Not to mention the "twice crucified" .... ("poor old Benito" in the Pisan
Cantos)

RE


>From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>    <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: EP & Religion
>Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 20:53:17 -0400
>
>Regarding the absence of Christ from the Cantos, recall:
>
>Christ follows Dionysus,
>Phallic and ambrosial
>Made way for macerations...
>
>Tim Romano
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Burt Hatlen" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2000 7:42 PM
>Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: EP & Religion
>
>
> > [log in to unmask],.Internet writes:
> > >>Robert Duncan said that Pound was  "pagan fundamentalist."
> > >Where did Duncan say this. I would be very grateful if Burt Hatlen
>could
> > >supply the reference.
> > >Stephen Wilson.
> >
> >
> > Here's the full quotation:
> >
> > "Pound derives from the Neoplatonic cult of Helios, from the Provencal
> > cult of Amor, from the Renaissance revival of pagan mysteries after
> > Gemistos Plethon, and from the immediate influence of the theosophical
> > revival in which Yeats was immersed, an analogous tradition of poetry
> > as a vehicle for heterodox belief, a ground in which the divine world
> > may appear (with the exception of the Judeo-Christian orders). At the
> > thought of Jesus, Pound has all the furious fanaticism of the Emperor
> > Julian; he is a pagan fundamentalist. Aphrodite may appear to the poet,
> > and even Kuanon, but not Mary; Helios and even Ra-Set may come into the
> > poem, but not Christ. Yet these gods of the old world are not only
> > illustrations of a living tradition; they are, Pound testifies
> > throughout The Cantos, presences of a living experience. Does the poet
> > cast them as images upon our minds or do they use the medium of the
> > poem to present themselves?  They come to the poet as he calls them up.
> > So, in the first draft of Canto I: 'Gods float in the azure air . . .'
> >                 'It is not gone,' Metastasio
> >                 Is right, we have that world about us."
> >
>(II.5: 340)
> >
> > The citation refers to Part II, Chapter 5 of The H.D. Book. Published
> > in fragments during Duncan's lifetime,  The H.D. Book, one of our
> > century's central works of poetic theory, is still not available as a
> > book, although the University of California Press is supposedly
> > committed to publishing it. The quotation comes from a section of Part
> > II, Chapter 5, that was published in the journal Stony Brook 3/4 (Fall
> > 1969), pp. 336-347.
> >
> > The quoted passage, by the way, also raises what seems to me the
> > central issue about Pound's "religion." Did he subscribe to a set of
> > "religious beliefs," pagan or otherwise, that stand apart from and
> > prior to the poem?  Or is THE POEM ITSELF the locus of religious
> > experience, for him? Duncan suggests the later.  The poet as theurge,
> > and the poem itself as the place where the gods show themselves. Now
> > that's an idea that really does challenge our assumptions about
> > religion and poetry and the relationship between the two.
> >
> > Syrette and Tryphonopoulos have, of course, been moving toward a
> > "Duncanesque" view of Pound, with their theory that he belongs within
> > the history of the "occult."  But Surette at least shows no interest in
> > Pound's poetry, casting the issue entirely as a question of Pound's
> > presumed beliefs, within the context of 19th and 20th century
> > intellectual history. (Indeed, Surette says as much in The Birth of
> > Modernism: "The rationale of this study is much closer to the old
> > method of the history of ideas" (5).)And as long as we try to read
> > Pound as primarily a "thinker," we will, I think, miss the point. The
> > poet is a maker, and we need to be talking about what he MADE, not
> > about what he may or may not have "thought."
> >
> > Burt Hatlen
> >
> >

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