Bob,
The title.   I'd venture the following explanation:  the Nunc Dimittis (the
Song of Simeon to which you refer) has long been a prayer which is said at
the end of the day; this allusion, together with "It troubles my sleep",
establishes the dramatic context: it's bedtime.  But the prayer ("Now
lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace") is also associated with the end
of life, and has come to be associated with the Departed, with death and
dying.  So there's a death-wish here.  Death is, in a sense, an answer to
the vexations of the man, for it brings "peace" to the troubled soul.  But
the death-wish is intertwined with the guilt-ridden puritanical mind, which
fears dying in a state of sin and damnation. This guilt/punishment complex
sheds some light on the title.  In Saint Francis's Cantico del Sole one
finds this line:  "guai a quelli che morranno ne le peccata mortali" -- woe
to those who die in in mortal sin. That's how the title is connected
thematically to the poem.
Tim






----- Original Message -----
From: "bob scheetz" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 9:44 PM
Subject: Re: cantico del sole


> tim,
>      yes, this is excellent... i see it now
> ...the embedded freudian image
> ...the quote from simeon
> ...the fear & loathing,
>  & sickness unto death of the portrait.
>
> ...but the title still puzzles me?
>
> bob
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 8:18 AM
> Subject: Re: cantico del sole
>
>
> > Bob,
> > There is a recording of Pound reading this poem.  He delivers the brief
> > dramatic monologue in a kind of stylized rant, his voice rising with
each
> > repetition of the phrase "the thought of what America" to a higher level
> of
> > anxiety and reaching a climax with "circulation... Oh!"  The falling
> action,
> > as it were, occurs with the phrase "It troubles my sleep."  The poem is
> > indeed an "obsessive puritanic" bedtime reverie. The sexually repressed
> > character  is kept awake at night worrying that the classics might reach
> the
> > American public. One imagines him trying with the prayer "Nunc dimittis"
> to
> > crowd out of his mind images of particular scenes from the classics. Did
> the
> > Latin prayer remind you of TS Eliot?  Take a gander at Wyndham Lewis's
> first
> > portrait of Eliot, the one where TSE is dressed in a dark green suit,
his
> > hands are folded nervously in his lap, and the front-lighting casts a
> shadow
> > on the wall behind the troubled poet.
> > Tim
>
>