Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>  wrote:

>Imagine that Pound is reading "letters to the editor" on the subject of
>Latin as the language of the mass; imagine him becoming incensed at the
>opinions of both the laity and the clergy.  Some may be writing that latin
>is a dead language while others may be saying that the hearts of the people
>are not in the mass, or appealing to papal authority, or explaining the
>meaning and purpose of certain phrases in the liturgy by bombarding the
>reader with passages from the Summa Theologica about the "mysterium fidei".
>Whereas Pound would be thinking something like this:
>
>"Paganism included a certain attitude toward; a certain understanding of,
>coitus, which is the mysterium. The other rites are the festivals of
>fecundity of the grain and the sun festivals, without revival of which
>religion can not return to the hearts of the people."


That seems highly speculative to me, though perhaps accurate in some
respects.   If Pound had been reading letters to the editor along the lines
you describe, we know that he would have thought, “The Mass itself is good.
Communion is good.  Why, because it is not of Jewish origin.”  Let us look
again at what thoughts were ACTUALLY reflected in the letter.   When we
chose to focus on one part, we forgot the preceding lines:

  Re European belief:  Neither mass nor communion
  are of Jew origin.  Nowt to do with that nasty old
  maniac JHV [Jehovah] and are basis of Xtn. religion.
  Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in
  Greek or Chinese.  In fact, any abracadabra that no
  bloody member of the public or a half-educated ape
  of a clargimint cd. think he understood
   (Letter to Rev. Henry Swabey, Mar. 1940).



If we cut away the lines ----"Re European belief:  Neither mass nor
communion are of Jew origin.  Nowt to do with that nasty old maniac JHV
[Jehovah] and are basis of Xtn. religion."  -----  your conclusions
regarding Pound’s sentiments are more palatable.  But Pound’s championship
of the Catholic mass is inextricably tied here to his anti-semitism (and to
his classism as well, it seems to me).

I am no great fan of Jehovah.  But I cannot see that Pound’s fondness for
Dionysus represents some kind of spiritual or cultural advance over belief
in “that nasty old maniac JHV [Jehovah]”  Do you?  Pound gives several
beautifully written instances of Dionysus worship in the Cantos.  But the
isn’t the nasty old maniac Dionysus, as portrayed in Eurpides and in Ovid
just as bad?  (Namely the Dionysus who hypnotizes  the non believer Pentheus
and forces him to tear off his own mothers head).   The assertion that Pagan
Greek gods are less “maniacal” or less “nasty” than Jehovah seems highly
questionable to me.

>
>To the extent that the clergy are given to theological book-learning and
>doctrinal disputations, Pound would condemn them all as "half-educated".

This would be a bit odd for someone as prone to disputation as Pound.

>Pound's gripe isn't about city mice/country mice or about studing theology
>in Rome over Kansas City.

My point is that Pound supports that religious hierarchies as a matter of
general principle.  He supports the Mass; he supports the ceremony of
communion; he supports Latin as the language of communion.  He does not
support them because he believes very strongly in Catholicism (in fact he
only toys with, flirts with Catholicism, when it appears to fit in with his
larger picture).  Whether he despises “bloody members of the public” or
“members of the bloody public” is too fine a distinction.  There is no
evidence that he cares for the ordinary person, or for institutions that
would give them more social or political power.

In more public statements Pound's attitude appears slightly less
condescending (than it does in the above quote), but it may be seen as part
of a growing belief that ritual has a universal applicability , whether the
religious ritual is Italian Catholic, Chinese Confucian, or Japanese
Samurai.

  I see out of my bedroom window a chapel built
  on a sane economic system.  Namely, the peasants up
  that side of the mountain had the stone underfoot and
  they wanted a chapel, so they got the stone out of the
  mountain and put up the chapel.  I suppose they believe
  in something.  And it is quite certain that the FASCIST
  regime approves of that sort of activity . . .
    I see and approve the folks in Rapallo coming down
  to the sea on Easter morning, not so many as used to.
I see the peasant women bringing their silk worm cocoons
into the church about Easter time to get 'em blessed, hiding
them under their aprons.  All this shows respect for divinity.
Nobody taxes 'em for doing it or for NOT doing it.
They bring out their grass that has been sprouted up prematurely
by puttin' the seed on the wet flannel and put little rows in front of their
altars.
All that is very pretty.
   It may or may not be part of a theory.
I think it conduces to the amenities.
ANYHOW, it is part of the good life, part of the art of living.
ANY Chinese gentleman, on Wang Chin-Wei's side of the line at
least, would respect it, and Japanese Samurai would respect it.
       (Doob, 119).

Pound has by 1940 abandoned the position that he held in "Axiomata" where he
opposed "the
organization of religions" precisely because such organization was effected
"for some ulterior purpose,
[such as] exploitation . . . "  In the passage just quoted, Pound associates
Catholic ritual and ceremony
with "FASCISM."  A Catholic chapel becomes good because it is a product of
"a sane economic
system."  Fascism is good because it "approves of that sort of activity,"
i.e., the construction of
religious buildings and the observance of Easter ceremonies.  Whereas in the
Chinese Imperial Cantos
the construction of Buddhist temples is depicted as noxious, and rulers who
destroy such temples are
portrayed as Confucian heroes, all Catholic religious activity is seen
during the World War II period as
"conducing to the amenities."  Church and state cooperate, the hierarchical,
traditional features of one
complement the authoritarian, dictatorial features of the other, in idyllic
fashion.  Hence, the nature
imagery, the talk of "peasant women bringing their silk worm cocoons into
the church" (which evokes
Confucian China rather than modern Italy), and the talk of devoted
worshippers who put "the seed on
wet flannel and put little rows in front of their altars."  While Pound may
"suppose they believe in
something," he believes in none of the rituals, apart from their socializing
function.

(continued in the next post)
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