Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

"Pound and Peirce" [2019] ELECD 1386; in Broekman, M. Jan (ed), "Rethinking Law and Language" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 235

Book Title: Rethinking Law and Language

Editor(s): Broekman, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: INTERMEZZO 6

Section Title: Pound and Peirce

Number of pages: 6

Extract:

INTERMEZZO 6



Pound and Peirce


Ezra Pound and Charles S. Peirce: astonished at being brought together.
Finally!
The wealth of an unwritten book on them gives us uneasy feelings:
"Who are we, and what do we neglect?"




Pound and Peirce: the first is the poet who was a philosopher who
liberated himself from all systemic and cultural ballast and wrote as a
poet; the other was the philosopher who freed himself from systemic and
cultural ballast and wrote as a poet. Surprising perspectives are open to
those who study how the two were fascinated by language. A crossroads
of cultures opens before our eyes. There are no names for such crossings.
Are the two solely operating in one language--in English? By no means
do they do so. They would, remarkably enough, never focus on how
many languages they mastered as a means of communication or conver-
sation, but were only interested in how many different languages were
enclosed in their perspectives on life and its plurality of cultures. This
phenomenon of enclosure has many layers of meaning.
To think, speak, or write about Pound in a mother tongue is a risky
adventure. His prose contains a parallel with the lawyer's problem: the
speech most wanted and experienced is at a dangerous distance to the
languages of the everyday. In the case of Pound, when reading his texts
each fragment is a matter of translation from a multitude of languages,
236 Rethinking law and language

which became forged into ...