I think we agree on this point. By "simple" I meant something like
"unmitigated" and by "exploitation" I meant something like the rounding up
and enslavement of aboriginal populations to make rubber.  Pound is making a
distinction between that sort of one-sided taking and the spreading of
civilization.
Tim Romano


----- Original Message -----
From: "Carrol Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2000 9:25 PM
Subject: Re: Seeking an exit . . . [an exit towards . .
.?]----Pound'sImperialist Utopia


> Tim Romano wrote:
>
> > How, then, do you interpret the line in its first appearance in the
poem?
> > It's used twice. The poem juxtaposes  two (very different?) imperialist
> > acts:
> >
> > IN THE NAME OF GOD THE MOST GLORIOUS MR. D'ARCY
> > is permitted for 50 years to dig up the subsoil of Persia
> >
> > ...
> >
> > PLEASING TO CARTHEGINIANS: HANNO
> > that he ply beyond pillars of Herakles
> > 60 ships of armada to lay out Phoenician cities
> >
> > The first seems to be simple exploitation of natural resource.
>
> No -- the race for Persian oil was one of the sources of World War
> I. A very modern kind of imperialism was involved. There's almost
> a full column of references to Iran in the Index to Lenin's *Collected
> Works*.
>
> > The latter
> > seems to be a founding, a spreading of civilization. To lump them
together
> > seems to overlook the distinction Pound was trying to make.
>
> But the distinction (if there is one) could not be made without first
lumping
> them together. And at least off hand the repeated line would seem to
> join rather than separate the two explorations. I've never checked, but
> I would think it probable that Zaretsky would have been involved in
> Persian oil -- and I presume Morgan and Zaretsky are the "same" in
> Pound's demonology.
>
>
> >
> > Carrol Cox's "imperial clutter" might be applied to the "seignieurial
> > splendours" (read vain trappings ) of the first example of
> > empire("haberdashery, clocks, ormoulu, brocatelli, tapestries,
unreadable
> > volumes bound in tree-calf, half-morocco, morocco, tooled edges, green
> > ribbons, flaps, farthingales fichus, cuties, shorties, pinkies et
> > etera")  ---but desire to escape that clutter of vanities is not a
> > satisfactory explanation of the force of the line  "Out of which things
> > seeking an exit" the second time it is used in the canto.
>
> Perhaps it is my merely personal response, but it seems to me Canto 40
> in many ways echoes Canto 29. Both do end with a thrust out beyond
> the towers of Hercules, and the "And lest it pass with the day's news /
> Thrown out with the daily paper" has, for me, a similar "feel" to "Out of
> which things seeking an exit." In both cantos there are various kinds of
> clutter (not all of it negatively judged) climaxing with a burst into a
> cleanly cut "beyond":
>
>             Went on into darkness,
>             Saw naught above but close dark,
>             Weight of ice on the fuselage
>             Borne into the tempest, black cloud wrapping their wings . . .
>                                 (Canto 29, 139)
> Could it be that with all his venom against clutter Pound also
> (and in this he would have been correct) saw it as an essential
> part of "civilization" but a part from which one had to periodically
> "escape"? He does, after all, always return to the clutter,
> and in Canto 41 it is the "Boss's" focus on creativity ("but what will
> you / DO with that money?") that cuts through the clutter of the
> Morgans et al.
>
>
> > And the first use
> > of the line makes me question your interpretation that it refers to an
> > "aesthetic moment". "Exit" is too negative in its connotations, I think,
for
> > it to convey such a meaning.
>
> I don't know about the "aesthetic moment," but how is "Exit" negative
> in its connotations? It is one of the most common images of the poem
> it seems to me. It comes back repeatedly until the very end:
>
>                 Flaccus' translator wore the crown
>                 The jew and the buggar dragged it down:
>                 Devil in dung-cart" Gondemar
>                 And Raleigh's head on King James' platter"
> "That the dead will not fawn to advance themselves"
>                                             1621, December eleventh.
> So that Dante's view is quite natural:
>                 this light
>                             as a river,
>                 in Kung; in Ocellus, Coke, Agassiz
>                                 [rei], the flowing
>                                 this persistent awareness
>                                         (Canto 107, 782)
>
> It is even there, parodied and with a sneer, in
>
> She held that a sonnet was a sonnet
> And ought never to be destroyed,
> And had taken a number of courses
> And continued with hopes of degrees and
> Ended in a Baptist learnery
>             Somewhere near the Rio Grande.
>                         (Canto 28, 135-6)
>
> Again a merely personal reaction: these seem to me among
> the most poignant lines in the poem.
>
> Carrol Cox
>
> >
> >
> > Tim Romano
> >
> > En Lin Wei wrote:
> >
> > > Tim Romano asks about the phrase "seeking an exit."
>
> [snip]
>
>