Dear Hideo, on the basical misunderstanding of the western thinkers since
Leibniz, Hegel and many more ref. the proposed 'fundamental opposite' of
aristotelian deductive logic of classifications and the chinese method of
classifications by structural similarities I recommand Eva Hesse's
invaluable book of Munich 1978, pp 85-92. Unfortunately, as Alexander has
confirmed (who wd be more qualified on this topic) this standard work is
not available in english and I am not sure whether my language ability is
sufficient for a correct rendering; if you or someone else would be
interested I could send you the german text in whole.
Only that much in short:
The basical misinterpretation that finally might have added a great share
to the supposed 'failure' of Pound's Outyssee is in an almost sibyllinical
style preformed by Hegel, who is quoted by Mrs Hesse with a parabolic
description in his >>Jenenser Realphilosophie<< (most heavy stuff, indeed),
where he writes:
 
"Mind [Geist] refers to himself: he says to the donkey: Thou art an Inward
[Inneres] and this Inside is Me [Ich] and thine being [Sein] is a sound I
have invented voluntarily meaning that every man, whether Chinese, American
or German wse says in his very own language always the same: This is a
donkey. By what scriptural expression this image may be uttered whatsoever,
there is no reason for believing in a "impermeable boundary" (to whom it
may concern) between the western way of nominalization, taking the
recipiating object and the terms themself for an absolute and the chinese
objectivation by ways of sensual perception ('first came the seen/and thus
the palpable'), because the final parameter if there can be any, the
meaning/sense can in no case be in a sole subject but in its dialectical
confrontation with an outside world of everchanging objects. Only if you
accept the donkey for itself, not by acceptance through your accidental
perception of it you can come to an understanding of connections and both
(mainly scriptural based) worldsights lead to an misunderstanding or better
said overinterpretation of relations between separated objects. Deductive
aristotelian logic of classification (Daloc) leads to an amount of
predicates like "An ape's queue is no legislative constitution" - the
typical computerpoetry nonsense btw. Concrete Kitsch. - There is an
relation between them although (vd Hugh Kenner), but the all containing
inductive way supposed to the chinese method of ordering by structural
similarities may lead to overexaggeration like "Devil's black, so black's
devilish, too" or "This usurer is a jew, so Usura is jewish" etc,
-superstition and fanatism=religious/political Kitsch) - or the example of
an schizophrenic (or an 'automate poet') proclaiming the identity between
Jesus in the Aureole (not Gloryhole), a box of cigarettes and the female
genitalia, because all three are "shrouded"...
 
In any case the fundamental difference, left aside whether it really may be
found in today's society in the same separated way as in Pound's times
(don't want to use the cliché of an panmundial MTV-aesthetic containing a
whole in itself logical but absolute useless highend semiotic machine) must
be in the YinYang-priciple, to make it short, the permanent exchange
between the opposites: and as Pound always gets into latin when he comes to
emotional terms (some cantos read, at least for untrained me like some of
the scientific sexual education books from these times: when it gets dirty
it either turns to Latin, Greek or French - Spanish not to forget!), he is
so full of prejudices changing and smoothing only towards the last cantos
which in this meaning are the only humanistic ones (3 Parts of cantos to my
view: The Pagan - The Radical - The Man, very logical and often practised
in human thought development through the ages), that he seems to have
preached what he did not practise. Very human after all...
 
Greetings
Martin
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
>I added one more English page to my magazine site,
>From Modern to Postmodern.
>I wish as many list members would kindly read it.
>(my holiday's home work)
>
>  Hideo Nogami
>  studying Ezra Pound nonprofessionally in Japan
>  [log in to unmask]
>
>New page:
>Essay : The Chinese written character and the ideogrammic method
>http://www.seaple.icc.ne.jp/~nogami/essay2_eng.htm