Bob
I think we may mean different things by the word "archetype."  Archetype, as
I use the term, is not an individuating psychic structure, like the Self,
but a collective psychic structure. Nor are the archetypes expedients,
standalone concepts or notions, to facilitate abstract pscyhochat; rather
the archetypes inhere in and inform  individual human psyches.   An
oxymoron, but for the ego.

So don'tget sidetracked into ontology. These are NOT metaphysical
categories. Nor are they mythical "themes" but structures of the psyche.
Myths reflect the "eternal states of mind".

Let's put this into terms less intellectualized, more metaphorical. When the
poet says "I stood still and was a tree amid the wood"  he is having an
unmediated metamorphic EXPERIENCE of the same order as that undergone by
Yeats, who asks: "How can we tell the dancer from the dance?"  The interplay
of archetypes is the dance, is the woods.  The ego is the dancer,  the tree.

There is no absolute border between Self and un-self; the self-consciousness
we refer to by the term "ego" is merely a threshold. One may assent to this
statement intellectually. Or one may RECOGNIZE its truth by undergoing an
unmediated liminal experience. This poem is the record not of intellectual
assent but of the liminal experience. It relates great emotion in the
calmness of retrospect. The EXPERIENCE recounted in this poem is one of
crossing that threshold. Normally that happens in sleep and dream. This time
it took place in broad daylight  "among the primal things".

Tim

----- Original Message -----
From: "bob scheetz" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2000 11:45 PM
Subject: Re: Pound myth and religion


> tim,
>      yes, the baucis & philemon story is an objective correlative
> ...the speaker, the olympian,
> having been accorded the great gift of the ironic perception of the
> magnanimity of the-little-ones
> (correlatively, the mean-ness of the great);
> in gratitude for which he immortalizes their beauties in poetry.
> ...this is the lyrical mode, the "mark but the lillies of the field," no?
>
> from whence i guess you could say he's working
> out the xian archetype...
> ...and surely his bio with all the cornball romances
> is  preposterous enuf for a quixote (and indeed,
> his political-econ fits here, no?)
>
> ...but  did he take this to his heart's hearth tropologically?
> does the poem evoke/invoke the spirit of jesus cum enuhim?
> step into that archetype, that cosmos of meaning?
>
> maybe you got sumpin here...
> and, of course, jesus was the last
> of the greek (i.e. "pagan", as you'd have it)
> translated semitic deities.
> so...the gospel according to ep, eh?
> ok, very nice
>
> bob
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2000 1:56 PM
> Subject: Re: Pound myth and religion
>
>
> > I prefer to state this approximate truth in another way ;-)  Namely,
that
> > Pound has begun a search for corroborating  expressions of the liminal
> > experience alluded to in The Tree, and a language with which to describe
> > that experience.  The poems in PERSONAE are the record of the poet's
> > embarking upon this exploration to find his sincere voice and a unifying
> > mythos. What Pound discovers is not one voice, nor one myth, but many
> voices
> > and multiple myths, each facet reflecting however the same "eternal
states
> > of mind".
>
> > > the arrival of the lyrical
> >
> > Yes, this experience does eventually take Pound to Cavalcanti. But the
> > subjects of the lyricism are psyche and knowing, archetype and the high
> > dream; it is not a simple unselfconscious lyricism.
> >
> > > ...the heightened sense (wonderfull-ness) of the simple,
> > > unmediated, sensual moments
> >
> > Here, I must differ rather strongly.  The poet's day is lit by a light
the
> > quality of which he has never seen before.  The _experience_ alluded to
in
> > The Tree is straight out of Ovid.  I don't mean merely that the language
> or
> > themes are cribbed from Ovid, but that  this is a new and strange mode
of
> > awareness for the poet. He hasn't merely got himself a new attitude; his
> > senses now add up to more than 5. He has "stepped into the myth",
stepped,
> > as in the Cocteau film, through the mirror into the underworld.
> >
> > > he's not a poet of the grande narrative...myth, archetype, allegory
> >
> > There are two assertions here. Grande narrative (as in cohesive
sequential
> > story without narrative lacunae, that adheres to the rules of syntax so
> > firmly one could drive a bullet-train upon its rails) -- you've got a
> point
> > there. But NOT A POET OF MYTH, ARCHETYPE, ALLEGORY ?????
> >
> > Perhaps you are thinking of Ezra Pound the monetary theorist?
> > Tim
>
>