I do wonder if you are not thinking of the Averroist idea that individual humanity is only incidental to G or H, thus making personal immortality impossible--a notion anathema to Aquinas and the Christian world. I don't think that this was Avicenna's position--but I am pretty much skipping him in my readings for the time being.

Maybe on this list, if there is no great rush to "Pound and Islam" as a panel discussion (and there yet may be such an interest) a "Pound and Cavalcanti" session might draw, thereby getting Islam indirectly into the discussion? 

 
The person of excellence understands what is moral. 
The petty person understands what is profitable.
                   "Analects" IV.16, Confucius
 
Robert E. Kibler, Ph.D.
English and Humanities
Director, Northern Plains Writing Project
229 Hartnett Hall West
Minot State University
500 University Avenue West
Minot, North Dakota 58701
telephone: 701 858 3876
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
fax: 701 858 3894


-----Original Message-----
From: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Charles Moyer
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 6:16 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Pound panel(s) at the ALA?

Important distinction - with Pound it is not so much "in and out of the
mind of God and artist" as granted in the mind of the big "G" God of the
Averroist borrowing the blueprint of heathen Aristotle but with tradition
and gods and goddesses (devils) in an expanded history and geography beyond
the understanding of the religiously constricted by petrified ideology. Thus
Pound places Avicenna and Averroe among those of his culture heroes in "a
conspiracy of intelligence" which "outlasted the hash of the political map."
(KULCHUR p.263)
    Another important distinction which should be noted concerned the big
"G" whose "only excuse is that he doesn't exist" except when one is claiming
another's land or ass, of course, is that Avicenna believed very
Aristotelian that cause and effect are simultaneous and therefore big "G"
and the world are co-eternal; that big "G" created intelligence and the
soul, and these emanate from his realm and reach the mortal earth by large
chains; that intelligence is maintained by "G", and (here's the kicker)
though that is innately eternal, its multiple extensions are not dependent
on Him (big "H"), for "H" is not concerned with matter. Unfortunately
Avicenna's main work, PHILOSOPHIA ORIENTALIS, in which he may have clarified
his rationalizations for big "G" further is lost, probably the last copy was
used to light the fire that burned Michael Servitus or kicked out from under
the feet of the hanging Mansur ibn al-Hallaj.
    Just a note of further clarification by the master himself from his
essay ON THE DEGREES OF HONESTY IN VARIOUS OCCIDENTAL RELIGIONS;
    "Were we in a meeting I should rise to express my doubts as to the
spiritual value of the KORAN in relation to the philosophy of the Arab
philosophers, with Avicenna at the apex. I see almost no spiritual elevation
in the OLD TESTAMENT, and the TALMUD, if one is to judge by current
quotations, is not an ethical volume at all but a species of gangster's
handbook." As I said useful in stealing another's lands.
    Just remember this when the Q.&A. in Cal-i-forn-nia turns to the
contemporary "Islamofascism". But certainly someone can get something
anti-semitic out of it. Some of them innocent folks always show up at a
Pound pounding. Sorry I won't make it.

Charlie

"anon leet fle a fart, As greet as it had been a thonder-dent"

> From: Robert Kibler <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: - Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 07:31:10 -0600
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Pound panel(s) at the ALA?
> 
> More specifically, the Averroist translation of and interpretation of
> Aristotle's "De Anima" corresponds in a general way to how Pound's combinant
> metaphysics and aesthetics operate--as a process, a forma mentis, a
> Ling--moving in and out of discernible form and reality, and likewise, in and
> out of the mind of both God and artist, thereby changing the character of
> created art, perceived reality, and the overall quality of mind possessed by
> both.  As seen in the Cantos.