----------
>From: Daniel Pearlman <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Mr. Davis Once More
>Date: Fri, Dec 21, 2001, 8:39 PM
>

> Hey Dirk, how do I open an account in your bank?
> ==Dan P
    Yeah, and does he get a free toaster?
>
> At 05:34 PM 12/21/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>>Mr. Davis:
>>
>>You say: "Never have I encountered so many questions begged, so
>>many assertions substituted for proof, so many denials supplied instead of
>>demonstration."
>>
>>Hmmmmm.
>>
>>Within your original message: "The Cantos is "responsible" for the other
>>unreadable long
>>poems of the Modernist era--like Olson's Maximus or Merrill's The Changing
>>Light at Sandover."
>>
>>Was this meant as a paradigm for your later (in time) statement?  You did
>>not prove that Maximus or Sandover is unreadable.  I found Maximus readable
>>in high-school and Sandover readable a couple of years ago.  You have not
>>only made an assertion into a proof, you have done so in such an oblique way
>>that it can't be untangled into more than air. Then you attacked other
>>people for not giving this air a full analysis with proofs and
>>demonstrations.
>>
>>Would you also assert, without proof, that, since the Cantos were
>>"responsible" for their own greatest achievements, Olson and Merrill found
>>the Cantos to be unreadable?
>>
>>My goodness!
>>
>>I prefer to refer to them , i.e., the Cantos, as plural description (there
>>are how many Cantos?) rather than as a singular title - yet this does not
>>lead to your reductio of either "one thing or a miscellany"/ "great epic
>>poem of the 20th century or a complete mess ".  In fact, this
>>black-and-white way of thinking you employ toward poetry will merely lead
>>you into binary structures that shrink to infinity without arriving at
>>anything; cf Zeno. (By the way, you don't think that Zeno's Paradox is a
>>mooring on the Adriatic, do you?).  You may have missed your calling as a
>>computer BIOS programmer, the realm of the pure binary.
>>
>>My goodness!
>>
>>Do your really expect to be given complete analyses by those responding to
>>your suggestions when you have either failed or refused to give complete
>>analyses yourself?  Refer back to your original missive: "... the Cantos is
>>a failure according to any critical measure we wish to use."
>>
>>In light of your animadversions concerning the quality of the responses to
>>this statement by some of the esteemed members of this list (of whom I am
>>not one, that is, esteemed or OneHavingResponded), one must conclude that
>>you were merely jesting.  Surely a jest employing such broad-ranging
>>generalities doesn't require a lengthy and detailed response from critics
>>whose published work on the subject is readily available. (I don't know
>>whether or not you've read, e.g., Mr. Pearlman's Barb of Time or not, but if
>>you wish to engage him, you might at least give the man some respect by
>>countering assertions he has made there or elsewhere rather than expecting
>>him to give detailed responses to vague assertions you put forth as fact.)
>>
>>You proffer as evidence of this failure (that is, Pound's, not Pearlman's)
>>something slightly more specific: "...a small army of scholars has gained
>>tenure by annotating its [the Cantos] lines, and that enterprise has taken
>>fifty years."
>>
>>Is this the same charge you level at the Iliad to prove that it's a failure?
>>Virtually every word of the Iliad was annotated by Hellenistic times - by
>>the time of Plato it had already been worked over more than the Cantos have.
>>By your reckoning, the Iliad must have been (must be) even more obscure than
>>the Cantos - people STILL get tenure annotating it -- and it's been nearly
>>3,000 years since it came to be!
>>
>>My goodness!  Could this not be a result of people finding the poem
>>fascinating?
>>
>>And William Blake?  (My goodness, that wasn't a sentence, was it?) Can you
>>read him (Blake, that is)?  Since you seem to insist that a long poem be
>>digestible by some kind of rationalistic system before it can be deemed
>>readable, I suppose that you would find his e.g., i.e. Blake's, Milton
>>impossible to read, er, ah.... unreadable.  In this you are in the company
>>of virtually every critic (with the exception of Swinburne, and even he
>>found them difficult) before the 20th Century. But I find Blake's Milton
>>charming and entertaining as well as very clear and - My goodness! -
>>coherent.  Look under the microscope too long and you may not be able to
>>identify anything at all (that was a joke for fans of Swinburne's
>>criticism).
>>
>>Do you insist that art follow criticism?  Shall we condemn Shakespeare for
>>having humor in his tragedies?  Must a 20th Century poet conform to "unity,
>>wholeness, and variety"?  Come to think of it, you haven't proven that the
>>Cantos don't fit these criteria which linger in the background of all of
>>your remarks.  In fact, you seem most put out by the variety of the Cantos.
>>The gist of your position seems to be: "Since there is too much variety in
>>the Cantos, there can't be unity or wholeness [coherence, I am not a
>>demigod, I can not make it cohere]."  But since, due to the teeming variety
>>of the Cantos, you find them unreadable, why would you even care if they did
>>match the other two criteria?  Would being supplied with a proof of their
>>unity and/or wholeness make them readable to you?
>>
>>And is it that, when you sought to apply the criticism of Horace (perhaps
>>unconsciously and in varied terminology), you forgot the third term
>>(variety) while asserting "... the Cantos is a failure according to any
>>critical measure we wish to use."?
>>
>>And.... Self-sufficient work of art? Before attacking the Cantos for not
>>being one, please give me an example of a poem that IS a "self-sufficient
>>work of art".  Does that mean it doesn't need to be read?  Or does it mean
>>that it has no direct ties to or dependencies on the culture in which it
>>arises?  Really, I'd be thrilled to encounter one of these "self-sufficient
>>work of art".  They must really be something! Is that sort of like a....
>>like an...  um, er....  I admit it.  I'm at a loss.  I can't think of a
>>single referent in the universe that is "self-sufficient".  Wow!!
>>Self-sufficient art!!!! These must be great works indeed!!  Please let me
>>know what they are so I can encounter them!!!
>>
>>My goodness!  Can a self-sufficient work of art actually BE encountered?
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Dirk Johnson
>>Assistant Vice President
>>Kelling, Northcross & Nobriga
>>A Division of Zions First National Bank
>
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