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Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine <[log in to unmask]>
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Peter Reavy <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 24 Nov 1999 18:41:48 +0000
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On Wed, 24 Nov 1999 11:03:42 -0500 William Stoneking <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> The interesting thing to me is the synchronicity of ideas at
> diverse places among diverse people... Eisenstein and
> Pound never met, nor, do I believe, did they ever correspond
> or read each other's theories... I would've thought this a fruitful
> area of inquiry for those whose tastes run in the direction of
> maggotry!
 
What do we know about the source of Pound's ideogrammic idea? I would have
guessed that it was only crystallized by him reading Fenollosa, and that
the roots of the idea were central to the symbolism that Pound was coming out
of. The objects being placed side by side in his theory themselves being
symbols of a kind. In contrast, montage suited the Soviets because it fitted
with dialectical thinking. So unless there is common ground between symbolism
and Marx/Hegel, it looks like a coincidence. I admire the film writer David
Thomson, who knocks Eisenstein's writing as dogmatic and instead quotes
Alexandre Astruc, embracing montage as only one element in how a film works.
Under this approach to film criticism, also shared by Manny Farber, it is
crucial to The Big Sleep that Bogart happens to pause for a fraction of a
second while crossing the street. A detail like this, and not the idea of
montage, is what Pound was keen on, if what he admired in a film was its
"enormous correlation of particulars". The same compendious "solid solidity"
(if that was the phrase) that he admired in Flaubert.
 
Peter

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