tim,
has it been suggested c.71 be read as a modernist pastoral elegy?
mourning the death of a geist ...and perhaps the poet
en-fleshing it...himself, if you want; but, rather a conventional
structure, than biographical?
also re the centaur metafor: what about the equestrian
statue image, gatamelatta, or marcus aurelius, or st geo?
conventional western image of "courage", "order"...dragon-slayer?
and of course bonaparte,... & mussolini affected this,
and finally got pulled down of their high-horses, prodigious vanities.
bob
----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 9:18 AM
Subject: Re: More on Ants & Centaurs
> Unlike Leon, who reads the passage as Pound criticizing others who don't
> know their "asses from their elbows", I read this passage as a
> self-assessment, half apology, half apologia. On what grounds?
>
> 1.
> As a lone ant from a broken ant-hill
> from the wreckage of Europe, ego scriptor. (C76)
>
>
> 2. "master thyself" -- the central idea of this passage ... the self is
a
> dual nature-- the master-self and the unruly-self. The self who sees with
> right reason and the self that cannot see through Vanity .
>
> This idea is reinforced by the other symbols of duality in the passage,
most
> notably, the magpie, "half black half white". We saw the same idea in
action
> in "Dr. Williams' Position", by the way:
>
> "He was able to observe national phenomena without
> necessity for constant vigilance over himself, there was no instinctive
> fear that if he forgot himself he might be like some really unpleasant
> Ralph Waldo..."
>
> 3. The poet summons up the shades of Lawes and Jenkyns; they are his
> judges, and ask him:
>
> Hast 'ou fashioned so airy a mood
> To draw up leaf from root
> Hast 'ou found a cloud so light
> As seemed neither mist nor shade?
>
>
> 4. Then "resolve me". Logopeia here draws attention to the self-duality
> again. See 2 above.
>
> 5. The passage is homiletic in tone. The theme of the homily: "The ant's
a
> centaur in his dragon world."
> The minister is not without guilt...and yet it is his prerogative to throw
> stones...as long as some of them fall on his own head. "Vanity" as Leon
> rightly points out, is to be understood in the context of western
homiletic
> tradition. In its broadest meaning, Vanity is the belief that Man can do
or
> create anything which endures or which has meaning that can stand the test
> of Time, arrogant anthropocentrism:
>
> ...... it is not man
> Made courage, or made order, or made grace.
>
> Only the wider perspective saves man from such vanity. The ant's a
centaur
> only in "HIS" dragon world... that is, only from his own point of view. A
> wider view shows it to be a rather piddling small creature. And yet Man
is
> endowed with Will and Intelligence and has therefore an obligation to Act
in
> spite of his puniness in the scope of creation:
>
> "But to have done instead of not doing
> this is not vanity"
>
> Hamlet's question, resolved. "Whether 'tis nobler..."
>
>
> Tim Romano
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