Mr. Wei, We were talking about God and poets- infinity and
incomprehensibily. Yousay, "Maybe we both have it turned around and list
other possibilites summoning the help of Buddhist "fourfold logic". I prefer
infinite but partly comprehensible, at least for Pound. For God, he can take
care of himself. God is clever. He seems to be able to wiggle loose even
from nonexistence. But Anselm's statement MAY as easily be applied to
"pagan" gods as well, i.e. that their essence is necessary.
    About Pound's definitions (syllogistic) on God it sounds like the old
realist vs. idealist argument  to me, but one should be able to see that
Pound is distancing himself from the Judeao-Xtian God, the one Nietzsche
called the "honor-craving Oriental in heaven" to come in closer to the more
universal and far-reaching concept of all  "theos"- "Deus", IE *deiwo-s
(Skt. dyaus [long a] ) god in all Indo-European experience.
    You ask "Where does this fit in the history of Western rationalism?" You
misunderstand what is meant here by the accepted critique on rationalism
which is this as it is applied to the belief in an "historical Christ" which
is this- that since rationalism fails to provide answers and breaks down
then one is permitted his (Christian) belief based in his faith. In other
words "Yours fails so you cannot deny mine ("tu quoque" - yours also).
Pound's rationalism is something quite apart from this although it may
suffer from the limitations  of any rationalism. His, however, is a
recognition mostly through reading Western literature that there is a very
large and ancient pantheon of gods and goddesses in addition  to Yaweh and
Christ systems by the way not monotheistic but henotheistic. "The gods have
never left us" he wrote though he was very aware of the history and would
have known in an instant what Pope Gregory"the great" 601 A.D. meant when he
instructed "If these temples are well built, it is requisite that they be
converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God,..."This
is the proselytizing Which goes on ti this day. The results sometimes are
not pretty as in China when one convert dreams that he goes to heaven and
sits by the throne of the Almighty, is told that he is the brother of Christ
etc. etc.
    Poetry keeps the muse alive or at least in visible tradition, but she
has found no place in the J-C  Heaven. I have quoted Pound on the Xtian
traditions which he saw as branching out of pagan roots. There is no denying
this historic fact. Similar to Pound's statement Robert Graves put it his
way, "The concept of a creative goddess was banned by Christian theologians
almost two thousand years ago, and by Jewish theologians long before that."
Nietzsche put it this way, "Christianity desires to become master on a soil
where the worship of Adonis or Aphrodite has already determined the concept
of what religious worship is." And Spengler elaborated the theme. "Plainly,
we have almost no notion of the multitude of great ideas belonging to other
cultures that we have suffered to lapse because our thought with its
limitations has not permitted us to assimilate them, or (which comes to the
same thing) has led us to reject them as false, superfluous, and
nonsensical." All serious western thinkers of the 20th. Cent. have had to
come to grips with "The Higher Criticism", Darwin, Nietzsche, Frazer, and
others besides a wealth of historical and archaeological evidence and theory
which has changed the world's thinking and continues to.
    Of course there is more than one point to Western lterature, but among
all the facets I would say that all Indo-European Epic from Gilgamesh and
Indra (Rig Veda) to Huck Finn and Ulysses deals with the struggle of one
man, the hero, against hostile odds. And incidently Hindu and Buddhist are
Indo-European in origin. Sanskrit is one of the oldest of Indo-European
languages and Buddhism originates from the ksatram or rajam Vedic caste.
    It is nice to think that great literature is written like "Goldilocks +3
Bears" so everyone can understand it, and you are partly right and Spengler
is not entirely wrong either. I  suggest  William Empson's "Seven Types of
Ambiguity" as a critical approach to the question of accessibility.
    On the subject of pantheism you say that Pound rejected it and made
statements  inconsistent with it because pantheism you say is democratic? I
have never heard or read in my references one to popular elections on Mt.
Olympus. The statement you provide as your evidence doesn't prove anything
except what we have already agreed upon- i.e. that  the Judeo-Xtian
traditions are antagonistic to paganism and especially pantheism .neither of
which have anything to do with democratic concepts. More importantly these
traditions especially the Christian was antagonistic toward Gnosticism which
was an even more "democratic" or at least free form of Xtianity in which an
individual could have a chance at finding the god within him that pantheism
never would deny. But as William Bartley has pointed out "When the orthodox
church crushed Gnosticism, that opportunity for a different and undogmatic
Christianity was lost forever." Why should Pound show any sympathy for this
institution? And you ask the absurd question, "Does it make sense for a
pantheist(someone who believes that God is in all things, in all places, and
in all persons) to speak this way?"
    Yes, it does because Pound knows that gods and goddesses are at least as
aware as Bob Dylan, who once sang, "The moral of this story, the moral of
this song, is one should not be where one does not belong."

                                 Charles Moyer