I want to thank David Moody for his contribution to this list, and for his
contribution to Pound studies.  If I am not mistaken I believe it was
something you wrote that sparked my original interest in the issue of Pound
and Confucius.  Please do not allow my disagreement with some of your
comments to be misinterpreted as a lack of cordial feeling toward you and
your ideas.


David Moody wrote,


>Subject: art/action
>
>Tim Romano,
>
>You moved the discussion on a step (beyond 'Censorship & Social Darwinism')
>by observing that 'Pound was both an idea-into-action and an
>action-into-idea artist'.   Yes, but we need a distinction here:  the
>poet's
>business is to make his poem,  and it is the poem which goes into action.

I am not sure that a "poem" goes into action.  Of course we often here that
poems and works of art have lives of their own, independently of the artist.
  But I take this to be a metaphor.  It signifies not that the poem goes
into action, but that PEOPLE go into action, often by choosing to read a
poem, or react to a poem in a unique fashion.  The poem is the product of
the poet's mental activity, and the interpretation is the product of the
reader's act of reading.  The reader's action stems from his choice to
respond to his own interpretation in a certain way.

>(One could say: the poet's job is to create the 'idea', and it is the
>'idea'
>which goes into action--but 'idea' is easily mistaken to mean its mere
>abstract, so I prefer to say it is his making which goes into action.)  It
>acts, necessarily, in and upon the minds of its readers;  its results,
>naturally, will be slow to show up and must change perceptions before they
>can affect public policy.

Again I would say that the reader acts upon the poem, or in response to the
poem.


>But when the poet would go into action directly,
>as Pound did in his prose propaganda, he is not acting as poet.  And he can
>act contrary to his poetry, as Pound did in the worst of his Rome radio
>broadcasts.

Here I agree with you, at least in part.  The poet CAN act contrary to his
poetry.  But it needs to be proven first, that he wanted to, and second,
that he did.  We cannot assume this, especially in Pound's case.


>That is, he can unmake his own making.  One man in opposite
>modes.  Yet the same motivation behind both.  It is a good puzzle to bemuse
>the fixities and definites by which Pound is too readily judged.
>

Why opposite modes?  Can it be proven that Pound acts in opposite modes when
he writes poetry and when he broadcasts fascist propaganda?  Or should this
be taken as an assumption?  What kind of unmaking are you talking about?
Does the poetry "unmake" the fascist propaganda?  Or does the fascist
propaganda reinforce the values of the poetry (as Pound himself
maintained--- recall that he said the Radio broadcasts would be the best
source of cultural and artistic education for the youth of his age, that he
did not know where else they could gain the benefits of such knowledge).

Why does it not seem to you that Pound is trying to acheive the same things
in his poetry and his prose, in his artistic activity and his social and
economic theorizing?  What do YOU make of his statement:  "New Masses
Magazine is correct when they say my poetry and my economics are not
separable."  ?

Pound himself said his China Cantos offered "evidence" that fascism could
work.  Pound himself links together the Confucianism and the fascism, in the
prose, the speeches, and in the Cantos.  One of the more famous examples,
pointed out by Kenner, was the inclusion of a poetic rendering of a
Hitler-Mussolini summit at a point in the China Cantos where the Chinese
Empire reaches its height( after the conclusion of a treaty between the
Chinese and the Tartars).


>And let's repeat, what several contributors have been maintaining, the
>politics of the poetry are one thing, and Pound's prose propaganda is
>something else.   To confuse the one with the other serves obfuscation, not
>the better understanding of either.
>

Pound thought otherwise, it would appear.  I don't think the statements you
cite prove that Pound saw his poetry as one thing and his "prose propaganda
as something else."  Could you explain how they do?  To artificially
separate the propaganda from the poetry might be a more serious
"obfuscation" of the totality of Pound than any attempt to discover the
precise relation between the two.   In a previous post I pointed out how
POUND HIMSELF thought his belief in Mussolini's "continuous revolution"  was
tied to his belief in Confucianism and to the symbolic signficance of the
character Hsin1 (New).  How do you interpret Pound's comments, and his use
of the Chinese character, and of Confucianism in the Cantos?  Does the
latter have only aesthetic significance, or does it have moral significance
which can be divorced from the history of Confucian politics and Pound
interpretation of history?

I recently offered an explanation of the cultural significance of the phrase
T'ai P'ing, (Great Peace) in relation to Chinese history and Pound's use of
the term.  I ask you (or anyone else) to react to Pound's use (or misuse) of
this term, in relations to Pound's view on the significance of Confucius and
Confucianism for Chinese history.

Regards,

Wei
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