Allowance of the Day
Civilized society may not depend on stoning to deter immoral crimes . . .
Via Crooked Timber. And it seems like a good time to renew your acquaintance with Pound’s “Ballad of the Goodly Fère.”
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Comment by Doug M. —
May 13, 2007 @ 11:32 pm
The selective use of Biblical scholarship is pretty interesting. It’s not wrong, BTW. But I suspect the Book as a whole is not receiving this sort of exegesis.
Goodly Fere: I can’t enjoy that because I know it’s Ezra Pound.
Doug M.
Comment by William Burns —
May 14, 2007 @ 6:21 am
What kills it for me is “lover he was of brawny men.”
Comment by Doug M. —
May 14, 2007 @ 7:08 am
Pound was not gay — he had a strange and complicated love life, but that wasn’t part of it. And the poem was written in [googles] 1917, when Pound was not nearly as strange and unpleasant as he later became.
That said, I keep thinking of Il Duce, brawny son of a blacksmith, hanging on that hook. Unfair, I know.
Doug M.
Comment by Mona —
May 14, 2007 @ 9:04 am
Conservapedia. The final, dispositive piece of evidence that one cannot parody the modern right.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
May 14, 2007 @ 9:08 am
Pound’s politics were awful, but so were those of Yeats (a much more thorough fascist), and Eliot, and Larkin, and Frost (very few people realize what a vicious and right-wing his personl views were). So what?
“Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.”
Works for Pound as well.
Trackback by Drug WarRant —
May 14, 2007 @ 9:37 am
More fringe religious follies…
…
Comment by well, actually —
May 14, 2007 @ 5:38 pm
The answer lies in its liberal message
As if the rest Christ’s messege isn’t liberal. Tracking down theives and giving them the rest of your stuff is kinda soft on crime too. Conservative Christian is an oxymoron – or would be if Christ had anything to say about it.
Comment by Jackmormon —
May 14, 2007 @ 9:13 pm
And Céline, despite all of his political awfulness, could fucking write.
Comment by Kip W —
May 18, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
A timely sentiment. When I drive to pick my daughter up at preschool, I pass various houses with little signs in their yards with biblical verses on them. These seem to change from time to time. The nice place on East Mountain Road that used to say something about fearing the Lord now says “Whoever is without sin, first cast a stone.” The word order is interesting, and not what I usually hear for that verse. (Actually, I’m not sure of the wording it starts with, but the last four words are verbatim.)