[log in to unmask] wrote:

>
>
> << I have no idea what this means. What I said was that Pound was deeply
> skeptical of
>  representative democracy. What I also said was that Pound really didn't care
> much
>  about the specifics of governments; instead, he was much more attracted to
> the
>  strong leader. >>
>
> this is the sort of double-talk that characterizes this discussion.  in fact,
> what you claimed in your prior post was "Yes, Pound praised Thomas Jefferson
> and said he believed in the Constitution. In itself that means nothing..."
> where in this quote does it say "that Pound was deeply skeptical of
> representative democracy"?

Again, you didn't read my post carefully. Here's my exact quote: "It seems
absolutely clear to me that (as En Lin Wei as suggested) the key to Pound's
political beliefs is his Confucianism, and that this Confucianism is deeply
skeptical of representative democracy and deeply sympathetic to
powerful and even totalitarian individuals and elites."

>  > as far as saying that he believed
>  > in the constitution, I think we can take him at his word, remembering, of
>  > course, that the our concepts of the constitution are not the same.
>
> << Why should we take him at his word, since it seems anomalous (to put it
> mildly) to
>  suggest that someone who repeatedly endorses dictators and ruling elites
> could *at
>  the same time* support the Constitution of a republican democracy?>>
>
> we should take him at his word because we have no cause to do otherwise: for
> one thing, he said it over and over.

This is an enormously problematic claim. If someone supports Long, Coughlin,
Lenin, Mussolini and (to a lesser extent) Petain and Hitler, and has no problem
with a single state-run news outlet, *and* claims to support the Constitution,
it's impossible to take him at his word.

> you seem to believe that there is no
> honesty in his claim, whereas I think that Pound was as honest as they come.
> Pound, in case you don't know it, was a very sincere person, and very
> consistent in what he believed; what he wasn't, was a liar.

I hate to quote P.J. O'Rourke, but he once said that sincerity is just stupidity
sent to college. Of course Pound wasn't a liar, but the majority of his political
views hover between the imperceptive and the downright foolish.

> if he says he
> admired Jefferson, then he did.  if he said he believed in the constitution,
> then he did.

No -- if his words and actions demonstrate that he believed in the Constitution,
then he did. Unfortunately, that 's usually not the case.

> this goes directly to the disingenuousness of your position.
> you have absolutely no problem in believing in the sincerity of Pound at his
> worst: you have no doubt that he hated Jews or that he admired Mussolini and
> Hitler, but you react with skepticism at his more decent qualities. you

> will. of course, deny this is your position, but I defy anyone to read your
> posts honestly, and come away with any other conclusion.

What do you mean by "his more decent qualities?" Given Pound's repeated and
explicit celebration of authoritarian rulers -- which greatly exceed the number of
very selective celebrations of the Constitution -- I find it impossible to argue
that Pound was a proponent of representative democracy. What's disingenuous about
that?

>
>  > my
>  > objection is to the sweeping denunciations of Pound and his politics, as if
>  > nothing he believed in wasn't somehow vitiated or contaminated by his more
>  > obnoxious beliefs.
>
> >> I disagree with that, too. However, I'd suggest the bigger problem is
> those who
>  would ignore his politics -- and a few people here have come very close to
> that. >>
>
> this is nonsense, and laughable.  there isn't any large contingent of Pound
> sanitizers running amok in the critical field; there is general agreement
> that many aspects of Pound's political beliefs were, and are, horrible -- I
> don't know anyone who thinks otherwise, and if you do, you should name them.

A number of people here have explicitly stated that the Cantos are poetry and
therefore mostly removed from Pound's anti-Semitism and totalitarian rulers. En
Lin Wei responded with an argument that I think was excellent and, in spite of his
own unflagging courtesy, was subjected to ad hominem attacks, many of which never
bothered to engage with his argument.

>  >  there's merit in much of what he had to say about
>  > politics, as well as his economic positions.
>
> << Right, but isn't that true of almost every political movement in history?
> One
>  would have to be pretty dense not to spot the problems between the wars.>>
>
> in other words, you have nothing to say about this, except to insinuate that
> it's unnecessary to say because it's so obvious.  well, read the posts, it
> hasn't been that obvious on this list, and the positive aspects of these
> issues are almost never discussed on this list.

I'm confused by this. I'm supposed to give Pound some credit because in the wake
of what was then the bloodiest war in history and in the middle of the Great
Depression he recognized there were economic problems? I don't see anything
positive about that, especially when a major part of his explanation for those
problems was an international Jewish conspiracy.

> the tenor of the remarks
> regarding Pound are overwhelmingly negative, which is precisely what I'm
> objecting to.  in fact, almost everytime someone has something positive to
> say about Pound, there's a flurry of negative posts -- if you don't believe
> this, check the archive.

Again, this is the problem to which I'm referring: any critique of Pound's
politics is automatically seen as an attack on Pound's work. I'd bet there aren't
more than a handful of people on this list who really think Pound was anything
less than a spectacular poet, but as soon as someone raises the subject of Pound's
politics, the defenses start flying.

>  > the ugliness of Pound is not
>  > news, and to imply, as wei has done, that his sins outweigh his value, is,
>  > from my point of view, simply wrong.
>
> << I disagree with that argument, too. However, I completely reject the
> claims that
>  the Cantos are not explicitly political, or that Pound was a relatively
> orthodox
>  Jeffersonian. >>
>
> talk about being bashed for claims that one hasn't made!  who makes the claim
> that the Cantos aren't political?

I didn't meant to suggest that you had made that claim. However, the standard
defense of the Cantos has always been that the poetry is separate from Pound's
wartime broadcasts and political writings. That's been the case since I joined
this list three years ago. Check the archives -- you'll find dozens of references,
both in this thread and in others.

>
> this doesn't surprise me.  but let's suppose (and I say suppose because none
> of us actually knows) that you're put the cart before the horse -- that is,
> that Pound was attracted to Confucius because he was already attracted to the
> heroic, strong leader type?

That's very possible. However, Confucius's thought certainly provides the form and
direction for whatever authoritarian sympathies Pound may have had.

> after all, this is a man who believed in the
> gods, in spirit, if not in fact.

Right, and this is one of the great tensions in the Cantos. Pound advocates both
an authoritarian Confucianism and a spiritual, anarchic sexuality. While these two
poles should be opposed, he uses "the middle way" to refer to both of them. That's
one of the things that makes the Cantos so interesting.

> myself, I'm careful in my use of the word
> "totalitarianism" because it's a term that, in Pound's case, frequently needs
> to be modified.  personally, I don't find the Cantos all that totalitarian --
> mostly I find that they're an attempt to gather together historical insights
> (or, as Pound calls them, rhymes) that elucidate the tale of the tribe.  this
> is my emphasis, anyway.  those who want to waste their time by proving that
> Pound was actually Confucius, or Mussolini, or whomever, are free to do so.

I don't think the Cantos are totalitarian, either, although I think they aspire to
that. In fact, even with Pound's totalitarian sympathies, it's hard to imagine a
text that's less suited for supporting a fascist government.

> perhaps you could point to specific remarks in this thread by persons on this
> list, which is who your charge was leveled at.  most persons that I know
> who've read Pound have had a difficult and painful struggle with the noxious
> aspects of his canon, and who were able to see the value despite these
> serious problems.

Maybe they have, but I haven't seen that in these posts. More on this below.

>  I don't know anyone who has ever presented Pound as
> principally a proponent of Jeffersonian democracy, and I doubt that you can
> present any examples of this.  this claim that there's an army of Pound
> sanitizers is a lie that the Pound haters promulgate in their attempt to
> denigrate Pound's poetry;

I never said there were an army of sanitizers; I said some on this list have done
that. However, one of the few good things about Casillo's book is his devastating
critique of the evasions and half-truths which decades of Pound critics used to
extenuate Pound's politics. While that's not the case any more, it's important to
remember that for years there was an army of sanitizers.

Again, I want to emphasize that the problem here might be the emotionally charged
nature of the debate. I'm willing to bet that some people here who have attempted
to defend Pound have slid into polemics which are more extreme than their own more
reasoned opinions.

Bill Freind