10-23-2013, 09:07 PM
If we're going to speak in praise of modernist anti-semite poets - something as shameful to mention as it is to leave unmentioned, perhaps - I much prefer Pound to Eliot. Though I can't get all that much from the Cantos past the first one, Eliot's modernism was later and, if I can brave the notion, more post-modern than Ezra's. Pound's was a properly classical sensibility, one that, to my mind, rightly despaired of the forgetfulness of the classics. Per his own rhetoric, though, he might have done himself some good to study the same a little closer.
While this may be somewhat of a caricature, I think of Eliot as a poet who often thematized his own despair over this fact: that the Old Guard of a mythically pure ethnic, national and cultural identity had to be ultimately discarded. Calling himself a "metic", he frequently complained of his fragmented sense of identity as an immigrant to England. Pound, however, was a twisted genius for his naivete. He really and truly believed in the intellect's power to offer solutions to intractable human problems, on a grand, political scale, and refused to accede to any sort of pragmatic, mercantile cosmopolitanism.
It is easy to see this, in that he expatriated himself from his homeland with manic exuberance, all in the name of his own rigid, loopy, uncompromising ideals. Of course, he imagined these to be in accord with Antiquity, and some of them in fact were. This explains to me, at least in part, why he was such a daffy character -- and also, strangely, why some of his writing expresses the most sublime truths, surpassing even his own despairing moral corruption and corruptibility.
Incidentally, Pound related how suburban, pedestrian and stupid his own anti-semitism was towards the end of his life. The insight finally came to him, at some point, even though he was nearing death by then. Though he never took on the explicit role of a fascist radio propagandist, to my knowledge, Eliot never gave such a transparent confession.
Here's a favorite by Pound, Histrion:
No man hath dared to write this thing as yet,
And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great
At times pass athrough us,
And we are melted into them, and are not
Save reflexions of their souls.
Thus am I Dante for a space and am
One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and thief,
Or am such holy ones I may not write
Lest blasphemy be writ against my name;
This for an instant and the flame is gone.
'Tis as in midmost us there glows a sphere
Translucent, molten gold, that is the "I"
And into this some form projects itself:
Christus, or John, or eke the Florentine;
And as the clear space is not if a form's
Imposed thereon,
So cease we from all being for the time,
And these, the Masters of the Soul, live on.
If anyone finds my biographical gloss contentious, by all means, chime in.
While this may be somewhat of a caricature, I think of Eliot as a poet who often thematized his own despair over this fact: that the Old Guard of a mythically pure ethnic, national and cultural identity had to be ultimately discarded. Calling himself a "metic", he frequently complained of his fragmented sense of identity as an immigrant to England. Pound, however, was a twisted genius for his naivete. He really and truly believed in the intellect's power to offer solutions to intractable human problems, on a grand, political scale, and refused to accede to any sort of pragmatic, mercantile cosmopolitanism.
It is easy to see this, in that he expatriated himself from his homeland with manic exuberance, all in the name of his own rigid, loopy, uncompromising ideals. Of course, he imagined these to be in accord with Antiquity, and some of them in fact were. This explains to me, at least in part, why he was such a daffy character -- and also, strangely, why some of his writing expresses the most sublime truths, surpassing even his own despairing moral corruption and corruptibility.
Incidentally, Pound related how suburban, pedestrian and stupid his own anti-semitism was towards the end of his life. The insight finally came to him, at some point, even though he was nearing death by then. Though he never took on the explicit role of a fascist radio propagandist, to my knowledge, Eliot never gave such a transparent confession.
Here's a favorite by Pound, Histrion:
No man hath dared to write this thing as yet,
And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great
At times pass athrough us,
And we are melted into them, and are not
Save reflexions of their souls.
Thus am I Dante for a space and am
One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and thief,
Or am such holy ones I may not write
Lest blasphemy be writ against my name;
This for an instant and the flame is gone.
'Tis as in midmost us there glows a sphere
Translucent, molten gold, that is the "I"
And into this some form projects itself:
Christus, or John, or eke the Florentine;
And as the clear space is not if a form's
Imposed thereon,
So cease we from all being for the time,
And these, the Masters of the Soul, live on.
If anyone finds my biographical gloss contentious, by all means, chime in.