Louis,
    Let's start with a statement by Umberto Eco from his otherwise boring
book, "The Search for the Perfect Language". He acknowledges,

    "I have no wish to saddle the honest students of Indo-European with
blame for the extermination camps, especially as - at the level of
linguistic science- they were right."

Something from this should have followed, but only two sentences later Eco's
term "Indo-European" shifts to the all familiar red-flag "A" word - "Aryan".
In other words we are permitted to make race arguments as long as we select
the "correct" position from which to argue, and an appropriate language has
been preconditioned and provide for all the qualifying prophylactic handling
of this subject. - the Babel argument prevails.
    Although I personally prefer the "Volsunga Saga", the fact that the
Germans have "The Niebelungenlied" in their national literature  only adds
to confirm the fact that they are not different from any of the other
Indo-European peoples who can trace the mythological archetype of the
dragonslayer back to the "Rig-Veda" whether they  choose to make their
movies entirely in the studio or not. And the Old Testicles has its
smathering of the big worm story also. Why does German art have to be
tainted because it got used by some bad folks? Isn't this like saying the
Bible is all propaganda because the Devil has been  known to quote from it?
Now how about Ezra Pound? Don't you turn heads at a cocktail party if you
say you enjoy reading the Cantos? I think from what I have observed over the
past months participating and reading every posting coming to this list that
Pound stays quite alive today; and some folks, just as the Bard of Avon
said, "doth protest too much". Are they affraid of something in themselves,
an exegetical deficiency perhaps. Maybe Pound is not the one who has the
lobsided view. But why bother so much over someone who is so obviously
wrong?
    I would like to go into greater detail in explaining how linear time and
cyclical time vary and are similar, but suffice it to say myth is the
allegorical and esoteric vehicle of the latter while history bears the
Herculean and insuperable responsibility of recording the former. There is
no real eschatological sense to cyclical time and its archetypes nor can
there be by definition. We all must wait for the exciting conclusion of the
Celestial War of the Gods, but "victory"? What do you mean by "victory"? Of
what over what? Which vain ant hill won? I wish I could afford a Passat or a
BMW. "Nice car to drive after a war" said the young Bob Dylan, but I think
he meant a Cadillac.
    Incidentally, Wagner's "Ring" despite its attraction for all sorts of
unsavory bad guys still enjoys a great following even in such politically
cleansed American places like San Francisco. Ticket sales for the 1999
performance of the San Francisco Opera's "Ring" reached six million dollars.
There was not one Hitler mustache reported seen during the entire run. There
was one guy who looked a little bit like Nietzsche, but he left before the
fat lady sang.

CDM