tim,
     has it been suggested c.71 be read as a modernist pastoral elegy?
mourning the death of a geist ...and perhaps the poet
en-fleshing it...himself, if you want;  but, rather a conventional
structure, than biographical?

also re the centaur metafor: what about the equestrian
statue image, gatamelatta, or marcus aurelius, or st geo?
conventional western image of "courage", "order"...dragon-slayer?
and of course bonaparte,... & mussolini affected this,
and finally  got pulled down of their high-horses,  prodigious vanities.

bob




----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 9:18 AM
Subject: Re: More on Ants & Centaurs


> Unlike Leon, who reads the passage as Pound criticizing others who don't
> know their "asses from their elbows", I read this passage as a
> self-assessment, half apology, half apologia. On what grounds?
>
> 1.
>                 As a lone ant from a broken ant-hill
>     from the wreckage of Europe, ego scriptor.        (C76)
>
>
> 2.  "master thyself"  --  the central idea of this passage ... the self is
a
> dual nature-- the master-self and the unruly-self.  The self who sees with
> right reason and the self that cannot see through Vanity .
>
> This idea is reinforced by the other symbols of duality in the passage,
most
> notably, the magpie, "half black half white". We saw the same idea in
action
> in "Dr. Williams' Position", by the way:
>
>                 "He was able to observe national phenomena without
> necessity for constant vigilance over himself, there was no instinctive
> fear that if he forgot himself he might be like some really unpleasant
> Ralph Waldo..."
>
> 3.  The poet summons up the shades of Lawes and Jenkyns; they are his
> judges, and ask him:
>
>                 Hast 'ou fashioned so airy a mood
>                     To draw up leaf from root
>                 Hast 'ou found    a cloud     so light
>                     As seemed  neither mist  nor shade?
>
>
> 4.  Then "resolve me".   Logopeia here draws attention to the self-duality
> again. See 2 above.
>
> 5.  The passage is homiletic in tone.  The theme of the homily: "The ant's
a
> centaur in his dragon world."
> The minister is not without guilt...and yet it is his prerogative to throw
> stones...as long as some of them fall on his own head.  "Vanity" as Leon
> rightly points out, is to be understood in the context of western
homiletic
> tradition. In its broadest meaning, Vanity is the belief that Man can do
or
> create anything which endures or which has meaning that can stand the test
> of Time,  arrogant anthropocentrism:
>
>                        ...... it is not man
> Made courage, or made order, or made grace.
>
> Only the wider perspective saves man from such vanity.  The ant's a
centaur
> only in "HIS" dragon world... that is, only from his own point of view.  A
> wider view shows it to be a rather piddling small creature.  And yet Man
is
> endowed with Will and Intelligence and has therefore an obligation to Act
in
> spite of his puniness in the scope of creation:
>
>             "But to have done instead of not doing
>                          this is not vanity"
>
> Hamlet's question, resolved.  "Whether 'tis nobler..."
>
>
> Tim Romano