Thank you for the greeting, Jacob!...
I just want to say that I have not reversed the view I
developed in the Paideuma article ("Ezra Pound: America's
Wandering Jew"). I tried to make it clear that the
identification with the "wandering Jew" archetype was in
*ironic contrast* with EP's antisemitism. For a man who
most desperately wanted to identify with the power elite
(e.g., Mussolini), it must have been humiliating, whether
on a conscious or unconscious level, to see that in
reality his life followed the pattern of some despised,
marginalized minority group (poets, Jews, expatriates ...).
What do they call that in psychoanalysis--projection?
Conversion reaction? Whatever. ... In my article I
did not presume to be an Analyst; I stuck to a common-sense
rhetorical strategy, the same I would stick to now.
==Dan Pearlman
At 04:37 PM 10/15/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Anyone interested in Pound's anti-Semitism should read Robert Casillo's
>Genealogy of Demons, which is weighty and scholarly, though not
>necessarily final.It intersects interestingly with the study of the same
>theme inT. S. Eliot by Anthony Julius.
> I'm a little skeptical about your "graven images" idea. The usual
>view is that Pound associated Jews with his hated "usury." Among many
>other objections (as Dan Pearlman mentions) is his aversion to the
>presence or consciousness of blood in Jewish rituals. This is odd because
>in the Cantos he (or some speaker) considers the "blood rite" tobe the
>only authentic one.Incidentally, Pearlman (who is of course, listening
>--hello Dan, I had a brief meeting with you once) seems to have reversed
>the view in his Paideuma article which, as I recall, said that Pound, as
>marginalized figure, felt some sort of identification with Jews.
> And the Biblical warning against Graven Images is not tobe taken
>too
>seriously. It did not keep Jews from producing much graphic art throughout
>the ages.
>
>On Thu, 15 Oct 1998, rajasekharan wrote:
>
>> Re Pound and Jewish mysticism:
>> I'm new to this forum and I find it interesting because the coffee shops I
>> frequent do not welcome a serious discussion of Poundstuff.
>>
>> It's possible that Gill's remarks on Pound's (anti)Semitism are supported
>> by a neat structure based on the latter's first footnote and last book.
>> However, to accept these at face value, one has to ignore EP's statements
>> like "All the Jew part of the Bible is black evil" (Paige 1982, 345) and
>> (far more important) the implicit assumptions on which the edifice of the
>> Cantos is founded. The pagan mode of perception (which converts everything
>> into "graven" images) is instrumental in the Cantos and this, as I
>> understand it, is incompatible with the Jewish way of looking at the world,
>> in which Imagisme is forbidden. That is, when you perceive Judaism as the
>> faith of Abraham, Moses and David, you won't be able to reconcile it with
>> the idolatrous (Aphrodite-Kuanon-Bacchus-Muss.) way the Cantos apprehend
>> the cosmos. The Talmud, it is quite possible, (I don't know) dilutes the
>> rigor of the Torah.
>>
>> Incidentally, I've just completed a dissertation on the Cantos, which
>> argues that Pound's anti-Semitic thinking can be traced back to his
>> "imagistic" phase during which his poetics was sketched. For a reader of
>> Pound who started as an admirer, such "findings" are rather unsettling. I
>> face an enigma now, when I am seduced by the beauty of a line such as "The
>> enormous tragedy . . . . " In my present (Indian) milieu, it is difficult
>> to forget that such beauty is compatible with the discourse of a similar
>> (dominant/ruling) ideological Imagisme that threatens political and
>> religious liberty.
>> I am eager to discuss the matter with those who hold different views.
>>
>> Mohandas C. Bhaskaran
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>
Dan Pearlman Office: Department of English
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