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PARTISAN REVIEW
and partly by the Poundianly vituperative marginalia in my own edition of
Charles Francis's
W orks of J ohn Adams. )
The Adams cantos stand as a representative case of the excesses of
modernism, whose dogmas have shielded them from critical scrutiny .
While the doctrine of the separation of art from life has protected their
crackbrained and vicious ideas, the concurrent mythology of the artist has
made Pound's life and these ideas appear as guarantees of poetic excellence.
The modern writer, insofar as he appears as the alienated holder of unpopu–
lar opinions, and insofar as his works are unpleasant, obscure, and insult–
ing, has the critical advantage. That his life and art might display these
characteristics without the accompaniment of poetic achievement is hardly
to
be imagined . Of course a definitive analysis of Pound's state of mind
during the 1930s will have to await a thorough biographical study. But in
the meantime the evidence points to intellectual and poetic decline below
the level of respectability, along with signs of mental breakdown . If the
mindlessness of the Adams cantos has not been generally recognized, their
impenetrability has been evident to any non-Poundian who has troubled
to
read them. Yet, instead of taking their lack of sense as continuous with
Pound's political rantings, intelligent critics have labored
to
deceive them–
selves about the poetry while excusing the politics .
In this process the very senselessness of Pound's cantos guaranteed
their respectability . For above all, it is obscurity that secures respect for
works perceived as modernist . Had the Adams cantos displayed the begin–
nings of rational content and poetic form, then they might have been
dismissed by non-Poundian critics. Instead, their impenetrability served to
insulate them from scrutiny.
Yet if obscurity is worshipped it is not really believed in . Among all of
the elaborate explanations about the necessary difficulty of modern verse,
how often does a critic confess that he is unable to understand something?
Pound has benefited not only from being obscure but from critical confi–
dence that all modernism ultimately makes sense . In the case of the Adams
cantos, therefore, the dementia of Pound himself, and the devotions of the
Poundians are not chiefly at issue . What is at issue is the self-deception of
the rest of the literary community. In "The Emperor's New Clothes" the
courtiers who fail to speak up have the excuse offear. Uncoerced, the critics
of Pound have honored the Poundians and mispraised the Adams cantos.
The case presents no adjunct to the muses diadem .
