Charlie,
Your description comes pretty close to an accurate capsulized verion, I
think, though it does not address the political facet. And Jung's
association of the dionysian with war obscures some important things.
When Pound says, in that broadcast I referred to, that "it doesn't matter
what the artist thinks he is doing..." [this is from memory; the actual
quotation may be a little different] one may take his words to mean that the
greater importance of an artist's work is to be found not in the artist's
agenda or intent, but in the artist's absorbing and truthfully reflecting
the historical circumstances in which the work was produced. The artist's
work will be of value, he goes on to say, as long as the artist is being
"true to himself" [again, quoting from faulty memory]. Only by being true
to himself (or herself, of course) can the artist transcend self. This
paradoxical statement has cummings's EIMI for its context, and EIMI, in
turn, has for its backdrop the collectivist notion of the artist's "puny
self". [Was it John Taber who gave us that quote?] So Pound is setting
himself against the communistic politico-aesthetic agenda that would
stupidly quash individual expression as decadent narcissism. Pound counters
that only through the artist's being true to personal experience can we
expect to find universality in the artist's work. To thine own self be
true. Of course, these are the words of an artist who knows himself to have
experienced something universal. I would refer you again to The Tree, the
poem with which PERSONAE opens, as the ur-expression in Pound's work of this
universal, archetypal experience.
Jung's characterization of the archetypcal experience is misguided, in two
ways. Frst, rather than being an "abyss of impassioned dissolution" the
archetypal experience is a kind of crystalline transfiguration, an
achievement of new form and definition; an emergence from flux. Isn't this
how we find the experience of metamorphosis depicted in Pound? Second, in
his attempt to associate archetypal experience with the violence of war,
and with events such as the holocaust, Jung obscures the systematic,
orderly, rational nature of the genocide. IT was not an eruption of raw
irrational violence, but very much the opposite. The Jews were not simply
hapless victims, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,
when violence erupted, but a targeted group. I don't mean to imply that the
rationality that characterized the manner in which this genocide was
conducted was "good". Rational does not qual good. Nor do I mean to imply
that the basic human capacity for "dionysian" violence was not taken
advantage of by those whose plan it was to carry out this revolutionary
agenda. What I want to say was this: there was method in this madness,
which removes it from the realm of the dionysian. Also, the theoretical
leap Jung makes from "blood lust" to "mechanized warfare" ignores the fact
of the production of wealth from the production of war. The
military-industrial complex has no soul, and the vast web of capitalist
shareholders are at a great psychological remove from the effects of their
investments.
> "Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human
> distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche -
a
> blissful and terrible experience. Humanity, huddling behind the walls of
its
> culture, believes it has escaped this experience, until it succeeds in
> letting loose another orgy of bloodshed. All well-meaning people are
amazed
> when this happens and blame high finance, the armaments industry, the
Jews,
> or the Freemasons."
I suppose it would be fairer to Jung to say that his interest lies in the
pscyhological factors that cause individual men and women to participate in
atrocites, rather than in the psychological factors that enable men and
women to invest their money in munitions stocks.
Tim Romano
> On the subject of Pound's animus-anima analysis, I would understand
that
> what you characterize as the "passive antennae" is his anima or any poet's
> anima, i.e. his deeply collective unconscious which gathers the "live
> tradition" from all sources of or, moreover, is all sources of
"sagetrieb",
> paideuma, etc. This is the quality which poets as sages (antenae) of the
> race (human) allow to flow perhaps more freely than others through
> themselves and out as Cavalcanti saw love doing. Pound understood the
> artist's urge in this respect.
> His animus, on the other hand, is manifested in the conscious will,
and
> this was all too human, a "power directed by the will" as you put it. In
> regard to this side of his nature he was not guided as he was by the anima
> but suffered as Schiller put it as one who has "zwei Seele in den Brust".
> In 1935 Jung wrote the following which describes the conscious
reaction
> of the animus to what he called the Dionysian effect on the primordial
> psyche. If he is correct it may explain Pound's "all too human" animus
> reacting in a quite predictable fashion with forces beyond its
comprehension
> or control. Jung writes;
> "Dionysus is the abyss of impassioned dissolution, where all human
> distinctions are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche -
a
> blissful and terrible experience. Humanity, huddling behind the walls of
its
> culture, believes it has escaped this experience, until it succeeds in
> letting loose another orgy of bloodshed. All well-meaning people are
amazed
> when this happens and blame high finance, the armaments industry, the
Jews,
> or the Freemasons."
> To my reference concerning Blunt in my previous posting, I should have
> added the following from Terrell, p.454;
> "Blunt: Wilfred Scawen B., 1840-1922, poet, diplomat, politician,
world
> traveler, and defender of home rule for India, Egypt, and even Ireland,
for
> which he became the first Englishman to go to prison. In the London years,
> Pound thought highly of Blunt and sent some of his poetry to Harriet
Monroe,
> saying, "the Blunt stuff, glory of the name etc. ought to build up our
> position...' [L,34]. On Jan. 18, 1914, a committe of poets including
Yeats,
> Masefield, Pound, and several others 'presented to Wilfred Scawen Blunt'
in
> token of homage' a reliquary carved ... by the brilliant young sculptor,
> Gaudier-Brezka...' So Pound wrote in "Poetry" [vol.3,no.4., March 1914,
> 220-223]." This should clear up any mystery on Blunt if there was any.
> As a final observation on the class question which once manifested
> itself openly and clearly drew its lines in the sand, nowadays it seems to
> have resolved into the question of advertizing and selling to the greatest
> portion of the population possible while maintaining the proper set of
> "do's" and "don't's" in order to remain as innocuous as possible. This of
> course takes money and lots of it to pay the drama coaches and spin
doctors
> so the "liars in public places" don't get caught with their pants down or
> their flies unzipped. But "liars" may be too strong a word for lying
implies
> that one knows something in the first place. "A tawdry cheapness shall
> outlast our days" wrote Pound, and it did outlast his days. Furthermore
it
> remains to be seen if it outlasts ours, and maybe this is the only whimper
> we will hear with no bang ever coming. No one will pull Pentheus down from
> his tree again.
>
> CDM
>
>
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