Rick,
The western Christian tradition is the backdrop for Pound's "paradiso
terrestre."   Pound's views represent a radical departure from the
Christian eschatological tradition.

I find Boris's translation to be not all that different from Gardiner's:
'heaven' and 'paradise' are synonyms. Neither man's translation can be
paraphrased as "a pleasant nature is a man's ultimate possession" although
Gardiner, in his note, seems to want to retract or weaken his translation
and move in the direction of that paraphrase:  Heaven = loftiest
point(?).  Gardiner seems uncomfortable with the simple radical statement
in a way that Pound and Boris are not; his note suggests that the statement
is figurative or hyperbolic, whereas Boris takes it quite literally. As
does Pound.

Word order. With the copula verb, the subject of the sentence hardly
matters; it is  a matter of style what words come before the verb and what
words after: the idea is the same in  "A man's heaven is his good nature"
and "A man's good nature is his heaven".

Tim Romano

















At 12:57 PM 9/1/03, Richard Seddon wrote:
>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
>
>
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