(continued from previous post)

I must thank Carrol Cox for putting into words my exact feeling about Pound,
vis-a-vis students and friends.  I cannot in good conscience recommend that
others read Pound.  In fact, I often warn others away from it.  Why? Before
recommending Pound,  I would recommend a student or a friend to read the
Iliad, the Odyssey, all the works of all the Greek playwrights.  I would
recommend to a friend that they read the Mahabharata (a work which Pound
would NOT recommmend), the Ramayana, the Tao Te Ching, the Damma pada, or
Chuang Tze, before I would recommend Pound.

Darwin, Marx, Hegel, Freud, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Melville, Twain, Eliot's
Four Quartets, and many others deserve more attention.  The list goes on and
on.  If you have read all the Western and Eastern classics, of Philosophy
and Literature, then I might recommend Pound.  This is NOT a telling remark
about me. about Carrol Cox, or about Pound.  I would not condemn anyone who
would put Pound at the top of the list of "books to recommend."  This is
mostly a matter of taste, is it not?

>Are we to assume from this that young people of today are incapable, over a
>life
>of reading, to differentiate between Pound the fascist and Pound the poet?

Not at all.  There just may be better things to recommend.  You can
recommend whatever author you wish.

>Or is he afraid that by recommending Pound's poetry to young people, that
>they will somehow see him as someone who endorses the objectionable aspects
>of Pound's work?

Speaking for myself, unless a person has certain interests, and particular
propensities, there is no reason to recommend Pound.  Now, if one is
dedicated to understanding 20th century poetry written in the English
language, Pound should perhaps be recommended, and studied carefully.  But
that does not apply to all people.


>anyone who engages Pound must, early on, come to terms with
>Pound's ugliness.  it is only after a great struggle that one can come to
>an
>honest appraisal of the work itself, and see the beauty and those elements
>of
>truth that inform it.  struggling with the worst of Pound is the only way
>to
>see the best of Pound, a process that one can only hope will eventually
>inform the understanding of En Lin Wei.

I am glad you hope my understanding will go through a process during which I
will eventually "see a light", so to speak.  I genuinely think you have my
interest at heart when you make such a statement.  But you may misunderstand
me, my purposes, my background, my inclinations---my soul, if you
will---when you say such things.

Perhaps you should be more careful about making a sweeping judgment about
"my understanding".

Would it not be more fruitful to discuss the issue at hand, rather than to
denounce my alleged lack of understanding?  Would it not be better to
discuss evidence regarding the interpretation of Pound, than to denounce my
supposed participation in and membership in a "cadre"?


>I have found this process to be
>personally rewarding, and I see no reason why one should deny it to young
>people of today, particularly because of the current social/political
>conditions.
>

I must agree with you here.  Why study Pound?  Perhaps because of the
current social and political conditions.  I can sympathize with this
statement.

However, the question remains:  Which aspects of the current social and
political conditions?  And although Pound put his finger on some of the
crucial questions which many others ignored, are we to see his approach, his
intellectual strivings, his mental efforts, his musings, his rants, his
imaginative flights as parts of the solution, or as artistic
crystallizations of the problem?

Can anyone offer evidence to show that the Cantos is NOT an imperialistic
epic?  Is there anything in his writings to show that he questioned, rather
than advocated, the notion of a new fascist empire ruled by a superior race,
as a solution to humankind's woes?

And another question, which I asked before, but has not been addressed by
those who accuse me of blindly attacking Pound.  If the Cantos is a fascist,
or an imperialist epic---and if it is, as many argue, the most sustained and
successful attempt at composing a 20th century epic  (I would accept this
latter point as a premise--- then what are the implications for American
culture?   Why is America's greatest epic poem, to date, an authoritarian
epic poem (and not a democratic one)?

Allow me conclude by commenting on Carl's observations.

>.Gancie/C.Parcelli" wrote:
>
> > I agree with much of what En Lin Wei says in this post, but only because
> > he does not speak to the issue. The only reason he can deliver such
> > posts is because he accepts Pound's conflation of Confucious/ Mencius,
> > Mussolini, National Socialism, ancient imperial regimes of many stripes
> > as being the standard for fascism.

Pound himself constructs this "conflation."  I can give you literally scores
of examples, pehaps hundreds.

>>Then, taking Pound's indiosyncratic
> > formulations, in a feat of (a)mazing intellectual gymnastics and
> > personal bile, he portions out Pound's version of these varied elements
> > as those most descriptive to their historical nature. He/she proceeds
> > with no sense of irony or understanding of how other people hear such
> > things.

Show me the irony.  Please.  Take a quote, if you will, where he equates
Hitlerism with Confucianism, or where he equates Mussolini's fascism with
the Chinese imperial state, and point out what you believe are the
indications that Pound was being "ironic."  And if he is being "ironic", in
what sense?

Yes, Pound was capable of irony, of course. But when he conflates
Confucianism and fascism, is he being ironic in this sense:  "Oh its all a
big joke.  I really don't think Confucianism and fascism have anything in
common.  I really just think Confucius is a great moral philosopher, and
that fascism is altogether different.  I am just pulling the wool over your
eyes, and I don't really believe in Mussolini anyway."  Of course this is
caricature of irony.  But what exactly do YOU mean with regard to the
particulars of Pound's political and social views prior to his imprisonment?

> > This is also because, according to En Lin Wei "We have to distinguish
> > between different types of imperialism here." But all the "distinctions"
> > En Lin Wen recognizes are set by Pound. So Pound's notions of Fascism
> > fit into Pound's notions of fascism.

Are you denying that Pound is tautological in his advocacy of fascism?  What
do YOU have to say about it?  Take a quote and analyze it, or explain your
understanding of it.

>>When En Lin Wei introduces
> > historical buttresses for his argument, he/she is utterly blind to how
> > tendentious and bullshit a fit his criticism is to Pound's poetry.
> >

Well, of course it is tendentious.  That does not mean it is incorrect.

Of course the argument uses "historical butresses".  What arguments about
Pound do not, since Pound's work is "a poem which contains history"?

Doubtless you have a view of history as well.  I am interested to see what
it is.  I will look at the web site

wedelsol.com/FLASHPOINT

and find out.

But you must have a view not only of history, but also a view of Pound's
interpretation of history.  You are familiar with some of the historical
events of the Han and Qin dynasties.  What do you make of Pound's
interpretation of these events?


> > As for my criticism of the Han Dynasty. It is involved with my critique
> > of the epistemology of science and involves the standardization of
> > weights and measures under the Ch'in. My poem which contains much of
> > this material is unpublished. However, a more recent refinement of the
> > ideas without recourse to the Han or Ch'in, is available at
> > wedelsol.com/FLASHPOINT. It is called Deconstructing the Demiurge: Tale
> > of the Tribe and unlike some recent Poundian scholarship does not rely
> > on canards.

If by "canard" you mean a false or unfounded story, I am afraid neither you
nor I can absolutely guarantee that our accounts of history do not "rely on
canards."  Every account of history is, don't you agree, partially unfounded
and partially false, since it cannot contain the entire truth.  My
epistemology is mostly Hegelian (or Hegelio-Marxian, though not in the
Frankfurt or pessimistic sense), so I see even this conversation as a
movement toward more clarified Concepts.  As the conversation proceeds,
dialectically opposed views uncover the limitations inherent in different
provisional truths.   Your reaction to my arguments about Pound are perhaps
no more or less valid-- in themselves--than the views I propose.  They may
participate in the process which leads toward edification (on both of our
parts).

Regards,

Wei

(For those interested:  Wei is a surname; the given names En Lin or Enlin is
a male name.  En and Lin, are, incidentally two Chinese written characters
which appear in the Cantos.  En means "compassion or mercy."  Lin represents
two trees, and means "forest.")

PS  I would like to say something on the Chinese trade question (PNTR), the
labor movement, the AFL-CIO, etc.  I will have to save it for a future post.


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