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From: Charles Moyer <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 06:59:34 -0500
To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
<[log in to unmask]>
Subject: ALA panels, etc.

Bob and potential panelers,
    I appreciate the invitation to present a paper in SF, but unfortunately
May will be the month that my Leer jet will be in for repairs. So I will
have to offer the following by way of this poor list in hopes that it may
brighten the affair in some remote way.

    In further consideration of the Pound and Islam discussion-
"Let us search for Mr. Upward's dangerous and heretical doctrines." -Pound
    and
"Every high creator in Western history has in reality aimed, from first to
last, at something which only the few could comprehend." -Spengler
    
    In his Table I. "Contemporary Spiritual Epochs" Spengler puts Avicenna
in the period of "Autumn", particularly among "the Great Conclusive
systems". To be more specific this autumn represents the "intelligence of
the City. Zenith of strict intellectual creativeness." What follows is
"Winter (Dawn of Megalopolitan Civilization. Extinction of spiritual
creative force. Life itself becomes problematical. Ethical practical
tendencies of an irreligious and unmetaphysical cosmopolitanism) In terms of
Islam = practical fatalism after 1000" AD - and what comes out of it
nowadays?
    Pound is a Spengler Faustian. He displays the "symbolic infinity"
expressed by the Faustian world-feeling, "the mechanical and extensional
re-ideation of the idea of immortality and world-soul" - Pound's "conspiracy
of intelligence outlasts the hash of the political map" and, one may add,
the ravages of the ages. Kung and Athena can and do enter this stage set by
the Cantos one now then another among many to visit the shadow-boxing sage
in his Pisan cage. In the parlance of Spengler the "Olympian college is
historyless, it knows no becoming, no epochal moments, no aim. But the
passionate thrust into distance is Faustian."
    And Pound is such a Faustian heretic. But then all Fausts are heretics.
However, all heretics are not Fausts. Is the question's stakes now raised
from Islam and salvation promising religion to one of immortality of another
brand? Or was the question always not about Islam and Pound but Aristotle
and his followers and Pound's perception of them?

Charlie

"'Tis the white stag, Fame, we're a-hunting,
Bid the world's hounds come to horn!"
    




> From: Robert Kibler <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 13:10:05 -0600
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Pound panel(s) at the ALA?
> 
> I think you do go straight to the heart of the matter with this question, and
> I do think Pound reconciles his pragmatism with his 'goddess' tendency in
> identifiable if changing ways in the cantos, on his way to paradise. I guess I
> am looking at those points or modes of reconciliation.
> And of the two then, Avicenna is more a Dante type, while Averroes, condemned
> somewhere along the line by everyone, seems more in line with a Pound, as
> before him, a Cavalcanti.
> 
> I swear, there are enough people talking about Pound and Islam here that we
> should be able to put together a panel session offering three worthy
> perspectives. If so, can some shoot me or Burt Hatlen or Alec Marsh a title
> and an abstract for ALA, so that we can make a case for this general topic? We
> need titles, leastways, by 20 January, as I understand it. Thanks in general,
> Charles, and thanks in particular for offering a clarifying question about
> Pound. .
> As for dualism, dualist religions, philosophies, life approaches, et
> cetera--aven't these often worked their separate ways--such as the Eleusianian
> Mysteries--understood one way by the true believers, and another by the
> politicians and group leaders who saw something operating behind the spectacle
> rather than simply in it?  Averroes has a great quote regarding the multiple
> layers of reality or perception/understanding of reality operating among
> people, but as it is, I have to install a light fixture and get to the gym
> before the Washington Redskins take the field.
> So please, all of you out there in cyberspace, consider offering a paper on
> Pound and Islam at ALA. I can do something. Are there two others out there
> willing to do so? Robert K
> 
>  
> The person of excellence understands what is moral.
> The petty person understands what is profitable.
>                    "Analects" IV.16, Confucius
>  
> Robert E. Kibler, Ph.D.
> English and Humanities
> Director, Northern Plains Writing Project
> 229 Hartnett Hall West
> Minot State University
> 500 University Avenue West
> Minot, North Dakota 58701
> telephone: 701 858 3876
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> fax: 701 858 3894
> 
>