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Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
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Mon, 31 Jul 2000 08:30:18 -0400
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Charlie,

I've changed the subject header to reflect a shift of topic.

You wrote:

>  ... I think there is a muse lurking behind the best in
> poets.

That is often true.

> Here is where Pound and Graves do meet on common ground [...]

Yes.

> Pound helped to make the
> atmosphere more congenial for the anima to manifest itself and find the
> voices of poetic genius. Jung did her no harm.

Agreed again.

>     That said, I find it more difficult to agree with you on your analysis
> of Jung's statement which I provided to illustrate the reaction of the
> animus to the darker manifestations of the anima, those aspects which
erupt
> as the result of being pent up deep within the psyche.
>     You say that Jung was misguided in two ways. First, he was mistaking
> "the archetypal experience for an "abyss of impassioned dissolution"
rather
> than "a Kind of crystalline transfiguration, an achievement of new form
and
> definition; an emergence from flux." I understand what you mean, but I
> believe you are confusing the results with the cause, and Jung was
> delineating the cause of the Dionysian chaos  coming from an abyssmal
> source, a primordial chthonic urquell of Erde. No doubt that after an
> upsurge from this well of the eternal return and the waters subside the
> resulting consequences are the clear metamorphosis of a cathartic,
> transfigured, and newly defined form.


If I can extend your metaphor .... what I am saying is that the
transfiguration is sudden and immediate, and does not have to wait while the
"waters subside".  It is the very opposite of Jung's "dissolution".   Though
I do want to place great emphasis on the abruptness and immediacy of the
transfiguration,  certainly there is benefit to be obtained from
contemplating the experience in retrospect, as you imply. This process is
precisely what is delineated in PERSONAE: the immediate metamorphic
experience, followed by a period of contemplation and reassessment in which
Pound encounters and re-encounters the archetypal truth depicted in art.


>     Your second objection to Jung's characterization that war and its
> attendant iniquities are rationally planned and not "an eruption of raw
> irrational violence" needs a closer examination. For one thing you mention
> the holocaust and imply that the rest of your analysis is based on events
of
> WWII. I must remind you to note that Jung's statement was written in 1935,
> and while it is a general assessment of an "orgy of bloodshed" by which
> Jung must of course mean war, it is not about events which had not yet
> happened.

> I can not agree with you that Jung makes a
> leap from "blood lust" to "mechanized warfare". He never makes that leap
but
> merely states that there are certain rationalizations "well-meaning
people"
> use to explain why all the madness is once again loosed upon their world.

> All of these "reasons" Jung implies are inadequate. Once in war, yes, the
> generals and politicians apply all the rational animus they can muster to
> their cause, and truth we know becomes the first casualty. But I think you
> may have read too much into Jung's statement. As I see it Jung is saying
> that the animus by itself cannot subdue the anima entirely and must be
swept
> along with the collective flow of its force. I do not offer this as a
> rationalization for cruelty and murder nor I think would Jung, but it may
> serve to help us understand why these things happen.Jung calls the people
> "well-meaning". This is the tragedy that like Pound we loose our center
> sometimes "fighting the world".

I accept your objection here with respect to timing, but  I understood Jung
to be referring to the fact that nations were being put on a war-footing.
(In Germany, this war-footing included the planned genocide against the Jews
which, though it hadn't taken place yet, was in the making.) Jung's
explanation of eruptive human violence, including the violence of war, in
terms of the animal force of the human psyche, does not address the issue of
how a country maybe be deliberately put on a war-footing. To envision a
nation (whose material production not merely its mentality is moving
inexorably towards war) as a collective dionysian UNCONTROLLABLE animality
only serves to obscure the fact that the nation is being PUT on its war
footing and that its citizens are being CONTROLLED like puppets or automata.
I made the same criticism of Wei with respect to his anthropomorphizing of
power; he referred to the political phenomenon of empire-building as a
"drive" to empire, as if it were a kind of libidinous force.  Explanations
of nationalistic or imperialistic aggression in terms of human aggression
are well-meaning but off-the-mark, IMO.

Tim Romano

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