Wei,
Do you see no merit whatseover in the view that a poet, who is attracted to
Eleusis and whose work is full of references to the otherworld and the
underworld, might value the concept of religious mystery for reasons that do
not involve control of the workers?

Perhaps you were angered by my telling you, in some many words, that you are
becoming predictable. Even so, remember your tendency to reduce contrary
opinion to absurdity ("preserve God's mystery like putting jam in a jar").
If anything, Wei, translating the ritual into the vernacular might be
regarded as an attempt to make the experience more palatable for the
contemporary consumer congregation.

Look more closely at the passage you quoted from Pound:


> > >   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

Let's burn a few straw men:

That Pound is able to imagine the Mass in Chinese shows that his reasons for
wanting the Mass in Latin do not stem from any notion of philological or
historical accuracy, are not akin to the rigid opinions of certain
musicologists who insist that pieces be played on period instruments.

That Pound would accept "any abracadabra" (ile. any mumbo-jumbo) as the
language of the Mass shows that his primary criterion is that the language
be unintelligible.

That Pound regarded the celebrant of the Mass as a "half-educated ape of a
clargimint" (play on "varmint") shows that he does not regard the clergy as
an elect class.

That Pound refers to the public in less than glowing terms ("bloody member
of the public") shows that he does make a distinction between the elect and
everyone else.  Who are the elect? Who are the high-priests? They who have
been initiated into the mysteries. And who are they? Artists.

Why should the ritual language be unintelligible? Because it inculcates (I
use the word advisedly) the notion that an understanding of these mysteries
is not to be had by any Tom Dick or Harry of a layman or by any Father
Michael, Father Gregorio, or Father Stanislaus of a clergyman, who has
happened to pass the required courses at the seminary and can wave his
doctor of divinity diploma around.  I leave aside the possibility also that
their chanting of nonsense may have induced a certain mental state during
which it would have been quite easy for Pound to slip through the pews
picking the congregation's pockets.

Tim Romano

P.S. I have no idea whether deity is all-compassionate. That would be mere
credo on my part. But I do know that men are likely, when their idea of God
is mercy incarnate,  to prefer mercy over justice. Put this on a
Machievellian axis. Men whose god is a god of mercy are likely to belong to
the class of men who must pray.

P.P.S. Mind you -- I am explicating Pound's thought, not necessarily
offering up my own.


----- Original Message -----
From: "En Lin Wei" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 10:54 PM
Subject: "Preserve the mystery"? (part one)


> >I knew you would have trouble seeing
> >that an attempt to preserve mystery could be anything more than an
> >authoritarian attempt to control the masses.
>
> "Preserve mystery"  ?  Maybe you have to explain how you interpret the
> phrase.  I think the phrase is an oxymoron.  If God is a mystery, how
could
> the experience of communing with God be "preserved"?  Can you  preserve
> God's mystery like putting jam in a jar?  That seems to me what Latin
> intoning priests are trying to do.  They believe they are replicating a
> "mystery" which is nothing but a formalized crystalization of what WAS a
> genuine experience of the Divine.
>
> You need to explain how "preserving the mystery" could be anything else
but
> a attempt to "control the masses".  Insofar as these attempts to "preserve
> the mystery" are part of the social organization of religion, why are they
> not part of an attempt to control the masses?  It was POUND, not me, who
> uses the phrase "control the masses:
>
> > >
> > >   Historically the organization of religions has usually
> > >   been for some ulterior purpose, exploitation, control
> > >   of the masses, etc.
> > >     (S.P., 50).
> > >
>
> How do you explain this?  You appear to avoid my claim that genuine
> religious experience probably has nothing to do with priests incantations.
> In light of the above quote, doesn't the burden of proof remain with you?
> Can you explain how "preserving the mystery" is anything but "controlling
> the masses."
>
> >
> >Pound rejects religions which have an eschatological focus or which
> >undermine individual and collective enduring human achievement.  Their
> >amenability to representative democracy has, I believe, very little to do
> >with it.  Buddhism is also amenable to oppressive dictatorships.  The
> >essence of Buddhism is Amenability.
> >
>
> Late in life Pound does seem to be interested in eschatology.  By 1960
Pound
> had rejected Confucianism, in part because it did NOT have any clear
> eschatological focus.  Notice that the later Cantos do not contain any
> reference to Confucius.
>
> Pound's loss of interest in Confucius seems, at least in part, to have
been
> prompted by a desire to find a
> new creed which could supply him with a hope for religious salvation.
When
> he came out of a clinic in the
> autumn of 1960,
>
>   There were more self-reproaches, more regrets.
>   He now felt that Confucianism was an inadequate
>   creed, telling Stock that it could scarcely provide
>   'a "Refuge for Sinners" to whom one may appeal.'
>       (Carpenter, 871).
>
> >Pound rejects religions which . . . .
> >undermine individual and collective enduring human achievement.
>
>
> Can you offer some evidence to sustain this . . .   ?  Confucianism
> undermines individual attainment as much as any ideological system on
earth.
>   I think you and most people on this list are aware that ALL great
Chinese
> artists, painters, and poets (with virtually no exception) WERE BUDDHISTS
> AND TAOISTS.  Can anyone name any great individual artistic acheivement in
> Chinese or Japanese culture which was produced by a Confucianist?  I doubt
> it.
>
> >Buddhism is also amenable to oppressive >dictatorships.  The
> >essence of Buddhism is Amenability.
> >
>
> I am not sure what this means.  Can you give me an example of a Buddhist
> dictatorship?  I cannot think of one.  Of course any ideology can be
> corrupted and perverted.  But scholars of Chinese history agree that under
> the Tang dynasty -- a Buddhist dynasty -- there was less oppression and
more
> toleration of religious diversity than in any other period.   The essense
of
> Buddhism is tolerance and compassion, and allowance for varying
> interpretations.  I mentioned Sri Lanka and Japan as two countries where
the
> main religion is Buddhism, and where tolerance and democracy have thrived.
> Can you address this with a counter example?
>
> >
> >What Pound is saying is that the Gods smile upon dynamic men who by their
> >actions attempt to shape the world.
>
> Shouldn't it matter HOW such men attempt to shape the world?  Any man who
is
> dynamic, who attempts to shape the world, is ipso facto "favored by the
> Gods"?
>
> Pound's view seems to be rendered problematic by his conception of the
> "martyr."  You say Pound is not fond of eschatology.  But he is interested
> in the meaning of a hero's death, and in the deification or apotheosis of
> specific heros (That is what the "Thrones" is about).
>
> The notion of a martyr is an eschatalotical one, is it not? Hitler is
called
> a martyr, comparable to Joan of Arc (strange comparison---- a mass
murderer
> who tries to oppress the world, and committs suicide to escape punishment
> ----with a soldier-maiden who tries to liberate her country from foreign
> oppression and dies in the flames praising God).  Mussolini is grouped
with
> Manes and Dionysus as a divine figure in the Cantos, another martyr hardly
> deserving the appelation.
>
> >In effect, you're criticizing Pound
> >because his view is not that the gods are all-compassionate and
> >all-accepting.
>
> Yes, I am.  Do you think that the Deity (God, or the gods) are NOT
> compassionate?
>
>
> >The gods, according to Pound, are not all
> >forgiving.
>
> If Pound thinks that the gods "smiled upon" men like Hitler and Mussolini
> (and Genghis Khan), then the gods must be pretty horrific, worse than
> unforgiving.  If Pound is correct then "who could deny the savagery of
God"
> (to use Sophocles' phrase)?
>
> It is strange that many followers of Judaism ask, how could God have
allowed
> Hitler to do what he did (?); while for Pound the tragedy is that the gods
> could not allow Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito to succeed.
>
> >This is
> >why he does not champion Hinduism.
> >
>
> It is perhaps because Hinduism cannot fit into his "totalitarian
synthesis"
> [Pound's phrase].  Many on this list (myself included) have applied the
word
> syncretistic to Pound's relgious approach.  But there are different types
of
> syncretisim.  Pound wants a syncretism which is consistent with
> totalitarianism (Roman imperial paganism, Confucianism, and Catholicism
ARE;
> liberal protestantism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are NOT).
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