res publica, the public convenience

EZRA POUND

RAPALLO

VIA MARSALA, 12 INT. 5

19 Feb. 1928

A.M. Whitehead Esq.

Cambridge

Dear Sir :

Am reading your Science and Mod. World with
interest.

line 3

On P. 58 has the printer omitted " this"
before thought, or is the "The" at begining of the
line a misprint for " this ". ?

P. 55 last line and P. 56 line 2., 1 question
whether the italicized "is", might not better read
" may not have been " and " may be ".

//
Personal thanks for providing lucid statement that will
save me trouble of explaining to people of my
immediate acquaintance what I mean by kicking Aristotle
and saying that his being good at his own little line
had possible wasted two thousand years of man's time.

/////

P. 59. A queery that my have been demoded by new
ideas re/ electrons, BUT ( and pardon amateurs
enquiry ) in dealing with what used to be called
matter ( solids, planets, metal etc ), people to assume
or during long period to have assumed that it was
"heavier " than everything else.

Doesn't that assumption still rather bind
experiment ? Even though a few people may already
conceive it as " lighter "; that is to say the

RAPALLO

EZRA POUND

VIA MARSALA, 12 INT. 5

kicked out of the way by some more vigorous and
bustling "element" of ( old style ) or " condition or
modality of electrification. ?

I know there is social danger in such
speculation. "General danger of contemporary science
allowing a lot of weak minded people to flop back
into theology. ( Thomism and other fads ).

////
My terminology probably "unscientific" and too loose
but, putting it another way :

say the weight-energy charge in solids ( liquids ,
gasses ) is less than weight-energy charge in whatever
one chooses to call the next-thing-to!" vacuum ";

or at any rate that this possibility
shd. not be automatically or from mere prejudice and
superstition ruled out of al speculation.

//////
PARENTHESES if can you set one of your students to
picking holes in my brief " Treatise on Harmony ".
Contemporary musicians and mus. crits. seem to be too
ignorant to deal with it.

PARENTHESES : am asking Dial to send you marked copy
of March issue, with an alas very unsystematized note
on relation of mind of mediaeval " natural philosopher "
to what wd. appear be to be contemporary " climate"
as you call it of scient. mind.

RAPALLO

EZRA POUND

VIA MARSALA, 12 INT. 5

P. 109, lines two and three.

Only a celebrated mathematician cd. display
such sublime indifference to number !!!

P. 110, e,s.

It is not that men are really such imbeciles as
to boggle so about subject and object in their
actual THOUGHT, but largely a boggle in language.

Have possible made an approach to formulation
(no, no, not a formulation, but a start on the
way to a mode that might be useful in formulation)
in forthcoming treatise on "How to Read",

///

Contempt of most scientists ( especially
in yr. dark island ) for literature and the amenities
has prevented earlier examination of language itself
or banana peel
as a greased slide for the thinker, . Contempt
for the technique of writing, very foolish. Just as
bad a demi-literati's ignorance of science.

P. 122. You can rephrase my earlier remark re/
lightness of matter, and say : in the field of
physical activity, the activity is greatest where the
" matter " is most tenuous.

/////

Given you more or less Baconian - all that is
perceives.

I don't see the obstacle to a theory that the
electrons in an atom: let us say, for argument
an atom of one positive and 5 negative electrons,

RAPALLO

EZRA POUND

VIA MARSALA, 12 INT. 5

The electrons follow certain orbits round the positive, gradually the paths loci (equinoctial progression) arrive at a point where there is a comparative hollow or void that that atom; call it a hole that a corresponding spike on some other electron wd. fill.

This wd. give basis both for development of atoms of higher numerical status, and also start for "desire" :

all of which shd. ultimately develop without inconvenience from atom to organic cell, cognition being merely a more complicated mode of perception.

Must leave it some honest working man to find out whether atoms appear to behave in such accomodating manner.

P. 149, line 10. At what speed is or was the interferometer turned ?

Last sentence P, 194. Oh you abstracting Johnnies !!
Bertie wont pull this off. It is really time for you
to get of the Wordsworthio-Shellean and LOOK at
contemporary art. Cubism, vorticism etc. I hadn't meant
to drag in this question. Have a look at Picasso,
Lewis ( of 1914 ) before he took to journalism,
even Miro. Damn England, anyway. The ang-sax habit
of heaping abuse and excrement on perceivers until
a century after their deaths.