The original issue, Roger, was the claim made for The Cantos by Marjorie
Perloff. And therein lies the rub: that Pound scholars and devotees continue
to make unjustifiable claims for the work and for Pound. {You'll get
statements like 'Landor complained that Dante left his characters in
skeleton form, but Pound is able to clothe them with a phrase' (Henry
Swabey).}
If you want to talk about The Cantos as work that failed grandly I'm ok
with that, I think it's a fascinating but seriously damaged work, rather
than being some kind of defining epic of our times it's on a par with
Jubilate Agno, Blake's Prophetic Books, the poems Clare wrote when he
thought he was Lord Byron, even Michael Drayton's Polyolbion: interesting
oddball events that sometimes flash with brilliance.
I didn't know you liked Wagner though: definitely no comment!
On 02/04/2008, Roger Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> So what? Wagner's project was anti-semitic to the very core. He says
> so very plainly in his writing. Yet I quite like Wagner, and so do a
> lot of other people. I hear that Wagner's operas were staged in
> Jerusalem. Celine was an out-and-out fascist thug, yet I like his
> writing. I like Jorge Luis Borges.
>
> Sure EP doesn't measure up to his own standards ... who does? He may
> not intend the work to be fragmentary ... again, so what? I intend my
> work to be all kinds of things but it never is. What he says and what
> he does maybe two different things. Again, so what? I like his work,
> it speaks to me. I find sustenance in it when I read it. I wish I
> could write a work which failed as grandly and as big-time as the
> Cantos. All I ever seem to come out with is mediocre.
>
>
> Roger
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:15 AM, David Bircumshaw
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > My point about Arvo Part was concerning a specific work of his, not a
> > generalised comment on his or others music. Its context was what can be
> done
> > with unpromising language, indigestible prose.
> >
> > Pound's artistic project in The Cantos was political, it was a politics
> > derived from his aesthetics and thus confused, disastrously,
> categories. Its
> > politics were specifically totalitarian. You don't have to take my
> opinion
> > on that - he states so himself in the 'Guide to Kulchur' which calls
> for 'a
> > new synthesis, the totalitarian'.
> > His intentions were would-be universalist, in no way are The Cantos
> supposed
> > to fragmentary. That they are is an index of artistic failure. His
> method
> > does not approach a fragmented world as an reality to be experienced.
> > As aesthetic law-giver in this Ezra-world he decrees, in 'The ABC of
> > Reading' that 'poetry must be as well written as prose. Its language
> must be
> > fine language, departing in no way from speech save by heightened
> intensity
> > (i.e.simplicity). There must be no book words, no periphrase, no
> > inversions'.
> >
> > If ever there was a case of man hoist by his own petard. His writing is
> full
> > of 'book-words, periphrase, inversions'. As for being as well written
> as
> > prose ... (The image of someone blowing themselves up with their own
> > primitive bomb is quite apt in his case I think)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > David Bircumshaw
> > Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> > The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> > Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
> >
>
>
>
>
> --
> My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
> "She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
> She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
> The Go-Betweens
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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