Louis,

This is a very interesting reading, and it winds up being very
paradoxical.  You too see the ant image as military, but you see it
as the poet intentionally representing himself (or the ideal
fascist man of action) in a negative light, i.e., admonishing
himself for his "vanity."  Others in this discussion, when
seeing the ant as Pound the poet, do NOT seem to feel that the
ant is being upbraided for its "vanity."  Your reading would
imply (to me) that, in this passage, Pound puts himself on a
moral footing with his "casque"-wearing captors, and that strikes
me as highly improbable.  (But perhaps I'm misremembering the
interpretational intent of both you and those "others" I'm
alluding to.)

==Dan

At 11:24 PM 8/28/00 -0400, you wrote:
>        I'd like to respond to C81, and to the ant line, within the larger
>sphere of close attention to Pound's work that Leon Surette proposes (C4 &
>C93). In the process I too have synthesized various positions already
>affirmed by some list members.
>
>        Three ontological orders are represented in "The ant's a centaur
>in his dragon world." At one pole, the ant (= natural world, pure
>'outside' -- from Imagisme); at the other, the dragon (= nonnatural, pure
>'inside', elemental energy); and in between these two worlds, a ratio of
>them both, attempting to shape both, the centaur.
>        C93 reintroduces a recurring opposition in Pound's work --
>between, in this canto's terms, "natural science" (pure 'outside') and
>"moral science" (what Pound calls here, "agenda"):
>                Avicenna and Algazel
>                The 8th being natural science, 9th moral
>                8th the concrete, 9th the agenda,
>                Agassiz with the fixed stars, Kung to the crystaline,
>The visitation in C81's libretto can be read in light of these lines to be
>calling for (i.e. the call of "Pull down thy vanity") a return to natural
>proportion between the concrete (the "green world") and the purposed
>agenda (the proposed ethical imperative for change). Why this call to
>vanquish vanity? Because the proposed "agenda" has overtaken the
>"concrete," is out of  natural proportion. The term "agenda" now picks up
>particular resonance within the context of Leon Surette's assertion, which
>I agree with, that after 1931 "*The Cantos* began to serve Pound's
>economic and political agenda rather than merely being informed by it"
>(*Pound in Purgatory* 2).
>        Thus the task of the centaur is to correlate concrete natural
>science with the moral agenda; ideally (and this is the sense of the
>phrase, 'natural proportion'), *it is the agenda of nature itself*, of the
>way (tao), the process. This conclusion about the centaur resonates with
>the following sentence in Ronald Bush's 1976 book (and interestingly for
>us, Bush's sentence builds out of a comment on list-member Dan Pearlman's
>book): "*The Cantos* describe a process of learning to direct the energy
>of the will so that it is in harmony with the energies of what Canto 81
>calls the "green world'" (Genesis 17). Is this process a success, or a
>failure?
>        "Dragon" signals a state of being (state of emotional being, or
>state of being in action, or state of intellectual attention) that is no
>longer in 'natural' proportion with the "green world." The dragon is
>neither "swollen magpie," nor "beaten dog," but is far worse-off, from the
>perspective of the judgment coming down in C81's libretto: the dragon's
>state of being is *already* non-natural, is figmentary (as real as an
>imaginary/mythic projection -- myths which Pound felt it necessary to
>recuperate from Ovid, for modern times, etc).
>        What does one do with dragons in 'Western Civ.'? One "kills" them
>-- like Cadmus, in order to found a great city (Thebes). One must
>shape/control their creative-destructive, otherworldly (nonhuman)
>energies. Cadmus establishes (in C4) an important precedent for
>understanding the dragon world, both in terms of success and failure
>(terms which conclude C81). The seeds Cadmus sows from the dragon's teeth
>turn into warriers, most of whom die (i.e., fail to accomplish anything),
>while some live to help Cadmus build Thebes. To answer my question I
>pose above, the "process of learning" Bush describes as
>being one goal of *The Cantos* fails. To put this in the figurative
>language of the dragon metaphor, the dragon is not killed/controlled. One
>wonders, however --to all of Pound's words to the contrary -- if this
>ultimately was what Pound thought mattered most (I return to this
>below, in my conclusion).
>        Pound's sense of "agenda" (in Avicenna's sense, above) has
>exploded beyond recuperation by the 'thirties, the world itself has become
>dragon-like for Pound, and good/evil, phantasmal (the phantasy of
>conspiracy theory, etc) -- all is unscaled (even the notes/birds on the
>wire, who come and go at random, in C75). Evidence of this is that,
>tragically, the vicious hatreds flagged in C81 have become inextricably
>bound to the ideal character (Kung) of the serious artist or ruler, as
>lines in C93 attest:
>                But still,
>                        The duration
>                        in re/ mental velocity
>                as to antennae
>                as to malevolence.
>"[M]ental velocity" is of course highly praised by Pound, and the
>characteristic figure for it is the artist's "antennae" tuned to the
>world's agenda -- but in these lines, the antennae are fatefully,
>inextricably associable with malevolence. The good desire to "Know agenda,
>/ to the utmost of its virtu / of its own" (C93) by staying tuned to the
>world by means of artist's antennae, is in constant danger at this point
>of being interchangable with malevolence. (Earlier in C93, there is a
>reference to the "trigger-happy mind," suggesting velocity of thought like
>a bullet ("the direct shooting mind" [GK 106]. Here the association of
>mental alertness with violence is further confirmed.)
>        C93 attempts to contemplate the nature of human sociality (not
>surprisingly, with Aristotle appearing in the poetic argument only
>indirectly, via Dante: i.e., the political context is not that of an
>Athenian democracy, but that of the Italian city-state). C93 argues for a
>fascist sense of sociality by juxtaposing Dante's Aristotelian phrase with
>the event of Pound meeting Mussolini:
>                "compagnevole animale"
>                        or "Perche" said the Boss
>                "vuol mettere le sue idee in ordine?"
>                        "Pel mio poema,"
>To paraphrase, Pound wants to put his ideas in order ("mettere le sue idee
>in ordine") *because* it is in the nature of "man" to be sociable. Non
>sequitor? No! Remarkably, the syllogism here is operational: Order is the
>essence of sociality, sociality best articulated as a form of rule
>(Muss)/order (poem) (the Kung canto, 13, would corroborate this view of
>sociality as order). The same conclusion is reached by juxtaposing a
>clown's (Glock's) routine with the statement, "I have an idea," in C87:
>                "Why do you want to
>                        "--perche si vuol mettere--
>                your ideas in order?"
>                                        Date '32
>                Or Grock: Ou ca?
>                        (J'ai une idee.)
>                Grock: Ou ca?
>The 'wisdom' of a clown reveals where true foolishness lies -- in the
>unnamed speaker, who declares, "I have have idea." For where is it, your
>idea? asks the clown. Clown's lesson: An idea needs to be put into action,
>in order for it to be perceived by others; otherwise, to "have" an idea is
>merely a form of vanity.
>        The individual who acts, inherently cuts a military figure for
>Pound -- action requires military force. Thus, the ant, representing
>sociality (as Leon Surette has interestingly suggested), represents
>specifically the fascist version of sociality, the military ant (as others
>have been suggesting, I think!). The end of C81 confirms that in this
>understanding of sociality, action is its own justification *on
>principal*, or in other words that action itself is the history of the
>conquerer (history is made by the conquerer, as Hegel would say). Success
>= having acted (regardless of outcome, good or bad); failure = never
>having tried.
>        Pound tends to want to assert (to brag?) that such a brute and
>basic idea of action is ultimately what counts in the end, even if the
>"process of learning" that Bush detects as a thread in *The Cantos* fails
>-- or more accurately, is the casualty of such action.
>        I could go on (and on!) expanding the sphere of attention on *The
>Cantos*, and providing more detail, but will stop for now. I am grateful
>to those who manage to read this far, and I hope some of this has been
>worth your time.
>
>Louis Cabri
>
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