Joe:
 
The legal definition of "treason" is not simply taking up arms against
one's country, or advocating that others do it.  Providing aid & comfort
are the key concepts... and, from my reading of the broadcasts,
one could argue this was exactly what Pound was providing, through
his attack on Roosevelt and "his jews"... The notion that Pound was,
indeed, guilty of "giving aid and comfort" - was no doubt shared by some
of his closest friends, else why were they so keen to have him
plead insanity?
 
But there is a moral principle at work here which I feel is much
more serious than the legal one...  Pound's public and poetic utterances
against the Jews, his wholesale hatred - if we are to believe what he said
and not what he meant - calls not only his work but his whole life into
question... Can the work of an artist - an unquestionably great poet -
be separated from that poet's life? Pound would say - and did say - it
could. And, simple-mindedly, the answer is "yes, of course"... But in the
case of the holocaust - in the case of a poet of Pound's genius and
stature not speaking out, not caring; in fact, at times, seemingly
applauding
the extermination - doesn't this mitigate against his art. Indeed, doesn't
it bankrupt it for all honest and good men and women who believe in beauty
and truth above all things? Doesn't it make a mockery of his efforts to
champion those civilisations which evinced a balance of heart and mind?
 
This is one of the central questions I raise in my play, without
beating the audience over the head with it. I present a sympathetic Pound,
a Pound I lived in close proximity to for more than four years of my life...
And next to this genius, this pacifist, this understander of Cathars, I
placed
the old hater, the glib anti-Semite, the village explainer... And I ask:
 
                   Is the beauty immune to the ugliness?
 
Or does the ugliness - must the ugliness - ultimately corrupt and canker
the finer abstractions?
 
I have for some time waivered between thinking it does, and thinking it
doesn't...  Yes, our system - as it is - upholds the principle of free
speech...
our democracy... i say "ours" as if it belongs to us - what a joke!
There is no freedom of anything, let alone speech, so long as one upholds
any kind of tyranny...
 
Perhaps there is a kind of weird variation on Godel's proof going on in all
of this... namely, freedom of speech can never be a reality until it is free
enough to provide the proof of its own unreality.  Pound would've admitted
to yelling FIRE!!!  I have no doubt... he would've also argued the theatre
was in flames!
 
Stoneking
 
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Joe Brennan <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, September 04, 1999 4:58 PM
Subject: Re: Pound's castle
 
 
> In a message dated 9/4/99 4:35:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask]
> writes:
>
> << Does this extend as far as crying "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre?
>
>  Stoneking >>
>
>
> I don't think that what Pound did was the same as crying "FIRE!" -- and
I'm
> not sure what this contributes to the conversation.  you wrote earlier
that
> you "would like to see (and hear) some debate on this issue" -- and so
would
> I.  so if you could demonstrate some level of equivalence vis a vis your
> example of FIRE! with what Pound actually said, I'd be interested in
seeing
> and hearing what that is.
>
> jb...
>