Michael,
The line could be paraphrased so: the ant is mighty in its miniature world of
life and death struggle.  The implication is that the ant is a puny creature
when regarded from a wider perspective. This exemplum in miniature is quite apt
for a poem whose theme is vanity. When we think ourselves to be Gullivers in a
land Lilliputians we suffer from a vain lack of perspective, for we are puny in
the wider scheme of things too, though we may be centaurs in our own sphere of
influence. That's how the exemplum fits in with the exhortation it precedes.
Pound's mode is consonant here with the one he puts on when speaking contra
Usura.
Tim Romano
 
Michael Coyle wrote:
 
> Bill Wagner was recently kind enough to post us all a copy of Kenner's
> review of the second volume of the EP/DP letters. Several people, like
> Jonathan Gill, have already commented on the tenor of the review. I just
> want to ask a question simple but stubborn: what *do* these lines mean?
>
> The ant's a centaur in his
>   dragon world.
>
> Kenner's gloss (which I've copied at the end of this message) tells us that
> the ant "derives from Proverbs 6:6." But how is that image altered by
> identifying the ant with a "centaur," let alone "a centaur in his dragon
> world"? I'm embarrassed to ask such a question, given the understandable
> fame of the passage in which it is part. And yet it seems to me that most
> everyone rushes to the subsequent lines about vanity to avoid that
> professorial mumble about a difficult image. Any Poundians out there willing
> and able to finish the explication?
>         I have to confess that I was put up to this question by my friend
> David Chinitz, who justifiably (I think) grumbles that the lack of
> commentary on "The ant's a centaur in his dragon world" seems a kind of
> critical embarrassment, given that these lines mark a transition into one of
> the most quoted passages in the *Cantos*. Imagine if Eliot scholars had no
> clue about what to make of, and therefore simply passed over the lines, 'And
> the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, / And the dry stone
> no sound of water'!"
>
> Hoping for enlightenment, all best,
>
> Michael
>
> *     *     *     *     *
>
> Kenner text:
>
> That ant derives from Proverbs 6:6: "Go to the ant, thou
>   sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which,
>   having no guide, overseer or ruler, Provideth her meat in
>   the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest."
>
>   And as for vanity, turn almost anywhere in Ecclesiastes,
>   for instance 2:11: "Then I looked on all the works that
>   my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had
>   laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation
>   of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."
>
>   The ant and vanity are just a few pages apart in the
>   Hebrew Bible, the one seeing to necessary things, the
>   other wasting its labor on vexation of spirit. What Pound
>   would one day regret as "that stupid, suburban,
>   anti-Semitic prejudice" may have begun to dissipate in
>   the Pisan cage. I know that I once brought a Jewish
>   friend to visit him at St. Elizabeth's, and they got on
>   well, and the friend went back on his own another time.
>   And one moral is, beware of generalizations.