(Sorry about the blank post just sent by accident)

Just a couple of added obserations to Tim's post. I agree that
"Light fighting for speed" (or, as Blackmur noticed 60 years ago,
the gold in the darkness) ties the poem together, but it seems to
me that it is a bit upside down to see that material as *originating*
in "The Tree." Rather, "The Tree" was one of a large number of
first approximations as Pound fumbled (I don't think the young Pound
would have rejected that verb) his way towards the themes of the
*Cantos*. Secondly, light, The Leader, The Thinker, the Sculptor,
and other manifestations of a struggle out of chaos into order should
be seen in the light of Pound's slogan, "make it new," which I take
to mean "make that which has been live again" rather than an
injunction to make something that was "original" in never having
existed before. It is not too far, for example, from Pope's
(in)famous couplet, "True art is nature to advantage dressed /
What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed." Hence for
example the recurrent image of waves taking form -- each wave
the same and yet each new.

And incidentally the image of light fighting for speed does seem
to evoke the Zorostrian/Manichaean idea of creation as the
entrapment of light in matter, and therefore existence as a struggle
to free light from that entrapment in clutter?????

Carrol


Tim Romano wrote:

> Wei,
>
> I would again direct your attention to the poem known as The Tree. The poem
> is, as I wrote in an earlier posting, the ur-statement of Pound's awakening
> to the world of myth and archetype, and the poem is most important for a
> fuller understanding of the role that myth and religious experience play in
> the Cantos and in Pound's thought generally.  The line "I stood still" is
> _not_ merely metaphorical, but a reference to an archetypal experience. The
> "light" that runs as a leitmotiv throughout Pound's works has its origin in
> the events recounted in this poem. Again, Pound sought and found
> corroboration of this experience in many places, and his ability to
> recognize the experience in all of its various manifestations lies at the
> heart of his syncretism and eclecticism.
> Tim Romano