--- [log in to unmask] wrote:
> very well put.  to deal with Pound in the context of
> his time, and not by
> projecting the present time into the past, is to see
> him for the human being
> he was.  this dimension has been sorely missing in
> many of the "treatments"
> of Pound that have peppered the list lately.
>
> joe...
>
> In a message dated 06/28/2000 6:50:47 PM Eastern
> Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> <<
>  Tim Romano wrote:
>
>  >
>  > To demonize Pound by linking him to the harsh
> political acts/sins against
>  > mankind/atrocities/draconian measures (however
> one wishes to characterize
>  > them) of the leaders, ancient and modern, whom
> Pound chooses to exalt for
>  > some quality or qualities they possessed, gives
> the false impression that
>  > Pound was not a product of his times; it suggests
> that his views were so
>  > exterme that he was on the fringes. But these
> views were common, almost
>  > "mainstream."  The record of these times has been
> distorted and purged.
>
>  This whole post is of extreme interest, but I wish
> only to expand on a couple
>  of points. To put this paragraph another way, in
> order to conceal the tracks
>  of racism and authoritarianism in u.s. imperialism
> it is necessary to
> demonize
>  Pound and others and (as Tim notes below) actually
> conceal the existence
>  of some writers. Back in the era of Trumanism
> (misnamed McCarthyism)
>  great fun was had by all in reference to Soviet
> rewriting of history. The
>  process Tim describes in this post is much more
> democratic or at least
>  more sophisticated. Some of that history is being
> dug up however,
>  revealing that eugenics was not only a "scientific"
> position but embodied
>  in the actual proceedings of a number of state
> governments -- and even
>  in social-democratic Sweden. Pound has nothing over
> Woodrow Wilson
>  as a racist. And when someone "accused" Eisenhower
> of being Jewish,
>  his response was not "SoWhat!" but "THAT'S A LIE!"
> In the late
>  1960s Princess Margaret at a banquet given in her
> honor by Mayor
>  Daley of Chicago was overheard dismissing the Irish
> as dirty like
>  pigs. And the Blackfoot Nation is attempting to sue
> Canada for the
>  genocidal special boading schools into which for
> half a century they
>  kidnapped Indian children. (The schools, many of
> them church-
>  operated, do fit fairly closely the definitions of
> genocide in international
>  treaties.) The U.S. while keeping Pound in the
> Pisan DTC was
>  dismantling the local governments established by
> peasants in  Korea
>  after the defeat of Japan and replacing them with
> the quislings who had
>  served the Japanese. Shoot Quisling in Norway --
> make his Korean
>  equivalent, Synghman Rhee, dictator of Korea. Pound
> is right for
>  the wrong reasons about the various war-crimes
> trials.
>
>  > Other artists have been long ignored, their works
> allowed to go out of
> print
>  > or rot in basements. I spent 8 years studying
> literature, from the late
> '70s
>  > through the mid '80s and did not see the name of
> the painter and
>  > man-of-letters Wyndham Lewis mentioned even once
> in any course description,
>  > or hear his name mentioned by any teacher or
> colleague --the man whom T.S.
>  > Eliot called "the greatest prose writer of my
> generation"-- and when I did
>  > learn about Lewis, it was impossible to find
> copies of his many works
>  > anywhere; in some instances, the works had been
> removed from the shelves.
>
>  I find this astounding. The marxist critic
> Frederick Jameson wrote a book on
>  Wyndham Lewis. I haven't read it, but I would agree
> with what I understand
>  was one of its theses, that we have something to
> learn from the artists who
>  celebrated Fascism. Fascism was a strange blend. In
> its material existence
>  it had no ideology  but was completely arbitrary.
> It *needed*, however,
>  the appearance of an ideology, and the first-rate
> writers (Lewis and Pound
>  not the only ones) who in a sense provided that
> ideology are important.
>  This is another way of saying that the Mussolini of
> the Cantos both is
>  and (more importantly) is *not* the Mussolini of
> history.
>
>  Consider the lines:
>
>              Adolf furious from perception.
>                      But there is a blindness that
> comes from inside --
>              they try to explain themselves out of
> nullity.
>                                      (104/761 [1998
> printing])
>
>  Adolf does not deserve the compliment -- but it is
> still a profoundly true
>  insight into the lives of many in the last century.
> I am battling now on
>  another list with two political friends who are
> being drive to a blind fury
>  by their perception of the facts of global warming.
> It is not impossible that
>  some like them may end up supporters of some new
> Fuerher.
>
>  > I
>  > happen to know that rare scientific works on
> eugenics are being removed
> from
>  > the shelves of a major university to be stored
> offsite, not in a special
>  > archive, but in an area devoted to superseded or
> discredited volumes which
>  > are destined eventually for the incinerator,
> while the pulp fiction section
>  > is growing larger. There's a painting by Augustus
> John of the South African
>  > poet Roy Campbell locked away in a basement in an
> art museum in Pittsburgh
>  > PA, where it has been out of sight for maybe 40
> years. e.e. cumming's work
>  > EIMI is also out of print.  Pound's translation
> of Moscardino is out of
>  > print.
>  >
>  > If I had the broadcasts to hand, I would cite the
> passage where Pound
> writes
>  > that it does not matter what the artist believes
> he is making or doing; if
>  > he sincerely reports what his eyes are observing,
> his works will reflect
> the
>  > times.
>
>  "Reflect" is almost too weak here. The future will
> not be too wrong if in
>  looking back on this and the last century, trying
> to make sense of the
>  long fallen U.S. empire, they take the Cantos as
> their guide. Nor would
>  "Furious from perception" be an unfair epitaph for
> Pound himself --
>  see the earlier lines:
>
>                          and the light became so
> bright and so blindin'
>              in this layer of paradise
>                          that the mind of man was
> bewildered.
>
> (38/190)
>  It seems to me that a poet who sees so much is
> forgiveable for being
>  such a fucking fool in his interpretation of what
> he saw. And  if one
>  focuses on it in this way, there is less a conflict
> than is often assumed
>  by both his friends and enemies between the
> "aestehtics" of Pound's
>  poem and its substance -- nor is so necessary to
> labor painfully to
>
=== message truncated ===


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