Fisher's constructions are ingenious, and it is to Pound's credit that
his work should elicit such intensive commentary.  My reminder, not only
to Fisher, is that if we are to gain insight into Pound's specific
intentions in the passage in question, we can not deal only with
selected images and search for similar ones elsewhere but must first
try to see the function of those images locally, i.e., within the
whole 3-stanza passage beginning "Ed ascoltando."

==Dan

At 12:49 PM 8/27/00 -0700, you wrote:
>The physicality of the centaur is primary to the allusion - the haunches
>of goat or horse, as Terrell mentions - the upper body having the
>dexterity and social skills of a human. Those haunches are the source of
>power and movement, leading to rhythm. That rhythm is lithe, not heavy,
>it is the great base of the emotions and dexterous skills of the upper
>body, i.e, affects all above it. The ant uses its legs in a facile way,
>its rhythm determined by the legs. The upper body used for dexterity.
>The "poetry" or "art" found in the ant derives from two movements: the
>rhythmic patterning of the ants' endeavor as a whole, and the individual
>cadence of each ant. The centaur's heel plants in the earth's loam,
>another way of saying things flower forth from being able to negotiate
>the soft clay. The heel must depress, ie. plant, to get the spring
>forward. Loam is not the most fertile soil. Some definitions of loam
>include stickiness, sandy, soft, so that heavier beasts would sink in
>it, inactivated, but not issue forth a plant.
>The dragon, with its weight throughout the body, has no real haunches or
>physical source of power other than sheer weight; it moves slowly, if at
>all; its rhythm comes through its fiery breath/its internal gases and
>hot air. It destroys; does not produce. Dragons are associated with
>place, where a centaur is not.
>On physical premise alone, the ant is productive, the dragon not. Each
>has a rhythm, but that of the ant is the rhythm of art-a rhythm of
>detail built upon movement that produces and does not destroy.
>I do remember in previous ant/centaur discussion someone asking if the
>ant couldn't just be an ant (did I recall correctly?). Pound's
>observations on the relationship of innate or adapted physicality to the
>type of action that ensues are, I think, grist for the other lines, and
>the ant-seen in terms of its great base-is still an ant.
>Dan, I've used the external references to help gain a focus on what
>Pound's central ideas might be; I think they are about the physical
>requirements for (detailed) movement. These ideas recur in the poetry
>and music consistently. A rich passage will serve as nutriment of
>impulse for other ideas, too.
>Ant M
>
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