"The latin tradition, more tolerant, catholic and mature , has not
sentimentalized about the deeply-pigmented skin, nor fixed upon it, on the
other hand, a stigma. You would not be so likely to get adepts of jazz in a
Black Belt in a latin land, nor the ferocity of lynching neighboured by
anti-White tracts, written by Whites, nor a universal thunder of psalms
from Black and White throats mixed, and evangelist extremes of intolerance
and hysterical expansion-- it would be more likely you would find a firmer
attitude, more satisfactory to both sides, far less superstitious, in the
Latin."
    -- Wyndham Lewis, PALEFACE (1929), "A Model Melting-pot"


At 09:22 AM 12/19/01 +0000, Davis, Alex wrote:
>Mr Davis's (wilfully?) provocative post would appear to be premised on an a
>priori notion of what an artwork should be, viz., "unified": "Considered as
>an epic poem, as a unified work of art, the Cantos is a failure according to
>any critical measure we wish to use."  I suspect that, in Mr Davis's
>poetics, the phrase "unified work of art" is tautological; that is, he is
>unable to consider the possibility of a dis-unified or disjunctive poetic
>practice (hence his dislike for Maximus, among other post-Poundian long
>poems).   Even if one were to accept Mr Davis's claim that the Cantos are/is
>"nasty, obscure, fragmentary, and long" it does not follow that it fails
>necessarily as a work of art. (Incidentally, is to be "nasty" to forsake the
>aesthetic?  A large number of modernists possessed "nasty" views on class
>(Woolf), race (Lewis, Eliot), gender (Faulkner) etc., etc.  Is this a reason
>for not reading them?  My library would be quite depopulated!).
>         I know there are many Poundians who view the Cantos as coherent and
>unified; but if, for the sake of argument, one sees in the Cantos a
>paratactic processual poetic that--regardless of Pound's intentions--resists
>closure and totality, then the poem might be seen as forcing us to expand
>our sense of what a long poem might _be_. I think that this is what is
>genuinely avant-garde about the Cantos, and which still speaks to us--much
>as Duchamp is still our contemporary.
>
>         Regards and best wishes for the season,
>         Alex Davis (no relation)
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: 19 December 2001 01:38
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: The Incoherence of the Cantos
>
>
>Dear Pound Listmembers,
>
>I would like to hear some discussion on the lasting importance of the
>Cantos.
>Is it the great epic poem of the 20th century or a complete mess?
>
>It seems to me that, in the end, it is the great garbage heap of
>Modernism--a
>vast accumulation of (now annotated) passages from which the reader (or,
>more
>probably, the scholar) picks at random. It has a vast reputation among
>scholars and poets--and yet it is formless and incoherent by any standard.
>Its reputation (and example) has been pernicious. The Cantos is
>"responsible"
>for the other unreadable long poems of the Modernist era--like Olson's
>Maximus or Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover.
>
>It is, in short, the perfect example of the excesses of Modernism and the
>taste in poetry that it championed: nasty, obscure, fragmentary, and long.
>
>If I may be permitted to quote myself:
>"Considered as an epic poem, as a unified work of art, the Cantos is a
>failure according to any critical measure we wish to use. It is so obscure
>that a small army of scholars has gained tenure by annotating its lines, and
>
>that enterprise has taken fifty years. It is so fragmentary that, even with
>their notes, most of it seems willfully private in the worst way: like the
>diary of an encryptionist, written for an audience of one. Without such
>notes, of course, the poem is merely a terrifying, polylingual puzzle. It,
>in
>fact, depends upon the glosses of scholars to render it readable; it is
>inscrutable without exegesis.  The Cantos is simply not a self-sufficient
>work of art."
>
>This question seems to be exemplified in the whole problem of addressing the
>
>Cantos in the singular or plural form. The Cantos is or the Cantos are? Is
>it
>one thing or a miscellany?
>
>Regards,
>Garrick Davis
>editor,
>CPR (www.cprw.com)