.  Wei wrote:" Leon Surette says it [Pound's religion is] an "Eleusinian"
religion."
    I must protest, that I have never said anything of the sort. My first
book argued that Pound used the Eleusinian religion as a factitious paradigm
for the CANTOS much in the manner that Eliot used the Grail legend in TWL.
That is far from claiming that it was his religion.
    In THE BIRTH OF MODERNISM I revised that opinion and argued that Pound
took seriously the occult and visionary postulates of Swedenborgians like
Yeats and theosophists like G. R. S. Mead and Allen Upward, and that these
views animate the CANTOS. Demetres Tryphonopolous holds much the same view,
and articulates it manifestation in Pound's poetry and prose--with a special
emphasis on the palingenetic of katabasis and epotpteia. Demetres does
stress the occurence of that pattern at Eleusis and argues for its
suitability as a paradigm case applicable to the CANTOS. But that, too, is
very different from arguing that Eleusis is his religion.
    Akiko Miyake argues--erroneously, in my view, that Pound's religion was
Zen Buddhism. The occult of the 19th century and later regarded all
established religions as merely aspects of the true religion. The revelation
of that religion was contained in esoteric texts, whose meaning was manifest
only to the initiated r the elect, or the --which Pound thought were
artists, not clerics.
    Given all the care Wei takes to present his own view and to protect it
from careless distortion, I think we have a right to expect a lttle less
cavalier dismissal of other people's views.

Leon Surette
English Dept.
University of Western Ontario
London, Ont.
N6A 3K7