Bill  Wagner wrote:
 
>Mark....
>
>"Elite" & "elitist" are words that carry many different meanings to many
>different people, ranging from respect to contempt.  "Snobbery" is clearly
>pejorative.   It was not my intention to denigrate anyone who loves poetry
>and poets, obscure or famous.  The same goes for anyone who devotes his or
>her life to scholarship, teaching, or education. It was not my intention to
>disparage anyone who reads, enjoys, studies or discusses any subject no
>matter how esoteric or obscure.
 
I appreciate your libertarian attitude. In return, I grant you the same right
to read, enjoy, study or discuss any subject that turns you on. Ain't
civilization  grand?
>
>But we are talking about EP here, a poet who chose to be a puppet lapdog for
>a Fascist dictator
 
Well, that's one way of stating the case. Pound preferred to describe the
broadcasts as personal propaganda in defense of the US Constitution.
I have considered that they might better be described as personal propaganda
in defense of Article I, Section 8.5 of said Constitution. Later on, EP
explained the broadcasts in yet another way [Paris Review] "Maybe I
was nutz." All three of these judgements give one an idea to chew on.
Your judgement just suggests the rejection of ideas in favor of cliches,
and extremely tired cliches at that. "Lapdog" sounds like the Daily
Worker c 1948 but "puppet lapdog" sounds like Joyce doing a parody
of that kind of "journalism"....
 
 in part because the president of the United States didn't
>drop the concerns of state to hear his (EP's) grandiose political rantings.
 
 
In what sense do EP's ideas constitute "grandiose political rantings"
as compared to the ideas of FDR himself, or Bernard Shaw,
or  Ronald Reagan, or my sainted aunt, or the galoot
leaning against the lamp-post? I  don't want to be mean-spirited, but
if you tried to cut down on the cliches -- say, one per
paragraph -- your prose might sound less sodden.
 
>The fact that he picked up a castle in the bargain might also be interpreted
>as elitist, might it not?
 
I thought EP's daughter picked up the castle. Are you implying that Mary
married Boris just for the castle? How do you know this? Do you read
minds perchance? And even if she did marry the guy for his castle, how does
this reflect on Ez himself? Are you trying to revive "guilt by association"?
>
>Pound's choice to write in many languages - some of them moribund if not
>deceased - fits into the "elite snobbery" category in my opinion.
 
Well, in my opinion it just shows a passionate search for the
absolutely correct tones, overtones and connatations for each
word in the poem, combined with a heroic
effort at multi-cultural empathy. Unless you really do claim to read minds,
this
matter of opinion must remain.....a matter of opinion.
 
Does Einsteins's choice to write in tensor calculus and Reimannian
geometry[instead of ordinary calculus and Euclidean geometry]
also represent elitism and snobbery in your opinion? Or do you
grant the possibility that the choice of symbols used depends on
the density of the ideas one wishes to communicate?
 
 
Wasn't
>one of Dante's great contributions writing in common language rather than
>Latin, an archaic language (even then) kept alive for ceremony and - dare I
>use the word again - snobbery?
>
>If greatness in poetry is measured by counting the number of obscure
>literary references & linguistic excursions per page, then EP is clearly the
>greatest poet of our times.  A desire to unravel or understand some of those
>mysteries drew me to this list.  But it was always my belief that Pound's
>stature was as much for his theories, editing skills and cultivation of
>other talents as for his poetry.
>
>Pound is also great because his writings challenge readers to look into
>other cultures, other ages, other ideas.
 
And that's why I personally consider him so goddam important. Whatever
his"wrecks
and errors" he did more than any 20th Century artist to create [rather
than merely to preach] the multi-cultural perspective we will all need
if we live into the 21st  Century.....
 
 
This leads to many areas where most
>people will not have the time to go.  That's where a small group of devotees
>can illuminate the darker corners for those who lack the time or temperament
>for serious study.  That group could be considered elite with no pejorative
>implication to the word.  Members of this list fall into that category.
>
>But it seemed to me that there was considerable "snobbery" in the response
>to See's article.
 
I won't comment on See's article, since I haven't read it, but I certainly
didn't sense any "snobbery" in the comments here. I thought what I
read here was indignation at sloppy and inaccurate journalism......
 
Oh well, that's why we have horse racing.
 
mark
 
 
 
 
 
 
[log in to unmask]
 
 
That is precisely what common sense is for, to be jarred into uncommon
sense.  One of the chief services whcih mathematics has  rendered the
human race in the past century is to put "common sense" where it
belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dust cannister labeled
"discarded nonsense."
        Eric  Temple   Bell, Mathematics: Queen of the Sciences
 
 
Las die Lasagne weiter fliegen!
 
~