Bob,
An autobiographical thread runs throughout the Cantos  - beginning in Canto
1 with the lines "Line quiet Divus. I mean that is Andreas Divus/In officina
Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer".  The poet takes off his mask in these lines.
Of course, an unmasking is itself a symbolic gesture ... and so the face
behind the mask is yet another persona.  Even so, "frankness" and "candor"
are ideals highly prized by Pound, even though perfect candor -- the self
unmasked -- is unattainable. This realization takes one into the world of
Action and directed will, or leaves one looking at the mirror in the mirror.
Recall Robert Graves'  box-- "children, don't untie that string!".

As the self is merely a jumble of broken mirrors, so the direction of the
will must be external in its origin. In Pound, the external direction is
twofold: the heavenly, in the form of Right Reason, and the chthonic, in the
form of the animal nature. The centaur can be read as a symbol of this dual
beast,  moved by reason and passion.  A beast of great learning but also of
great heart, its hooves planted firmly in the loam.  This is a common
understanding of the symbolic aspects of that man-beast.  Yet the symbolic
meaning seems to fall shy of the mark, in the context of the homiletic "pull
down thy vanity" passage. The symbolic meanings do not point at the Vanity
of human endeavor.

You are right, I think, to look outside this symbolic meaning, as you have
done. The equestrian statues, man-horse units, do signify  military
intelligence and bravery. Such associations work well with Dan Pearlman's
"myrmidon" reading. But it also behooves us to bring in complementary
associations from Pound's other writings of the period. In Women of Trachis,
the centaurs are called "arrogant, lawless", traits which fit in quite
tightly with the themes of  Vanity and "self-mastery".

Certainly there are elegiac aspects to the poems in the Pisan Cantos, and
Canto 81 is no exception.  Europe is wreckage.  And there is also "pastoral"
elements to be found in "the green world."   Even political conflict is
transposed into a naturalistic key:

        hot wind came from the marshes
            and death chill from the mountains

And yet Elegy tends toward fade-out and drift-off, whereas Canto 81 ends on
an assertive even defiant note  vis-a-vis the activist role the poet has
played. So I wouldn't want to put any sort of label on the poem.

Tim


> 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
>
>