Tim,
    First, thanks for changing the "subject" title.
    I suggest that you read Surette's book which I assume does not differ
much from the essay. Then see if you can understand what the author means by
the "occult".
    Yes, please read for yourself- "Modernism also exploited the apparent
immateriality of quantum physics and the apparent irrationality of
relativity theory." - Surette p.285
    It's amazing that he does not claim that with modernism (occultism) the
skull can no longer contain the airy fabric of the brain itself.
    "Authority comes from right reason." Don't you  hear occultists often
throw that one at you?
   Now back to the seance!

Charles

----------
>From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Pound and the Occult (was Re: Cantgo ergo possum physic)
>Date: Tue, Jan 28, 2003, 7:50 AM
>

> Haven't read Leon Surette's essay yet and don't know if you're correct in
> this assessment ... but perhaps you're taking "occult" to mean something
> narrower than he intended, as Tom White recently mistook your use of the
> term "pagan" as a pejorative?  Occult need not refer only to secrecy; the
> word can refer also to the supernatural or simply to mysterious phenomena
> that seem to have no ready scientific explanation.  "I stood still and was
> a tree amid the wood/Knowing the truth of things unseen before."  "The
> sudden beat of wings..."
> Tim Romano
>
> At 01:38 AM 1/28/03 -0500, charles moyer wrote:
>>Rick,
>>    I submit that neither Pound nor Weston were writing with any occult
>>purpose in mind. If occult implies something secret why would anyone write
>>in order to explain it? This accusation which is the theme of Surette's "The
>>Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and the Occult"
>>smacks of the type of pejorative one would expect of Christian witch hunters
>>although it is never explicitly stated. In whatever way the term "occult"
>>seems to be reduced to definition it always seems to come up meaning nothing
>>but "non-Christian".
>>     It is so easy to get an En Lin Wei or a Stoner James to buy into this so
>>their confusion becomes less painful that there must be some truth in what
>>Eliot said to Pound in 1945, "Ez, you are NOT good at explaining to the
>>simple-minded."
>>
>>Charles
>>     "...they say 'judge not', but they send to Hell everything that stands
>>in their way." -Nietzsche
>>
>>----------
>> >From: Richard Seddon <[log in to unmask]>
>> >To: [log in to unmask]
>> >Subject: Re: Cantgo ergo possum physic
>> >Date: Mon, Jan 27, 2003, 8:47 PM
>> >
>>
>> > Charles
>> >
>> > My reference to the Anglican clergyman was in reply to a question
>> concerning
>> > Eliot and the English concept of  "Parish".  I had earlier suggested that
>> > the idea of "Parish" had much to do with Eliot's conversion.  I was
>> asked to
>> > enlarge upon the concept of "Parish".  I admitted to ignorance but offered
>> > to provide reference to an expert.  The English "Parish" is a very
>> > appropriate subject for an Anglican Priest.  It had nothing to do with
>> > Weston or even directly with Eliot's Christianity.
>> >
>> > We must not be reading the same Weston.  I find that virtually her whole
>> > argument is concerned with finding and showing the Pagan origin of the
>> Grail
>> > legend.  Weston would have been the first to acknowledge Christian
>> > borrowings from the Grail legend.  Her point was that the actual origins
>> > were not in Christian mystery but in Pagan mystery.  You chose to excerpt a
>> > few occult passages which only serves to demonstrate the large amount
>> > occultism which is present in her writings.  I do not think that your
>> > excerptions challenge my reading of Weston intentions in any way.
>> >
>> > I suggest "The Waste Land and Jessie Weston: A Reassessment" by Leon
>> Surette
>> > (Twentieth Century Literature volume 34 number 2, page 223)
>> >
>> > Rick Seddon
>> > McIntosh, NM