The Gift_ Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World - Lewis Hyde [161]
“Yes,” he replied finally, and then mumbled “but my own work does not make sense.” … “A mess,” he said.
“What, you or the Cantos or me?”
“My writing—stupidity and ignorance all the way through,” he said. “Stupidity and ignorance.”
[Ginsberg and the others objected, Ginsberg concluding:] “Williams told me … in 1961—we were talking about prosody … anyway Williams said, ‘Pound has a mystical ear’—did he ever tell you that?”
“No,” said Pound, “he never said that to me”—smiling almost shyly and pleased—eyes averted, but smiling, almost curious and childlike.
“Well I’m reporting it to you now seven years later— the judgment of the tender-eyed Doctor that you had a ‘mystical ear’—not gaseous mystical he meant—but a natural ear for rhythm and tone.”
I continued explaining the concrete value of his perceptions. I added that as humor—HUMOR—the ancient humours—his irritations, … against Buddhists, Taoists and Jews—fitted into place, despite his intentions, as part of the drama … “The Paradise is in the desire, not in the imperfection of accomplishment—it was the intention of Desire we all respond to—Bhakti—the Paradise is in the magnanimity of the desire to manifest coherent perceptions in language.”
“The intention was bad—that’s the trouble—anything I’ve done has been an accident—any good has been spoiled by my intentions—the preoccupation with irrelevant and stupid things—” Pound said this quietly, rusty voiced like an old child, looked directly in my eye while pronouncing “intention.”
“Ah well, what I’m trying to tell you—what I came here for all this time—was to give you my blessing then, because despite your disillusion …, [my] perceptions have been strengthened by the series of practical exact language models which are scattered thruout the Cantos like stepping stones—ground for me to occupy, walk on—so that despite your intentions, the practical effect has been to clarify my perceptions—and, anyway, now, do you accept my blessing?”
He hesitated, opening his mouth, like an old turtle.
“I do,” he said—“but my worst mistake was the stupid suburban prejudice of antisemitism, all along, that spoiled everything—” …
“Ah, that’s lovely to hear you say that …”*
Later, Ginsberg and the others walked Pound back to his apartment. At the door, Ginsberg took him by the shoulders and said, “I also came here for your blessing. And now may I have it, sir?”
“Yes,” nodded Pound, “for whatever it’s worth.”
In the history of the creative spirit in America, this encounter seems as significant as the day, thirty-five years before, when Pound handed the Cantos to Mussolini. For here the Jew—or rather, the Buddhist Jew (for he has left the judge behind)—came to exchange a blessing with the bitter servant. There were Jews who thought that Pound should have been put to death for his broadcasts during the war. But that would have been no more of a solution than the killing of the Jew in the fairy tale. Rather than fighting devils with devils, Ginsberg managed to change the form of the drama itself, and a light suddenly fell from a window no one had noticed. The story of our poetry need not be finished in one man’s life. Ginsberg calls the light out of Pound’s labor; the forces of decay will strip away the “stupidity and ignorance.” The servant of the gift may yet regain his voice and feel, with each word that leaves his body, his own worth return to him as undivided light.
* “But this/… is entertaining.”
* All cultures seem to find a slightly alien local population to carry the Hermes projection. For the Vietnamese it is the Chinese, and for the Chinese it is the Japanese. For the Hindu it is the Muslim; for the North Pacific tribes it was the Chinook; in Latin America and in the American South it is the Yankee. In Uganda it is the East Indians and Pakistanis. In French Quebec it is the English. In Spain the Catalans are “the Jews of Spain.” On Crete it is the Turks, and in Turkey it is