village explainer

He [Ezra Pound] was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.

—Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Harcourt Brace, NY, 1933. p. 246)

Posted by JforJames
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1 comment:

  1. Berkeley MikeJanuary 12, 2017 at 4:10 PM

    In a moment between two World Wars, Stein's trenchant remark about the person Ezra Pound, has a catalytic power of an epiphany at a time when language was failing superbly to make a civilized world whole by towering flights of elegance. The story, oft repeated, of Titans dying in their finery turning to tatters.

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