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