Selective quotation seems the norm around here... I
agree with Dan.
 
Stoneking
 
 
 
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel Pearlman <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 06, 1999 4:20 PM
Subject: Re: Pound's castle
 
 
> By selective quotation, you softpedal the antisemitism of the
> 30s, which grew more and more severe.
>
> ==DP
>
>
> At 12:09 PM 9/6/99 -0800, you wrote:
> >If I may intrude my ignorance into this learned discussion one more
time...
> >
> >EP's "anti-semitism" seems to me a much more complicated matter than
> >either his defenders or detractors appear to realize.
> >
> >1.From his earliest letters, poems & articles, EP had an "anti-Judaic"
> >positition,but I don't think this qualifies as "anti-semitic" because
> >it was part of his general "anti-monotheist" stance, and (I think)
> >always appears as part of a general rejection of Chrisitianity, Judaism
> >and Islam --"all this Xtian-Jew-Moslem bunk"as he sez in one place.
> >(Selected Leters)
> >B. In a 1919 aritcle,EP says he prfers the Jews to the Xtians and Moslems
> >because they haven't started a religious war in 2000 years (Selected
Prose)
> >C.The anti-monotheist position seems part of that aspect of  EP
> >which comes closest to conventional "liberalism":  he dislikes monotheism
> >because it appears historically linked to intolerance.
> >[Okay: he also disliked monotheism on poetic grounds.  His type
> >of multilinguistic/multicultural sensibility resonated more to
> >polytheistic imagery than to monotheistic abstraction
> >or to Hindic monist abstraction.]
> >
> >2. In the 1930s, Pound repudiated anti-semitism specifically and
> >precisely in several places. Having joined the anti-banker radicals
> >as distinct from the anti-free-market  radicals, Pound found he
> >had a lot of anti-semitic allies. He was not quickly seduced by
> >them. His 1930-1940 writings include several explicit rejectons
> >of generalized anti-semitism, usually on the grounds that "the
> >poorJews"were not responsible for the Rothschilds, and twice on
> >the grounds that the worst "usurers" (money-coiners) were
> >not all  Jews and once on the grounds that some of them were "Aryan"
> >-- a sarcastic repudiation of Hitler's ideas. (Collected Letters, Cantos,
> >Terrel's Companion to the Cantos.)
> >
> >3. From about 1940 to somewhere in the 1960s EP clearly
> >and unambigously expressed uncritical (bigoted) anti-semitism on
> >many, many occasions. Only rarely did he pull back to the
> >(relatively sane) position of only blaming certain banking families.
> >He raved  and ranted against "the Jews" in general.
> >Some consider this immoral; some consider it insane;
> >I can see some truth in both perspectives.
> >
> >4.From sometime in the 1960s (date unknown to me: I wd
> >love to be informed by one of the more learned members of
> >this list  ) EP repudiated his anti-semitism. (See especially
> >his interview with Allen Ginsberg) He then became silent,
> >either in clinical depression (psychiatric view) or as
> >pennance (religious view.) In either case, the punishment
> >inflicted upon him by the US govt was continued by
> >self-punishment.
> >
> >5. The anti-monotheist position disappeared around the same
> >time as the anti-semitism. The religious imagery of Pound's
> >paradise cantos very carefully remains non-sectarian,
> >open to both monotheist and polytheist readings.
> >
> >This letter does not arrive at a verdict, and does not intend
> >to move others toward a verdict or toward abandonning thier
> >previous verdicts. I merely wish to share my own sense
> >of the complexity and tragedy of Pound's "errors and wrecks."
> >Most of the Cantos seem to me neither error nor wreck.....
> >
> >
> >Most humbly,
> >
> >
> >mark chan
> >
> >
> >[log in to unmask]
> >
> >
> >That is precisely what common sense is for, to be jarred into uncommon
> >sense.  One of the chief services whcih mathematics has  rendered the
> >human race in the past century is to put "common sense" where it
> >belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dust cannister labeled
> >"discarded nonsense."
> >        Eric  Temple   Bell, Mathematics: Queen of the Sciences
> >
> >
> >Las die Lasagne weiter fliegen!
> >
> >~
> >
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