The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce with Pound’s Essays on Joyce is an interesting volume. Between January 1971 and March 1972, I was reading everything, and this volume was one of them. Below are some of the excerpts I found interesting, and hope you do as well. Enjoy.
_________________________
“My whole habit of thinking of the stage is: that it is a gross, coarse form of art. That a play speaks to a thousand fools huddled together, whereas a novel or a poem can lie about in a book and find the stray persons worth finding…There is no uinion in intellect, when we diverse, we explore, we go away. When we feel we unite.” (46)
“…all the real problems of life are insoluble and that the real dramatist will be the man with a mind in search; he will grope for his answer and he will differ from the sincere auditor in that his groping will be the keener, the more far-reaching, the more conscious, or at least the more articulate: whereas, the man who tries to preach at you, the man who stops his play to deliver a sermon, will only be playing about the surface of things or trying to foist off some theory.” (56)
“The terror of clarity is not confined to any one people. The obstructionist and the provincial are everywhere, and in them alone is the permanent danger to civilization. Clear, hard prose is the safeguard and should be valued as such. The min accustomed to it will not be chated or stampeded by national phrases and public emotions.” (91)
“I do not imply that there cannot be excellent art with quite distinct limitations, but the artist cannot afford to be ignorant of his limitations; he cannot afford a pretense of such ignorance. The artist must also choose his limitations.” (138)