Rupert Owen reviewed Guide to kulchur. by Ezra Pound
Review of 'Guide to kulchur.' on 'GoodReads'
5 stars
Difficult to immediately say, but Pound dissects certain fractions in thought about economics, music, literature and history placing them against classical Chinese and Greek philosophy. Ezra suffuses all this with his own wit calling philosophers such as Aristotle "Arry" throughout and observes his distaste with a distilled acerbic snarl. His views on money are very interesting especially in relation to Aristotle's view of it being a matter of custom and easily altered or rendered useless at will.
Primarily I think Pound set out to cover two quite over-casting levels of mental firmament with this text: one is that ideas only work when they are put into action and the other is that the value of knowledge is not in the facts but in the processes involved through-out history.
This was a fairly challenging read for me, and I laughed when Pound talked of not liking authors that required of him …
Difficult to immediately say, but Pound dissects certain fractions in thought about economics, music, literature and history placing them against classical Chinese and Greek philosophy. Ezra suffuses all this with his own wit calling philosophers such as Aristotle "Arry" throughout and observes his distaste with a distilled acerbic snarl. His views on money are very interesting especially in relation to Aristotle's view of it being a matter of custom and easily altered or rendered useless at will.
Primarily I think Pound set out to cover two quite over-casting levels of mental firmament with this text: one is that ideas only work when they are put into action and the other is that the value of knowledge is not in the facts but in the processes involved through-out history.
This was a fairly challenging read for me, and I laughed when Pound talked of not liking authors that required of him to have a dictionary handy whilst reading.
I think that with a basic knowledge of literature and history, you will enjoy this work, and if you have curiosity or interest in the analects you will draw much from Pound's work. Pace yourself through it, remembering that Pound was as much an anti-academic as was Shaw, and certain vibrancy of ideas are particular to that person, not necessarily a mimesis of other's ideas.