Carlo wrote:


>Consider Pound in light of a poet who did literally believe in the Greek
>pantheon, Friedrich Hoelderlin. (I've spent considerable time with
>Hoelderlin because I've spent considerable time with Heidegger, and,
>yes, Heisenberg and quantum figures largely in my work, so I'm very
>experienced in arguing these questions with myself and others.)
>Hoelderlin's intensity is palpable and led to a series of breakdown's
>and eventual insanity. Bread and Wine is so lucid, so clear, that one
>fears for the mind that wrote it.

I am, as I often discover, in complete sympathy with Carlo when it comes to
a purely aesthetic question.  Heidegger was my first "philosophical love,"
so to speak.  And the notion of Hölderlin's similarity with Pound is one
that needs further elucidation.  Cookson points to it when he writes,
"Pound's belief in Greek deities is as strong as was Hölderlin's,"  citing
as evidence lines from Canto 113:  "The Gods have not returned. 'They never
left us'. They have not returned./Cloud's processional and the air moves
with their living." (787/113).

>Pound, too, of course, has some of Hoelderlin's intensity.

I agree, and would offer, as an example, the following from the same Canto,
which concludes with a prayer to Helios.  "Out of dark, thou, Father Helios,
leadest,/but the mind as Ixion, unstill, ever turning" (790/113).

This seems, viewed from a fully devotional perspective, to be as sincere as
any recorded prayer in any religious tradition.   Does anyone ---who knows
the Greek tradition well--- know if the phrase "Father Helios," appears in
any of the pagan hymns?  In Pindar, perhaps?  In a Homeric Hymn?  We have
heard "Father Zeus," but "Father Helios" seems rare if not unprecedented.
Of course it makes both poetic and philosophical sense considering the role
of light worship in the Cantos, and in Pound's general mode of apprehending
the Divine.

I want to add my voice to Carlo's in appreciation of Hölderlin's poetry.
From what I gather, he sincerely did believe that he was a priest of the
Greek Gods, and did break down (as a result of this belief??).  That sharp
edge to his later poems, which stems from, what must seem  to many in modern
Europe, an anachronistic belief in Greek gods, is so absolutely unique, that
I urge all to experience it.  It comes as close as anything I have read to
the hymns to Dionysus contained in Euripides' Bacchae.  I wonder if Pound's
pagan sentiments (or beliefs) ran that deep, but were simply moderated by
other factors which assuaged the sense of isolation which would normally
attend such a belief system in a contemporatry Western culture?


Regards,

Wei
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