I think you do go straight to the heart of the matter with this question, and I do think Pound reconciles his pragmatism with his 'goddess' tendency in identifiable if changing ways in the cantos, on his way to paradise. I guess I am looking at those points or modes of reconciliation. 
  And of the two then, Avicenna is more a Dante type, while Averroes, condemned somewhere along the line by everyone, seems more in line with a Pound, as before him, a Cavalcanti. 
  
  I swear, there are enough people talking about Pound and Islam here that we should be able to put together a panel session offering three worthy perspectives. If so, can some shoot me or Burt Hatlen or Alec Marsh a title and an abstract for ALA, so that we can make a case for this general topic? We need titles, leastways, by 20 January, as I understand it. Thanks in general, Charles, and thanks in particular for offering a clarifying question about Pound. .
   As for dualism, dualist religions, philosophies, life approaches, et cetera--aven't these often worked their separate ways--such as the Eleusianian Mysteries--understood one way by the true believers, and another by the politicians and group leaders who saw something operating behind the spectacle rather than simply in it?  Averroes has a great quote regarding the multiple layers of reality or perception/understanding of reality operating among people, but as it is, I have to install a light fixture and get to the gym before the Washington Redskins take the field. 
   So please, all of you out there in cyberspace, consider offering a paper on Pound and Islam at ALA. I can do something. Are there two others out there willing to do so? Robert K

 
The person of excellence understands what is moral. 
The petty person understands what is profitable.
                   "Analects" IV.16, Confucius
 
Robert E. Kibler, Ph.D.
English and Humanities
Director, Northern Plains Writing Project
229 Hartnett Hall West
Minot State University
500 University Avenue West
Minot, North Dakota 58701
telephone: 701 858 3876
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
fax: 701 858 3894


-----Original Message-----
From: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Charles Moyer
Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2006 5:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Pound panel(s) at the ALA?

Bob,
    I think that going straight to the heart of the matter is to ask how our
poet reconciles his Confucian pragmatism with his goddess tendency. Or to
put it differently would he have made more of Manitou (Canto LXXIX) had he
remained in his own country?
"Faun's flesh is not to us Nor the saint's vision"...."Subjectively."
    As to Avicenna and Averoes my understanding is that the former had the
Koran memorized at the age of ten and could have hardly denied the
immortality of the soul while the latter was declared a heretic by the
Mahound clergy and his books burned even though he maintained there could be
a double truth i.e. a proposition could be theologically true while
philosophically false. Evidently the book burners were not impressed. And
apparently neither Avicenna nor Averroes have qualified as the Madhi. Some
thousand years later that Scholasticism could have an effect on such diverse
individuals as Ezra Pound and Jacques Maritain must give us pause on the
contemplation of the evolution of such duality or if it really means much at
all to the great mass of "believers" who are still engaged in jubilantly
eliminating one another and hastening their immortal souls on to their
respective Paradises.

Manitou, please keep them from fighting in my corn field.

Charles


> From: Robert Kibler <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 10:45:21 -0600
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Pound panel(s) at the ALA?
> 
> I do wonder if you are not thinking of the Averroist idea that individual
> humanity is only incidental to G or H, thus making personal immortality
> impossible--a notion anathema to Aquinas and the Christian world. I don't
> think that this was Avicenna's position--but I am pretty much skipping him in
> my readings for the time being.
> 
> Maybe on this list, if there is no great rush to "Pound and Islam" as a panel
> discussion (and there yet may be such an interest) a "Pound and Cavalcanti"
> session might draw, thereby getting Islam indirectly into the discussion?
> 
>  
> The person of excellence understands what is moral.
> The petty person understands what is profitable.
>                    "Analects" IV.16, Confucius
>  
> Robert E. Kibler, Ph.D.
> English and Humanities
> Director, Northern Plains Writing Project
> 229 Hartnett Hall West
> Minot State University
> 500 University Avenue West
> Minot, North Dakota 58701
> telephone: 701 858 3876
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> fax: 701 858 3894
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Charles Moyer
> Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 6:16 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Pound panel(s) at the ALA?
> 
> Important distinction - with Pound it is not so much "in and out of the
> mind of God and artist" as granted in the mind of the big "G" God of the
> Averroist borrowing the blueprint of heathen Aristotle but with tradition
> and gods and goddesses (devils) in an expanded history and geography beyond
> the understanding of the religiously constricted by petrified ideology. Thus
> Pound places Avicenna and Averroe among those of his culture heroes in "a
> conspiracy of intelligence" which "outlasted the hash of the political map."
> (KULCHUR p.263)
> Another important distinction which should be noted concerned the big
> "G" whose "only excuse is that he doesn't exist" except when one is claiming
> another's land or ass, of course, is that Avicenna believed very
> Aristotelian that cause and effect are simultaneous and therefore big "G"
> and the world are co-eternal; that big "G" created intelligence and the
> soul, and these emanate from his realm and reach the mortal earth by large
> chains; that intelligence is maintained by "G", and (here's the kicker)
> though that is innately eternal, its multiple extensions are not dependent
> on Him (big "H"), for "H" is not concerned with matter. Unfortunately
> Avicenna's main work, PHILOSOPHIA ORIENTALIS, in which he may have clarified
> his rationalizations for big "G" further is lost, probably the last copy was
> used to light the fire that burned Michael Servitus or kicked out from under
> the feet of the hanging Mansur ibn al-Hallaj.
> Just a note of further clarification by the master himself from his
> essay ON THE DEGREES OF HONESTY IN VARIOUS OCCIDENTAL RELIGIONS;
> "Were we in a meeting I should rise to express my doubts as to the
> spiritual value of the KORAN in relation to the philosophy of the Arab
> philosophers, with Avicenna at the apex. I see almost no spiritual elevation
> in the OLD TESTAMENT, and the TALMUD, if one is to judge by current
> quotations, is not an ethical volume at all but a species of gangster's
> handbook." As I said useful in stealing another's lands.
> Just remember this when the Q.&A. in Cal-i-forn-nia turns to the
> contemporary "Islamofascism". But certainly someone can get something
> anti-semitic out of it. Some of them innocent folks always show up at a
> Pound pounding. Sorry I won't make it.
> 
> Charlie
> 
> "anon leet fle a fart, As greet as it had been a thonder-dent"
> 
>> From: Robert Kibler <[log in to unmask]>
>> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>> <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 07:31:10 -0600
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Pound panel(s) at the ALA?
>> 
>> More specifically, the Averroist translation of and interpretation of
>> Aristotle's "De Anima" corresponds in a general way to how Pound's combinant
>> metaphysics and aesthetics operate--as a process, a forma mentis, a
>> Ling--moving in and out of discernible form and reality, and likewise, in and
>> out of the mind of both God and artist, thereby changing the character of
>> created art, perceived reality, and the overall quality of mind possessed by
>> both.  As seen in the Cantos.