Marie-Noelle,
    Some brief answers and comments-

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>From: Marie-Noelle Little <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: bloody violence... or yet another possibility
>Date: Sat, Mar 8, 2003, 8:00 PM
>

> Charles,
>
> Do you mean that because of "these trying times", we may lose our temper
> on this list?
    Yes, on the list a bit, but a bit of posturing also, axes to grind, etc.
here.  However, I have seen an edgy temperament and an awful uneasiness
almost everywhere I turn these days. Even Diogenes would be rolling his jar
about now.
>
> And when you say "there are always those 'outsiders' whose vision may be
> painful but also enlightening", do you limit yourself to history or do
> you also include the list?

    Oh no, not just history although I am still enchanted by Pound's belief
that the artist are the antennae of the race. But it takes more than just
the intellectual effort to truly understand the etranger. You must be him to
know him. You must like Van Gogh have the villagers jeer at you and call out
"fou roue". You must feel that whip Emerson referred to when he said, "For
nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure." That brings us to
St. Elizabeths.
>
> Perhaps my mistake was to address two different issues, without really
> elaborating.
> I first thought that if we were all "at St. Elizabeth", we would be more
> tolerant with each other.
> (There are certain rituals in some "crazy" circles, almost like a
> politeness.)
    One only has to observe the decorum of the U.S. Senate or House of
Representatives to confirm this. But the internet is conversation among the
faceless. There is a new freedom here which makes some uneasy. None of the
tricks like censorship, screening, qualification, intimidation, etc. work.
It's the crazy circle of all crazy circles. It's a fist fight in a railroad
car but with no bloody noses.
>
> Then, I went on wondering about Pound and other great poets and artists,
> and about their genius or "madness".   I asked myself [and the list]:
> when does one come to the conclusion that someone is "insane", "crazy"?
> I should have used the word "mad", which is much better in this case, if
> one thinks of Pound before he was ever arrested, and when he was also
> mad at his own country!
    How many anger young men and women have seen Pound as a guru? Would
there ever have been a beat generation, a generation perdue? Didn't they cut
their teeth on existential writers? But what have they ever meant to
Amerika's vast Babbittland? I mentioned before Colin Wilson's "The
Outsider", a book he wrote when he was only 24, but remarkably well-read for
one who was not formally educated which probably accounts for his reading
the works of outsiders. Its about Kafka, Camus, Eliot, Hemingway, Hesse,
Lawrence (D.H. and T.E.), Van Gogh, Nijinsky, Shaw, Blake, Nietzsche,
Dostoyevski, Fox, Yeats, and more. Why Pound is not in it I have no idea and
would like to ask Wilson why he isn't. But I can't even find out about
Pound's cats. Although I did see a bunch of the race of Hemingway's cats in
Key West.
>
> I wasn't thinking of Rimbaud.  I don't see him as "original", but I had
> not read the great passage you quoted.  (It is interesting that to say
> that someone is "different" in English, is not as polite as the French
> "original".)
    It sounds to me that the French expression implies a greater degree of
latitude for the possibility of value.
>
> I hope that the "tone" of my comments isn't perceived as too sarcastic,
> especially when saying that the list is "tout un poème", which is a
> compliment!
    Again Rimbaud if I may,
    "Les passions mortes des chevaliers errants
        Mais que salubre est le vent!"
>
> One night, not too long ago, I was awakened by what sounded like bombs
> and machine guns. I really thought the war had started!  Hamilton
> College, nearby, was only having a winter festival with fireworks. . .
> I thought, then, that many of us would feel differently about the war,
> if we knew that it could happen in our backyard.
    Bullets make the strangest little buzzing sound when they fly by you,
but it's the ones you never hear that are the worst ones.
>
> "Au revoir ici, n'importe ou. Conscrits du bon vouloir, nous aurons la
> philosophie feroce"
>
> Marie-Noëlle
Bon voyage,
Charles