Tim Romano wrote:


<<
The first question is, what does Pound mean by "demi-god".  Only when we
arrive at an answer to that question, can we meaningfully ask the question,
What does Pound mean when he says "I am not a demi-god"? To begin to anwer
the first question, one must go all the way back to _Religio_.    Being a
'demi-god,' for Pound,  has litttle or nothing to do with expectation of the
"worship" or "adoration" of mortals.>>

I think you are right to try to begin an answer to the question by first
attempting to discover what Pound means by "demi-god."

Going back to "Religio" may be helpful, to a certain extent.  But we must
recall that Religio was written rather early, well before the period when
the phrase "I am not a demigod" was written.

You say that for Pound being a demigod has little or nothing to do with the
expectation of worship or adoration.  Can you explain how that you know that
this is true?

The best way to proceed would be to define what demi-god means in ordinary
parlance, then to understand what Pound may have meant by demigod (early in
his life)and finally what this term came to mean later for Pound, during the
period of the composition of Pisan.  We might also ask ourselves, who does
Pound consider to be a demigod, or who in the poem itself (in the Pisan
Cantos) is held up as a demigod, and why?  Then we should determine an
answer to the question, what does a demigod deserve:  respect, reverence,
worship, adoration, or simply admiration (or perhaps some other attitude
toward demigods would be appropriate, either in Pound's religious
philosophy, or in his "political hagiography" to use the phrase applied by
Achilles Fang.)

Having determined answers to some (or all) of these questions, we might then
be able gain a full appreciation for what Pound meant when he said, "I am
not a demi-god".

You asked what I meant by "pride in remission".  I was simply referring to
the fact that the defeat of fascism and Pound's capture, had put a damper on
his rather prideful espousal of fascist doctrines.  Mussolini's death was, I
think, the starting point for a long and drawn out thought process, by which
Pound began to become measureably less prideful about the alleged glories of
fascism.  By 1960, Pound had totally abandoned his beliefs in both fascism
and in Confucianism.

This could be part of the meaning of the phrase "I am not a demi-god".


Regards,

Wei


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