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.
>