Hear, hear to David's very reasonable take on this often
overly-emotional debate. To which I would only add that it seems to
me both naive and unfair to expect Pound (or any other artist) to
escape the morass of errors, prejudices, and complicities to which we
are all subject and among whichwe have all, I dare say, comported
ourselves less than nobly at times. None of this forgives, but I seem
to recall a story about throwing the first stone...
--Bill Cole
At 3:36 PM -0700 5/24/01, A. David Moody wrote:
>It occurs to me that the ever recurring question -- How could Pound write
>anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist propaganda, and also write such great
>poetry? -- reveals more about the questioners' mindset than it ever will
>about Pound. What it reveals is the difficulty of getting our minds around
>the relativity and complexity of things. The cause of that difficulty is
>dealing in absolutes and either/ors. The source is our Hebraic-Christian
>culture. Very difficult to get out of that. So we simplify, holding on to
>just one graspable aspect of the case at a time, and making that the whole
>case for the time. He wrote anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist propaganda and
>that's all that's to be said. It is all that some want to say or have said.
>Or, he wrote <The Cantos> and that is all that matters -- as if the poetry
>would be invalidated if the propaganda were seen for what it is. Whereas it
>is the case that he wrote both the poetry and the propaganda, and that
>neither cancels out the other. Both/and, or yes/yes -- a truer structure
>for thinking than the binary yes/no, but it doesn't come naturally in our
>particular culture. Of course it does put a strain on the moralized mind,
>this trying to marry heaven and hell.
>
>As for Purgatory, as I am sure Leon Surette is well aware, that's the state
>of those who went wrong without losing rightness. I can go along with
>that, as a neat metaphor.
>
>But what I can't understand is how people can sit in judgment on Pound as
>confidently as if they were the Christian deity, all-knowing. The rest of
>us have to allow for having a more limiting point of view. As Jennifer
>Wilson crisply remarked.
>
>Many thanks to Ian Kluge for his informing good sense.
>
>David Moody
--
__________________________________________
William Cole, Assistant Director
Computers in Composition and Literature
Department of English
The Ohio State University
338B Denney Hall
164 W. 17th Avenue
Columbus, OH 43210
phone: 614-292-4640
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WWW: http://people.english.ohio-state.edu/cole.254
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