Bill Wagner was recently kind enough to post us all a copy of Kenner's
review of the second volume of the EP/DP letters. Several people, like
Jonathan Gill, have already commented on the tenor of the review. I just
want to ask a question simple but stubborn: what *do* these lines mean?
 
The ant's a centaur in his
  dragon world.
 
Kenner's gloss (which I've copied at the end of this message) tells us that
the ant "derives from Proverbs 6:6." But how is that image altered by
identifying the ant with a "centaur," let alone "a centaur in his dragon
world"? I'm embarrassed to ask such a question, given the understandable
fame of the passage in which it is part. And yet it seems to me that most
everyone rushes to the subsequent lines about vanity to avoid that
professorial mumble about a difficult image. Any Poundians out there willing
and able to finish the explication?
        I have to confess that I was put up to this question by my friend
David Chinitz, who justifiably (I think) grumbles that the lack of
commentary on "The ant's a centaur in his dragon world" seems a kind of
critical embarrassment, given that these lines mark a transition into one of
the most quoted passages in the *Cantos*. Imagine if Eliot scholars had no
clue about what to make of, and therefore simply passed over the lines, 'And
the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, / And the dry stone
no sound of water'!"
 
Hoping for enlightenment, all best,
 
Michael
 
*     *     *     *     *
 
Kenner text:
 
That ant derives from Proverbs 6:6: "Go to the ant, thou
  sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which,
  having no guide, overseer or ruler, Provideth her meat in
  the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest."
 
  And as for vanity, turn almost anywhere in Ecclesiastes,
  for instance 2:11: "Then I looked on all the works that
  my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had
  laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation
  of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."
 
  The ant and vanity are just a few pages apart in the
  Hebrew Bible, the one seeing to necessary things, the
  other wasting its labor on vexation of spirit. What Pound
  would one day regret as "that stupid, suburban,
  anti-Semitic prejudice" may have begun to dissipate in
  the Pisan cage. I know that I once brought a Jewish
  friend to visit him at St. Elizabeth's, and they got on
  well, and the friend went back on his own another time.
  And one moral is, beware of generalizations.