garrick,
       pardon, but yer "scholar" seems rather pinched;
and, yer notion, hero-worship  (the "great books" crowd),
old-fangled,... a classic (18th cent) expression
of pedagogical idealism/fetishism.
 
isn't it the job of today's scholar/critic rather to
engage the text, no-holds-barred,
no bracketing-off  - ideology, psychology, gender, whatever...
in an uncircumscribed universe of living  discourse?
 
after all this is the era of dolly and the daily abortion holocaust;
the scholar afraid of "fascism, antisemitism, & co
is surely incapaz for adult lit
 
bob
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Garrick Davis <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, October 16, 1999 4:17 PM
Subject: Re: Poundian Criticism (An Overview)
 
 
>My letter concerning Poundian criticism was addressed to those members of
the
>listserver who had asked for a guide, an overview of what books they could
>safely dispense with. It certainly was not intended to catalog the precise
>location of every interesting jot and tittle about the poet, which is a
>scholarly exercise not every reader is interested in assigning himself, and
I
>sympathize.
>
>Since my overview was largely an exclusion of a great many scholarly books,
>we might usefully begin with the question: "What is the scholar's task?"
More
>particularly, what is the scholar's task when his scholarship is directed
at
>a poet, and a great one? Is it not preserving his manuscripts, explaining
>textual difficulties (in so far as that is possible), and collecting
>biographical details? Is it not, in short, tending the flame of the poet?
>
>Now this function of the scholar is, I assert, a universal one.  And there
is
>something in this "tending of the flame" of hero-worship. Else why tend the
>flame at all? This does not mean that the scholar makes  deletions or
>omissions from the biographical record which are unflattering,  or edits
out
>what is inconvenient: our great men do not need to be falsified.
>
>I submit that the books I excluded were judged to be devoid of scholarship.
>For the scholarly book provides the reader with the materials necessary to
>form an objective judgment concerning the merit of the poet, which is his
>poetry. The scholarly book does not direct the reader on how to make his
>judgment.
>
>It is, I believe, an obvious truth that our Poundian scholars, for the last
>twenty years, have not performed the function of scholars but of critics.
>This is, in and of itself, a remarkable thing. Those who should preserve
the
>poet also wish to judge him. And what is the basis of their criticism? Is
it
>on the basis of manuscripts newly discovered, or textual difficulties
finally
>resolved? Has some discovery been made about the poems? Is it, in short, on
>the basis of scholarship?
>
>No. These scholars wish to criticize Pound because of his life, and more
>particularly his political sympathies. Thus, the poet has been re-evaluated
>on the basis of moral criteria, which in the realm of literary judgment, is
>the oldest fallacy. Today Pound is guilty of fascism and antisemitism, as
>Paul Verlaine was guilty of sexual immorality, as Oscar Wilde was guilty of
>sodomy, etc. The moral fallacy only demonstrates the fact that a writer's
>life and work are not synonymous: a fact that critics were well aware of,
but
>the interloping scholars were not.
>
>The use of the moral fallacy by our Poundian scholars only emphasizes their
>unfitness to be critics. For the basis of the poet's reputation is his
>poetry, and not his life. So why was this improper denigration of the poet
>pursued? It must be admitted that some Poundian scholars were highly
>uncomfortable with the poet's canonical position in American letters,
simply
>because he was a fascist and an antisemite. Their criteria for literary
>greatness included a test of political sympathies, a test which Pound (and
>Robert Frost, and T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats) failed.
>
>This imposition of political criteria into the realm of aesthetic judgment
is
>our era's rather sad addition to literary criticism. It must be added that
>this program has not been consistently employed on literary authors
either;
>it has been focused on politically right-wing Modernist writers (Pound,
>Yeats, Celine, Eliot) but not on their left-wing counterparts (Mayakovsky,
>Sartre, the French Surrealists).
>
>I, for one, do not wish to see it employed at all. The scholarly books that
>I referred to as "mean-spirited and ridiculous" were ones which employed
some
>version of this political/moral fallacy. In so far as Poundian scholars and
>critics are responsible for the formation of taste in their day, these
>authors have not only been irresponsible but actively harmful to the
Poundian
>scholarship they claim to represent.  In this regard, I consider them not
>only enemies of the poet they unfairly disparage, but enemies of
literature.
>
>These critics have, however, raised one important issue, which is the
oldest
>one: the morality of art. Should morality intrude at all into literary
>judgment? Without restating all the Aristotelian and Platonic positions and
>all the artistic creeds, I would submit that the degree to which Pound's
>fascist and antisemitic opinions enter into literary judgment is the degree
>to which they enter into the poetry (as opposed to the prose, the letters,
>the radio speeches, ad infinitum). Such opinions appear in Pound's poetry
>only in The Cantos and there very infrequently. There are perhaps, if one
>compiled the passages, three or four pages of objectionable material in a
>poem stretching some 800 pages.
>
>Pound simply cannot be made into "the poet laureate of Nazism" as one
critic
>has asserted. However the question, of the intersection of art and evil, is
a
>fascinating one. And there is another poet who more consistently
exemplifies
>the problem,  an author who today receives universal praise: Baudelaire.
But
>this leads us to another issue, altogether.
>
>Regards,
>Garrick Davis
>Contemporary Poetry Review
>(www.cprw.com)