Burt:  I'm responding directly to you because the Pound listserv started
bouncing my posts right after our university made some transparent
alteration to our server --
 
First a note of caution:  I have not read the Lilla essays yet (but
will on
your recommendation); still, I know enough to be deeply suspicious of
the
argument that _Being and Time_ "leads us straight to Hitler and to
National
Socialism."  This is simply _ad hominem_ and untrue.
 
Similarly, I'd be a bit careful about the assumption that "whatever
Pound
did affected only himself."  This assumes that the people with whom
Pound
corresponded and the people who read his works had no material effects
in
the world as a result.  That's a limb I wouldn't want to go out upon.
 
More importantly, you raise some fundamental questions about how we read
that I think have been given short shrift in the recent list
discussions,
and this is what I value most in your message today.  I would liken the
issues to discussions I find in the works of Patrocinio Schweickart and
Derrida, neither of whom writes on Pound to my knowledge.  In _The Ear
of
the Other_, Derrida makes arguments about our readings of Nietzsche
that I
think have crucial implications for reading Heidegger, and Pound.
Derrida
rejects the argument that Nietzsche's texts "lead us straight to Hitler
and
to National Socialism," but neither is he willing to accept the argument
that the Nazi reading of Nietzsche is simply and clearly a gross
misreading.  Instead, he wants us to engage in  readings that can
account
for the fact that Nietzsche's texts produce both the Nazi and anti-Nazi
interpretations.  We must come to understand how both can proceed from
the
same texts, and how both are active in our cultural response to the
texts.
 
Similarly, Schwieckart, in her 1984 essay "Reading Ourselves," starts
from
the question she finds herself confronted with in her continued desire
to
read (and to find important) texts that appear to be demonstrably
sexist.
"Why do they remain appealing even after they have been subjected to
thorough feminsit critique?"  She concludes that the particular works
she
has in mind continue to call upon her "authentic liberatory
aspirations."
While I'd quibble with the use of the term "authentic" here, I think
she's
absolutely right that an artist such as Pound continues to appeal to a
utopian impulse in my reading, an impulse that he so often seems to
betray,
and that both the utopian moment and its betrayal are inextricably
bound up
in one another.  We cannot separate the beauty and critical acuity of
Pound
from its simultaneous undermining.  Schweickert ends by calling for "a
dual
hermeneutic" that discloses the text's varied ideological complicities
and
"recuperates the utopian moment."  Again, I might argue with her choice
of
terms, but I think that any reading of Pound that is to be useful to us
today must offer us exacty this sort of dual hermeneutic.  The argument
that Pound was not an antisemite, or that he wasn't antisemitic in any
way
that had material consequences simply will not hold up to a full
reading of
all that he wrote.  Many on the list seem to be dismissive of serious
attempts to read Pound's racism and political ideology.  This to my mind
simply mirrors the errors of those who would dismiss Pound and all who
read
him on the basis of his politics.
 
We are all still struggling with these issues -- I take the same final
stand that you do -- whatever poetry can be in our time _has_ passed
through Pound, and must continue to do so.  To understand what poetry
can
be in our time, what it is now and might come to be, requires readings
that
account for ALL of the mountain.
 
X-SMTP-From: [log in to unmask]
X-SMTP-To: [log in to unmask]
Received: from 157.242.50.240 (157.242.50.240 [157.242.50.240]) by
voyager.umeres.maine.edu with SMTP id MSGVYEYO; Thu, 18 Nov 1999
21:08:37 GMT
Received: from [157.242.66.40] by popmail.lmu.edu (NTMail
4.30.0013/NT2109.01.19acd5a3) with ESMTP id gszjcaaa for
<[log in to unmask]>; Thu, 18 Nov 1999 13:06:19 -0800
Message-Id: <[log in to unmask]>
X-Sender: [log in to unmask]
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 13:07:18 -0800
To: [log in to unmask]
From: "Nielsen, Aldon" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"