I recommend Pound all the time to my young customers who want to learn
about poetry. I supply the appropriate caveats. I can't address all of
En Lin Wei's tendentious replies. I'll only say they are both wrong AND
tendentious. He is a great academic nit picker and should find a home in
the rarified nit picking world of the academy. For my own part, he has
supplied me with quite a supply of sugar coated nits and I am stuffed.
Its late. Its Sunday. And I've just pulled another 10 hour shift. I am
perfectly willing to let En Lin Wei go his/her way of academic discourse
as I go mine--the way that's actually concerned with Pound's poetry.
Carlo Parcelli     En Lin Wei wrote:
>
> (continued from previous post)
>
> I must thank Carrol Cox for putting into words my exact feeling about Pound,
> vis-a-vis students and friends.  I cannot in good conscience recommend that
> others read Pound.  In fact, I often warn others away from it.  Why? Before
> recommending Pound,  I would recommend a student or a friend to read the
> Iliad, the Odyssey, all the works of all the Greek playwrights.  I would
> recommend to a friend that they read the Mahabharata (a work which Pound
> would NOT recommmend), the Ramayana, the Tao Te Ching, the Damma pada, or
> Chuang Tze, before I would recommend Pound.
>
> Darwin, Marx, Hegel, Freud, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Melville, Twain, Eliot's
> Four Quartets, and many others deserve more attention.  The list goes on and
> on.  If you have read all the Western and Eastern classics, of Philosophy
> and Literature, then I might recommend Pound.  This is NOT a telling remark
> about me. about Carrol Cox, or about Pound.  I would not condemn anyone who
> would put Pound at the top of the list of "books to recommend."  This is
> mostly a matter of taste, is it not?
>
> >Are we to assume from this that young people of today are incapable, over a
> >life
> >of reading, to differentiate between Pound the fascist and Pound the poet?
>
> Not at all.  There just may be better things to recommend.  You can
> recommend whatever author you wish.
>
> >Or is he afraid that by recommending Pound's poetry to young people, that
> >they will somehow see him as someone who endorses the objectionable aspects
> >of Pound's work?
>
> Speaking for myself, unless a person has certain interests, and particular
> propensities, there is no reason to recommend Pound.  Now, if one is
> dedicated to understanding 20th century poetry written in the English
> language, Pound should perhaps be recommended, and studied carefully.  But
> that does not apply to all people.
>
> >anyone who engages Pound must, early on, come to terms with
> >Pound's ugliness.  it is only after a great struggle that one can come to
> >an
> >honest appraisal of the work itself, and see the beauty and those elements
> >of
> >truth that inform it.  struggling with the worst of Pound is the only way
> >to
> >see the best of Pound, a process that one can only hope will eventually
> >inform the understanding of En Lin Wei.
>
> I am glad you hope my understanding will go through a process during which I
> will eventually "see a light", so to speak.  I genuinely think you have my
> interest at heart when you make such a statement.  But you may misunderstand
> me, my purposes, my background, my inclinations---my soul, if you
> will---when you say such things.
>
> Perhaps you should be more careful about making a sweeping judgment about
> "my understanding".
>
> Would it not be more fruitful to discuss the issue at hand, rather than to
> denounce my alleged lack of understanding?  Would it not be better to
> discuss evidence regarding the interpretation of Pound, than to denounce my
> supposed participation in and membership in a "cadre"?
>
> >I have found this process to be
> >personally rewarding, and I see no reason why one should deny it to young
> >people of today, particularly because of the current social/political
> >conditions.
> >
>
> I must agree with you here.  Why study Pound?  Perhaps because of the
> current social and political conditions.  I can sympathize with this
> statement.
>
> However, the question remains:  Which aspects of the current social and
> political conditions?  And although Pound put his finger on some of the
> crucial questions which many others ignored, are we to see his approach, his
> intellectual strivings, his mental efforts, his musings, his rants, his
> imaginative flights as parts of the solution, or as artistic
> crystallizations of the problem?
>
> Can anyone offer evidence to show that the Cantos is NOT an imperialistic
> epic?  Is there anything in his writings to show that he questioned, rather
> than advocated, the notion of a new fascist empire ruled by a superior race,
> as a solution to humankind's woes?
>
> And another question, which I asked before, but has not been addressed by
> those who accuse me of blindly attacking Pound.  If the Cantos is a fascist,
> or an imperialist epic---and if it is, as many argue, the most sustained and
> successful attempt at composing a 20th century epic  (I would accept this
> latter point as a premise--- then what are the implications for American
> culture?   Why is America's greatest epic poem, to date, an authoritarian
> epic poem (and not a democratic one)?
>
> Allow me conclude by commenting on Carl's observations.
>
> >.Gancie/C.Parcelli" wrote:
> >
> > > I agree with much of what En Lin Wei says in this post, but only because
> > > he does not speak to the issue. The only reason he can deliver such
> > > posts is because he accepts Pound's conflation of Confucious/ Mencius,
> > > Mussolini, National Socialism, ancient imperial regimes of many stripes
> > > as being the standard for fascism.
>
> Pound himself constructs this "conflation."  I can give you literally scores
> of examples, pehaps hundreds.
>
> >>Then, taking Pound's indiosyncratic
> > > formulations, in a feat of (a)mazing intellectual gymnastics and
> > > personal bile, he portions out Pound's version of these varied elements
> > > as those most descriptive to their historical nature. He/she proceeds
> > > with no sense of irony or understanding of how other people hear such
> > > things.
>
> Show me the irony.  Please.  Take a quote, if you will, where he equates
> Hitlerism with Confucianism, or where he equates Mussolini's fascism with
> the Chinese imperial state, and point out what you believe are the
> indications that Pound was being "ironic."  And if he is being "ironic", in
> what sense?
>
> Yes, Pound was capable of irony, of course. But when he conflates
> Confucianism and fascism, is he being ironic in this sense:  "Oh its all a
> big joke.  I really don't think Confucianism and fascism have anything in
> common.  I really just think Confucius is a great moral philosopher, and
> that fascism is altogether different.  I am just pulling the wool over your
> eyes, and I don't really believe in Mussolini anyway."  Of course this is
> caricature of irony.  But what exactly do YOU mean with regard to the
> particulars of Pound's political and social views prior to his imprisonment?
>
> > > This is also because, according to En Lin Wei "We have to distinguish
> > > between different types of imperialism here." But all the "distinctions"
> > > En Lin Wen recognizes are set by Pound. So Pound's notions of Fascism
> > > fit into Pound's notions of fascism.
>
> Are you denying that Pound is tautological in his advocacy of fascism?  What
> do YOU have to say about it?  Take a quote and analyze it, or explain your
> understanding of it.
>
> >>When En Lin Wei introduces
> > > historical buttresses for his argument, he/she is utterly blind to how
> > > tendentious and bullshit a fit his criticism is to Pound's poetry.
> > >
>
> Well, of course it is tendentious.  That does not mean it is incorrect.
>
> Of course the argument uses "historical butresses".  What arguments about
> Pound do not, since Pound's work is "a poem which contains history"?
>
> Doubtless you have a view of history as well.  I am interested to see what
> it is.  I will look at the web site
>
> wedelsol.com/FLASHPOINT
>
> and find out.
>
> But you must have a view not only of history, but also a view of Pound's
> interpretation of history.  You are familiar with some of the historical
> events of the Han and Qin dynasties.  What do you make of Pound's
> interpretation of these events?
>
> > > As for my criticism of the Han Dynasty. It is involved with my critique
> > > of the epistemology of science and involves the standardization of
> > > weights and measures under the Ch'in. My poem which contains much of
> > > this material is unpublished. However, a more recent refinement of the
> > > ideas without recourse to the Han or Ch'in, is available at
> > > wedelsol.com/FLASHPOINT. It is called Deconstructing the Demiurge: Tale
> > > of the Tribe and unlike some recent Poundian scholarship does not rely
> > > on canards.
>
> If by "canard" you mean a false or unfounded story, I am afraid neither you
> nor I can absolutely guarantee that our accounts of history do not "rely on
> canards."  Every account of history is, don't you agree, partially unfounded
> and partially false, since it cannot contain the entire truth.  My
> epistemology is mostly Hegelian (or Hegelio-Marxian, though not in the
> Frankfurt or pessimistic sense), so I see even this conversation as a
> movement toward more clarified Concepts.  As the conversation proceeds,
> dialectically opposed views uncover the limitations inherent in different
> provisional truths.   Your reaction to my arguments about Pound are perhaps
> no more or less valid-- in themselves--than the views I propose.  They may
> participate in the process which leads toward edification (on both of our
> parts).
>
> Regards,
>
> Wei
>
> (For those interested:  Wei is a surname; the given names En Lin or Enlin is
> a male name.  En and Lin, are, incidentally two Chinese written characters
> which appear in the Cantos.  En means "compassion or mercy."  Lin represents
> two trees, and means "forest.")
>
> PS  I would like to say something on the Chinese trade question (PNTR), the
> labor movement, the AFL-CIO, etc.  I will have to save it for a future post.
>
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