>I wonder whether anyone can help me find the source of a reference to a
>passage in Pound.  I am an editor on the Collected Works of Northrop Frye
>project (out of McMaster University and the University of Toronto).  We
>have come upon a reference to Pound in one of Frye's late sermons ("On
>Lent," dated 8 April 1988).  Frye is talking there about the ancient,
>pre-Christian dependence of human societies on agriculture and their
>anxiety "for the burial of seed in the ground."  Frye writes:  "Ezra Pound
>remarks that there seem to be two kinds of people:  the people who think
>that sexual and other forms of licence are good for the crops and those
>who think they are bad for the crops."
>        Frye is notorious for paraphrasing other writers, as he seems to
>have done here.  If anyone has an idea of where this comes from in Pound,
>or what Frye might be paraphrasing, I'd very much appreciate hearing from
>you.
>
>Yours,
>
>Jeffery Donaldson
>McMaster University
>Hamilton, Canada
 
The passage I believe occurs in the Introduction to Pound's
MAKE IT NEW. Paraphasing from memory, not quoting, I think
EP wrote "By now Frazer is well enough digested for most
readers to know that opposing systems of morality go back
to those who thought copulation was good for the crops
and those who thought copulation was bad for the crops."
I think he also called the latter group "the scarcity
economists of pre-history."
 
mark the tris
 
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"Peace comes of communication."-- Ezra Pound
"Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech
or of the press..." -- Anon
"To live well is to live with adequate information"-- Norbert Weiner