To Sylvester, Tim, Kevin, Charles:
I'm responding here to the whole list, and perhaps should by now be
taking this discussion off list, to address only individuals; but
thought I might be forgiven at least one more message before doing
that. I am grateful to all I name above for help on my initial query.
To respond to Kevin's query: I posed it because I had two things
going: I am writing a general article on Pound for a magazine that
has been kind enough to take some of my things in the past, and I was
working on a "pum" of my own. The poem started out to be a comment
(logopoeia?) on Lennon's song, "Imagine," which has annoyed me for
two reasons (1) he seems to be objecting foolishly to the
constitution of our universe as our (human) senses receive it, that
is, as made up of opposites, and (2) and because it is so popular,
and dammit, so good, IMHO. I especially like Baez's version, as I
like her version of Dylan's "Forever Young," probably chiefly for the
reason that I am a month from being 84. I am not bragging (or am I?),
but perhaps more hinting as to why the existence (or not) of Paradiso
has come to interest me a lot.
For the general article (not a scholarly effort since I am not a bona
fide Pound scholar or a scholar of anything else really) I wanted to
make a sweeping generalization more of less to the effect that
Pound's entire life and outlook and certainly his megawork, the
Cantos, reflect, portray, embody, (etc., etc.), the pull and haul of
two of the master opposites, paradise and hell. I believe in his
contention, or at least implication, that Paradise can be built and
held in the mind even before death.
(I keep in mind an ever so slightly impatient dismissal by that saint
of metaphysical scholarship, Ananda Coomaraswamy, of a correspondent
of his who wrote to complain that the universe or God or somebody had
got things wrong with all that good/bad, black/white stuff. He (that
is, God or his stand-in) should have done better.)
My level of hubris in even attempting to write about EP can be
indicated by the fact that I had not known that the French version of
the line about Le paradis referred to a Baudelaire text (thanks, Tim)
and even with that lead, I still don't know where it comes from in B,
that is, what the context is. I see Kevin works hashish into the
picture. I left booze and drugs behind in 59, a decade ahead of the
so-called Revolution of 1968. I still don't know quite what that
really was, although I think I was in some ways helping to set it up
in the 50s.
I particularly love Canto CXX. Maybe it seems to me quintessential
old-man's verse. I wish I could quote it entire in my mag piece, but
I suppose it constitutes a "whole poem" for copyright considerations.
Anybody have an informed opinion on that?
I am a retread Christian with a heightened appreciation of the
central figure of the Gospels. EP and G. Santayana are two of my
culture heroes; both of them wrote brilliantly and winningly, I would
even say lovingly, of Christ; both seem to have been badly burned by
institutional Xty, something I have come to see as almost inevitable
in growing up churched. Someone on this email list suggested that
EP's references to Zagreus can be taken as references to Christ/
Logos. I have unfortunately forgotten who it was who said that and
wish I hadn't. Perhaps no one else sees it that way. Christ is
presently being rather badly salvaged by the Talmudites; I don't
think their thing has legs, however. The whole business is up in the
air, and dishonesty rather rules these days. We all, I think, are
waiting, one way for another, for release from l'enfer, that is, for
entry into Le Paradis, with or without houris.
Thanks for your patience. Tom White
On Apr 14, 2007, at 11:09 AM, Kevin Kiely wrote:
> Sylvester, Tim and Colleagues,
>
> Tom White suggests an ignition, leading from/to:
>
> Baudelaire’s ‘Du vin et du haschisch’ and ‘Les Paradis
> artificiels’—?—are
> the latter
>
> in receipt of a riposte from EP, apropos—the paradise in not
> artificial
>
> And in passing ‘paradise’ schematically pervades the Cantos, as TW
> says, is
> he working up a total statement on this—?—:
>
> ‘hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall’ C 45
>
> ‘So that walking here under the larches of Paradise’ C 94
>
> ‘nel Paradiso Terrestre’ C 105
>
> ‘I tried to make a paradiso
> terrestre.’ C 117 [incomplete]
>
> ...& more
>
>
> —Kevin Kiely, Dublin
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