Bob,
One could certainly relate The Tree to Yeat's Leda and the Swan or
Veronica's Napkin, or to poems by Graves, or to films by Cocteau. Not
because of any influences, however, but simply because they're all about the
same kind of liminal experience.

Eliot is "religious" in the western smitten-by-guilt augustinian tradition.
Pound was a pagan. How can we speak of the Anglican religion and the
religions of Bali? The word encompasses a wide range of practices and
beliefs.

This is not a poem that celebrates the "carnal" but rather the semi-divine
nature of humanity (the gods must be "_kindly_ entreated"); the "elm-oak"
alludes to the halves of the soul, the other quotations I adduced will bear
this out.

Tim

----- Original Message -----
From: "bob scheetz" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 11:17 PM
Subject: Re: Pound myth and religion


> tim,
>     i read "the tree" as a yeats-ish effort telling
> the speaker's new recognition, "this wonder thing",
> of eros (formerly, "rank folly")...therefore, celebration of
> the secular, carnal,... human.
>
> and further, if eliot is religious poetry,
> how is it possible ep could qualify,
> without the term be so broad as to lose all meaning?
>
> bob
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 10:39 PM
> Subject: Re: Pound myth and religion
>
>
> > Carroll,
> > The "a tree amid the wood" is a metaphor for the archetypal. The "I
stood
> > still" on the other hand is not mere metaphor but to be taken literally.
> > The event might well have taken place on a bustling city streetcorner
for
> > all I know--but there's no mistaking the epiphanic nature of the
> archetypal
> > experience alluded to in this poem and in others from this period.
> >
> > For the unfolding of the theme of the archetypal experience in Pound's
> early
> > poetry, see also "De Aegypto": "I have beheld the Lady of Life" and
> > "Francesca": "I who have seen you amid the primal things." and "Speech
for
> > Psyche in the Golden Book of Apuleius": "And music flowing through me
> seemed
> > to open /Mine eyes upon new colours." and "Erat Hora":
> >
> >     One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
> >     May not make boast of any better thing
> >     Than to have watched that hour as it passed.
> >
> > And "Praise of Ysolt":
> >
> >     And I: "I have no song,"
> >     Till my soul sent a woman as the sun:
> >     Yea as the sun calleth to the seed,
> >     As the spring upon the bough
> >     So is she that cometh, the mother of songs,
> >     She that holdeth the wonder words within her eyes
> >
> > Notice how light, the gods, myth, and other "primal things" come
together.
> >
> > Tim Romano
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Carrol Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 8:03 PM
> > Subject: Re: Pound myth and religion
> >
> >
> > > Tim Romano wrote:
> > >
> > > > Carroll,
> > > >
> > > > "... had its origins _in the events_ recounted in this poem".
> > >
> > > Yup -- I didn't read your post carefully enough. But now I have
> > > a question. Are you saying that in some sense the events of the
> > > poem *happened*? That on some particular day Pound stood
> > > in the woods and had certain experiences which he then tried
> > > to enact in the poem? I'm interested.
> > >
> > > My own first reaction on just now reading "The Tree" is that I
> > > don't believe Pound. That is, from about *Lustra* (1915) on
> > > when I read a poem of Pound's or a line in the *Cantos* I
> > > "Believe" it in the sense that I believe that the poem's *persona*
> > > really did believe or in some sense experience what he is
> > > saying. When I read "The Tree" it seems to me that the poet
> > > thinks he *ought* to think or feel that way -- but I think he's
> > > lying. The rhythms are too flat -- and the tree created in the
> > > poem doesn't seem to have much connection, in the poet's
> > > own feeling, either to Baucis and Philemon or to Daphne.
> > >
> > > I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
> > >
> > > Carrol Cox
> > >
> > >
>
>