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civilized intelligence is one of per–
petual salvage. We cannot choose
the aesthetic or the practical; art
or life.
It
is never either-or; it is
both-and. We as society have got
to take them indissolubly together.
But as individuals we discharge our
particular responsibilities to society
from the point of view of the labors
in which we are placed. Weare
placed in the profession of letters;
we cannot expect the politician or
business man, the man who runs
the state, to know that our parti–
cular responsibility exists; we can–
not ask him to understand the more
difficult fact that our responsibil–
ity to him is for the language which
he uses for the general welfare.
The medium cannot be extricated
from the material, the how from
the what: part of our responsibil–
ity is to correct the monism of the
statesman who imagines that what
he says is scarcely said in language
at all, that it exists apart from the
medium, in something indefinite
like "practicality."
If
we do not
look after the medium, nobody else
will. We need never fear that the
practical man will fail in offsetting
our concern for the health of lan–
guage. This, in the case of Ezra
Pound, he has already done. But
Pound's language remains our con–
cern.
If
he were a convicted trai–
tor, I should still think that Pound
in another direction which com–
plicates the problem ultimately be–
yond our understanding, had per–
formed one of his duties to society.
Allen Tate
ODI ET AMO
Mr. Barrett asks how far tech–
nical embellishments can transform
vicious and ugly matter into beau–
tiful poetry. The question is
phrased somewhat ambiguously.
"Technical embellishments" sug–
gests that something new has been
added, something merely ornamen–
tal, perhaps diverting, probably
de trap.
But Pound received the
award for "poetic achievement,"
which is a solid thing, no mere
decorative flourish, and indeed,
means work in which the manner
cannot be divorced from the mat–
ter without injury. Further, in re–
gard to "vicious and ugly matter,"
the question fails to distinguish be–
tween the subject of the poem and
its tone, between the poet's theme
and his attitude towards it. Among
the several questions raised by the
award it seems to me that two im–
portant ones are these: 1) What
constitutes poetic achievement? 2)
Is it necessary, desirable, or pos–
sible to distinguish between Pound
the man and Pound the poet, and,
while abhorring the behavior of
the one, to honor the performance
of the other?
My answer to this question
would be that it is desirable, though
certainly it is difficult, to distin–
guish between the poet and his
poem, as it is difficult but some–
times necessary to restrain a man as
an enemy of society while permit–
ting him to function as a crafts–
man. By writing as well as he knows
