M. Romano, M. Weilder and all interested parties,


M. Romano's comment on my line of inquiry, what he called the 'serious use of multiple real languages',  hit the nail right on the head. Apart from a few psycho- and socio- linguists, few have taken the stylistics and politics of multilingual texts 'seriously'. The best books on the subject I have found have been 'The Poet's Tongues', 'Macaronic Sermons', an Italian book on the Carmina Burana, and one on Gadda. If anyone knows of any others that are worth looking at, I'd be grateful. I would also like to thank M. Romano for getting the 'gist' of what I was trying, but obviously failing, to get at.

However, in response to M. Romano's comment on my broad use of the word 'utterance': if you can explain to me how either a treaty put forth by a State, corporate or not, a billboard, or rock'n'roll lyrics were put together without an emodied subject producing them, I'd be grateful. I guess you would be one of those scientists who refused to believe that the whole universe is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, or in today's weltenshaung, neutrinos. Pound's idea of 'virtu' seems appropriate here somehow.

I was happy to read M. Wilder's questions/comments; at quite a few instances I was reading my own thoughts, in an Emersonian kind of way.

In response:

My intentions are indeed utopian; to quote JFK: 'Some to look to the past and ask 'why?' I look to the future and ask 'why not?'' Academia after post-structuralism needs a little idealism, I think; do you think otherwise?

As for macaronics providing an produce "extra stability," as I said before, i am working on the semiotics. All I know is that the Saussurian tradition has been pretty much fruitless for me; Pierce has offered some insights. I find I'm having to go back to Augustine and Maimonides for leaps and bounds. I'll be spending most of my summer on this, so I'll get back to you.

The concepts of 'open' or 'closed' texts are, I think, artificial, stale and restrictive; all texts are bound by the material in which they are held, and offer quasi-limitless interpretations, ok, ok, let's move on now. How can we think outside this dichotomy? Eternal recurrence? Maslow's pyramid? Game theory? Time for some creativity, I think.

You missed the gist of what I was saying when you wrote 'race, class, and national situation determine much more directly which languages will be most often understood and written, and by whom.' Race, class, and national situations are, first and foremost, language-systems themselves, and thus always already caught in the double bind of determining and being determined by language(s); the 'lines' between races, classes, genders and all the other popular (i.e. facile) topics for cultural critique are first and foremost 'linguistic' (i.e. semiotic) lines that are constantly being crossed and re-crossed. My questions are: How does this crossing take place? What are its effects? Are the beneficial to life in the universe, and if so, how can they be harnessed? All the good old liberal humanist crap, without the liberal humanists shite.

You were, however, right when you wrote 'polyglot context could [not] guarantee stability, because in many cases such hybridity reveals
the instabilities left in place by historical upheaval.' What I am saying is that, if we believe theorists of the past thirty years, conflict-whether linguistic or social- is pretty much inevitable. What I see polyglossia doing is stabilizing this conflict both in terms of quantity and quality. Following Jefferson and Pound, I think a little conflict does the body politic good. If we could understand how languages work together-in-conflict in poetry, maybe we can figure out how 'historical upheaval[s]' can be used mroe fruitfully (see the Malatesta Cantos).

Finally, Pound's legislators have been of the unacknowledged sort, I'm afraid. But think of it: All the teachers who have been touched by Pound are teaching other students how to write and read poetry: dissemination at its finest.

Green eggs and ham,

tony.










-----Original Message-----

> Date: Sat May 03 15:52:47 PDT 2003
> From: Jonathan Weidler <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: In Defense of Macaronism
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Mr. Adolf -
>
> I suspect that your theory about polyglossic writing is
> well-intentioned, but I worry that it's utopian, and I have some
> questions about it.
>
> You say multilingual texts (macaronics or what-you-will) produce "extra
> stability". Honestly, after some thought I have to come to an opposite
> conclusion.  From one angle I can see why you would say so, but from
> another, I remember how destabilizing the polyglot Cantos are for me as
> a reader, and how the "meaning" of the poems escapes me even more
> quickly when I'm reading words that are often entirely alien, but
> continue reading nonetheless.  Theoretically, I could overcome this
> deficiency -- and Pound made curricula to encourage people to do so --
> but realistically speaking, I will rely on his annotators much more
> often than I will go to Provencal class.  It's a pity, but it's true.
> Joyce is a different matter, not because he doesn't print ideograms in
> Finnegan's Wake, but because the range of his irony seals his texts
> shut in a way that the texts of the more credulous Pound (or Yeats)
> remain open.  The difference between Pound and Joyce has to do with how
> they pursued the extra-textual implications of their polyglossic
> activity: Pound might have agreed with you more strongly than Joyce
> that "macaronics" could change the world for the better, if only
> applied correctly, but I tend to be suspicious (though appreciative) of
> Pound's worldly beliefs.  Just because he was a good poet does not mean
> he was a good economist or a good statesman.
>
> Speaking of the world, saying that the problem of the 21st century is
> the "language line" seems mistaken to me.  Other "identity" issues like
> race, class, and national situation determine much more directly which
> languages will be most often understood and written, and by whom.  This
> is not to dismiss your point, but is simply to ask that you explain why
> linguistic diversity is such a pressing problem that it will take the
> place of the problems caused by racial difference.  After all, even in
> very polyglot places like India or Indonesia (or Europe), "peace" is
> hardly an automatic implication.  It may occur alongside peace and
> prosperity, or it may occur alongside violent resentment, but it
> doesn't seem that neighboring languages themselves are responsible for
> the difference.  I find it hard to believe that any  polyglot context
> could guarantee stability, because in many cases such hybridity reveals
> the instabilities left in place by historical upheaval.  (I'm thinking
> of Nigerian tribal languages versus English, or the easy absorption of
> Native American words into English.  Writing "Tennessee" or "Milwaukee"
> does not a peace treaty make, and the power of writing in English makes
> it less likely that one would write in Igbo.)  After all, the Rosetta
> Stone's translation did not happen in a vaccuum, but was the
> consequence of Napoleonic "adventures" in Egypt.  History is
> inescapable in this matter, and I think you should address it much more
> directly.
>
> (I would also like to know which "legislative" followers Pound has, and
> whether they are of the acknowledged or unacknowledged variety.  Mr.
> Mauberly Goes to Washington?)
>
> Finally, I'd like to mourn the fall of the Old Man in the Mountain --
> if I were an individual more inclined to myth, I'd say it's a sign.
> see http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2678297
>
> -Jon Weidler
>
> On Wednesday, April 30, 2003, at 08:26  PM, Antony Adolf wrote:
>
> > 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.
> >