Tim,
I am glad to go with you on this:
                                                    >Pound's Cantos bring
together
> these two courses: his art makes absolute statements using exempla of the
> 'proportionally good' action. The important idea here is _proportional_.
> Thus, when one encounters among Pound's exemplars individuals who have
taken
> drastic action, a fair question to ask is, What did Pound see as the
> proportional badness, historical or contemporary, that might have
warranted
> such extreme measures? The wartime broadcasts and his other prose works
shed
> light on the badness of these times, as Pound perceived it, and, in turn,
> illuminate the _proportional_ goodness of the exemplars whose actions are
> exalted in the Cantos.

But I don't go with you on this:
                    > For that reason, I would assert that his broadcasts
> and prose writings are integral to an understanding of the exemplars in
the
> Cantos.
The evidence of this list, and of the great bulk of criticism of Pound,
shows that if you start from the broadcasts and prose writings you never get
beyond them.  They are no more "integral" to an understanding of  The Cantos
than the dictionary is integral to an understanding of *King Lear*.  Useful,
necessary, but outside and separate from the poem.  If you don't read the
poem as determining its own making you just won't get it, as we mostly
don't.

David Moody

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "A. David Moody" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, June 30, 2000 1:55 PM
> Subject: art/action
>
>
> > Tim Romano,
> >
> > You moved the discussion on a step (beyond 'Censorship & Social
> Darwinism')
> > by observing that 'Pound was both an idea-into-action and an
> > action-into-idea artist'.   Yes, but we need a distinction here:  the
> poet's
> > business is to make his poem,  and it is the poem which goes into
action.
> > (One could say: the poet's job is to create the 'idea', and it is the
> 'idea'
> > which goes into action--but 'idea' is easily mistaken to mean its mere
> > abstract, so I prefer to say it is his making which goes into action.)
It
> > acts, necessarily, in and upon the minds of its readers;  its results,
> > naturally, will be slow to show up and must change perceptions before
they
> > can affect public policy.  But when the poet would go into action
> directly,
> > as Pound did in his prose propaganda, he is not acting as poet.  And he
> can
> > act contrary to his poetry, as Pound did in the worst of his Rome radio
> > broadcasts.  That is, he can unmake his own making.  One man in opposite
> > modes.  Yet the same motivation behind both.  It is a good puzzle to
> bemuse
> > the fixities and definites by which Pound is too readily judged.
> >
> > There is a note among Pound's papers in the Yale Beinecke Pound Archive
in
> > which he makes the distinction between 'the two sane courses worth
> > attention'  'for a thinking man not a scientist':  'Art which is search
> for
> > an absolute statement, just as absolute as .... a conclusion of Euclid';
> > and 'action, say political or economic action .... the goodness or
badness
> > lying in proportion to what is possible in particular given conditions'.
> > [Taken from "Ezra Pound and Europe", ed. Richard Taylor and Claus
> Melchior,
> > (Rodopi, 1993) p.89]
> >
> > This doesn't in the least question your fully warranted statement that
> Pound
> > was an 'engaged' poet.  His own phrase for it was 'volitional', having a
> > clear aim.  The poem has its aim, its politics and all, but its way of
> going
> > into action is not that of political activism.
> >
> > And let's repeat, what several contributors have been maintaining, the
> > politics of the poetry are one thing, and Pound's prose propaganda is
> > something else.   To confuse the one with the other serves obfuscation,
> not
> > the better understanding of either.
> >
> > Many thanks for your contributions to the list.
> >
> > David Moody
> >
> >
>