Ezra Pound claims that any serious reader and/or writer of literature

That's nice, EP. I think I just heard Tom, he said his enema is done.

>>9276107
>Everyone should do as I do. There is no other way than my way.

>>9276114
I'll be in minute, tell him to lube up

>>9276107
so basically wants to everyone to know how many languages he wasted his time learning

>>9276107
I like some his stuff, but he was a notorious dickhead.

>>9276118
>>9276114
I was going to write a book about their relationship entitled "Pounded by the Pound", turns out a certain hugo-nominated author already beat me to it.

>>9276107
Pound is a fucking fraud

He helped a lot of writers but man his standards of a reader dont even apply to most of the writers he helped

>not knowing nearly everything
>calling yourself a reader
>the current year + 2

Sure hope you plebs don't do this

>Ezra Pound

Stopped reading there.

>>9276107
>A serious reader of english literature must be fluent in French and Italian.

Got get em', Mr. Pound

>>9276122
Call it 'Ezra Pounds Me'.

>>9276107
Oikophobia is a mental illness.

>>9276107

>not German
>Not the language that has facilitated the greatest philosophy ever conceived
>Not the language with the best prose, surpassing even Joyce
>Not the only language that rivals french in terms of poetry

More like Ezra Pleb.

Did Pound even have a grasp of Chinese?

>>9276277
What prose are you reffering to? I'd like a good read.

>>9276290
he could say 'shay shay' to his cantonese waitress, what more do you want?

>>9276107
Sounds pretentious to me, but I don't know - I'm not fluent in those languages.

>>9276107
>"You cannot learn to write by reading English," he says.

Correct.

>>9276290
only a very basic one as far as i know. same goes for Latin.

>the languages he claims you need to be fluent in are just by coincidence the ones he happens to know

hmmmmm

>>9276277
>german poetry
kek

There was a time when this was true regarding Latin, simply because any educated person would have learned the language.

>>9276132
>pound will never bail you out of jail and wrap you in a blanket because he believes in your poetry
why live

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>>9276277
>german poetry

>>9276536
>same goes for Latin.

Terrible wrong.

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>>9276277
>german poetry and literature
Stick to your music and philosophy, kiddo.

>>9276308
> -

I quoted Ezra Pound in a paper in college and my TA just underlined it and wrote a spiel about how he was an anti-semite in the margins-

>no Spanish
>no Portuguese
>no Russian
>no Tupi-Guarani

Jesus, Pound was a massive shitposter.

>>9277226
>Spanish
>Portuguese

ekekekekkee

>>9276550
>>9276841
>>9277004


>You share a board with these people

>Schiller
>Goethe
>Novalis
>Hölderlin

Arguably the 4 greatest poets of all time, you gargantuan fucking plebs.

Pretentious faggot
Just another case of anglo cultural cringe

>>9276550
>>9276841
>>9277004
wow at these /int/ rejects

>>9277231
Four single poets doesn't make a tradiition, Joachim.

No one gives Pound his due. Most our English language canon from the 20th century is a result of his ardent promotion & memeing-into-being.

>you have to know Chinese to write English

yes this makes sense, those languages are known for their deep and syncretic cultural exchanges over the ages

it has nothing to do with Pound knowing Chinese or anything

>>9277245
except it does mayor of plebtown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturm_und_Drang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Classicism

>>9276550
>>9276841
>>9277004
German prose an shit for the most part, but the language has some pretty great poetry.

>>9277264
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichter_und_Denker

He's right.

Pound is my biggest influence, I don't know why he gets so much negativity on this board.
Pure genius in his Cantos

>>9277264
You know what a tradition is, right? Read with me, t-r-a-d-i-t-i-o-n, not movement. Every country has a literary movement, kek. You can find it in Caribbe, if you dig enough.

>DUDE IM A GENIUS LMFAO
>leave absolutely no notable works behind, your only claim to fame is helping Eliot write Wasteland and being a fucking nazi

>>9277325
>leave absolutely no notable works behind

He reached in only two lines a beauty that the vast majority of poets couldn't in thousands.

>>9277333
t. Ezra Pound

>>9277341
nope. it's true. Pound was one of the greatest poets to have walked this earth.

rest in peace with petasos held low :(

He's delusional. Japanese is better than Chinese anyway.

>>9277245
>four single poets don't make a tradition
Say that to Homer. Say that to Dante and Petrarca. Say that to Cervantes (you might add the three golden age playwrights, but it still only makes 4).

>>9277245
>>9277231
Rilke, George too

>>9277520
>comparing novalis to homer
>comparing schiller to dante
>comparing holderlin to petrarch

Top kek this delusional Joachim.

>>9277536
You're right, they're all better.

>>9277529
>Rilke
he was a contemporary of Pound so doesn't really count since he is talking about tradition
>George
another who in the world poetry big scenario

We are talking about the big guys here m8. Homer, Dante, Petrarch, Villon, Shakespeare, Basho, etc. So, fuck off.

>>9277549
kek

>>9277541
>germans in charge of humour

ABC of Reading is one of the most autistic things I've read in my life, dude certainly had issues

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>all this german butthurt

Kek.

>>9276277
but thats not greek

>>9277575

I really liked ABC even though it's so pretentious and also seems so insecure.

> Mandarin is a constitutive skill of good writing.

What are you on about? Was Nabokov incapable of writing a novel for lack of niponese then?

>>9277004
kafka

>>9276107
He's right. Most of /lit/ is full of retards but you will NOT understand poetry without an understanding of other languages.

It's not even hard, French is literally so shit-easy for English speakers that there is no reason not to learn it. Same with Italian, Spanish, and German.

>>9276107
fuck learning chinese

>>9276536
He was good at Latin but shit at Greek

Chinese is pretty much impossible for Westerners to learn unless you spend your entire life on it

>>9276841
>who is Von der Vogelweide
>>9277226
He actually liked Lope de Vega and the Cantar del Cid. Russian is important, as is Danish.

>>9276294
Kafka

>>9277902
I feel bad for Von der Vogelweide, truly. Every time we talk shit about german poetry, he is called up. Such a lonely boy. Didn't he had friends? Poet friends? Good poets friends? Such a pity.

>>9277914
>Kafka
>German

Pick one.

>>9277925
We're talking about the german language here, bucko.

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>>9277934
Oh, so the only german writer brought up to the table isn't even german at all. How surprising.

I don't know about you guys, but German philosophy is something to dig into. So learning German should help a lot. I don't know much about German poetry. Will anyone suggest me where to begin?

>>9277562
I'm not German.

>>9278143
Get going with Goethe

>>9278143
Celan.

>>9276122
Nothing, wow. This board isn't very well read

>>9277895
>Chinese is pretty much impossible for Westerners to learn unless you spend your entire life on it

all it is is pronounciation and vocabulary memorization

theres no grammar

stop being a dumb anglo

>>9276107
So, on a personal level I would imagine very few agree or condone what Pound says. Off the top of my head and paraphrasing I remember Pound speaking in ABC of people who did not read 'The Greats' as vermin and a disease who need to be vaccinated. He speaks of people as deadwood who either need to read what he does or they should be removed from society. This is not exaggeration: he uses all of these images and similar ones in ABC.
There is a particularly nice exchange between Pound and a reviewer and BBC editior called DG Bridson that illustrates Pound's attitude. In 1936 Bridson wrote a review of The Cantos and argued that because they were so difficult Pound might like to include footnotes to aid understanding. Pound replied to this something along the lines of: 'For whom am I writing footnotes? As you know London is full of pimps and vermin'. Given the cultural and political context within which Pound is writing I probably don't need to say who he is referring to as vermin here. Also, remember his direct involvement in Fascist Italy as a propogandist.
So, Pound is enacting and describing in ABC a kind of literary cleansing where those people who do not share his intelliegnce or tastes are seen as vermin to be exterminated (another word he liked). So, he is doing in the literary world what Hitler would do in political terms. There really is a very clear similarity here.
That being said Pound also often saw himself as a teacher and whilst he admonished people for not reading or understanding what he did he also tried to teach them. So, ABC is a guide for how to read and he includes, contrary to his exchange with Bridson, several footnotes to difficult poems in ABC. But, even here he almost admonishes the reader who chooses to use them: he describes the notes as crutches and says that it would obviously be better if he didn't need or use them. This is where effort comes in for Pound. He sees unintelligent people as lazy and feckless who should either put the effort in for which he will offer guidence or remove themselves from society entriely. They should either be vaciniated or exterminated. Again, the exact imagery that Pound uses throughout ABC.
So, I doubt many people today would find this language appealing. I personally feel that the kind of poetry he writes, and poetry in general, does require effort and people aren't very willing to put that effort in. But, then the difference is Pound uses this position to espouse a certain brand of politics which is repugnant.

>>9279278
One-syllable words can literally mean dozens of different things based on context and intonation. Plus, Chinese has an awful non-phonetic writing system where knowing a character and knowing a spoken word are two entirely different things.

>>9279278
No need to learn to pronounce if you're just going to be reading and writing. It's not like he even has to handwrite anything, either.

The only languages I am interested in learning are Latin, Greek, Italian, Serbo-croat and Russian.

>>9277549
>who is Heinrich Heine
I also find it funny that there's one anon on this board (You) who always shitposts about Basho, he's not that good

>>9276107

pound started with the greeks

Can someone give me the exact quote of him saying something like "Living is when you dare to do things you were afraid of" ?

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>>9279396
"Living is when you dare to
do things you
were afraid of"

LXXXI Canto.

>>9279324
Best post itt

>>9279460
It's an old pasta tho

Whilst I wouldn't want to try and encapsulate the entirety of literary criticism I would say that, on the whole, critics do not agree with Pound's views. Even if you remove the political and cultural implications, I very much doubt modern day critics would be quite so elitist as Pound. In terms of translation, I doubt it would be an issue for most critics to read work in translation and rather than prescribing how to read critics would be much more interested in challenging what it means to translate a work or what is lost in doing so, and perhaps by tackling issues of appropriation, etc.
I think the issue of prescriptivism is an important one. Pound's criticism is very prescritpive: this is what you should read, this is how you should read it, this is why you should read it. This outlook continued throughout the years of New Criticism and debates around the canon also (I suppose someone like Bloom has somewhat revitalized this debate recently). But, from the 60s onward and with the advent of theory it is quite rare now to find a scholar advocating an approach predicated on prescription. So, in this sense scholars do not still hold Pound's critics views. The critical moment has shifted and it has shifted irrevocably.
Also, you would need to bear in mind that the cultural moment out of which Pound was writing (modernism) has been completely eroded and challenged by contemporary literary shifts and moments. So, in this sense asking whether or not critics today still agree with Pound's views might be the equivalent of asking if physicists today still agree with models from 100 years ago. Things have changed, our understanding of cultural relationships have changed, etc.
So, again I would suggest that critics do not agree with Pound on what it takes to be a writer or a poet or on the models of readership that Pound advocated. He is taken very seriously as a critic and poet from an investigative or analytical point of view, but not someone to emulate or advance. I think that's perhaps the best way to look at it.

>>9279464
Personally, I feel that our culture of skimming and rapid reading engendered by the internet and related digital technologies have made reading poetry far more difficult. Poetry that is good almost always requires prolonged intellectual effort: it requires study and thought and to be re-read time and time again. It is impossible to read a poem once and to then be contented that it has divulged all of its secrets.
This style of reading, which Pound in some senses was advocating, has become much more difficult in a cultural climate that, rightly or wrongly, privileges and values instantaneous and easy access to material. Poetry demands concentration which again has become far more difficult in an age of hyperlinks and skimming. I don't want to go so far as to offer a value judgement as to the kinds of reading practices made possible and promoted in the 21st century but I think it would be difficult to argue it is conducive to the appreciation of poetry. Again, who's to say that's a good thing? Most people don't care about poetry and the ability to find something out in seconds is far, far more highly valued than the pleasure borne out of reading and studying a poem for hours on end.
Check out Nick Carr's The Shallows for a neurological rendition of this argument where he argues skim reading has actually altered the neurological pathways making it not only more difficult but in some cases impossible to devote the kind of sustained attention to one item as is required by poetry.

>>9279469
ead from the perspective of the twenty first century Pound's work is seen as antiquated and not at all aligned to what people now think. You might study his work, but you would not want to propagate it or otherwise promote what he says in works like ABC.
However, it is also worth emphasizing that this would not have been the case at the time Pound was writing. His ideas were perfectly appropriate and commonplace and this can be seen in any of the number of little magazines of the time, many of which Pound wrote for. It also seeped into wider society as seen in the BBC's mantra of giving people not what they want but what they need. This all speaks to a general sense that people were stupid, that they had been poisoned by cheap and popular novels, and were in their own turn poisoning society. Thus, it fell to people like Eliot and Pound to either create a milieu that would be immune to such cultural destruction or to educate the otherwise half-witted vox populi. See also David Jones's notion of The Break for a really interesting take on this general idea (if people care I'd be happy to explain what it is as it's really fascinating).

Pound himself didn't have a very good grasp of Chinese, and his translations and especially the notes on ideograms are usually the source of a great many giggles for Chinese professors. Very few Chinese characters are ideogramatic and he largely used French sources for his Confucius and Noh translations.
As to knowing multiple languages being necessary for writing significantly in the world today, I cannot agree more. I simply wouldn't limit them to French, Italian and Latin; that shared tradition with English is great for what it is, but it's kind of weirdly xenophobic to say those are the only options. Spanish is also incredibly important, as is German, Greek, Russian, Korean, Japanese and Portuguese. You don't need to stick with familiar traditions; even familiar foreign traditions when there's several others out there.

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>>9279464
>>9279469
>>9279474
>>9279480
Dude, fuck off with your reddit shit.

>>9279480
>Korean
are you fucking joking? please be joking

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>>9279589
It's a reddit post, dumbass.

>>9279464
you can't treat literary criticism like a science. this entire post smacks of academia yet it amounts to a huge ad populum. GJ

>>9279560
>post insightful comments on the matter
>might not agree with them
>but all you can come back with is fuck off

this board is shit

which is funny because his "grasp" of other languages was often intensely feigned and extremely showy

which is basically Ezra in a nutshell. He'd have been a fine poet if he didn't keep reaching beyond what he knew he actually had, and he had quite a bit.

>>9279622
>which is funny because his "grasp" of other languages was often intensely feigned and extremely showy

prove it or btfo

>>9276107
Replace ching chong with Greek and add German and I'd agree with him.

>>9279598

They're literally better than most posts here. Fuck this website, I'm out of here.

And you guys smell. And shave for God's sake.

And stop being so pissed off at the world as if it gives you an excuse to be shitty.

There's something I like in elitist writers. It's their complete disdain for plebs and how relentlessly they beat them down.

>>9279624

As is pointed out in above Reddit posts, he literally knew almost no Chinese.

I think trying to include Chinese in your poems when you aren't a reader of ancient texts, or trying to translate poems from Chinese when you literally have a beginner's knowledge and a dictionary, is disengenuous.

He "translated" the sea-farer but did not have the skills necessary to read the original.


Let's get something straight here. You can pull out a dictionary and a grammar, and if you really want to, you can produce a HORRIBLE translation of an Ovid poem in a couple weeks: a couple hours if you've taken a semester or two of Latin. Minutes if you consult other translations.

But what in the fuck is the point of that? That's the sort of translating Pound did. "Il miglior fabbro" is intensely ironic in my opinion: Eliot's poem, not Pounds, is the one that made the canon, and Eliot knew perfectly well that Pound couldn't hope to write anything like it.

Everything about Pound is Grandiose, Vast, Historical, Epic. He's trying to tie all of history into some sort of weird aesthetic vision. Can't be done.

Given, Eliot and other moderns have a similar tendency. Eliot wasn't a Sanskrit scholar, but Shanteh shanteh shanteh. It's a matter of degree and taste, like everything in art. Pound always seems like he's trying to tell us he's a great poet.

>>9279337
>Intonation
>In archaic Chinese
I bet you think Anglo-Saxons talked like us.

hes right though

>>9279337
literally just pronounciation and then learn pinyin

stop pretending to be retarded

>>9279337
>Chinese has an awful non-phonetic writing system where knowing a character and knowing a spoken word are two entirely different things.

Wtf this is an advantage. Stop being this occidental faggot.

>>9276107
i don't give a shit what ezra pound thinks.

>>9279480
how the fuck is korean important at all

And Wyndham Lewis went to it,
With a heavy bit of artillery,
and the airmen came by with a mitrailleuse,
And cleaned out most of his company,
and a shell lit on his tin hut,
While he was out in the privy,
and he was all there was left of that outfit.

Windeler went to it,
and he was out in the Ægæan,
And down in the hold of his ship
pumping gas into a sausage,
And the boatswain looked over the rail,
down into amidships, and he said:
Gees! look a’ the Kept’n,
The Kept’n’s a-gettin’ ‘er up.

And Ole Captain Baker went to it,
with his legs full of rheumatics,
So much so he couldn’t run,
so he was six months in hospital,
Observing the mentality of the patients.

And Fletcher was 19 when he went to it,
And his major went mad in the control pit,
about midnight, and started throwing the ‘phone about
And he had to keep him quiet
till abut six in the morning,
And direct that bunch of artillery.

And Ernie Hemingway went to it,
too much in a hurry,
And they buried him for four days.

Et ma foi, vous savez,
tous les nerveux. Non,
Y a une limite; les bêtes, les bêtes ne sont
Pas faites pour ça, c’est peu de chose un cheval.
Les hommes de 34 ans à quatre pattes
qui criaient “maman.” Mais les costauds,
La fin, là à Verdun, n’y avait que ces gros bonshommes
Et y voyaient extrêmement clair.
Qu’est-ce que ça vaut, les généraux, le lieutenant,
on les pèse à un centigramme,
n’y a rien que du bois,
Notr’ capitaine, tout, tout ce qu’il y a de plus renfermé
de vieux polytechnicien, mais solide,
La tête solide. Là, vous savez,
Tout, tout fonctionne, et les voleurs, tous les vices,
Mais les rapaces,
y avait trois dans notre compagnie, tous tués.
Y sortaient fouiller un cadavre, pour rien,
y n’serainet sortis pour rien que ça.
Et les boches, tout ce que vous voulez,
militarisme, et cætera, et cætera.
Tout ça, mais, MAIS,
l’français, i s’bat quand y a mangé.
Mais ces pauvres types
A la fin y s’attaquaient pour manger,
Sans orders, les bêtes sauvages, on y fait
Prisonniers; ceux qui parlaient français disaient:
“Poo quah? Ma foi on attaquait pour manger.”

C’est le corr-ggras, le corps gras,
leurs trains marchaient trois kilomètres à l’heure,
Et ça criait, ça grincait, on l’entendait à cinq kilomètres.
(Ça qui finit la guerre.)

Liste officielle des morts 5,000,000.

I vous dit, bè, voui, tout sentait le pétrole.
Mais, Non! je l’ai engueulé.
Je lui ai dit: T’es un con! T’a raté la guerre.

O voui! tous les homes de goût, y conviens,
Tout ça en arrière.
Mais un mec comme toi!
C’t homme, un type comme ça!
Ce qu’il aurait pu encaisser!
Il était dans une fabrique.
What, burying squad, terrassiers, avec leur tête
en arrière, qui regardaient comme ça,
On risquait la vie pour un coup de pelle,
Faut que ça soit bein carré, exact…

Dey vus a bolcheviki dere, und dey dease him:
Looka vat youah Trotzsk is done, e iss
madeh deh zhamefull beace!!
“He iss madeh de zhamefull beace, iss he?
“He is madeh de zhamevull beace?
“A Brest-Litovsk, yess? Aint yuh herd?
“He vinneh de vore.
“De droobs iss released vrom de eastern vront, yess?
“Un venn dey getts to deh vestern vront, iss it
“How many getts dere?
“And dose doat getts dere iss so full off revolutions
“Venn deh vrench is come dhru, yess,
“Dey say, “Vot?” Un de posch say:
“Aint yeh heard? Say, ve got a rheffolution.”

>>9276107
I would go with Italian, French and Russian instead of Latin.

>>9276107

He's probably somewhat right. Except for the hyper-rich, most educations nowadays are abysmal and leave us with mediocre minds, hardly with anything that we could really reach.

>>9277253

You tend to get memory-holed if you tell the truth about the jews.

>>9277893

You've inspired me to spend 30 minutes a day on Rosetta Stone rather than shitposting on imageboards.

>>9279618

No, it's an eye sore and makes it hard to read. You just have to press enter a few times.

>>9277253
>memeing-into-being
I'm going to steal this one

>>9277942
It's about the language. And when Kafka lived prague was under austrian control, Austria and germany are culturally closely related and austrian is kind of an accent of german.