Would it be accurate to say that Pound sees himself as a sort of
demi-god,
whose goal is portray a serious of historico-mythical exemplars, many of

which (begining with Odysseus) are semi-divine.

Without having dug into it substantially: I'd say that Pound does not
emerge as a person in the Cantos until we get to 81 etc. He is not
presented qua individual on the historical stage until this point. Of
course, various personae refelect his subjectivity, but it is only here
that he himself examines his subjecetivity unmasked. Those various masks
were often those of demi-gods. He believed in demigods as real mythical
constructs, but here he asesses himself differently. It is very
dialectical of course to say that any act of self assessment is
hubris.... so it seems to me that the tenor of Wei's last post is
reductive.

I too can oversimplify things. I oversimplified the importance of the
Confuciam material to Pound's sense of self in my last post and I agree
with all of Wei's corrections on that score, which I found to be quite
subtle.

On "ugly language": I think there are at least two modalities. There is
the deliberate gambit as when Pound tries to write his hell. Here he
might not realize how ugly his language is (how off the mark), because
prejudices seep through.

S..t on the throne of Englandm s..t on the Austrian sofa
In their soul was usura and in their minds darkness
and blankness, greased fat were four Georges
Pus was in Spain, Wellington was a jew's pimp .... (Canto 50, p. 148).

He has to know that the words are scatological and ugly, but he cannot
be judging the effect of the language or rhetoric here with any
precision. The diction too has some of his 'hallmark' features. The
inversions of word order in line 2 above, but phrases like "s..t",
"greased fat" and "jew's pimp" lack any inventiveness. They are too
close to a muttering that I associate with the ugliness that sometimes
characterizes his state of mind and very far from the poetry of the ugly
or grotesque.

Then there is "ugly" or ungainly language when his ear fails him. I have
read very positive commentaries on the "Odes" as being caste in various
approprate 'folk' idioms from the breadth of English language poetries,
an enactment that some how captures something of the original. That
argument never satisfied me and I have been personally unable to take
much pleasure from the sound of the odes. I would appreciate pointers
that might allow me to enter them more fully.

--
Donald Wellman
http://www.dwc.edu/users/wellman/wellman.htm