>Date:  Sun, 5 Dec 1999 16:07:11 -1000
>From:  Tia Ballantine Berger <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Re: Getting things dead wrong
>To:    [log in to unmask]
>
>Hello Lee lady, and all:
>
>As a student in Professor Morse's graduate seminar, I am profoundly grateful
>for the lively and well-informed atmosphere of all of our sessions.
>Professor Morse has a wealth of information (about Pound, Whitman, and many,
>many other poets as well) that he freely shares with a great deal of wit and
>with careful attention to detail. His explications of the Cantos are
>thorough and thrilling. During this seminar, Morse has provided us with a
>rich contextual and multi-dimensional background that includes biographical,
>historical, political, and philosophical information that allows us, as
>students, access to a greater and certainly to a deeper understanding of the
>poetry. This seminar has been a marvelous experience, and I am not saying
>this to enhance my grade. I am not worried about grades--I concern myself
>with knowledge.
>
>I consider Lee Lady's personal attack on Professor Morse, aired on a public
>list, to be in poor taste and rather studiously childish.
 
I'm very glad that you found Professor Morse's seminar valuable.  I know
that he took his teaching of it very seriously.  And undoubtedly I would
have learned some valuable things myself if I had sat in on it.
 
I want to take the opportunity of acknowledging that in my initial
exchange of email with Professor Morse, at the time when I was
considering sitting in on his seminar, he frequently provided me with
very worthwhile information about Pound.  In particular, it was from
him that I first learned about the Agresti letters.
 
I thoroughly immersed myself in Pound's works and thoughts forty years
ago, when I used to be a very frequent visitor to Pound at St.
Elizabeths.  But in the intervening years, until recently, I did not
try to keep au courant at all and studiously avoided reading Paideuma
and books on Pound.  Consequently there is a great deal I do not know.
 
Although I can acknowledge that Professor Morse's expertise is in many
ways greater than my own, it still dismays me that he makes such facile
judgements and seems to have no interest in understanding Pound in
the context of his own time and his own world.  And it dismays me even
more that I cannot trust the information he gives, because he makes
statements as if giving objective factual reports but which in fact
represent his own "deep interpretations" of what, in his opinion, Pound
really meant between the lines.
 
In a lot of ways, I agree with many of Professor Morse's judgements.  I
do not think that the ideas on economics Pound championed have proved to
have value, and in fact I don't think anyone today would have any
interest in them except for their connection with a famous poet.
 
As to the writings of Confucius, they apparently also have only minor
value for those of us in today's world.  (I have to admit that I don't
feel very sure of myself on this issue, since it's been a long time since
I looked at them.)  But I don't think that one can reject the works of
Confucius simply because of the way the Mandarin civil service system
functioned in China or the way women have been treated in China any
more than one get reject the Bible merely because of the Inquisition.
 
Ideas should be examined on their merits, not merely on the basis of the
way particular people have implemented them.
 
In any case, it dismays me that someone seriously investigating Pound's
biography would not familiarize himself with the books that Pound
considered so overwhelmingly important and would not look at the ideas
Pound promoted in the usual serious manner by which most ideas are
studied.
 
I think that the Agresti letters are like a valuable archeological site
from which one can learn a great deal about what things Pound considered
important.  In these letters, I recognize very well the Pound I knew at
St. Elizabeths.  Those who read the Agresti letters looking only for the
anti-semitic references are, in my opinion, just as foolish as those
who attempt to sweep the anti-semitic references under the rug.
 
Finally, I want to acknowledge here that I am very prejudiced, inasmuch
as I very much dislike academics.  I have spent a great deal of my life
being an academic myself, and to some extent I am still one (or at
least get paid for being one), and I don't like that part of myself.  I
don't like the fact that I spent so much of my life devoting my mind,
and in fact devoting my life as a whole, to pursuits that I believe
have very little value to the world.
 
But, as someone has reminded us, the issue is Pound, not myself and not
any other contributor to the mailing list.