Tim Romano writes, "Pound's reaction to these religions is not unlike
that of the pagan norseman in europe's early middle ages when missionaries
brought them news of the Christ. They wanted nothing of this religion for
weaklings and quitters."
    Tim, you have raised an interesting point here. What happens to the
archetypal theme of the heroic epic in the Christianized landscape? I am
thinking especially of that archetypal myth of the dragonslayer. Throughout
Indo-European and Semitic myth the theme finds expression, e.g. Indra vs.
Vritra, Apollo vs. Python, Sigurd vs. Fafnir, Cadmos vs. a well-guarding
dragon, Perseus vs. ketos, Beowulf vs. Grendel only to mention a few.
    As Calvert Watkins puts it in "How to Kill a Dragon; Aspects of
Indo-European Poetics", "This Proto- Indo-European poetic repertory includes
a central mythographic formula
              (HERO) SLAY (*g'hen-) SERPENT
whose verbal history can be traced through nearly every branch of the
Indo-European family."
    And Pound did not miss this. See Addendum for Canto C, "neschek, the
serpent", Fafnir the worm", "Snake of the seven heads, Hydra" and again "The
Serpent". Does not Pound see in this symbol the ancient and traditional
obstructor of the waters of life, and does he not attempt to give it new and
expanded meaning for our age?
    There's more to this, but we must invoke Clio, the musa of epic and
history.

Charles Moyer

p.s. I just remembered the Church also has St. George of Cappodocia, but
he's a rip-off from Perseus and a bit of an embarassment to the Church if
one reads between the lines in Butler's "Lives of the Saints".