Rick and All,
    And all of this has resulted from my message via the quotation to Alex
that in moving to a new domicile he would find it pleasant and good because
he takes with him his good nature?
    But, Rick, is there a great difference between "A man's paradise is his
good nature." and "A good disposition is a man's heaven."?
    And, Alex, how is the new place? Are you there yet?
    But back to those quixotic Egyptians- the determinative of PET appears
to me to be possibly a stylized arch reminiscent of the arching star-filled
depiction of the goddess Nut which is often found in tombs.
    And what sense would it make to say a man's sky is his good nature? The
fact that the highest attainable paradise is not "artificial" to Pound seems
rather sensible to me especially if it is found in one's own good nature.
    The wish for a pleasant afterlife seems to me inescapably artificial
though optimistically and realistically not outside the arch of the heavens.
We have all known better times, but they were not outside this world.
Perhaps some are so enamored by the possibility of an afterlife and
disillusioned by this one that their efforts are to make the rest of us
miserable in this world.

Charles

"The practice of judging and condemning morally, is the favorite revenge of
the intellectually shallow on those who are less so; it is also a kind of
indemnity for their being badly endowed by nature; and finally, it is an
opportunity for acquiring spirit and becoming subtle:- malice spiritualises.
They are glad in their inmost heart that there is a standard according to
which those who are over-endowed with intellectual goods and privileges, are
equal to them; they contend for the 'equality of all before God,' and almost
need the belief in God for this purpose."  BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

"May I follow my heart at its season of fire and night." THE EGYPTIAN BOOK
OF THE DEAD -Budge

----------
>From: Richard Seddon <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Canto 93
>Date: Mon, Sep 1, 2003, 12:57 PM
>

> Tim:
>
> I don't think I misunderstand Pound.   I think you misunderstand me.  As I
> stated, Pound in his letter to Boris specifically links a non-man made
> paradise with Kati who is also linked with Antef and Kung.  I know that
> Pound believed that paradise could be self-created.  I also know what he
> wrote Boris, that paradise was non-man made.  Perhaps you have issues with
> Boris also.  This statement of Pound's is confusing in that Antef, a man,
> created well being by distributing bread and that Kung created well being by
> good government.  All three seem to me to be man-created.
>
> Probably as you said:
>
> Pound sees Kati as a kindred spirit, as
>> having taken a rather un-Egyptian undogmatic view of heaven.  Paradise is
>> to be found not in "the afterlife" but here on earth in one's heart.
>
> but this is engendered by Boris's unique translation of "Pet" as "paradise"
> and Boris's unique reconstruction of the sentence such that "Paradise" is
> the
> subject of the translation.  The subject of the "Instruction" is properly
> "Man's nature".  Pound was very well aware of the nuances that "paradise"
> engenders in the modern reader and intended the reader of "The Cantos" to
> expand mentally in a modern way upon the word "paradise", as you have done.
> In the letter to Boris he is ecstatic about Boris's use of "paradise".
> Perhaps unknown to Pound, but surely known to Boris,  the author of the
> "Instruction" simply intended that his reader know that a pleasant nature
> was a man's ultimate possession.
>
> Gardiner would not have been struggling with an "undogmatic" view of the
> afterlife not being heaven.  He knew well that the ancient Egyptian did not
> have a concept of an unified purified paradise or heaven.  The ancient
> Egyptian thought of the afterlife as a continuation in a different situation
> of his life on earth.  I would think that Boris as a serious student of
> Egypt would knew this.
>
> My question remains,  why did Boris undertake a unique translation of "pet"
> (to a concept foreign to an ancient Egyptian) and why did he reconstruct the
> sentence to make the subject "paradise" instead of "nature"?
>
> Rick Seddon
> McIntosh, NM