Tim,
   As I suspected, but I'm sure Eliot's conversion also helped against the
discouraging chances that the "Stukas" might score a direct hit on his flat
also sprach etc. And not to experience B. Russell's Princeton experience.
    Of course "Christ follows Dionysus". Rudiments possibly very much
reswallowed and redigested through many centuries of stomachs if Frazer
would have had the stomach to say so. See what Graves said-
    "Sir James Frazer was able to keep his beautiful rooms at Trinity
College, Cambridge, until his death by carefully and methodically sailing
all round his dangerous subject, as if charting the coastline of a forbidden
island without actually committing himself to a declaration that it existed.
What he was saying-not-saying was that Christian legend, dogma and ritual
are the refinement of a great body of primitive and even barbarous beliefs,
and that almost the only original element in Christianity is the personality
of Jesus."
    "High formality" and "Brittlishness" aside I think that Pound saw it as
"possuming" if not tainted a bit with intellectual dishonesty and kept
needling Eliot for it.
    I must admit though I also have had my P.S. moment of ritual performance
when as a minister in The Universal Life Church (since 1969) I helped
officiate at Bob Kaufman's wedding in 1975-1976? on Mt. Tamalpais.
"but never an ape or a bear".

Charles

P.S. Can anyone translate "Protopheriius"? I get "Marse Supial", of course,
but not "protopheriius"





----------
>From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Canto ergo possum
>Date: Mon, Jan 27, 2003, 8:05 AM
>

> The sacrificial rituals of the Mass dramatizing Death and Resurrection are
> what attracted Eliot to Xianity, I think; the rudiments of Xian ritual can
> be found in Frazer's catalogue. Eliot was attracted to Anglicanism in
> particular no doubt  because of its high formality and its "Britishness".
> Tim Romano
> P.S. I once baptized a British girl (who at the time needed all the help
> she could get) when she and her brother were having an early lunch with me
> in a pub in Tuebingen. We had no water on the table and so for the ablution
> one had to choose between dregs of weissen bier and tea.  In nomine patri
> et filii et cetera. Her brother remarked that she was now a proper
> Anglican, for I had chosen the tea.
>
>
> At 07:11 AM 1/27/03 -0500, charles moyer wrote:
>>     Did Eliot ever say why he became an Anglican? It seems he starts out
>>very far from such a position reading Jessie Weston and James Frazer. Still
>>I've always thought a possum would more resemble a Southern Baptist- "Do
>>folks keep eatin' possum 'til they can't eat no more?" I remember seeing
>>their carcasses lying about in the French Market in New Orleans.
>>
>>     "How confusing your religion is anyhow." -from a letter of Pound to
>>Eliot
>>
>>Charles
>>
>>----------
>> >From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
>> >To: [log in to unmask]
>> >Subject: Re: Canto ergo possum
>> >Date: Sun, Jan 26, 2003, 8:42 PM
>> >
>>
>> > Tom,
>> > I don't know that Pound regarded Eliot as "spiritually dead"; the nickname
>> > suggests a poet-persona whose voice has a disembodied quality--  the voice
>> > of a poet who  is "playing dead" -- holding his own severed head in his
>> > hand, as it were. This quality is one that William Carlos Williams did not
>> > like at all; he refers to Eliot as "frozen" or "sub-zero" or something like
>> > that--I can't remember his exact words or where he says this. But In
>> > _Paterson_ where the frozen lettuces or cabbages are tossed off the bridge
>> > and smash onto the frozen river below, I think Williams must be dealing
>> > with Eliot.
>> > Tim Romano
>> >
>> >
>> > At 02:50 PM 1/25/03 -0500, you wrote:
>> >>Interesting, how TS Eliot's nickname was Possum, one known to Pound, and
>> >>here it is on the listserv. The quote you gave us from EP is great. Did
>> >>Pound view Eliot as spiritually dead? I know Pound edited "The
>> >>Wasteland." Or, was it more of a friendly shove? Tom NJ
>> >>
>> >>-----Original Message-----
>> >>
>> >>"Mr. Eliot who is at times an excellent poet and who has arrived at the
>> >>supreme Eminence among English critics largely through disguising
>> >>himself as a corpse once asked in the course of an amiable article what
>> >>'I believed'."
>> >>-- E.P., Credo (1930)