EPOUND-L Archives

- Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine

EPOUND-L@LISTS.MAINE.EDU

Options: Use Forum View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Tom White <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
- Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 2 Jan 2003 18:26:32 -0600
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (39 lines)
RE landscape representations: I once attempted to characterize the
difference between ZG and LL (L'Amour), and decided principally it involved
the quantity of landscape description. Grey wrote out of a mad love for the
wild and massive beauty of the West (e.g. the aspens on the high mountain
sides shaking gold in the fall; "quakey" the natives call it, and sell it as
firewood by the cord: a cord of quakey, a cord of oak). He wanted readers to
see as he had seen. He wrote before color photography was everywhere, and
before TV, and even (mostly) before color movies. L'Amour instinctively cut
way back on the "poetic" descriptions, and used simple signs that
movie-trained people could interpret without trouble, and then had his
people race about on horseback rescuing damsels and others in distress,
landscape or no. Und so weiter. Tom



> From: James McDougall <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 16:27:49 -0800
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: grey pounds of space
>
> There was an interesting post just made where someone brought up the
> differences in aesthetics between EP and ZG.
>
> Another comparison that can be drawn from this absurd juxtaposition is the
> historical and geographic imaginations both writers devoted their creative
> talents towards. Pounds beautiful rendering of the Tang dynasty Yangzi river
> valley is fei chang fei chang mei li. His poetic recollection of the Anglo
> Saxon narrative also included in Cathay shares that element of the impossible
> place that ZG places his folk. The Western Shangri-La of ZG haunts the
> geographic "West" as does EP's Cantos describing Joseph Rock's Li Jiang, where
> the inspiration for "Lost Horizons'" Shangri-La supposedly came from. It might
> be a complete waste of time, but there might be something to carefully reading
> the landscape representations and how they affect the work as a whole.
>
> Wan Shi Ru Yi
> JMcD

ATOM RSS1 RSS2