to avoid the direct intent of your question.  In pursuit of
his aims Surette has an entire chapter on "The Cantos" and another chapter
on Pound's editing of "The Waste Land".

However, the only fair answer to your question is for you to examine the
book yourself.  It is available in most academic libraries and a fairly
inexpensive, about $20.00, paperback edition.  The book is extremely dense.
It is not a particularly easy read though it will fascinate and is very
intellectually rewarding.  I found myself only able to read 10 pages or so
before having to shift subjects for awhile.  The mind needs time to process
the mass of information that Surette provides.  Bring your pencil to your
reading.  You will like some parts and not others.

Rick Seddon
McIntosh, NM


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Romano" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: Canto ergo possum physic


> What works of Pound are cited in Birth of Modernism as evidence that he
was
> an "occultist"?
>
> Tim Romano
>