I want to thank Tim Romano for his very detailed reply to my post on whether
Pound is a pan-religionist.


>From:    Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Pantheist or Pan-religionist:  perhaps in the early days.

"What is a god?/A god is an
> > eternal state of mind" (SP., 47).
>

I wrote:

> > By itself, this [Pound's statement you quoted above] seems to imply the
> > existence of purely subjective gods.

You replied:

>
>I think not. I would agree with you if Pound had written "a state of mind"
>but he wrote "an _eternal_ state of mind." He's talking about
>archetypes  --the collective unconscious, if you will-- not purely
>individual
>subjectivity.
>

This may very well be a valid interpretation of what Pound intends in
"Religio."  But I am not saying Pound is talking about pure individual
subjectivity.  Our exchange on this particular point leads to a very
difficult and subtle distinction in religious experience, and in the Notion
of the divine.  I am arguing that Pound conceives of purely subjective gods,
in this sense:  The gods have no objective existence for Pound in "Religio";
though they do symbolize the objective state of “becoming divine.”

Thus for Pound while “the Divine” has objective existence,  Athena, Demeter,
and Dionysus may not. I would ask you to give your interpretation of this
statement that Pound made with regard to polytheism:


  The selection of monotheism, polytheism, plural, dual,
  trinitarian god or gods, or hierarchies, is a pure matter
  of individual temperament (in free minds), and of tradi-
  tion in environment of discipular, bound minds
       (S.P., 50).

My reading of this passage is that Pound here indicates a belief in “God”,
in “Deity,”  but that the Divine Reality is not to be constrained by
reference to it as a specifically characterizable Entities or group of
Entities. The question of Pound’s belief (in his early phase, at least) is
complicated by the fact that he does not appear to care whether any
particular god has an independent existence, apart from the mind.  Even
though a god is “an ETERNAL state of mind,” as you rightly point out, for
Pound, I think this means that the mind merges with the ETERNAL, and that
this is called “becoming a god.”
Later in life, Pound states more straightforwardly “the gods exist,” and
appears to be giving them objective reality.


What you say about archetypes is interesting.

>He's talking about
>archetypes  --the collective unconscious, if you will . . .

When it comes to looking a Pound’s work in its totality I am not sure that
we get real archetypes.

I would ask what YOU mean by archetypes.  For a long while I entertained the
idea that Pound’s poetry contained archetypes, and that a Jungian approach
to the Cantos would work.  Ultimately, I chose to reject such that view.

I think an archetype has a certain consistency, depth, and hardness, and a
relation to other archetypes which are put forward within the same mythic or
religious framework.  Allow me to suggest the possible validity of the
approach of C. Kerenyi to the question of archetypes and culture (in Pound’s
work),

C. Kerenyi, a noted authority on ancient Greek religion, was, like Pound,
enthusiastic about Frobenius's concept of paideuma.  Kerenyi referred to the
primary paideuma, or guiding spiritual idea of culture, as a  "monad."  He
speaks of the "monadic" and the mythological, in relation
to art, in a way which may be applicable to Pound.  Permit me to quote him
in some detail, because I think his observations are quite profound, and
because they relate to your suggestion that Pound empoys archetypes.

  Artists, even a whole nation of artists, city-
  builders and world-builders, are true creators, [and]
  founders . . .  only to the extent that they draw their
  strength from and build on that source whence the
  mythologies have their ultimate ground and origin,
  namely, what was anterior to but revealed in the
  monadic.  The "universally human" would  be a fit term
  for the "pre-monadic" were it not too little and too feeble; for the
important thing is not to become "universally human" but to encounter the
divine in absolute immediacy . . .  what exists historically has the
character not only of a monad, i.e. belonging locally and temporally to a
definite culture, but also of a work, i.e. speaking in the manner typical of
a certain people.  On the other hand, every people displays its form most
purely when it stands face to  face with the
  absolute, on the frontiers of the pre-monadic.  The deeper insight into
the pre-monadic, the more ***"archetypal"**** the  vision.  Examples would
lead us out of the sphere of mythology into that of mystic experience.
      (Kerenyi, 22).

Pound's own search for poetic inspiration led him to desire to be a
"world-builder," a "true creator," a
"founder;" it led him, in his own words, to desire "To build the city of
Dioce whose terraces are the colour of
stars."   Pound's search, under the rubric of a search for light--- as you
probably know --- involved encounters with such philosophersas Erigena,
Grosseteste, and Plotinus, and finally led him to a point where he became
strongly attracted to mysticism, despite some reservations.  He may have
believed that mysticism would allow him to apprehend a pre-verbal,
universal, trans-cultural paideuma.  He definitely felt that verbal
manifestations needed to be bypassed, in favor of something more essential.
This is characteristic of the mystical approach.  As Pound put it,

  The desire of the candidate or of the "mystic," if one can
  still employ that much abused term, is to get something
  into his consciousness, as distinct from getting it in the
  vain locus of verbal exchanges
      (Terra Italica, SP, 57).

I think you would agree that this is quote strongly indicates that Pound
tends, at least in his aspirations, toward mysticim.  He suspected that God
was the unifying force to be apprehended by mysticism, or to be symbolized
by the use of light images and references to a large number of luminous
deities:  "The unity of God," he said,"may be the supreme mystery beyond the
multitudinous appearance of nature" (Terra Italica , SP, 57).

But I don’t think Pound can not be called a mystic in the proper sense of
the word.  You don’t use the word “mystic” in connection with Pound, so
maybe you agree with me on this point.  I believe Pound’s attitude is more
typical of a kind of "semi-mystic" who appears, according to Kerenyi,
alongside "pure" mystics in an age when mythologies or religious orthodoxies
are crumbling.  Allow me quote Kerenyi again on this point:

“When solidly constructed monads break down, as at the end of an antique
era, or when their dissolution is advanced, as  it is today,  we find
ourselves closer to various kinds of mysticisms than to mythology.  That is
why Plotinus can tell us about pure mystical experience, and why his
contemporaries, the Gnostics, can tell us about what comes closest to
mythology in mysticism.  And that too is why the modern psychologist finds
in man the same mystical or semi-mystical phenomena as in a handbook of
Chinese mysticism  or in the Gnosticism of late antiquity.  What we meet in
both cases has the appearance of something midway between the archetype and
a monadic fragment,
a mythology at once germinating and disintegrating.”
        (Kerenyi, 23).

What we find in the Cantos seems to be precisely what Kerenyi is talking
about here: that is to say,  a vast
reflection of many of the world's mythologies interacting, while they
simultaneously germinate and disintegrate, both in the world and in Pound's
mind.  The light symbolism partly succeeds in uniting the diverse strands of
what Pound probably hoped the Cantos would become:  an epic springing forth
from a newly emerging universal myth.  But the mystical basis of the project
falls apart, I think, not only because Pound's mysticism is half-hearted,
but also because he makes associations which hold little promise for
anything resembling a meaningful myth -- such as the identification of
Manes, Dionysus, and Mussolini as divine or semi-divine figures all equally
worthy of religious reverence.

I want to emply to many other interesting points you made in your last post.
  But I will do so later.


> >   When is a god manifest?
> >   When the states of mind take form.
> >   When does a man become a god?
> >   When he enters one of these states of mind
> >         (SP., 47).
> >
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