I once attended a reading by TSE at the University of Chicago in the
mid-1950's. During the Q & A at the end, someone asked him what some
line or other meant, to which he replied (and here I quote from memory,
but the gist is accurate), "A poet, including myself, often writes from
inspiration and has no more idea what a poem may mean than its reader."
In this he echoed Browning (I think it was) who, the famous yarn tells
us, was once asked by a sweet old lady what particular line of his
poetry meant, to which he, very much like Eliot, answered, "Madame, when
I wrote that line only Browning and God knew what it meant; now, God
alone knows."
 
Why worry Pound's "centaur ant" like a bone? Part of the beauty of the
image derives from its mystery which, in turn, derives from its lack of
linear sense.
 
JLC
 
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.