To begin with, following the train of thought that had brought me to the point of my last email, there is no difference between the Rosetta Stone and a 'cereal box from Quebec': both exhibit the same basic phenomona. I, being from that beautiful place, have witnessed both the destruction and harmony that multilingualism can bring about. It is strange, nevertheless, that as destructive as late capitalism is, its marketing strategies have been the vanguard- other than poetry- in realizing what might be called the 'multilingual necessity' of the coming global age.

Early in the last century, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that the deviding line of the 20th century was to be the color line; I am saying that the dividing line of the 21st century is the language line, and that poets such as Pound might just have laid the groundwork for understand how multilingual symbolic orders- which have their largest logical extension in our social-symbolic order- can be used to create harmony (i.e. poetry) rather than destruction ('To be men not destroyers').

As for peace having 'no meaning except as it relates to those who enjoy it', I find it rediculous that you would think I was suggesting otherwise. What I was suggesting is that the extra stability I hold multilingual texts provide to referent-refered relationships (a theory, I admit, is not yet fully developed- if anyone is interesting in helping develop it, please let me know) can by analogy extended to our sense(s) of humanity, peace, love, vitality etc. And texts can and are considered utterances by most post-Austinian philosophers, a club of which I consider myself a member.

Why Pound's Cantos are an interesting site in which to conduct research in this area is because there is nor only a solely linguistic multilingualism being put before our eyes, but also the modus vivendi that springs forth from it in the form of a socioeconomic system; it is no coincidence that The Cantos open with a speech-act of tranlations of no one less than Homer.

As Homer and the bards were to the Greeks, so Pound and his followers (both poetic and legislative) could be for the coming citizens of the world.

Finally, as to M. Gavin's illuminating history despites its too narrow  definition of 'macaronics', as M. Romano has just pointed out, I can say only this: Rabelais et al., insofar as macaronism is concerned (a term that I have hitherto used to refer to any and all forms of polyglossic poetry), only understood the art insofar as it could be used to subvert a specific genre-centered (i.e. epic) literary ethos; Pound went further than anyone, including Joyce, most because he made use of non-Roman typography, unlike Joyce.

Following Bakhtin's influential discussion of epics and novel, The Cantos can be understood as the first in what has become an epidemic of 'novelistic epics', which have lost the popular appeal that novels once had, precisely because readers for the past 70 years have misunderstood their 'new' genre-specific locutionary and illocutionary force. Only recently have poets and critics started to realize the emmergence of the 'new' hybrid genre, to which macaronic technique is central; one can turn to Anne Carson for example.

As always, I am grateful for the sometimes vigorous discussionon this list, whether as a spectator or participant. The more voices the merrier.

Paix et amour,

tony.