Michael,
I can only say that the "honesty" approach to art, i.e., that the artist,
by being sincere, is on the highway to producing an effective work of
art (coherent, etc.), is a common fantasy of the non-artist about the
creative process.  Many of my creative-writing students, for example,
in attempting a work of fiction, insist on hewing "with integrity" to
"exactly the way things happened."  Pound's integrity, of course,
was not to the raw materials of experience but to the overriding
moralistic themes (usury, etc.) that gave "coherence" to his selection
and arrangement of those raw materials (of history, myth, etc.).
In this sense, you are right when you say, "In practice, don't writers
try to forge relations between integrity and coherence all the time,
a kind of on-going give and take between the two?"
==Dan




At 08:34 PM 12/20/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Dan:
>
>
>"I would say that the two concepts, integrity and coherence, are entirely
>disparate."
>
>I'm not so sure. Certainly they aren't necessarily linked. However:
>
>When writing with "integrity", and faced with problems of "coherence", how
>does
>one deal with it?
>
>One can say, "I accept the lack of coherence because it is honest", and I
>think
>this is sometimes (but not necessarily) appropriate.
>
>But one can also say, "I can sort this out only by a leap of integrity.
>Coherence will come if I work with honesty through this which I don't know.".
>
>In practice, don't writers try to forge relations between integrity and
>coherence all the time, a kind of on-going give and take between the two?
>
>Isn't one's early attraction to Pound partly due to the desire to watch that
>effort played out over the first half of this century?
>
>
>Michael

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