Thread 24574833

Chesterton is a vile scum on the pond. The multitude of his mumblings cannot be killed by multitude but only by a sharp thrust (even that won’t do it, but it purges one’s soul).

All his slop—it is really modern catholicism to a great extent, the never taking a hedge straight, the mumbo-jumbo of superstition dodging behind clumsy fun and paradox.

If it were a question of cruelty to a weak man I shouldn’t, of course, have printed it. But Chesterton is so much the mob, so much the multitude. It is not as if he weren’t a symbol for all the mob’s hatred of all art that aspires above mediocrity.

I feel very differently about Belloc, who once wanted to do the real thing, and for a long time, at least, had moments of bitterness (I think) that he had taken the journalistic turning. Still, he has left ‘Avril’ and his translation of Bedier's Tristan.

Chesterton has always taken the stand that the real thing isn’t worth doing. (Perhaps this is a slight exaggeration???? Complex of my own vanity??) My feeling is, perhaps, heightened by a feeling that I should probably like G.K.C. personally if I ever met him. Still, I believe he creates a milieu in which art is impossible. He and his kind.

This reads so much like a 4chan schizo post.
Truth One of us.

>>24574833 (OP)
Where is this from monsignor

>>24574833 (OP)

I appreciate any and all sincere expressions of contempt for Chesterton. His stupid fat body, his false religion, his terrible teeth. But worst of all, the cheap reversals in his stupid little aphorisms.

>>24574833 (OP)
And yet in the end it was Chesterton's faction that ultimately prevailed, and Pound's that did not.

>>24574951
what factions did they belong to? sorry, I'm not aware of every literary feud

>>24574936
>But worst of all, the cheap reversals in his stupid little aphorisms.
This. Dumb people think they're serious arguments.

>>24574951
There are millions of years left in the Kali Yuga, after all

>>24574991
>Kali Yuga
pajeet bullshit

>>24574833 (OP)
Sorry, Ezra, I like you but some of your opinions are shit.

>mob
Elitist fag.

>>24575013
Also, it's spelled Catholicism, capital C. Now resume your unhinged radio show in a weird and broken Italian accent that Italians couldn't even understand.

>>24574998
Metaphor. Chesterton triumphing is not a point to his favour, considering the age we find ourselves in.
Lord Fat Retard and his shopkeeper's quips about the One True God and stuffing your gullet overtakes one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Big whoop, did you expect something else?

>>24574833 (OP)
>All his slop
Hmm. Hits different these days.

>>24574833 (OP)
I don't have anything against Chesterton but I know what he means. People, even of great culture, who just don't get what matters, and have given up the fight. And then (mostly) there's the people with no culture who emulate it out of vanity, but when it comes then its helpless so there's so reason to be irritated

>>24574936
Well, it seems to me you spend entirely too much time worrying about the cheap reversals in stupid aphorisms, and not enough about the stupid reversals in the cheap aphorisms! Hrmm hmm hmm...
*produces cheeseburger from within my muumuu*

What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee

>>24576944
But Pound and Longfellow are absolutely nothing alike.

>>24576988
... yeah, that's the point.

>>24577020
Oh, it's a comment about him being insecure because he's American?

I get the impression that Pound was just not that smart. Definitely smarter than most, but an intellectual lightweight compared to actual greats. He has odd word choices and his ideas come off as half-baked and clumsy. It's like the passion is there but he lacks the cognitive horsepower to give it grace and coherence.

>>24576944
Most accounts of Pound are very positive, this one isn’t even bad, there’s nothing wrong with being soft-spoken, we know Pound was a warrior, there’s no need to always play the part, and there’s no pictures of Pound where he’s plump, he was probably just a lot taller than Graves. Read Hemingway’s account. He thought of his as a Saint even though he didn’t agree with his politics.

When earth's last thesis is copied
From the theses that went before,
When idea from fact has departed
And bare-boned factlets shall bore,
When all joy shall have fled from study
And scholarship reign supreme;
When truth shall 'baaa' on the hill crests
And no one shall dare to dream;

When all the good poems have been buried
With comment annoted in full
And art shall bow down in homage
To scholarship's zinc-plated bull,
When there shall be nothing to research
But the notes of annoted notes,
And Baalam's ass shall inquire
The price of imported oats;

Then no one shall tell him the answer
For each shall know the one fact
That lies in the special ass-ignment
From which he is making his tract.
So the ass shall sigh uninstructed
While each in his separate book
Shall grind for the love of grinding
And only the devil shall look.

>>24577099
No offence anon but maybe you're just not smart enough to understand him? I mean, the distinction between his poetry and his prose should be enough to show you that the style and vocabulary of the latter is not decided by lower iq, but you didn't seem capable of figuring that out.

>>24577099
literally me

>>24577105
>we know Pound was a warrior
do we, though?

>>24577120
Well I do. You could also read up on him if you‘re interested in learning more.

>>24577099
You can argue that he wasn’t a “great writer”, but you can’t doubt his intelligence, and we can be sure yours is of a very low order. Yeats, Joyce and W. Lewis all thought highly of him, and he created Modernist literature as though by force of will. (Yeats especially was amazed by his knowledge and skill when he worked with him on poems)
Hemingway said he spent most of his time furthering the work of other artists, so any deficiencies you detect can be attributed to his lack of monomaniacal passion
>It's like the passion is there but he lacks the cognitive horsepower to give it grace and coherence.
He does say in a late Canto
I have brought the great ball of crystal;
who can lift it?
Can you enter the great acorn of light?
But the beauty is not the madness
Tho’ my errors and wrecks lie about me.
And I am not a demigod,
I cannot make it cohere.
Even though he knew it would give fodder to presumptuous blockheads like yourself. Pound’s music is of a very high level, and it is of the kind that must filter people

>>24577120
of course we do! while other young poets died in wwi he ... avoided service, said nothing about the war, and edited a magazine.

>>24577132
He must have truly been a hero for the ages to incite this much seethe from a derelict anglo bourgeoise.

>>24577132
I don’t know why you expect us to value these people’s opinions. Englishmen were offended by him because he rightly saw their literature as dead (and the future course of England bears this out)
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

Pound was a good poet.

Yes, the Cantos were a self-described failure.
Yes, his political ideology failed.
Yes, his friends abandoned him.
Yes, he lived an unhappy live after WW2.
Yes, he had questionable taste sometimes.
Yes, his reputation is in the gutter.

But he was a good poet and I like his poems.

>>24577142
Yes the goyim’s a coward, Die for Israel!

Pound was a good poet.

Yes, the Cantos were a self-described failure.
Yes, his political ideology failed.
Yes, his friends abandoned him.
Yes, he lived an unhappy life after WW2.
Yes, he had questionable opinions sometimes.
Yes, his personal reputation is in the gutter.

But he was a good poet and I like his poems :)

>>24577145
had a feeling you'd take that line
(though didn't eliot transplant completely?)

>>24577142
nothing worse than when yanks start talking about their idea of bourgeoisie

Both Bongs and Burgers are ruled by juden. Mr Ezra Loomis Pound was right. UK's PM's wife has family in Jizzrael. Donny Drumpf's daughter married a jude and spawned judenites. The elite is controlled in great part via Esther doctrine. I wonder what Pound would make of that.

>>24577151
>Yes, the Cantos were a self-described failure.
A rushlight to lead back to splendour is not a failure.

I hate a Chesterton
I don't know why Father Brown is so beloved when it's tainted with the personality of such a vile and hate filled man like Chesterton

>>24577153
Then why did you share this? It’s like posting Bernard Shaw’s take on Shakespeare
I don’t view Eliot as a great man

>>24577161
can you make sense of this

>>24577166
pound did

>>24577167
for the initiates

>>24574951
>Chesterton's faction that ultimately prevailed
I don't see any Christian distributist states out there.

>>24577167
You the same anon who posted this like a year ago lol?
I’m glad you have because its so fresh and beautiful

Does "il miglior fabbro" mean "the better craftsman" or "the best craftsman"? In Italian, "miglior" can mean both better and best. It's what Elio calls Pound in his big poem.

>>24577177
don't know
did you explain it at the time?

>>24577179
The definition of a poem or any fine piece of writing is it cannot be “explained”. Are you asking for a translation? Is so, into what dialect? Maybe an anon here can help you out
Do you really not see its beauty?

>>24577112
You can tell the two are a creation of the same limited mind, but you don't seem capable of figuring that out.

>>24577136
He was serving as a glowie exporting and enforcing bogus American art movements

>>24577186
you don't think a poem should make sense?

i can get as far as where a lynx is improbably asked to keep from demeter's furrow a clear flaming pomegranate-like fruit in an orchard sacred to pomona. nut there the trail goes cold. what is the goddess pomona doing among pards, lynxes and bassarids, none of which occurred in her limited latin territory? nnd what or who is crotale?

>>24577167
It is esoteric, but not meaningless. You have to be familiar with what he is referencing to begin with and also how its usage has evolved in the poem.

>>24577198
which is why so many post-modernists rate pound so highly? they're so learned? not that, as fielding put it, 'men are strangely inclined to worship what they do not understand'?

Some years ago I had casual sex with a woman who claimed she was related to Hilda Doolittle. The subject came up when she saw I had a copy of The Cantos by New Directions and Library of America's Pound compilation in my bedroom library.

I'm Catholic and hate Chesterton. He's the quintessential British intellectual who's all wit and no substance. A 19th century Christopher Hitchens, if you will. I remember when the latter was asked about free will he would avoid the question and just respond: "We have no choice to but to have free will!" Always making crappy witty jokes, always dancing around the point with rhetoric. Always hiding the ball.

>>24577193
What do you even think it means for something to “make sense”?
There is a tendency in Pound to strive to break that invisible barrier where words become music, the question I have for you is, Does music make sense? Will you explain a piece of music for me?
A series of beautiful images corresponding to sounds is placed before you and you just want to crack the nut, What does it mean???
I assume you believe Finnegans Wake is pure garbage? Which interestingly enough Pound didn’t “get”

>>24577192
Lol, no need to seethe anon, but there is absolutely nothing 'limited' about Ezra Pound's poetry and you're not even articulate enough to explain why you think there is. It's just embarrassing to not be able to see the descriptions you applied to his prose does not apply to his poetry.

KNEEL

>>24577211
so you just liked the sound of the words?

finnegan's wake i sort of liked.
with JJ, when he goes wrong, it's never through doing something badly, always through doing something i don’t want done.

>>24577204
the impalpable made palpable. you wouldn't get it.

>>24577212
He tends to bloviate in both. Seems pretty transparent to me, but you're still free to enjoy him :]

>>24577167
these schizos are playing on a level you arent even aware of

>>24577221
and that is that

>>24577204
Post-modernists may like Pound simply because he was a firebrand modernist, but a lot of them also tend to study and read about his works a great deal so it wouldn't be unexpected for them to get most of the references. There are books explaining the references for you.

>>24577221
Pound actually disliked Mallarme and Symbolism and the tendency to abandon concrete ideas for musical expression.

>>24577238
>one quote validates me
these short bus niggas

>>24577233
Seems like maybe you just don't like poetry? Anyone could accuse Shakespeare of sometimes luxuriating in the pomposity and grandeur of blank verse as an end in itself, but that would just betray an ignorance of poetry.

>>24577242
mine's a more mature point of view obviously, because it takes yours into account but does not take it

>>24577239
>There are books
cheers david frost

>>24577248
this quote validates my claim because it backs up my claim

>>24577251
christ

>>24577220
> so you just liked the sound of the words?
You can’t separate sound from sense because language isn’t an abstract system of signifier but a living medium of magic effects
> Yeats’s defence & definition of magic: a) The borders of our minds are always shifting tending to become part of the universal mind b) The borders of our memory also shift and form part of universal memory c) This universal mind & memory can be evoked by symbols | | | It should be pointed out that Mr J. lived amidst all this (including Yeats) and his library was full of theosophicle works though he did not use any of the recognised symbols—using instead words trivial and quadrivial and local geographical allusions (Trivial meaning litterally—carrefour—where three roads meet).
I don’t rate Joyce/Pound as the greatest because the true office of the poet is to achieve clarification and there’s a lot of chaos in their work, though they are the greatest English language writers of the 20th century.

>>24577255
oh my heckin science

>>24577239
>Pound actually disliked Mallarme and Symbolism and the tendency to abandon concrete ideas for musical expression.
I see his point and agree. But the Mist is also potent.

>>24575042
>Metaphor.
It's not.

>>24577256
a song (ca.) is a compound, and the poetry lies in this relation. words for another man's music can hardly have a very lively independent existence. every word carries a long history, and combines creatively with thousands of others along its line. you'd have to be insensitive to the emotional quality of words and their associative subtleties to use words as weights and counters rather than as chemicals powerful in combination.

>>24577244
Nah I love poetry, mostly the Greeks and Romantics, and hold resentment towards the modernists in general except maybe Proust and Yeats, though I can acknowledge the talent of people like Wallace Stevens. So while part of my gripe is likely the subject matter I prefer, even though I've been occasionally surprised Pound's work, overall I just don't see the same beauty as in the poets I do like. Plus I take issue with the guy's personality that seems to seep into his work.

The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
Paquin pull down!
The green casque has outdone your elegance.

“Master thyself, then others shall thee beare”
Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Nor knowst’ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity
How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity,
I say pull down.

>>24577099
Yeah, you probably know him better than Yeats, Eliot and Joyce who all thought him to be their equal.

>>24577178
Obviously "better" because they were friends and Pound helped him a ton with editing the Waste Land.

>>24577549
Some people interpret this as some sort of grand mea culpa. Either way, writing your epic on fucking toilet paper in the blazing hot italian sun while constantly dancing on the edge of a heat stroke in your cage is so fucking metal as far as poetry goes.

>>24577645
If one is filtered by poetry, or else if it not to one's taste, then read the critical and political writings and there can be no doubt as to his intelligence (not that one must agree with his opinions). I actually don't know of any artist with as impressive and worthwhile production in that area

But you know there's actually a quote from Pound saying he didn't think Joyce was very intelligent, though he had to utmost belief in his skill *as a writer*. It's Joyce wasn't so energetic and curious as Pound when it came to all the aspects of intellectual culture -- which perhaps made him a better, more specialized writer

Eliot said Pound was just as excited in discovering a work of genius that he was if he created one himself. That is very rare