Re Pound and Jewish mysticism:
I'm new to this forum and I find it interesting because the coffee shops I
frequent do not welcome a serious discussion of Poundstuff.
 
It's possible that Gill's remarks on Pound's (anti)Semitism are supported
by a neat structure based on the latter's first footnote and last book.
However, to accept these at face value, one has to ignore EP's statements
like "All the Jew part of the Bible is black evil" (Paige 1982, 345) and
(far more important) the implicit assumptions on which the edifice of the
Cantos is founded.  The pagan mode of perception (which converts everything
into "graven" images) is instrumental in the Cantos and this, as I
understand it, is incompatible with the Jewish way of looking at the world,
in which Imagisme is forbidden.  That is, when you perceive Judaism as the
faith of Abraham, Moses and David, you won't be able to reconcile it with
the idolatrous (Aphrodite-Kuanon-Bacchus-Muss.) way the Cantos apprehend
the cosmos.  The Talmud, it is quite possible, (I don't know) dilutes the
rigor of the Torah.
 
Incidentally, I've just completed a dissertation on the Cantos, which
argues that Pound's anti-Semitic thinking can be traced back to his
"imagistic" phase during which his poetics was sketched.  For a reader of
Pound who started as an admirer, such "findings" are rather unsettling.  I
face an enigma now, when I am seduced by the beauty of a line such as "The
enormous tragedy . . . . "  In my present (Indian) milieu, it is difficult
to forget that such beauty is compatible with the discourse of a similar
(dominant/ruling) ideological Imagisme that threatens political and
religious liberty.
I am eager to discuss the matter with those who hold different views.
 
Mohandas C. Bhaskaran
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