Louis,  How very Faustian, your Pound, and on Goethe's birthday too!
    It is interesting that after some 60 years we are finally getting around
to some of the intellectual ideas which came into conflict in the 30's as if
we might have some guilt feelings about so readily  accepting our own
propaganda and that of our allies and now have to justify our position when
finally all the dust is settling. And Goethe said, "Alles vergangliche ist
nur eine Gleichnis." Freely translated - "The past only exists in images".
    The dragon-slayer myth you bring up is probably the one most important
of all Indo-European  myths and dies hard as we see even under the
unsympathetic frown of the Judeo-Christian priest.- St. George still in
Butler's "Lives of the Saints". In this sense, you have shown an awareness
of its presence in Pound's Cantos although he was only barely able to keep
it alive as he was diverted by the absurdity of historical events and lost
sight of the goal he was only intuitively aware of in the first place. The
Pisan Cantos are worth something because in them he is forced to look at a
real world.  Had he lived under more favorable conditions his studies might
have lead him to a successful completion of the work. He might have become
himself one of the great dragon-slayers, but Leucothea's veil was not
extended to him. Unfortunately he is too historically "bound up". What
little bit he saves himself from linear time will endure poetically, the
rest is dross as he said and in time will loose the emotional attachment of
its now fervent inquisitors and become even less than that.

CDM