On Wed, 22 Jul 1998 15:33:53 -0400 wrote...
>
lots of the lines you quote have been noted for their Taoist elements.  I would
only add a couple observations.  The "suave eyes" line I think, and the eyes
entering the tent at Pisa, are the eyes of Guan-yin, or Guan-shi-yin, or as
Pound calls her, Kwannon, Chinese Buddhist (and also Taoist) goddess of mercy.
She appears in the ur cantos, and in various places throughought Cantos, and
she is one of the most fascinating ancillary study in the cantos. She
incidentally is also the patron saint of those who travel by sea (a bingo, I
think, for a poet writing an Odyssean-like epic, and who is himself in trouble
at certain points in his Cantos, when he calls out to her.  But more
importantly, I would like to suggest to you that the sadness and tragedy that
you imply links Pound to Taoism only goes as far towards understanding Taoism
as Kenner got. But Taoism is very dynamic, and filled with the rhythms of life
and living. Look at the examples in Lao tzu and Chuang tzu--the two primary
Taoist texts. Those are full of the celebration of work and action, living and
doing.  Chad Hansen and several others would even suggest that it was a
terroristic political philosophy, one that sought to thwart the regimentation
of a dominant Confucianism. In this sense, trough their displacement of the
value of the precise and sacred Confucian word, Taoists were the original
desconstructionists. They would subert the surface interpretation of life, and
mock authority and its regulating status quo.  Like Hardy, and like Conrad,
perhaps, who on the surface of their narratives seem embittered by the human
condition, but whose presentation of character shows a great love and
compassion for humanity nonetheless, Taoism talks withdrawal, negation,
subversion, and otherwordliness, but the very presentation of its argument
denies the surface.  References to scores of trades, of crafts, of living
situations appear allover the Lao tzu and Chuang tzu. Taoist magic and hocus
pocus (save for a couple immortal potions and pills) for the most part came
later, when Taoism, like Confucianism, had to compete with Buddhism for
adherents (There are only so many spiritual dollars to be collected from a
group of people.)  This is why Pound could condemn Taoism while being drawn to
Taoist elements. He had already embraced Taoist poetry in Fenollosa's
notebooks, and never made the connection between a Taoist aesthetics and the
Taozers whom he found condemned by de Mailla in 1936-7, for being incorrigible
social misfits and corrupt ne'er do wells.  And it was never a philosophy that
came as a result of a failure of will--unlike Buddhism. But that is another
story.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robert E. Kibler
Department of English
University of Minnesota
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                fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestis,
                Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores.