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. 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.

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.  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.

Tim Romano


En Lin Wei wrote:

> Tim Romano asks about the phrase "seeking an exit."
>
> I think Pound is trying to accomplish here what Schiller described as
> creating the aesthetic moment which foreshadows a future utopia.  We move
> from the political act of extending empire, to the "stratosphere" to a
state
> of mind, which nonetheless has a political dimension "the imperial calm,"
> and we end in contemplation of the divine mind, NOUS.
>
> The difference between Pound and Schiller in this instance, is that
Pound's
> utopia, as is frequently the case, requires acts of imperialistic conquest
> and the slaughter of "barbarians" to be achieved. He often expresses
> approval of such acts performed in the past and the present.
>