Charles,
I applaud you for an excellent and highly suggestive reading.
==Dan
At 01:29 PM 8/25/00 -0700, you wrote:
> Dan, you wrote that "the helmet is not cocoon-shaped." You are quite
>right about this. I object to the use of the cocoon idea which is strictly
>out of Terrell. In fact a cocoon is a rather shapeless sack spun of silk by
>a moth larva. It houses the chrysalis of the moth. Butterflies, on the other
>hand, do not spin cocoons nor do wasps. "Casque" in the sense that Pound
>uses it refers IMO to the chrysalis exoskeletal covering during its dormant
>stage of the complete metamorphosis. The casque (an anatomical form
>resembling a helmet) is then the chrysalis as shown in the web site I
>provided.
> That said, you also wrote, "to suppress the militaru association in the
>passage" would loose "half of what Ez wanted to suggest." I don't disagree
>with the possibility of ambiguity in the word "casque". After all the word
>means helmet. In fact there is overt reference to the U.S. Army in the
>"Pisan Cantos". For example, Pound muses on the use of Mercury's caduceus on
>a packing case. Mercury is the messenger of the gods who visited Odyseus on
>his way to Circe in Book X. Could Pound be reading a message on this packing
>case we do not readily see?
> But throughout the "Pisan Cantos" there is criticism of the destruction
>caused by war. "Hoi Barbaroi" have destroyed Sigismundo's Temple delivering
>a blow to love itself. Pound is always anti-war, and we must continue to ask
>if "Le Paradis n'est pas artificiel" then what and where is it? "L'enfer
>non plus", and we have abounding examples of what that is- war being
>certainly among the clearest manifestations.
> The realm of Paradise seems to be accessible only through the
>contemplation of that which is not artificial to Pound. In Greek both
>butterfly and soul were expressed by the word "pysche". In Canto 76 the ant
>and the butterfly images contrast the mundane reality of the poet's
>situation ("a lone ant from a broken ant-hill") to the "Le Paradis" reached
>by the ascending (flying) soul ("within the crystal, went up swift as
>Thetis"). Here is love, "Thetis, Maya, "Aphrodite". All is ascending as the
>"wing'd fish" and "the clouds over the Pisan meadows", and least of all the
>"white-chested martin" a very different bird from the "swollen magpie".
> Now reading in this manner "that butterfly has gone out thru my smoke
>hole" (the smoke hole in his army tent) I think we see both an ascending of
>the soul at the same time as an abandonment of love, a victory of the
>destructive forces of the war which has like Mephistopheles admonishes in
>Goethe"s "Faust" pitted "Knecht gegen Knecht" (servant against servant),
>"Po'eri di'aoli (poor devils) sent to slaughter", ant-like in a war they can
>not understand , pawns powerless to resist the tide of events, eating the
>"remants for a usurer's holiday". Then he "greeks" us again with
>"Metaphemenon nason 'amumona" ("changing a noble island") -but to what? A
>ruined mess? We remember that it was the island where Hyperion kept his
>sacred cattle, Odyseus's army violating the same.
> And finally words that summarize-
>
> "woe to them that conquer with armies
> and whose only right is their power."
>
>"Woe"? Does Pound believe in divine rectification? By means of love, a poem,
>of a butterfly? We have to wonder, what power does face up to war?
>
>CDM
>
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