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From: "charles moyer" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "uwo.onemeg" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Cantgo ergo possum physic
Date: Wed, Jan 29, 2003, 10:35 PM


Mr.Surette,

    I have read your book entirely. I just do not agree with you.
    Notice your post came to me not the list, but it seems to be addressing
the list.

Charles

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>From: "uwo.onemeg" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: "charles moyer" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Cantgo ergo possum physic
>Date: Wed, Jan 29, 2003, 7:34 PM
>

>  Charles Moyer wrote:
> "I submit that neither Pound nor Weston were writing with any occult
> purpose in mind. If occult implies something secret why would anyone write
> in order to explain it? This accusation which is the theme of Surette's "The
> Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and the Occult"
> smacks of the type of pejorative one would expect of Christian witch hunters
> although it is never explicitly stated. In whatever way the term "occult"
> seems to be reduced to definition it always seems to come up meaning nothing
> but "non-Christian"."
>
>     I haven't been reading the Pound list postings for some time, but I
> notice that Rick Sedden has brought me into a discussion about Pound and the
> Occult.
>     I am puzzled by Charles Moyer's "submission." Are we to understand that
> whatever he submits must be accepted as true? On what does he base his
> submission? I can assure you that his submission cannot be supported. I have
> published a book demonstrating the contrary, and incidentally explain the
> apparent conundrum of speaking the unspeakable as well.
>     It is clear that he has not read the book of mine to which he refers,
> since I make no accusations in that study. There are no crimes or
> misdemeanours at issue, so far as I am aware -- save, of course,
> anti-Semitism and perhaps treason, and I discuss neither in BofM, though I
> do discuss the former in a subsequent book.
>     I should draw to the list's attention that the passage about relativity
> and quantum physics from BofM cited in several posts alludes to its
> "apparent" irrationality. Occultists exploited that feature to justify their
> own genuine mooniness -- just as current deconstructors use the undeniable
> difficulty of those branches of twentieth century physics to justify the
> obscurity of their own pronouncements. In both cases, of course, the
> parallel is unjustified. That it is unjustified, however, does not discredit
> references to the practice. A mention of murder or pederasty does entail
> endorsement of those crimes, as some of the posts appear to assume.
>     Finally I cannot determine what the antecedent of "it" is in the second
> last sentence of Moyer's remark. That is unfortunate since I have been
> accused of being guilty of "it" -- whatever it is.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Leon Surette
> Department of English
> The University of Western Ontario
> London, Ont.
> N6A 3K7
>
>