In a message dated 06/02/2000 9:27:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<<
 This is a perfect example of what has been wrong with so many of the posts
that
 have attempted to defend Pound's politics: it pretty much ignores my
original post
 to bash an argument I never made. Specifically:

 [log in to unmask] wrote:

 > the issue is not whether Pound was democratic, but that he didn't despise
 > governments because they were democratic.

<< I have no idea what this means. What I said was that Pound was deeply
skeptical of
 representative democracy. What I also said was that Pound really didn't care
much
 about the specifics of governments; instead, he was much more attracted to
the
 strong leader. >>

this is the sort of double-talk that characterizes this discussion.  in fact,
what you claimed in your prior post was "Yes, Pound praised Thomas Jefferson
and said he believed in the Constitution. In itself that means nothing..."
where in this quote does it say "that Pound was deeply skeptical of
representative democracy"?  further, your remarks are part of a larger debate
as to whether or not Pound, owing to his Confucian contamination, despised
democracy.

 > as far as saying that he believed
 > in the constitution, I think we can take him at his word, remembering, of
 > course, that the our concepts of the constitution are not the same.

<< Why should we take him at his word, since it seems anomalous (to put it
mildly) to
 suggest that someone who repeatedly endorses dictators and ruling elites
could *at
 the same time* support the Constitution of a republican democracy?>>

we should take him at his word because we have no cause to do otherwise: for
one thing, he said it over and over.  you seem to believe that there is no
honesty in his claim, whereas I think that Pound was as honest as they come.
Pound, in case you don't know it, was a very sincere person, and very
consistent in what he believed; what he wasn't, was a liar.  if he says he
admired Jefferson, then he did.  if he said he believed in the constitution,
then he did.  this goes directly to the disingenuousness of your position.
you have absolutely no problem in believing in the sincerity of Pound at his
worst: you have no doubt that he hated Jews or that he admired Mussolini and
Hitler, but you react with skepticism at his more decent qualities.  you
will. of course, deny this is your position, but I defy anyone to read your
posts honestly, and come away with any other conclusion.

 > my
 > objection is to the sweeping denunciations of Pound and his politics, as if
 > nothing he believed in wasn't somehow vitiated or contaminated by his more
 > obnoxious beliefs.

>> I disagree with that, too. However, I'd suggest the bigger problem is
those who
 would ignore his politics -- and a few people here have come very close to
that. >>

this is nonsense, and laughable.  there isn't any large contingent of Pound
sanitizers running amok in the critical field; there is general agreement
that many aspects of Pound's political beliefs were, and are, horrible -- I
don't know anyone who thinks otherwise, and if you do, you should name them.
which "few people" do you have in mind?  as has been pointed out, just about
all of the poets who have come out of Pound's modern tradition are very much
left of center -- not anti-Semitic, not fascistic, not sexist, and not stupid.



 >  there's merit in much of what he had to say about
 > politics, as well as his economic positions.

<< Right, but isn't that true of almost every political movement in history?
One
 would have to be pretty dense not to spot the problems between the wars.>>

in other words, you have nothing to say about this, except to insinuate that
it's unnecessary to say because it's so obvious.  well, read the posts, it
hasn't been that obvious on this list, and the positive aspects of these
issues are almost never discussed on this list.  the tenor of the remarks
regarding Pound are overwhelmingly negative, which is precisely what I'm
objecting to.  in fact, almost everytime someone has something positive to
say about Pound, there's a flurry of negative posts -- if you don't believe
this, check the archive.

 > the ugliness of Pound is not
 > news, and to imply, as wei has done, that his sins outweigh his value, is,
 > from my point of view, simply wrong.

<< I disagree with that argument, too. However, I completely reject the
claims that
 the Cantos are not explicitly political, or that Pound was a relatively
orthodox
 Jeffersonian. >>

talk about being bashed for claims that one hasn't made!  who makes the claim
that the Cantos aren't political?  but that's not all they are, nor is that
always the main focus.  who says Pound is an "orthodox Jeffersonian",
relative or otherwise?  let's name some names, let's go on the record.  I
don't think you can name very many persons on this list, if any, who fit that
description.

 >
 > Pound borrowed from many sources, so to say that the key to understanding
him
 > is to understand his Confucianism is to reduce him to that, which is,
again,
 > unhelpful.

 <<Again, that's not what I said. Instead, I said the key to understanding his
 politics is to understand his Confucianism.>>

that's what I'm referring to.

 >  the genius of Pound's poetry is that it isn't reductive, but, on
 > the contrary,  it increases and expands the experience.  as has been
pointed
 < out, Mussolini's involvement in the Cantos is no greater than, Jefferson's
or
 > Malatesta's.

 << Which is precisely why my post was about Confucius, not Mussolini. The
standard
 way to reject the argument that the political vision of the Cantos is
totalitarian
 is to count the references to Mussolini and Hitler. As we all know, there
really
 aren't that many of them. However, as I said, Pound's Confucianism leads him
to
 celebrate strong and even totalitarian leaders. As a result, I think it's
 perfectly reasonable to say that the political vision of the Cantos aspires
to
 totalitarianism. To be blunt, it's hard for me to see how anyone could argue
 otherwise.  >>

this doesn't surprise me.  but let's suppose (and I say suppose because none
of us actually knows) that you're put the cart before the horse -- that is,
that Pound was attracted to Confucius because he was already attracted to the
heroic, strong leader type?  after all, this is a man who believed in the
gods, in spirit, if not in fact.  myself, I'm careful in my use of the word
"totalitarianism" because it's a term that, in Pound's case, frequently needs
to be modified.  personally, I don't find the Cantos all that totalitarian --
mostly I find that they're an attempt to gather together historical insights
(or, as Pound calls them, rhymes) that elucidate the tale of the tribe.  this
is my emphasis, anyway.  those who want to waste their time by proving that
Pound was actually Confucius, or Mussolini, or whomever, are free to do so.

 > I don't get the impression that anyone is trying to sanitize Pound's
 > politics, and I find the suggestion offensive.

<< As I said above, I've seen people claim that Pound was essentially an
orthodox
 Jeffersonian who supported representative democracy. Given the extraordinary
 number of places that directly contradict that view, I consider that an
attempt to
 sanitize his politics. I think the reason that some people are rewriting
Pound's
 political commitments isn't because those correspondents themselves have
 questionable politics; instead, it's because they see a threat to Pound's
poetic
 achievement. In the wake of hatchet jobs like Casillo's book, that's not
 unfounded. At the same time, Casillo does an excellent job at demolishing the
 extenuations which too many critics invented for Pound's totalitarianism and
 anti-Semitism, and we should be very careful to avoid a return to those
 indefensible positions.>>

perhaps you could point to specific remarks in this thread by persons on this
list, which is who your charge was leveled at.  most persons that I know
who've read Pound have had a difficult and painful struggle with the noxious
aspects of his canon, and who were able to see the value despite these
serious problems.  I don't know anyone who has ever presented Pound as
principally a proponent of Jeffersonian democracy, and I doubt that you can
present any examples of this.  this claim that there's an army of Pound
sanitizers is a lie that the Pound haters promulgate in their attempt to
denigrate Pound's poetry; it doesn't matter that they deny that this is their
goal when they are called on it.  and don't bother to deny that you said that
there is an "army of Pound sanitizers", this is my characterization; but if
you don't believe there is a sizable number of critics who are attempting to
whitewash Pound's politics, then you're just raising a smokescreen.

joe brennan...