We could - doing no violence to the integrity of Pound's own obsessions - take the Chinese meaning of "ching" (sincerity) which is an equivalence of thought and action. If we do this then one is left wondering how true EP was to a Confucian ethic by pleading insanity when he, at least, didn;t think he was mad! Stoneking ----- Original Message ----- From: Jonathan Morse <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 6:05 PM Subject: Re: Getting things all mixed up > At 12:32 AM 12/1/99 -0500, Patricia Cockram wrote: > > > It was Pound who equated sincerity with technique. His anti-semitic > >obsession was wrongheaded, if not pathological, but he was sincere, and that > >is one reason so much of his work is both beautiful and disturbing. > > I sort of see what you mean, Patricia. "The worst / Are full of passionate > intensity," intoned Yeats, a great poet who stood with the worst. But boy, > I wish I knew how to understand that hard word "sincerity." > > It fits Pound in one obvious biographical way: he held to his political and > economic beliefs no matter what, at great cost to himself. And yet I should > think sincerity must entail some element of free choice, and in that > respect we have to worry a little when we apply the term to Pound. No > economist of any standing has ever paid the slightest attention to Pound's > ideas about money, for instance, but that rejection had no effect whatever > on the curriculum of the Ezuversity. By contrast, John Crowe Ransom > abandoned agrarianism after he worked systematically through the > economists' criticisms of _I'll Take My Stand_ and concluded that the > economists were right. You wouldn't call that insincere, would you? No; > you'd just say that Ransom was a rational man trying to learn from his > mistakes. > > Pound's other sincerities were equally durable in their defiance of > reality. There's something to be said for punctual trains, for instance, > but after 23 years of Fascism the Italians were happy enough to kick > Mussolini's body to pieces. Fascism would seem not to have worked. No > reflection of that little fact in Pound's oeuvre, though. > > And whatever it accomplished 2500 years ago, Confucianism as of the > twentieth century was doing a lot more harm than good. It too didn't work. > (Ask me about the status of women in South Korea before and after it became > a predominantly Christian society.) > > And Pound's antisemitism was an affront to his own language, because it > consisted entirely of cliches. When Pound was a young man, the > anti-Dreyfusards and eugenists included many intelligent people among their > numbers, but by the time he was 50 he was alone with the Jason Compsons. > > So many unconvinceabilities! And yet Pound is the man who said "Make it > new." There's sincerity in that phrase, but I should think it's the > sincerity of technique, not the sincerity of the sad stony heart. But > sursum corda: the sincerity of technique is the one that didn't die on > November 1, 1972. > > Jonathan Morse >