In a message dated 06/02/2000 9:27:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] writes: << This is a perfect example of what has been wrong with so many of the posts that have attempted to defend Pound's politics: it pretty much ignores my original post to bash an argument I never made. Specifically: [log in to unmask] wrote: > the issue is not whether Pound was democratic, but that he didn't despise > governments because they were democratic. << I have no idea what this means. What I said was that Pound was deeply skeptical of representative democracy. What I also said was that Pound really didn't care much about the specifics of governments; instead, he was much more attracted to the strong leader. >> this is the sort of double-talk that characterizes this discussion. in fact, what you claimed in your prior post was "Yes, Pound praised Thomas Jefferson and said he believed in the Constitution. In itself that means nothing..." where in this quote does it say "that Pound was deeply skeptical of representative democracy"? further, your remarks are part of a larger debate as to whether or not Pound, owing to his Confucian contamination, despised democracy. > as far as saying that he believed > in the constitution, I think we can take him at his word, remembering, of > course, that the our concepts of the constitution are not the same. << Why should we take him at his word, since it seems anomalous (to put it mildly) to suggest that someone who repeatedly endorses dictators and ruling elites could *at the same time* support the Constitution of a republican democracy?>> we should take him at his word because we have no cause to do otherwise: for one thing, he said it over and over. you seem to believe that there is no honesty in his claim, whereas I think that Pound was as honest as they come. Pound, in case you don't know it, was a very sincere person, and very consistent in what he believed; what he wasn't, was a liar. if he says he admired Jefferson, then he did. if he said he believed in the constitution, then he did. this goes directly to the disingenuousness of your position. you have absolutely no problem in believing in the sincerity of Pound at his worst: you have no doubt that he hated Jews or that he admired Mussolini and Hitler, but you react with skepticism at his more decent qualities. you will. of course, deny this is your position, but I defy anyone to read your posts honestly, and come away with any other conclusion. > my > objection is to the sweeping denunciations of Pound and his politics, as if > nothing he believed in wasn't somehow vitiated or contaminated by his more > obnoxious beliefs. >> I disagree with that, too. However, I'd suggest the bigger problem is those who would ignore his politics -- and a few people here have come very close to that. >> this is nonsense, and laughable. there isn't any large contingent of Pound sanitizers running amok in the critical field; there is general agreement that many aspects of Pound's political beliefs were, and are, horrible -- I don't know anyone who thinks otherwise, and if you do, you should name them. which "few people" do you have in mind? as has been pointed out, just about all of the poets who have come out of Pound's modern tradition are very much left of center -- not anti-Semitic, not fascistic, not sexist, and not stupid. > there's merit in much of what he had to say about > politics, as well as his economic positions. << Right, but isn't that true of almost every political movement in history? One would have to be pretty dense not to spot the problems between the wars.>> in other words, you have nothing to say about this, except to insinuate that it's unnecessary to say because it's so obvious. well, read the posts, it hasn't been that obvious on this list, and the positive aspects of these issues are almost never discussed on this list. the tenor of the remarks regarding Pound are overwhelmingly negative, which is precisely what I'm objecting to. in fact, almost everytime someone has something positive to say about Pound, there's a flurry of negative posts -- if you don't believe this, check the archive. > the ugliness of Pound is not > news, and to imply, as wei has done, that his sins outweigh his value, is, > from my point of view, simply wrong. << I disagree with that argument, too. However, I completely reject the claims that the Cantos are not explicitly political, or that Pound was a relatively orthodox Jeffersonian. >> talk about being bashed for claims that one hasn't made! who makes the claim that the Cantos aren't political? but that's not all they are, nor is that always the main focus. who says Pound is an "orthodox Jeffersonian", relative or otherwise? let's name some names, let's go on the record. I don't think you can name very many persons on this list, if any, who fit that description. > > Pound borrowed from many sources, so to say that the key to understanding him > is to understand his Confucianism is to reduce him to that, which is, again, > unhelpful. <<Again, that's not what I said. Instead, I said the key to understanding his politics is to understand his Confucianism.>> that's what I'm referring to. > the genius of Pound's poetry is that it isn't reductive, but, on > the contrary, it increases and expands the experience. as has been pointed < out, Mussolini's involvement in the Cantos is no greater than, Jefferson's or > Malatesta's. << Which is precisely why my post was about Confucius, not Mussolini. The standard way to reject the argument that the political vision of the Cantos is totalitarian is to count the references to Mussolini and Hitler. As we all know, there really aren't that many of them. However, as I said, Pound's Confucianism leads him to celebrate strong and even totalitarian leaders. As a result, I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that the political vision of the Cantos aspires to totalitarianism. To be blunt, it's hard for me to see how anyone could argue otherwise. >> this doesn't surprise me. but let's suppose (and I say suppose because none of us actually knows) that you're put the cart before the horse -- that is, that Pound was attracted to Confucius because he was already attracted to the heroic, strong leader type? after all, this is a man who believed in the gods, in spirit, if not in fact. myself, I'm careful in my use of the word "totalitarianism" because it's a term that, in Pound's case, frequently needs to be modified. personally, I don't find the Cantos all that totalitarian -- mostly I find that they're an attempt to gather together historical insights (or, as Pound calls them, rhymes) that elucidate the tale of the tribe. this is my emphasis, anyway. those who want to waste their time by proving that Pound was actually Confucius, or Mussolini, or whomever, are free to do so. > I don't get the impression that anyone is trying to sanitize Pound's > politics, and I find the suggestion offensive. << As I said above, I've seen people claim that Pound was essentially an orthodox Jeffersonian who supported representative democracy. Given the extraordinary number of places that directly contradict that view, I consider that an attempt to sanitize his politics. I think the reason that some people are rewriting Pound's political commitments isn't because those correspondents themselves have questionable politics; instead, it's because they see a threat to Pound's poetic achievement. In the wake of hatchet jobs like Casillo's book, that's not unfounded. At the same time, Casillo does an excellent job at demolishing the extenuations which too many critics invented for Pound's totalitarianism and anti-Semitism, and we should be very careful to avoid a return to those indefensible positions.>> perhaps you could point to specific remarks in this thread by persons on this list, which is who your charge was leveled at. most persons that I know who've read Pound have had a difficult and painful struggle with the noxious aspects of his canon, and who were able to see the value despite these serious problems. I don't know anyone who has ever presented Pound as principally a proponent of Jeffersonian democracy, and I doubt that you can present any examples of this. this claim that there's an army of Pound sanitizers is a lie that the Pound haters promulgate in their attempt to denigrate Pound's poetry; it doesn't matter that they deny that this is their goal when they are called on it. and don't bother to deny that you said that there is an "army of Pound sanitizers", this is my characterization; but if you don't believe there is a sizable number of critics who are attempting to whitewash Pound's politics, then you're just raising a smokescreen. joe brennan...