At 07:44 PM 12/21/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>It is one thing to accuse Mr Pound of anti-Semitism ...
>another to accuse him of treason ...
>but to blame him for Olson --
>well, that, ladies and gentlemen,
>is going too far
That was funny.
Going back to the ethical/aesthetical judgement problem; I think to use the
current geopolitical idiom, "we must drain the swamp before we proceed" in
order to move on to the larger question of Pound's politics which seems to
make his poetics problematic. So far we seem to have high-tech, low-concept
approaches to deal with the problem; that is launching sophisticated
vocabulary bombs, and sophist accusations, that I take to be intentional
friendly-fire more than any attempt to get to the heart of the matter. But
then again I'm still ignorant to the ways of the world as a grad student,
Like my Italian professor not too long ago said: "Your mouth still reeks of
mother's milk (Boy was I pissed-off at that comment)." Metaphors and war,
allow me to moan how they morph into our peaceful existence, coming far
from the understanding of the true conflict--powers we cannot conceive.
This is a dilemma. In Chinese it would me called a maodun (conflict), which
is an interesting character-compound, the first character mao means "a long
spear," and the second character dun means "a shield." Given a choice do
you go with the dun or the mao? Or has the mao left no choice but the mao,
and the dun no choice but the dun? Once you go down a wrong road and you
get to the toll-booth, the toll collector knows not from whence you come or
whither you go. If you go down the wrong road has your poetry necessarily
become the road?
One reason why I'm interested in Pound is not the myriad of byways that
lead to meanness, bitterness, and an ocean of self-deceit; but the written
roads that lead out of such swamps (that is in a situation that requires an
attitude that isn't hell bent on an "if A then not B" syllogism). Pound in
a way wrote Northwest passage. He, more than any poet, managed to find the
mythic "East" (with all the Said implications). What he brought back wasn't
a dream of Western mansions, but something fundamental. Something that
became not only a cornerstone of his poetic philosophy but what was to be
part of his best poetry, and one of the elements that give the Cantos
coherence-- Chinese Tang dynasty poetry. This poetry not only is arguable
the best poetry of the Middle Kingdom, but perhaps of the human experience.
One of the philosophies of classical Chinese poetry is readership. The
writer writes from the point of view of something that is witnessed, such
that the reader shares the same point of view as the writer, floating in
the consciousness, if you will. Something as common as a "Charge of the
Light Brigade," in Western literature would be a strange experience for the
reader, not only the empathetic value would be terrible for the reader, but
the reader would also expect that Tennyson would be trotting along with the
whole disaster. I think that in Pound's Cathay, he really begins to capture
the consciousness demanded in poetic imagery. This gets played out in the
Cantos as a very necessary experience in order to bridge the classical into
the modern; or allow the Classical to be rendered as Modern. He never
finished the Cantos. But the problem internal of the Cantos might be solved
outside the Cantos; when studying Han Dynasty China, you can't not look at
Japan. There were Beats that didn't espouse an ounce of his "delusions,"
but, while putting queer shoulders to the wheel, found some commerce (Go
fuck yourself with your Atom Bomb).
These are some of the things that lead me to the decision to pay all this
money to get into the Pound listserve (besides the fact that I'm Jones'n
for some leads). I can't quite get at a lot of list's urban discourse; but
I hope it doesn't end soon. As I'm subsisting (or is it subsiding) on my UF
TA stipend and cheap beer, this list has been a little holiday fun amid the
gators and hummocks of the American dream. Soon I'll be teaching two
Freshman writing about literature courses (as you, can see I have a long
way to go on the sentence, let alone the Cantos); my students' soon to be
mortgaged for textbook has a short bio on Pound that ends: "Pare away his
delusion, and a remarkable human being and splendid poet remains"(X.J.
Kennedy and Dana Gioia, Literature 8th ed., Longman Press, 1306).
Peace and Love
Gan Xiuyun
"We have one sap, one root"
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