--------- Tim Romano wrote: >I believe it is one's obligation, when engaged in a public >damnation of a dead poet for crimes against humanity, not to develop >_shorthand_ ways of referring to the matters under discussion which might >prejudice the outcome. > We all have the obligation to speak the truth as we see it, and to state the truth as completely and as accurately as we can. I believe you are making a sincere effort to do this, and I admire your striving to enter into aspects of Pound’s mind set. You are correct to point out that “shorthand” may “prejudice the outcome.” However, language itself is a kind of shorthand, and all the statements made on this forum represent abbreviated attempts to to deal with complex literary, political, spiritual, and social realities. You yourself use shorthand when you claim I am >engaged in a public >damnation of a dead poet for crimes against humanity This cannot be a fully accurate characterization of my analysis of the cultural implications of Pound’s work. First, I do not believe in the concept of “damnation”, public, spiritual, or otherwise; and I do not believe I have used words which are consistent with such a notion. Second, I am not particularly interested in the notion that Pound was guilty of “crimes as against humanity”. I have never argued that he was guilty of crimes against humanity. Legally speaking, he may have been guilty of treason, if defined as “giving aid and comfort to an enemy” of the US. But I am often doubtful of that; and even if he were guilty of treason in that sense, I do not equate that with “crimes against humanity”. Certainly not in the sense used today, or in the sense of any equivalent notion used during the Nuremburg trials. On the one had, I have to agree with Daniel Pearlman when he says > > Whether Pound wanted to remove only Jewish bankers, or all Jews, > > it's still disgusting racism. And to keep Jews out of the Italian > > gov't because they are presumed to be communists--again, a double > > smear, completely racist. But to go there, and only there, now, might be lose an opportunity which you, Tim Romano are offering to us. Let us try what may be a completely new approach. Instead of putting ourselves into camps--- whereby one of us appears as simply a Pound detractor (seeking only to point out the evil in Pound’s moral vision), and the other appears as a Pound defender (seeking to “minimize” Pound’s evils)--- let us instead move to higher ground if we can. I must say that I do NOT believe that you are trying to minimize Pound’s evils. Allow me to stress this point. Perhaps what you are doing is trying to enter into a sort of Keatsian sympathy with Pound as a character and thinker, a sympathy which implies neither judgement or approval of certain views, but which seeks to see the person as a whole, in his milieu, expressing himself with all his strengths and limitations. The new approach I would suggest (for myself, at least, or for anyone who might find it appealing) is this: try a Blakean methodology. You are probably aware that Blake said Milton, in writing Paradise Lost was “of the Devil’s part, without even knowing it.” What I understand Blake to have meant was that Milton’s God is really a tyrant, while Satan, as depicted, esp. in Books one and two, was a heroic rebel. (Byron and Shelley had similar views on Milton’s Satan). Of course theologically, and rationally, Milton sides with God against Satan. However, if Satan is seen as a metaphor for the rebel (Cromwell) and God is seen as a metaphor for the tyrant (the KIng), then the whole work is turned on its head. We can take Blake's observation about Milton and apply it to Pound. So while we might say that Milton was of the Devil’s part without really knowing it, we can say of Pound, “He was of the Angels' part, without really knowing it.” What does this mean, precisely? For me it could signify that Pound, in advocating race hatred, anti-semitism, hierarchical government, sexism, fascist dictatorship, is setting these views up in the Cantos metaphorically in such a way that (from a Blakean perspective) they become converted into their opposites, despite Pound’s CONSCIOUS INTENTIONS. It may be the case that Pound’s SUBCONSIOUS vision contains the advocacy of love for all men, regardless of race; love for the Jew, egalitarianism and democracy in the political sphere; equality between men and women, and non-hierachical forms of social order. Of course on the conscious level Pound is for fascism, just as on the conscious level Milton is for the God of Book IV. But these conscious advocacies are based on dogmatic conceptions, and their very extreme forcefullness converts the anti-heroes (those who oppose Fascism or those who oppose God) into actual heroes, by a necessary “equal and opposite” reaction which can take place in the mind of the reader. Blake experienced this sort of reversal of view when he read Paradise Lost, and also when he read the Bible. He called it the "infernal reading" I believe, in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." I must confess that this is what happens to me when I read Ezra Pound’s Cantos: I feel compelled to oppose overt content, and Pound’s consciously stated advocacies, esp those in favor of historical strong men, and Confucian tyrants. I am suggesting that this is one way to read the Cantos. It may a be a useful way to read Pound, if one wishes to deal with the social, economic, and political content of the work, and make sense of it psychologically. Like most Freudian or Jungian approaches, it requires we look at the Cantos more like a dream than as an “epic, ” more like fantasy than as a “poem containing history”. The historical content, transformed by the creative impulse becomes utterly different from concrete historical reality, and in fact, enters into a compex relationship, where empirical data and symbols collide. The Freudian approach involves the application of a form of analysis in which images often symbolize their opposites, and conscious intentions, are usually understood in relation to opposing sublimated desires. The Jungian approach would reveal contradictions or tensions between different “faculties”, such as intuition and sensation, reason and feeling, contraries which are concealed from the conscious mind, and which must be uncovered and used as keys in unraveling a complex weave of historical events. These "events" in the Cantos are themselves symbols which refer to anything other than their “obvious” overt “factual” significance. If I took such a premise, my personal conclusion would be that the stated goals of the Cantos and of Pound’s political philosophy imply, by their very vehemence, their exact opposites. In this sense, Pound is a democrat, an apostle of liberty, a Franklinian (not a follower of Adams), a Gramsci (not a follower of Mussolini), a Taoist ( not a Confucian), and an Anarchist (not a Fascist). ----Wei (and wu wei) "Notre revolution , etait dans la tete des penseurs lontemps avant 1789 comme Minerve dans la cerveau de Jupiter" ---Anacharsis Cloots ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com