-----
3.

JB wrote:

>
>
>well, if he did do this, it failed.


What does “fail” mean in this context?  Did Milton “fail” when he wrote
Paradise Lost?  Blake and Empson say Milton did not succeed in conveying to
us the notion of a God who merited our approbation, nor did he succeed in
depicting a Satan who deserved our condemnation.  He did succeed in writing
what many believe to be the greatest epic written in the English language,
but Satan appears to many to be heroic and revolutionary (esp. in Books I
and II) while God comes off as an arbitrary tyrant.  Empson makes this point
very well in his book, “Milton’s God.”

Pound “failed” if one of his main intentions was to glorify fascism and
Confucian tyrants, or to give us historical exemplars who merit our praise.
He did succeed in writing what many believe to be the greatest epic poem in
English of the modern era.

>I don't know of anyone who reads the
>Cantos to bask in Pound's anti-Semitism, or his other faults.

I am not sure whether it is important who we know, or what people we do know
think of Pound.  What matters here is what YOU think of Pound, and how
willing you are to explain what you think.


>do you know of
>anyone who uses Pound or the Cantos as a support for their antihuman
>activities?

I do not see how this is relevant to my point.  I do not personally know of
anyone who does use Pound’s work in that way.  Nor do I know of anyone who
uses Milton’s Paradise Lost to promote a Satanic cult or human sacrifice.

My point is that you can read Pound the way Blake reads Milton.  You can
choose to see the heroes as villains, and the villains as heroes.  You can
do this because in Pound (as well as in Milton) the heroes symbolize
something other than who they obviously appear to be.

The “”Hero” in Paradise is not God (who really symbolizes the tyrant), nor
is the villain in Paradise Lost Satan (who in reality is symbolic of the
revolutionary hero, who overthrows aristocracy and monarchical power).
Milton, according to Blake, was not even aware that “he was of the Devil’s
part”.

Similarly, I am suggesting that Pound was conceivably really on the side of
freedom, even though CONSCIOUSLY he was advocating support for fascism and
other dictatorial ideologies (such as Confucianism).

In other words, I am suggesting the possibility of AGREEING with those who
maintain that Pound was not wholeheartedly, or completely, dedicated to the
ideals of the Fascist and Nazi regimes.

Perhaps you misunderstood my statement.

Allow me to illustrate if another way.

Pound said, after he was in detention for a week in 1945.

HITLER WAS A JEANNE D’ARC, A SAINT.

How can we interpret such a statement?  One way would be to follow
Aristotles’s theory of the metaphor, which the philosopher said was the
supreme source of human knowledge.  “Hitler is Joan of Arc” understood as
profound metaphor (and not as an endorsement of evil) could mean this:

When Pound uses Hitler in his work, (or Mussolini, for that matter) he
intends him as a symbol.  Let us take the axiom, POUND IS FIRST AND FOREMOST
A POET.  For Pound, it may be the case that the physical social realities,
as transformed by his artistic lens, mean what do they do not, at first
glance, appear to mean.  Thus, when we read a reference to Hitler in Pound’s
writings or speeches, we instead read “Joan of Arc.”

[Bear in mind here Jung’s conception of the existence of an “animus”, or
conscious notion of the maleness of the self, in most men; while in the
unconscious of man, Jung claims, there lies a suppressed a “anima,” or
female aspect of the self, of which most males remain unaware.]

Thus, while consciously Pound appears to endorse Hitler, an egoistic “alpha
male”, who strives to conquer the whole of Europe and create an empire under
the yoke of his dictatorship HE UNCONSCIOUSLY harbours in his mind the
opposite: a self-effacing female who serves God and her Dauphin, without
recognition for her acheivement, who strives to free her oppressed country
from the yoke of an expanding imperial conqueror, and to return the French
themelves to their rightful role as governors of their own land.

In short, Pound’s conscious egoistic aggressive tendencies conceal a more
supportive feminine nature.  The choice of Joan of Arc is like the choice of
the unconscious mind in a dream, in that the French Saint serves as a
perfect symbol, a warrior woman, who unites in her mythos the different
aspects of male and female archetypes.

This is a bit difficult to explain, but those who have studied Freud or Jung
may be able to help clarify the point.


------
4  Bob Scheetz wrote:

>In fact, fascist anti-semitism was rational.

How can fascist anti-semitism be rational, if both fascism and anti-semitism
themselves, as patterns of belief, do not rest on a rational basis?

Anti-semitism is defined as a prejudice against an entire people based on
their racial origin and / or religious affiliation.  Prejudice, by its very
nature is irrational.


>they constituted (still do) an
>elite managerial caste on behalf of the bourgeois/whig (in germany,
>whilhelminian and weimar) ownership class, with critical strategic command
>of cultural, financial, and productive capital; and were, therefore, very
>much an objective enemy of the revolution.

Who constituted such a “caste”?  Jews?  All Jews?  And were not most members
of the managerial class in the Weimar republic protestants of German ethnic
origin?  I believe they were.  If you have statistical evidence to the
contrary, I would appreciate your showing it to us.


>fascist anti-semitism finds its parallel in bourgeois (masonic)
>anti-clericalism at the time of the french rev sea change.
>

The paranthesis makes this difficult to understand for me.  Are you talking
about ONLY “MASONIC” bourgeois anti-clericalism, or about bourgeois
anti-clericalism in general?

In either case, anti-clericalism cannot be equated with anti-semitism.  Nor
can the reaction to the clergy in revolutionary France be likened to
anti-semitism.  Anti-clericalism was at that time an essential element of
the struggle for democracy.  To be anti-clerical signified being against the
undue power of a SOCIAL INSTITUTION, to which individuals CHOSE to belong,
an institution which exercised undue influence over people’s lives.  The
Church demanded tithes, compelled belief, was exempt from taxation, punished
non-believers, took huge tracts of land from the peasants, and supported the
despotism of the monarch, and the aristocrats.  As Cloots put it, in 1790,

“Nous deliverons les esprits du joug des pretres comme nous avons delivere
les vassaux du joug des seigneurs”.

Delivering people from the yoke of the the priests was synonymous with
delivering people out from under the yoke of the aristocrats, in the minds
of the vast majority of enlightend thinkers of the age.

Anti-semitism is in no meaningful way parallel to anti-clericalism.  To be
anti-semitic is to be against a group of people based on their race (or
belief), and nothing more.  The charge that Jews controlled all the banks,
or most of financial capital is patently false.


>     of course, we all know this matter is taboo
>(which speaks volumes in itself, no?)...

What is taboo?  Racism?  Anti-semitism?

And what do you mean by taboo?

-------
Paul Montgomery wrote:

5.   Re: Ezra Pound is, and is not, Ezra Pound,
>          simultaneously and at different times
>
>         Whoa. I assumed that the alleged Wei was pseudo-Wei, cleverly
>posted by somebody who figured out how to fake an e-mail address. Perhaps
>the same slyboots who wrote the dreadful spider poem.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I did write that post.


>Surely the esteemed
>Wei would know better French than that at the end of the
>Pound-is-not-really-Pound message.
>

I  did not compose the French phrase at the end of that message.  The phrase
was:

>"Notre revolution , etait dans la tete des PENSEURS lontemps avant 1789
>comme Minerve dans la cerveau de Jupiter"  [authors’ emphasis]


The words were written by a moderately well-known revolutionary, Anacharsis
Cloots, a Prussian who gave up his country of origin to become a citizen of
the world, and a participant in the French Revolution.  Rather like Thomas
Paine.  If his French is inadequate, perhaps you could say what is wrong
with it, or how you would express the same idea.

How would you say

“Our revolution was in the head of THINKERS well before 1789, as Athena was
present in the head of Zeus”?

Is it the sentiment you object to, the grammar, or the style?  I can read
French, though many, many nuances escape me.  Is it the fact that the author
is a Prussian writing in French?  Does the problem lie in the fact that he
is writing in 1790, or is it somewhere else?

The quote is taken from I book I am reading now called,

“Anarcharsis Cloots ou l’utopie foudroyee”

by Roland Mortier.  He has written other books on Didierot, Voltaire, the
“siecles des Lumieres” and other topics.  The last one mentioned was
published in Geneva.  His “La Coeur et la Raison” was published at Oxford by
the Voltaire Foundation.

Here is another quote from Cloots if you like:

<<Chaque nation doit ses arts, ses sciences, ses lumieres, sa philosophie
aux etrangers.  Toutes les nations peuvent dire:  nous ne sommes rien par
nous-memes.  NOUS BROUTERIONS L’HERBE SANS LES ETRANGERS.>>

Maybe this not very good French either.  You tell me.  Give us if you could
a short passage from a French philosophical text, which you think is
particularly well written.


Regards,

Wei

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