> Cameron McWhirter wrote>
>
>
> I read those lines and i see Pound, dusty and depressed, sitting on the
> floor of his barbed cage in the Pisan DTC. He's waiting for his execution
on treason
> charges and he's staring at a small anthill.
I agree with that. There was surely an anthill close to E.P. cage. One of
the main points of the Pisan section it is in my opinion "division" of
motifs, sentences and lines into 2 subsections, which I call "high" and
"low" . What do I understand by that ? . To the first I count Pounds
quotations from another books, his references to the historical events or
famous people or mythological creatures, his reminiscences of paintings
by Del Cosa or Cosino Tura) and so on . To the "low" phrases belong for
example : birds sitting on the barbed wire, lizards, ordinary remarks made
by japanese prisoners or guardians and quotations from daily newspapers
(Time magazine). So by those words :"high" - "low" I understand a typical
opposition.
Additionally, reader does'nt know about certain events happening around
E.P. those days. As a working poet I would like to point exactly on this,
because not everything connected with considered line ("ant's a centaur in
his dragons world") as I believe can be explained using rational, logical
mind. And there were probably 2 important events connected with anthill,
described in Pisan section which can be anyway deduced from the poem. Both
of them are commented in the following lines
" as a lone ant from a broken ant-hill
" from the wreckage of Europe, ego scriptor
I think that someone, probably soldier one day simply STEPPED into this
ant-hill and destroyed it and this event impressed Pound so much , that
image of the broken anthill serves here as a symbolical description of
Europe in the year 1945. One of the ants probably was found by poet in his
papers, or on the floor of the cage day, or two days later after
destruction of anthill and poet has begun to indentify himself with her.
Certainly that had to be "male" ant :-) , thats why he wrote "HIS dragons
world".)
So the ant. Now leaving for a while word "centaur" I would like to jump
into "dragons world" and present my impressions connected with this :
First : it looks that we can consider the word "dragon" in a couple of
different cultural contexsts. Context, which I would like to call "germanic"
uses this word as a symbol or synonym of something highly dangerous and
wild. Those are for example well known Tolkien stories, phantazy movies ,
swedish sagas. Perception and understanding of this word in another
cultures is totally different. For Chinese people "dragon" is a symbol of
wisdom and pride, it is their I would say "one of the most favorit animals
:-)", probably symbol of China as well. In my own, slavic cultural contexst
"dragon" has completely another meaning, maybe hard to belive but true : it
is simply childlish. Yes, this word connects in my mind with stories for
children, eventually with something funny, nice, warm, but anyway not with
something highly dangerous or proud at all.
"Dragons world" as I believe must to be considered in germanic cultural
contexst and serves here once again as description of Europe in the year the
World War has ended. As a side effect of the above I would like to say that
NOT everything written in one language "works" in the another.
Finally centaur.
Thats poetical vision I think. For me the most important in that vision is
the rapid switch from something very small to something very big (in our
case - ant compared to centaur). Mr Tim Romano used argument of Gulliwer and
Lilliputians and this is the track I would like to follow. Because it is
impossible to separate centaur from the rest of the phrase I would like to
join everything I said earlier with the whole plausible picture : The ant
E.P. sees himself as an ant) is centaur (someone bigger, greater, I
would'nt hesitate to use words someone "more important" than the rest of the
citizens of the "broken anthill"- so I'm now pretty close to prof.
Pearlman's "puff up" interpretation.) But here once again we have to
consider germanic cultural context, legends about Giants, (which I know from
my own silesian mythology -all those stories about Rubenzahl, Fliess and
Lord of the Mountains - which all of them were Giants, always in comparison
to someone very, very small.) So it's hard to say why, but nevertheless this
rapid switch of size remains for me the most important, considering the
whole image.
So the resume : ant (E. P. ) is a centaur (Giant, der Riese, ) in his
dragons world (ruins of European cywilization in 1945). Maybe it is a little
bit to much simple but pay attention please that NOT HUMBLE at all. So -
from this point it is now comprehensible why poet wrote "pull down thy
vanity" in the next line and started disscusion with himself : can I write
like that ? Am I really "more important"? "Is that true ?" - pull down thy
vanity - becomes the constant answer, but the whole line shows, that he
already suspected that he may belong to the small society of writers who
will represent us, all of us - people living in XX century to the future
generations. Now rhetorical question : how many writers who worked in let's
say VI century do we remember right now. And how many from XIII cent. ? I
mean - writers every reader of literature knows. It will be decided
certainly in the future , whom those people will want to read and who will
become "immortal" in the literary meaning of this word. But anyway I
strongly belive it is possible to make certain suggestions, even right now.
:-)
And one more thing. This interaction between "high" and "low" in Pisan
Cantos not always can be easily comprehensible, because Pound was having
probably "eastern" sense of the equality of all events, so thats why using
"high" key for the explanations of "low" events produces misunderstandings.
Pawel Karwowski
UJ student
Cracow 21.03.99
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