A Sense Of Balance

13 Ramadhan, 1441

I've been thinking about balance today, and the various ways in which this month of fasting acts as necessary balance to our world of plenty - at least for those of us who are fortunate enough to be the recipients of that plenty. I suppose there are other ways of alerting us to the need for such a balance, but fasting is a remarkably robust and efficacious method.

The need for balance has further been on my mind in connection with my current reading of the second volume of Moody's impressive biography of Ezra Pound - The Epic Years 1921 - 1939. It's difficult to think of many other writers whose lives went so spectacularly out of balance as Pound's and Moody helps us understand why this was so without overly indulging in special pleading. Indeed, I'd say that around 1933, without the benefit of historical hindsight, it's possible to see why Pound was drawn to a manner of thinking he assumed to be Italian Fascism. But as the decade moves on the feeling that Pound is losing contact with common sense reality just gets stronger and stronger - and all the more so because he has friends like Basil Bunting and William Carlos Williams who are spelling it out to him.

There's one very powerful segment in which Moody cites some deeply unpleasant and disturbing anti-Semitic nonsense from Pound and follows this with some short paragraphs from Bunting strenuously objecting to the nonsense. The stuff from Bunting brings much-needed fresh air into the text - a reminder of sanity and decency. The mystery is how a man as intelligent and, in his way, generous as Pound could be so wrong-headed.

But then I suppose there's no real mystery with regard to our folly. It strikes at the intelligent and generous as much as it does the narrowly limited of mind. It's when we assume we are free from folly that we are likely to lose balance.