Dan, you wrote that "the helmet is not cocoon-shaped." You are  quite
right about this. I object to the use of the cocoon idea which is strictly
out of Terrell. In fact a cocoon is a rather shapeless sack spun of silk by
a moth larva. It houses the chrysalis of the moth. Butterflies, on the other
hand, do not spin cocoons nor do wasps. "Casque" in the sense that Pound
uses it refers IMO to the chrysalis exoskeletal covering during its dormant
stage of the complete metamorphosis. The casque (an anatomical form
resembling a helmet) is then the chrysalis as shown in the web site I
provided.
    That said, you also wrote, "to suppress the militaru association in the
passage" would loose "half of what Ez wanted to suggest." I don't disagree
with the possibility of ambiguity in the word "casque". After all the word
means helmet. In fact there is overt reference to the U.S. Army in the
"Pisan Cantos". For example, Pound muses on the use of Mercury's caduceus on
a packing case. Mercury is the messenger of the gods who visited Odyseus on
his way to Circe in Book X. Could Pound be reading a message on this packing
case we do not readily see?
    But throughout the "Pisan Cantos" there is criticism of the destruction
caused by war. "Hoi Barbaroi" have destroyed Sigismundo's Temple delivering
a blow to love itself. Pound is always anti-war, and we must continue to ask
if "Le Paradis n'est pas artificiel"  then what and where is it? "L'enfer
non plus", and we have abounding examples  of what that is- war being
certainly among the clearest manifestations.
    The realm of Paradise seems to be accessible only through the
contemplation of that which is not artificial to Pound. In Greek both
butterfly and soul were expressed  by the word "pysche". In Canto 76 the ant
and the butterfly images contrast the mundane reality of the poet's
situation ("a lone ant from a broken ant-hill") to the "Le Paradis" reached
by the ascending (flying) soul ("within the crystal, went up swift as
Thetis"). Here is love, "Thetis, Maya, "Aphrodite". All is ascending  as the
"wing'd fish" and "the clouds over the Pisan meadows", and least of all the
"white-chested martin" a very different bird from the "swollen magpie".
    Now  reading in this manner "that  butterfly has gone out thru my smoke
hole" (the smoke hole in his army tent) I think  we see both an ascending of
the soul at  the same time as an abandonment of love,  a victory of the
destructive forces of the war which has like Mephistopheles admonishes in
Goethe"s "Faust" pitted "Knecht gegen Knecht" (servant against servant),
"Po'eri di'aoli (poor devils) sent to slaughter", ant-like in a war they can
not understand , pawns powerless to resist the tide of events, eating the
"remants for a usurer's holiday". Then he "greeks" us again with
"Metaphemenon nason 'amumona" ("changing a noble island") -but to what? A
ruined mess? We remember that it was the island where Hyperion kept his
sacred cattle, Odyseus's army violating the same.
    And finally words that summarize-

    "woe to them that conquer with armies
        and whose only right is their power."

"Woe"? Does Pound believe in divine rectification? By means of love, a poem,
of a butterfly? We have to wonder, what power does face up to war?

CDM