>From: Dirk Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>    <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: "self-sufficient work of art"
>Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2001 09:35:19 -0800
>
>Your point is well-taken, but why use a term like "self-sufficient", which
>implies so much more?  The terminology itself seems to have been invented
>in
>order to raise a certain type of work above others by imbuing these works
>with an ontological superiority. Why not just call them "straight-forward"
>or "accessible" or something like that?  Could it be that, though
>accessibility is their touchstone, critics of this ilk wish to retain the
>mystery of the mantle of scholarship and to create an elitism of the
>anti-intellectual?
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tim Romano [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 6:19 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: "self-sufficient work of art"
>
>
>Not that I agree with the critical stance taken by Garrick Davis ... but I
>think he had in mind the kind of work that makes no recondite or arcane
>allusions, when he used the term "self-sufficient". Take Hemingway's _ The
>Old Man and the Sea _, for example; it alludes broadly to baseball in a way
>that "everybody" would understand, not to its obscure statistics or to a
>particularly dazzling double-play in the bottom of the 8th inning of some
>game that has achieved legendary status among baseball fans, but in the
>form of beloved teams.
>
>To understand Hemingway's allusions requires a deep acculturation. To
>understand Pound's allusions, on the other hand, requires extensive
>book-learning and a cross-cultural, anthropological perspective.  As I
>understood Garrick's question, it might be paraphrased so:  for an epic to
>be a successful epic, doesn't it have to play to the deep acculturation of
>a People, not the to book-learning and polyglot abilities of the elites?
>The cross-cultural and the Epic don't seem to mix, do they?
>
>My reply to that question would be this: the fair critic must ask how the
>Cantos seeks to _transcend_ the epic genre with respect to  Place, Time,
>People, Language, and the task set for its Hero.
>
>Tim Romano


" ... an elitism of the anti-intellectual"

Yes. And let's consider the source of that distinctively
American attitude:  --  fundamentalist Xtianity.

The Puritan invaders, ironically imitating Mother Church (R.C.),
long ago established a deep-seated suspicion -- if not ouright
fear -- of knowledge.

"Science is the criticism of Myth."  .... Yeats

Knowledge leads to Questions; questioning to Doubt ...
and there are still those among our fellow citizens (U.S.)
who maintain that the only Book one needs to read is
Ta Biblia.

(Mr Pound "knew his Bible".)

At any rate, if what we want in Art is that which will express
"emotion" to the greatest number in the simplest fashion,
we don't need to exert ourselves beyond the verse
of a Hallmark card.

"It ain't just to walk around and sing --
you gotta step out a little -- right?"

Robert Alan Zimmerman said that

Have a very merry winter solstice

(I said that)

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