Tim writes:
> However, The original question was, what was troubling the sleep of the
> character in the poem.  In your reading, the poem is not a dramatic
> monologue; you identify the speaker with Pound.  But such identification
is
> not supported by the tone of voice Pound used when he read the poem.  The
> tone lacks the typical sarcasm he is wont to use when speaking in propria
> persona in a satirical mode; rather it is a kind of stylized ventriloquism
> which is meant to reveal the state of mind of the character

tim,
     forgive the delay.
     but contrary to the above, i took your suggestion of judge learned hand
as the speaker, with the eliot quote extending it to the puritan
ethos,...and yes, another pound personna.

judge hand, in accord with that ethos, banned the publication of joyce's
"ulysses"; the classics should be restricted for those with sufficient
seriousness (piety) and erudition.

the supreme court overturned him (and "scopes") and introduced the reign of
1st amendment bourgeois liberalism, with the effect of creating a market
/consumer culture without reverance or transcendance,...culture-cide; the
prevision of which (as with simeon) accounts for the troubled sleep.

actually, i thot i was ff the lead of your reading...i think all the
freudian figuration works...but,  to corporealize/eroticize/impassion the
voice,
to make it big, pregnant, archetypal,...not neurotic.

and after all, it's a reading counter-intuitive to present day
sensibilities, and therefore, of course, likelier pound-ian, nez paw?

but am still unhappy with the st francis motif.

bob


----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2001 8:14 PM
Subject: Re: cantico del sole


> Bob,
> Let me take your objections one at a time.
>
> >  from the one line "woe to those that die in mutual transgression".
>
> I don't know where you come up with "mutual transgression".   "ne le
peccata
> mortali" = 'in mortal sin'.
>
>
> > ...granted that eros is everywhere, and always problematic
 dialectical),
> > i don't find the image of the pure/chaste "sister water" to be morbid.
>
> You don't see any ambivalence towards women, as sexual beings, in the
> following metaphor?
>
>                 Be praised, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
>                from whose embrace no living person can escape.
>
> The ethos is hardly an exuberant expression of physical being.  Death's
> EMBRACE?
>
> > yours about the death-wish sensibility, contemptu mundi, of medieval
> > religiosity is certainly true, but it is precisely st francis, giotto &
co
> > (12th cent renaissance, no?) and especially with the cantico, that
strike
> > the antithetical chord, celebration of the flesh, nso on.
>
>
> As I say above, I would not put St Francis or the Cantico del Sole" under
> the rubric "celebration of the flesh".  There's more to the metaphor
"Sister
> Bodily Death, from whose embrace.... "  than "contemptus mundi".
>
> > doubtless st fancis was oedipal, mama's boy;
> > but, isn't it just as
> > clear his career is a classic of successful
> > sublimation/maturation/creativity/aufhebung?
>
>
> "Successful sublimation" is rather like "military intelligence".
Seriously,
> the trouble is that the basis for the sublimation is a culture in which
> human sexuality is regarded as a necessary evil.
>
> > hasn't his cantico del sole always been percieved (and not naively) as
the
> > epitome of psycho-salubrity?
>
> That is not, I think, how Pound regarded the Cantico del Sole.
>
>
> > 2. the simeon mythos and the eliot poem, and thence the learned hand
> > persona's nocturnal prayer,  express the piety of self-emasculation in
> > abjection before the great castrating/circumcising oedipal  jewish god.
>
> Phallic and ambrosial
> made way for macerations.
>
> > but...luke's and eliot's and pound's explicitly situate their fears in
> > non-subjective dispensations of evil, the spiritual desolation of
> > roman/bourgeois-lib hegemony;
> > your insistance that this is merely the classic subtrafuge of projection
> > fails to reckon with all the evidence and analysis, marx to jameson, of
> the
> > objective existence of this evil.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "roman/bourgeois-lib". What do you mean by
> "this evil"?
>
> >
> > fer simeon, eliot, hand, & pound "the word" is salvation, no?
> > as, for all of them it is elitist...adults only, no?
> > so how comes it you totally discount the literal signification
> > of the poem?...the objective abomination of desolation that "the word"
has
> > been turned to in the western culture industry?...
>
> I wouldn't discount a reading of this poem that interpreted it in the
light
> of the fact that most Americans seem to prefer cheap trashy novels to the
> classics. The culture industry and the religion industry do not operate on
> skewed planes, and so these approaches are not at odds with one another.
> However, The original question was, what was troubling the sleep of the
> character in the poem.  In your reading, the poem is not a dramatic
> monologue; you identify the speaker with Pound.  But such identification
is
> not supported by the tone of voice Pound used when he read the poem.  The
> tone lacks the typical sarcasm he is wont to use when speaking in propria
> persona in a satirical mode; rather it is a kind of stylized ventriloquism
> which is meant to reveal the state of mind of the character.
>
> Tim