I would like to respond in some detail to Carl's post. After reading it,  I
discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that while we may disagree on Pound, we
may agree on almost everthing else.  So in the spirit of freundly
dialectical interchange, I make my replies.

Carl Parcelli wrote:

>While I applaud En Lin Wei's spirited attack on American foreign policy,
it demonstrates a naivete toward the nature of that policy that is
nothing short of fatal to his attempts to insert Pound's Cantos into it.

I admit this approach exists only in an embryonic form.  I do not suggest
(yet) that a full critique of American culture and foreign policy is
consistent with a systematic critique of the Cantos as an imperialistic
epic.  What I do suggest is that one of Pound's main critiques of the US was
that it was NOT imperialist enough.  He does state his view, in the Radio
Rome speeches, that the US and Japan, rather than fighting one another,
should pursue their imperialistic goals in the their respective spheres.

>Rather than "imperialist" motives it is the very social/liberal
institiutions that En Lin Wei sees as an "alternative" to Pound's
political/economic Pantheon that are responsible for the very slaughter
that En Lin Wei lays at the feet of those "imperialist" motives that he
asserts are reflected in the Cantos.

We have to distinguish between different types of imperialism here.  Pound's
distinction between an imperialism which sacks a country and one which
civilizes it, is largely mythical.  In other words, the Italian exploitation
of Ethiopia (which Pound praises) was just as bit as destructive of the
colonized country as was British exploitation in West Africa, which Pound
decries.  A careful look at the record will confirm this.  See Salvemini,
for example.  But I am sure I don't need to tell you this.  (Of course, it
is equally hypocritical to argue that British imperialism was more
benificent than Italy's forays into Africa.  For instance, while the
Italians used poison gas in Ethiopia, the British used it in Iraq).


>So called
"democratic institutions" are a liberal/social mask.(See Edward Bernays,
"Propaganda"1928.) The real politique of the Dulles Brothers, Ed
Lansdale, Richard Helms, Henry Kissinger etal bears no practical
relationship (and Kissinger does not allow for the figurative) and the
conquest literature that appears in the Cantos.

I am with you here.  Books like "Bitter Fruit" document the extent of US
horrors in Guatemala.  Dulles' policy has left about 200,000 dead in its
wake.

(incidentally, I think you understand that I do not endorse the current
"liberal" capitalist system, any more than I endorse fascism or "socialism
with Chinese characteristics," as current PRC regime qualifies itself.  I
endorse forms of syndicalism, economic democracy, mutualism, worker's self -
management , libertarian socialism, the economic philosophies of Kropotkin
and Proudhon, and the critiques of Noam Chomsky --- to name of a few).

>That Pound supported
Mussolini's actions in North and East Africa (a demonstrable fact) does
not mean that Pound understood the political nature of those acts and
the Cantos    . . .

The question then is DID Pound understand the political nature of
Mussolini's acts in Africa?  How was he so easily able to form negative
judgments about British imperial actions in Africa, and not about Italian
acts of conquest?  On what basis did he decide that one set of European
conquerors would act in such a way as benefit the conquered population, and
that another would not?  What evidence, what facts, what historical data did
he have to lead him to the conclusion that Mussolini's empire was good? Why
was he so sure that Hitler's empire would benefit Europe, and that Japan's
conquest of Asia would re-civilize the benighted Chinese?

Was it the case that Pound was really incapable of understanding the
implications of a fascist effort to conquer "Abyssina", or that he simply
chose to ignore any evidence that could cause him to question fascism?

>The poem itself admits to a, well, larger impractical set of
imaginative motives---"to the imperial/ calm."

I could accept this defense for the writings of almost any other poet.  But
Pound himself claimed over and over to be interested in facts juxtaposed to
reveal truth.  This is the ideogrammic method.

Are you suggesting, as some others have, that Pound let his imagination get
the better of him, that he was unable to see the truth because he was fixed
on the " impractical imaginative motives" ?  If Pound rejects the
otherworldliness and idealism in Platonist thought (in the Guide to
Kulchur), and instead affirms the practical wisdom of Confucianism; if he
rejects Greek abstraction in favor of a Roman philosophy of concrete action
(again in the Guide to Kulchur), then how can we defend him?  Can we say,
well, he wanted to be practical rather than theoretical; he wanted to be
realistic rather than idealistic------but he was just totally out of touch
with concrete political and social reality?

The evidence I have examined, in the political sphere, and in Pound's prose
and poetic writings seems to indicate that Pound was above all a
rhetorician, a poet  ---- yes, a POET, --- who sought to propagate fascist,
imperialist, racist ideology because he really believed in such things.  If
Nazi Germany had conquered Europe, and if all the democracies had been wiped
off the face of the earth, Pound would have approved.  He states this view
over and over.

>At the time Pound was playing imaginary tennis in his gorilla cage, the
U.S. government was flying Nazi's into the U.S. through Operation
Paperclip (among other operations still secreted from public scrutiny)
just as fast as they could circumvent the International War Crimes Act.
Werner von Braun, who said "I aim for the stars but sometimes I hit
London" was treated like royalty, ensconced at NASA and now children can
see his office when they attend NASA's Texas Space Camp. Walter
Dornberger, who worked Jews to death in slave labor camps at Peenemunde,
was brought to the U.S. and embraced by the military industrial complex.

Yes. Here you are absolutely correct.  I agree.  This is the nature of US
capitalist hypocrisy.  It continues to this day; I think you and I will
agree on this point.


>Hundreds of other Nazi murderers were immediately put on the U.S. and
corporate payrolls. And let's not forget Reinhard Gehlen. All the while
Pound is facing an indictment for treason and railing against the very
government in its hypocrisy (a trait Pound admired?) is bringing in by
the plane load Nazi war criminals that if one is to believe En Lin Wei
were ideological fellow travelers of Pound.

Does Pound ever rail against the hypocrisy of Mussolini or Hitler ?   If he
were, like other more principled poets (say Byron, or Shelley) he would rail
against all forms of hypocrisy.  Nothing is more deadly to the poetic spirit
than to endorse the doings of monsters.  Pound was for Mussolini what
Kipling was for Victoria's empire.

As to the hired Nazis being Pound's fellow travellers.  Pound thought the
Nazis and fascists who were "building empires and spreading civilization" in
Europe, Africa and Asia were his fellow travelers.  He lost no occasion to
praise them.

>Where the Nazis had info and expertise to trade for their lives, Pound
had a poem. Big difference. 'Bout 13 years in St. E's worth. The Nazis
like their handlers from the State Department, ONI, DIA, corporate and
OSS/CIA were far more "worldly" than Pound. And Pound's poem contains
little they would have recognized as THEIR WORLD.

Again, I agree with you.  There is a distinction you make here which is not
only valid, but essential.  Nevertheless, while those particular Nazis may
not have recognized much that the Poem contained, Pound chose to shape his
poem in such a way that it contained and approved of the very masters and
ideologists who framed the fascist doctrine in theory and practice.

>En Lin Wei would
benefit greatly by learning to make these distinctions.

Yes.  Pound was a poet; he was not a Nazi or fascist expert who had skills
which the US could use in the pursuit of its future political aims.  He was,
nonetheless, a committed fascist, whose poetic brilliance is, for me at
least, seriously marred by adherence to a brutal imperialism.

Now if you are as seriously critical of US imperialism as you say you are,
then I wonder to what degree you are troubled by Pound's affirmation of
imperialist goals?  What difference in our judgments should there be between
those who perpetrate acts of imperial agression, and those who advocate them
as vociferously as Pound did?

Incidentally, I like your caricature of my view as the equation:

>Cantos = Blueprint For American Imperialism As U.S. Foreign
>Policy Makers Implement the Policies of the Han Dynasty

Of course, Pound made some statements similar to this.  He said that the US
should follow Confucian and Mencian political maxims, and argued quite
seriously that the Confucian Analects and other Confucian classics should be
put AT THE TOP of a list of required texts to be read by all US university
students as part of the "Totalitarian synthesis"  [Pound's phrase, not
mine].  He also wrote Mussolini, offering his China Cantos as a guide for
foreign policy and as a testament to his "faith" in Fascism and in
Confucianism.  I don't think it is really possible to caricature any
critique of Pound, because Pound's own extreme and seemingly absurd
juxtapositions cannot be caricatured.

If Pound's propagandistic skills had been admired by the US adminstration,
and if Pound had been hired by US foreign policy makers after the war
(instead of tried), then the slogan you suggest ---"Blueprint For American
Imperialism As U.S. Foreign Policy Makers Implement the Policies of the Han
Dynasty"---would have been the one POUND himself would have written.

After all, what objection do you have to the Han dynasty?

Regards,

Wei

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