Here are Doug's posts:
>
> So what if Lynch is a Reaganite? What bearing does that have on
> whether he makes good movies? Pound was a fascist and he wrote some
> fine poetry. Stevens said in a letter that the only good thing
> happening in the world was that they were killing Communists in
> Korea, and he wrote some fine poetry too. And there are writers and
> artists with good politics who produce unbearable crap.
>
> Doug
> Charles Brown wrote:
>
> >But I want to ask , and I am not being snotty, what are the
> >standards that make Pound's or Stevens' poetry good ?
>
> Call me an aesthete and a formalist, but freshly beautiful use of
> language, and emotional and/or intellectual complexity. What makes so
> much "political" art bad is that it recycles cliches - that it's
> painfully earnest and straightforward. Tell the truth, but tell it
> slant, as Emily Dickinson said.
>
> Doug
I'll cut excess quoted material from the following posts, and include several in each of these posts.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: BHA: Agency chez Bhaskar Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 11:19:30 -0600 From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
> [Most of post clipped]
> I know of one such
> (retired) who is sitting in the south of France right now reading DPF
> and - for light relief - Pound's Cantos!)
>
Why the exclamation mark?
Pound finds words in Adams to define the quality of his own poem:
Exercises my lungs, revives my spirits opens my pores
reading Tully on Cataline quickens my circulation.
Canto 73
Actually, Pound's Cantos are fairly easy reading if one just relaxes and browses in them for a few years. You don't need a pickaxe, as Adams in the lines just preceding the above says he needed in order to read law:
Bracton,
Britten, Fleta on Glanville, must dig with my fingers
as nobody will lend me or seell me a pick axe.
Pound's certainly easier reading than Bhaskar. :-)
Carrol
-------- Original Message -------- Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 22:14:19 +0000 From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Dear Carrol,
Right. I'll follow your advice and just browse them for a few years. Should I be worried about Pound's politics?
Mervyn
Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes [CLIPPED]
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: BHA: Agency chez Bhaskar Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 20:04:05 -0600 From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
[This repeats earlier material from an lbo post]
Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
>
> Dear Carrol,
>
> Right. I'll follow your advice and just browse them for a few years.
> Should I be worried about Pound's politics?
>
They are pretty terrible. But not essentially worse than the politics of
the U.S. government. And if the only poets I read were those I agreed
with the only English language poet I would be able to tolerate would be
Guthrie. After all, the abstract ("responsible") individual celebrated
in Paradise Lost is what makes possible such politics as Pound's.
Consider how vile the following is -- and how magnificent:
An Irish Airman Forsees His Death
I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.
One commits suicide (and first kills as many as possible of those one has nothing against) just to give drama to one's life. If his countrymen were Kiltartan's poor why the fuck didn't he stay at home and do something useful?
Yeats certainly needed (and earned) Auden's defense:
Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
(Incidentally, Auden later omitted the last stanza.)
What excuses Yeats also excuses Pound.
Carrol
Subject:
BHA: Aesthetics and ethics
Date:
Mon, 25 Feb 2002 22:10:27 +0000
From:
Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Reply-To:
bhaskar at lists.village.virginia.edu
To:
bhaskar at lists.village.virginia.edu
Hi Carrol,
But I don't think Yeats needs defending here. You ask why didn't the airman stay at home and do something useful? The point is he didn't, and Yeats brilliantly captures the truth of the meaninglessness of the demi- real alienated and atomised existence that impelled him to do what he did.
Secondly, I don't think Auden is prepared to excuse vileness for 'writing well'; he finds this a 'strange excuse'.
Thirdly, the view that good writing excuses bad politics seems at odds with the (D)CR view of aesthetics as 'a branch of practical philosophy, the art of living well' (dpf 15), closely related to ethics. (The supreme good - concretely singularized universal human autonomy, i.e. the free development of each as a condition for the free development of all - becomes the highest good when it is 'aesthetically enjoyed [by all] in creative flourishing' (PE 154)). The logic of this position is ultimately, I think, that of Keats - 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' - that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know' - in which case beauty resides not just in the form but also in the content, and I for one shall approach Pound, like any other writer, as a seeker after truth. Last weekend's *Guardian* UK reproduced Francis Bacon's wonderful portrait (in Tate Britain) of William Blake, done from his life mask, showing the utter inner desolation and loneliness of the man in his later years. It is beautiful because it captures not just the reality (truth) of Blake's desolation, but the deeper truth to which that desolation stands testimony. Ditto re Yeats' Irish Airman.
Mervyn
Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes
Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
<<Dear Carrol,
Right. I'll follow your advice and just browse them for a few years. Should I be worried about Pound's politics?>>
[Carrol] They are pretty terrible. But not essentially worse than the politics of the U.S. government. And if the only poets I read were those I agreed with the only English language poet I would be able to tolerate would be Guthrie. After all, the abstract ("responsible") individual celebrated in Paradise Lost is what makes possible such politics as Pound's.
Consider how vile the following is -- and how magnificent:
An Irish Airman Forsees His Death
I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.
One commits suicide (and first kills as many as possible of those one has nothing against) just to give drama to one's life. If his countrymen were Kiltartan's poor why the fuck didn't he stay at home and do something useful?
Yeats certainly needed (and earned) Auden's defense:
Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
(Incidentally, Auden later omitted the last stanza.)
What excuses Yeats also excuses Pound.
Carrol
== == == == ==
Subject: BHA: Aesthetics and ethics
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 22:10:27 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Hi Carrol,
But I don't think Yeats needs defending here. You ask why didn't the airman stay at home and do something useful? The point is he didn't, and Yeats brilliantly captures the truth of the meaninglessness of the demi-real alienated and atomised existence that impelled him to do what he did.
Secondly, I don't think Auden is prepared to excuse vileness for 'writing well'; he finds this a 'strange excuse'.
Thirdly, the view that good writing excuses bad politics seems at odds with the (D)CR view of aesthetics as 'a branch of practical philosophy, the art of living well' (dpf 15), closely related to ethics. (The supreme good - concretely singularized universal human autonomy, i.e. the free development of each as a condition for the free development of all - becomes the highest good when it is 'aesthetically enjoyed [by all] in creative flourishing' (PE 154)). The logic of this position is ultimately, I think, that of Keats - 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' - that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know' - in which case beauty resides not just in the form but also in the content, and I for one shall approach Pound, like any other writer, as a seeker after truth. Last weekend's *Guardian* UK reproduced Francis Bacon's wonderful portrait (in Tate Britain) of William Blake, done from his life mask, showing the utter inner desolation and loneliness of the man in his later years. It is beautiful because it captures not just the reality (truth) of Blake's desolation, but the deeper truth to which that desolation stands testimony. Ditto re Yeats' Irish Airman.
Mervyn
Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes
>Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
[CLIP]
=====
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 20:03:53 -0500
From: Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus at gis.net>
Carrol wrote of Pound's politics:
<< They are pretty terrible. But not essentially worse than the politics of the U.S. government.>>
I'm sure this was meant to speak to the detriment of the US government, but it comes off soft-pedalling Pound's explicit fascist sympathies and rabid anti-semitism. But I have to agree that one can't simply judge aesthetics on the grounds of the author's politics. There are heaps of great writers with horrid politics, Pound among them. Why Carrol wants to damn the fictional Irish airman escapes me -- millions of poor sods get conscripted into the army with no chance of escaping to Canada or wherever, and this fellow sounds like one of them.
Mervyn, on the other hand, writes:
<< Thirdly, the view that good writing excuses bad politics seems at odds with the (D)CR view of aesthetics as 'a branch of practical philosophy, the art of living well' (dpf 15), closely related to ethics. [snip] The logic of this position is ultimately, I think, that of Keats - 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' ->>
Personally I think allying aesthetics with ethics is a bad deal for both. For one thing it starts drifting off toward "politically correct art." I can hear Meyerhold being shot already. Besides, a lot of stunningly brilliant art is ugly (Francis Bacon's painting is a fine example). For that matter, a lot of truths are ugly too. Keats's claim is lovely, but highly Romantic in every sense. I'd bet that radical Shelley knew better. And Shelley's wife -- the author of *Frankenstein*.
Allergic to over-simplifications as always,
T. --- Tobin Nellhaus
=======
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 16:45:55 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh at jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Tobin Nellhaus <nellhaus at gis.net> writes
>Allergic to over-simplifications as always,
But, Tobin, aren't you offering some pretty glib over-simplifications in return? :-
>I can hear Meyerhold being shot already.
I was speaking, not of the relationship of ethics to aesthetics in the Soviets, but in a eudaimonic society of freely flourishing and creative people.
>Besides, a lot of stunningly
>brilliant art is ugly (Francis Bacon's painting
>is a fine example).
I gave a clear example of a sense in which Bacon's art is not ugly but beautiful. I doubt Keats means by 'beauty', 'pretty', rather, something capable of conveying the joys of aesthetic experience, in which we inter alia transcend ourselves and are never more ourselves than when we do, as C S Lewis put it. That's anyhow what I mean by it. And, as Bhaskar says PE155 'There is in aesthetic experience a genuine aspiration to concrete utopianism, neo-Blochian hope and prefigurationality.' Of course, if you stay on the surface, a screaming Pope is a screaming Pope. But the paintings bear witness to the deeper possibility of a non-alienated existence.
>For that matter, a lot of truths are ugly too.
Again, if you stay on the surface. But my appeal was to alethic truth in its ethical sense. If Being is good, and deprivation of Being bad, then the truth of Blake's desolation and of the airman's suicide is beautiful.
>Keats's claim is lovely, but highly Romantic in every sense.
Since when was Romantic a boo word?
>I'd bet that radical Shelley knew better.
>And Shelley's wife -- the author of *Frankenstein*.
I gather from Moretti that Frankenstein is a metaphor for the horror and threat presented to the bourgeois brain by the early alienated and exploited industrial working class, so the truth of Frankenstein is beautiful too.
<<Why Carrol wants to damn the fictional Irish airman escapes me -- millions of poor sods get conscripted into the army with no chance of escaping to Canada or wherever, and this fellow sounds like one of them.>
Yeats' poem clearly tells us that the airman wasn't a conscript but a volunteer:
>Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
>Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
>A lonely impulse of delight
>Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
Mervyn
[CLIP] [To Be Continued]
====
[Note: Tobin's post suggests it might be useful to re-open the thread on fascism. More on that in a separate post. cbc]