--- [log in to unmask] wrote:
> very well put. to deal with Pound in the context of
> his time, and not by
> projecting the present time into the past, is to see
> him for the human being
> he was. this dimension has been sorely missing in
> many of the "treatments"
> of Pound that have peppered the list lately.
>
> joe...
>
> In a message dated 06/28/2000 6:50:47 PM Eastern
> Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> <<
> Tim Romano wrote:
>
> >
> > To demonize Pound by linking him to the harsh
> political acts/sins against
> > mankind/atrocities/draconian measures (however
> one wishes to characterize
> > them) of the leaders, ancient and modern, whom
> Pound chooses to exalt for
> > some quality or qualities they possessed, gives
> the false impression that
> > Pound was not a product of his times; it suggests
> that his views were so
> > exterme that he was on the fringes. But these
> views were common, almost
> > "mainstream." The record of these times has been
> distorted and purged.
>
> This whole post is of extreme interest, but I wish
> only to expand on a couple
> of points. To put this paragraph another way, in
> order to conceal the tracks
> of racism and authoritarianism in u.s. imperialism
> it is necessary to
> demonize
> Pound and others and (as Tim notes below) actually
> conceal the existence
> of some writers. Back in the era of Trumanism
> (misnamed McCarthyism)
> great fun was had by all in reference to Soviet
> rewriting of history. The
> process Tim describes in this post is much more
> democratic or at least
> more sophisticated. Some of that history is being
> dug up however,
> revealing that eugenics was not only a "scientific"
> position but embodied
> in the actual proceedings of a number of state
> governments -- and even
> in social-democratic Sweden. Pound has nothing over
> Woodrow Wilson
> as a racist. And when someone "accused" Eisenhower
> of being Jewish,
> his response was not "SoWhat!" but "THAT'S A LIE!"
> In the late
> 1960s Princess Margaret at a banquet given in her
> honor by Mayor
> Daley of Chicago was overheard dismissing the Irish
> as dirty like
> pigs. And the Blackfoot Nation is attempting to sue
> Canada for the
> genocidal special boading schools into which for
> half a century they
> kidnapped Indian children. (The schools, many of
> them church-
> operated, do fit fairly closely the definitions of
> genocide in international
> treaties.) The U.S. while keeping Pound in the
> Pisan DTC was
> dismantling the local governments established by
> peasants in Korea
> after the defeat of Japan and replacing them with
> the quislings who had
> served the Japanese. Shoot Quisling in Norway --
> make his Korean
> equivalent, Synghman Rhee, dictator of Korea. Pound
> is right for
> the wrong reasons about the various war-crimes
> trials.
>
> > Other artists have been long ignored, their works
> allowed to go out of
> print
> > or rot in basements. I spent 8 years studying
> literature, from the late
> '70s
> > through the mid '80s and did not see the name of
> the painter and
> > man-of-letters Wyndham Lewis mentioned even once
> in any course description,
> > or hear his name mentioned by any teacher or
> colleague --the man whom T.S.
> > Eliot called "the greatest prose writer of my
> generation"-- and when I did
> > learn about Lewis, it was impossible to find
> copies of his many works
> > anywhere; in some instances, the works had been
> removed from the shelves.
>
> I find this astounding. The marxist critic
> Frederick Jameson wrote a book on
> Wyndham Lewis. I haven't read it, but I would agree
> with what I understand
> was one of its theses, that we have something to
> learn from the artists who
> celebrated Fascism. Fascism was a strange blend. In
> its material existence
> it had no ideology but was completely arbitrary.
> It *needed*, however,
> the appearance of an ideology, and the first-rate
> writers (Lewis and Pound
> not the only ones) who in a sense provided that
> ideology are important.
> This is another way of saying that the Mussolini of
> the Cantos both is
> and (more importantly) is *not* the Mussolini of
> history.
>
> Consider the lines:
>
> Adolf furious from perception.
> But there is a blindness that
> comes from inside --
> they try to explain themselves out of
> nullity.
> (104/761 [1998
> printing])
>
> Adolf does not deserve the compliment -- but it is
> still a profoundly true
> insight into the lives of many in the last century.
> I am battling now on
> another list with two political friends who are
> being drive to a blind fury
> by their perception of the facts of global warming.
> It is not impossible that
> some like them may end up supporters of some new
> Fuerher.
>
> > I
> > happen to know that rare scientific works on
> eugenics are being removed
> from
> > the shelves of a major university to be stored
> offsite, not in a special
> > archive, but in an area devoted to superseded or
> discredited volumes which
> > are destined eventually for the incinerator,
> while the pulp fiction section
> > is growing larger. There's a painting by Augustus
> John of the South African
> > poet Roy Campbell locked away in a basement in an
> art museum in Pittsburgh
> > PA, where it has been out of sight for maybe 40
> years. e.e. cumming's work
> > EIMI is also out of print. Pound's translation
> of Moscardino is out of
> > print.
> >
> > If I had the broadcasts to hand, I would cite the
> passage where Pound
> writes
> > that it does not matter what the artist believes
> he is making or doing; if
> > he sincerely reports what his eyes are observing,
> his works will reflect
> the
> > times.
>
> "Reflect" is almost too weak here. The future will
> not be too wrong if in
> looking back on this and the last century, trying
> to make sense of the
> long fallen U.S. empire, they take the Cantos as
> their guide. Nor would
> "Furious from perception" be an unfair epitaph for
> Pound himself --
> see the earlier lines:
>
> and the light became so
> bright and so blindin'
> in this layer of paradise
> that the mind of man was
> bewildered.
>
> (38/190)
> It seems to me that a poet who sees so much is
> forgiveable for being
> such a fucking fool in his interpretation of what
> he saw. And if one
> focuses on it in this way, there is less a conflict
> than is often assumed
> by both his friends and enemies between the
> "aestehtics" of Pound's
> poem and its substance -- nor is so necessary to
> labor painfully to
>
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