My letter concerning Poundian criticism was addressed to those members of the
listserver who had asked for a guide, an overview of what books they could
safely dispense with. It certainly was not intended to catalog the precise
location of every interesting jot and tittle about the poet, which is a
scholarly exercise not every reader is interested in assigning himself, and I
sympathize.
 
Since my overview was largely an exclusion of a great many scholarly books,
we might usefully begin with the question: "What is the scholar's task?" More
particularly, what is the scholar's task when his scholarship is directed at
a poet, and a great one? Is it not preserving his manuscripts, explaining
textual difficulties (in so far as that is possible), and collecting
biographical details? Is it not, in short, tending the flame of the poet?
 
Now this function of the scholar is, I assert, a universal one.  And there is
something in this "tending of the flame" of hero-worship. Else why tend the
flame at all? This does not mean that the scholar makes  deletions or
omissions from the biographical record which are unflattering,  or edits out
what is inconvenient: our great men do not need to be falsified.
 
I submit that the books I excluded were judged to be devoid of scholarship.
For the scholarly book provides the reader with the materials necessary to
form an objective judgment concerning the merit of the poet, which is his
poetry. The scholarly book does not direct the reader on how to make his
judgment.
 
It is, I believe, an obvious truth that our Poundian scholars, for the last
twenty years, have not performed the function of scholars but of critics.
This is, in and of itself, a remarkable thing. Those who should preserve the
poet also wish to judge him. And what is the basis of their criticism? Is it
on the basis of manuscripts newly discovered, or textual difficulties finally
resolved? Has some discovery been made about the poems? Is it, in short, on
the basis of scholarship?
 
No. These scholars wish to criticize Pound because of his life, and more
particularly his political sympathies. Thus, the poet has been re-evaluated
on the basis of moral criteria, which in the realm of literary judgment, is
the oldest fallacy. Today Pound is guilty of fascism and antisemitism, as
Paul Verlaine was guilty of sexual immorality, as Oscar Wilde was guilty of
sodomy, etc. The moral fallacy only demonstrates the fact that a writer's
life and work are not synonymous: a fact that critics were well aware of, but
the interloping scholars were not.
 
The use of the moral fallacy by our Poundian scholars only emphasizes their
unfitness to be critics. For the basis of the poet's reputation is his
poetry, and not his life. So why was this improper denigration of the poet
pursued? It must be admitted that some Poundian scholars were highly
uncomfortable with the poet's canonical position in American letters, simply
because he was a fascist and an antisemite. Their criteria for literary
greatness included a test of political sympathies, a test which Pound (and
Robert Frost, and T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats) failed.
 
This imposition of political criteria into the realm of aesthetic judgment is
our era's rather sad addition to literary criticism. It must be added that
this program has not been consistently employed on literary authors  either;
it has been focused on politically right-wing Modernist writers (Pound,
Yeats, Celine, Eliot) but not on their left-wing counterparts (Mayakovsky,
Sartre, the French Surrealists).
 
I, for one, do not wish to see it employed at all. The scholarly books that
I referred to as "mean-spirited and ridiculous" were ones which employed some
version of this political/moral fallacy. In so far as Poundian scholars and
critics are responsible for the formation of taste in their day, these
authors have not only been irresponsible but actively harmful to the Poundian
scholarship they claim to represent.  In this regard, I consider them not
only enemies of the poet they unfairly disparage, but enemies of literature.
 
These critics have, however, raised one important issue, which is the oldest
one: the morality of art. Should morality intrude at all into literary
judgment? Without restating all the Aristotelian and Platonic positions and
all the artistic creeds, I would submit that the degree to which Pound's
fascist and antisemitic opinions enter into literary judgment is the degree
to which they enter into the poetry (as opposed to the prose, the letters,
the radio speeches, ad infinitum). Such opinions appear in Pound's poetry
only in The Cantos and there very infrequently. There are perhaps, if one
compiled the passages, three or four pages of objectionable material in a
poem stretching some 800 pages.
 
Pound simply cannot be made into "the poet laureate of Nazism" as one critic
has asserted. However the question, of the intersection of art and evil, is a
fascinating one. And there is another poet who more consistently exemplifies
the problem,  an author who today receives universal praise: Baudelaire. But
this leads us to another issue, altogether.
 
Regards,
Garrick Davis
Contemporary Poetry Review
(www.cprw.com)