Daily Reminder: Pound Did Nothing Wrong

[Anonymous No.4099554]

"He defends [his friends] when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. ... He writes articles about them. He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying ... he advances them hospital expenses and dissuades them from suicide."

-- Hemingway

[Anonymous No.4099566]

With usury has no man a good house
made of stone, no paradise on his church wall
With usury the stone cutter is kept from his stone
the weaver is kept from his loom by usura
Wool does not come into market
the peasant does not eat his own grain
the girl's needle goes blunt in her hand
The looms are hushed one after another
ten thousand after ten thousand

[Anonymous No.4099585]

He was a fascist, an anti-semite, and a traitor.

If that's cool in your book then, no, he did nothing wrong.

[Anonymous No.4099600]

>>4099554
>Quote someone listing some good things he did
>Say "see? He did nothing wrong!"
I guess that proves it. If Hemingway says you did some things, that means those are the ONLY things you did.

[Anonymous No.4099625]

>>4099600

[shekel jingling intensifies]

[Anonymous No.4099628]

>>4099625
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.4099672]

>>4099625
My statement has nothing to do with whether he actually did anything wrong, though. It was a criticism of your logic.

[Anonymous No.4099702]

>>4099672
>expecting someone from /pol/ to use logic in arguments

top lel

[Lynx No.4099782]

>>4099554

My problem with Pound are not his actions: he was deep down a good person. Lincoln, for example, was a racist, but he freed the slaves after all. At the same time Robespierre advocated against the death penalty and for the abolition of slavery, while supporting equality of rights, universal suffrage and the establishment of a republic, and yet he was one of the main responsible for thousands and thousands of beheadings during the Terror – words don’t count nothing in matter of ethics, but acts do.

My problem with him is his poetic theory, which, firstly, saw the sound and sonority in poetry as more important than the metaphors and imagery. Well, this is one of the main reasons for today’s poetry (and even Pound and Eliot’s poetry) be filled with poems were words are glued together in nonsense sentences only for the stupid desire of making striking sound-patterns. This is ridiculous, for words and poetry will never be music. Of course you might try to create more wild and rough passages, or more drowsy and silken ones, but only if you do not sacrifice the sense and the imagery for this sake.

Secondly, Pound thought that the fusion of concrete language with abstract language should not be used. This is crazy! The marriage of concrete and abstract language is one of the most powerful tools of a poetical arsenal. Want an example? If concrete and abstract language should not be mixed many of the most glorious passages of Shakespeare (better that almoust anything else in recorded literature) would not exist, such as:

that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.

(here, for example, Pity is an abstraction, but is connected with the concrete image of a babe)

Or

By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drownèd honor by the locks,
So he that doth redeem her thence might wear
Without corrival all her dignities.
But out upon this half-faced fellowship!

(here the most string passage is that of honor being plucked by its locks; well, Honor is an abstraction, and it certainly had no locks and cant drown. But this passage is better than anything that Pound ever wrote).

[Anonymous No.4099931]

>>4099782
Finally a good post on /lit/

[Anonymous No.4099986]

>>4099782
>for words and poetry will never be music
virtually the entire history of poetry disagrees, but thanks for trying. Both language and music are so deeply intertwined in the idea of poetry (and it's performance) that as soon anyone tries to discern the two in a meaningful way either blathers in utmost superficialities or, even worse, shoots off into gibberish, recognizable to anyone with even the most shallow knowledge of the poetry.

[Lynx No.4100020]

>>4099986

What I mean is that you will never be able to produce with the same melodic phrases and rhythmic movements as musical works. You can try your whole life, but will never produce a with words a rhythmically storm as powerful as the scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or a sweeter and smoother melody than the Serenade for Winds, K. 361, 3rd movement of Mozart’s.

After all I said in my post:

>>4099782
>for words and poetry will never be music. Of course you might try to create more wild and rough passages, or more drowsy and silken ones, but only if you do not sacrifice the sense and the imagery for this sake.

Also, don’t make the mistake of thinking that ancient Greek poetry was sung; actually I was mostly declaimed. And more: most poems, no matter how little concern the poet had for music at the time of their writing, can be set for music if a talented musician take them under his wing.

The thing is: If you can choose between imagery and sound, and you could only choose one, go for imagery. In my mind the greatest poet of all time is Shakespeare, and he’s major preoccupation was if metaphors and imagery. Also: you can search in all his work for something as musical as any instrumental song and you will never find it, because poetry and music are different forms of art, even if they share similarities.

Metaphor: that's the real marrow and heart of poetry.