He was a fascist. So one may infer that talking about the Pisan Cantos
or anything else Pound wrote as poetry (an act which has been an
uncommon accident on this list) is at best, sheer sentimentality--since
there is after all more judgment to be heaped upon Pound's already
well-ballasted but not yet fully loaded head.(Yes but he was an
antisemite) Better to talk about how we have talked, are talking or will
someday talk about talking about Pound's work. (Yeah but he was a
fascist and an antisemite, first we need to get that resolved) Or not.
 
Indeed we might engage in a thoroughly reckless discussion of all those
historical allusions in the Pisan Cantos (but it would be irresponsible
of us not to mention that he was a fascist and an antisemite I mean
that's why he was in the cage, right? People on this list need to
understand Pound was a fascist and an antisemite, right? So once we have
somehow established this in a manner never before done since Pisan
Cantos was awarded the Bollingen prize, and perhaps even *moreso* than
that we can talk about the Cantos and all that that other shit he wrote.
But don't forget: Pound was a fascist.And an antisemite.)
 
I have almost daily contact with someone who guarded Pound(the fascist,
the antisemite) while he was in the cage in Pisa. He has shared numerous
anecdotes about that period and about his brief friendship with Pound
(the fascist, the antisemite) and his time as part of the Army provost
in postwar Italy. I asked him if he would be interested in contributing
to the list--he said he wanted to take a look first. His response, after
observing the interaction and overall predominance of subject matter was
simply this:
 
"They sure do love their secondary sources, don't they?"
 
GAVIN
 
 
 
 
Richard Edwards wrote:
>
> "Close textual analysis" is of course what all critics ought to be good at,
> and the insights such analysis yields are what in the end makes literary
> criticism worthwhile. But close textual analysis without more is not and
> never has been enough. Surely Pound's work is an excellent example of why
> that should be the case. The idea of trying to read, say, the Pisan Cantos
> in a state of deliberate ignorance of the life and opinions of their author
> is quite frankly ridiculous. And once you recognise the relevance or
> potential relevance of biographical detail, then it becomes the scholar's
> duty to be accurate, especially where moral judgments are inevitably
> involved. Poetry does on occasions engage the reader's ethical or moral
> faculties and one does not have to be a "moral critic" to recognise that
> Pound's work does this in a particularly challenging way, because of the
> nature of some of the views which he voiced in his writing.
>
> One of the greatest masters of textual analysis was Sir William Empson,
> whose works include not only "Seven Types of Ambiguity", "The Structure of
> Complex Words" and "Some Versions of Pastoral" but also "Using Biography".
> It was he who exploded the notion, peddled by some of the New Critics (with
> whom Empson otherwise had much in common), that the intentions of the author
> are irrelevant to a true understanding of a poem. If that were so, why would
> anyone bother attempting to establish authentic texts?
>
> I wonder what members of this list would have to talk about if discussions
> of Pound's life and opinions were excluded as being contrary to list
> etiquette? I suppose we could swap sensitive appreciations of "In a Station
> in the Metro" (taking care not to mention the fact that Pound once lived in
> Paris)... Is that really what Garrick Davis wants?
>
> Richard Edwards
>