Wei,
To the extent that we both see the importance of the religious _experience_
in Pound's worldview, we agree.  Pound, in many places, opposes feeble
metaphysical argument, designed to assert or guard some specious dogma,
against true religious feeling and practice. "Hay aqui mucho catolicismo
pero muy poco religion." On the one hand, there is the
how-many-angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin quibbling, on the other, virtuous
worship and fervent celebration.  That is the kind of metaphysic to which I
was referring; Pound regarded the Ta Hio as encouraging real worship over
scholastic quibbling. In that sense, "anti-metaphysical".

My position is that Pound places the greatest weight on acting with the
motive force of divine love-energy, rather than on any particular set of
practices. Men are "impelled" by this force. The medieval tradition of
_virtu_ in which Pound writes, and for which he sees analogies in Ta Hio,
stresses the dynamic essence, the inherent beingforce and doingpower and
properfunctioning of the entity. The emphasis is on dynamism (as you rightly
pointed out.) All beings have within them the divine energy.
Pound does not seem to me to prescribe any behavior, but focuses instead on
the essence, i.e. on whether something encourages heaven-on-earth or
threatens heaven-on-earth.

In one strain of medieval thinking, the one Pound dislikes vehemently,
heaven is where you go when you die.  In other more mystical strains of
medieval thought, the divine love is here-and-now.  For Pound, the sacred
and the secular and not separate worlds. "Gods float on azure air". "All
things that are are lights."

In the Legge quotations, I'd would draw your attention to the word
"illustrious". One might paraphrase this as "a shining example Pound wanted
the Cantos to be shining examples. Light-in-world.  That's Pound's view of
his art. That's why he's interested in symbolic gesture too.  Virtu shines
through the form(al).
Tim Romano

Wei wrote:

> Notice he does not want to do away with, or demolish theology (or
idealism,
> for that matter); the passage simply means he wants it "put it in order."
> Confucian theology does exist in the TA HIO.  Pound likes the TA HIO,
> because its theology is simple, straightforward, not because the work is
> totally anti-metaphysical.   The same type of thinking applies to his talk
> of 'virtu'
>
>    There exists passage after passage in our serious
>   medieval thinkers which contains the terms 'virtu,'
>   virtus, with vivid and dynamic meaning.  But it is
>   precisely the kind of thought that is now atrophied
>   in the Occident.  This is precisely how we do not
>   now think.
>    It is for these values that we have need of
>   Ta Hio . . .
>    (SP, 78).
>

And Wei also wrote:
> Pound here is praising Medieval theology, as he does elsewhere.  He does
not
> dismiss the medieval texts because they are in themselves theological, or
> because they contain metaphysical presuppostions.  Confucianism itself has
> such presuppostions, but they are more orderly, "vivid" and "dynamic"
> concepts, Pound thinks.  The ground for Virtu in both Western medieval
> theology, and in Confucian thought, has its origin in an otherworldly
> source:  God or Heaven.
>

Pound is praising some medieval authors, those whose show a neo-pagan
understanding divine love-energy, those who if they had lived later, would
immediately understand Botticelli's paintings;  but Pound would demolish
other thinkers from the medieval period.




> Remember Pound says,
>
> No one has ever yet exhausted the wisdom of the
>   forty-six ideograms of the first chapter
>        (SP, 79).
>
> Well,  look at the first chapter:   Note the reference to the "decrees of
> Heaven."   Legge's translation  runs as follows:
>
>   Chapter I  1.  In the announcement to K'ang, it is
>   said, 'He was able to make his virtue illustrious.'
>    2. In the Tai Chia, it is said, 'He contemplated
>   and studied the ILLUSTRIOUS DECREES OF HEAVEN" [emphasis added]
>    3. In the Canon of the Emperor (Yao),
>   it is said, 'He was able to make illustrious his
>   lofty virtue.
>    4. These passages all show how those
>   sovereigns made themselves illustrious
>     (Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 360-361).
>
> "Heaven" (or "Tian" in Chinese) is a metaphysical concept.  It is vague,
and
> difficult to define, but definitlely a metaphysical principle, which is
> losely analygous to Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, and has as part of its
> significance the idea of a MORAL PATTERN, which all should follow,
> especially the ruler (who himself is the pattern --exemplar --for his
> subjects).
>
> So how does this relate to Pound's polytheism and his pagan beliefs?
Quite
> directly I would say.
>
> You can see how Pound expresses his metaphysical views in his rendering of
> the following passage (from a Confucian classic) by using both the words
> "spirits" and "gods."
>
> Where Legge says the spirits "cause all the people . . . to array
themselves
> in their richest dresses, in order to
> attend at their sacrifices," Pound writes, "they impel the people . . . to
> array themselves for the rites, to carry
> human affairs to the cognizance of the gods with their sacrifice" (Con.,
> 13).  The reference to the "gods," which
> has no textual justification, I would argue, derives from the poet's
> syncretist impulse, his desire to equate the Greek pagan and Chinese
> spiritual cosmologies.  There is nothing in Confucianism which does not
> encourage some form of worship of gods/spirits  . . .  On the contrary,
> proper rites and reverence toward the spirits are required.
>
> Pound also renders a longer passage concerning spirits from the
> Book of Poetry (the Odes), that is not quoted in the original Chung Yung.
> Part of Pound's passage reads,
>
>   The thought of the multitude
>   Can not grasp the categories
>   Of the thoughts of the SPIRITS  [emphasis added]
>   Circumvolving, but the tense mind
>   Can shoot arrows toward them
>      (Con., 13).
>
> The fact that the spirits have "thoughts" in Pound's unwarranted addition,
> and that they "impel the people,"
> indicates that Pound believed such spirits (or gods) have some sort of
> independent existence, as he asserts
> both in the Guide to Kulchur and Axiomata. Of course, Confucius himself
> refers numerous times to the existence of spirits as a positive fact.  It
is
> a common misconception of Confucian thought to think it is secular,
> agnostic, or atheistical.  This might require more evidence, probably, to
be
> established according to your satisfaction.
>
> You conclude:
>
> >The problem Pound identified in the predominant strains of western
> >judeo-christian idealism, is that, with its eye on eschatology, it was
> >otherworldy, rejecting the notion of individual and collective human
> >achievement, and infusing human sexuality with guilt. This strain of
> >western
> >religious teaching (a typical tract would be "On Generation and
> >Corruption")
> >would create more T.S. Eliots, not more William Carlos Williamses.
> >Tim Romano
> >
>
> I think you are right about Pound's diagnosis of Christianity.  Right on
the
> mark.  But  it should be made clear that neither Pound, nor Confucius,
> reject the otherworldly or the existence of gods (or spirits).  They both,
> in fact, affirm it the other world.  However, they do so in a way which
(by
> Western standards) appears less dogmatic less tied to specific assertions
> about the nature of the other world.  (In actual fact the Confucian
> standards for the forms of the rites were as rigid or more rigid than
> Western standards; the content of "belief" was less regulated).
>
> Regards,
>
> Wei
>
> http://www.geocities.com/weienlin/religion.html
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