In Mauberley, the rampant mercantilism of the 20th c has turned the old matrix, the foundation of classical western thought -- Apollonian/sky-sun-dry/reason-order-measure-permanence vs Dionysian/earth-vine-wet/irrationality-chaos-flowing-mutability. upside down: all things are a flowing ... but a tawdry cheapness shall outlast our days. 'Tawdry cheapness' in the stead of the Apollonian. To kalon is decreed in the marketplace. And upon this classical template is overlaid the Masculine/Feminine opposition, the mythic orientation of much medieval European romance and knight errantry, to which Pound alludes in an appropriately crass and ugly manner: 'for an old bitch gone in the teeth'. So neither the classical nor the romantic survives. The western ying/yang is replaced by the cheap thing. Tim Romano At 12:26 AM 10/14/03, charles moyer wrote: >I have often suspected that Pound did not really mean to denigrate Nietzsche >by his line in "Mauberley"- "Mildness, amid the neo-Nietzschean clatter", >and had actually plied that philosopher's thesis in "The Birth of Tragedy" >into his poem with more critical acumen. The poem mentions both Dionysus and >Apollo, and why should the apathein mentioned here be of the serious >"Olympian" sort? Perhaps he was getting at something less about the feminine >and the masculine but more about order and chaos. > >Charles > >---------- > >From: Tim Romano <[log in to unmask]> > >To: [log in to unmask] > >Subject: Re: Canto II & Prohibition > >Date: Mon, Oct 13, 2003, 3:50 PM > > > > > The heroic "virile" Christ of the "Ballad" and Bacchus belong to the same > > vortex. Like his friend Wyndham Lewis, Pound would have seen the womens > > temperance movement as being all mixed up with the Christers in the same > > feminizing vortex, threatening the prerogatives of the adult male will: > > take away booze and replace it with family worship and men will be tame > > husbands and more reliable worker-bees. With the wild bacchanal, Pound > > opposes that feminizing vortex from without; he counters it from within in > > the figure of the virile Christ of the "Ballad" -- a heroic role model for > > the paterfamilias. The Virile Christ : Bacchus :: Popeye : Brutus. Alas, > > poor Wimpy. He shattered the nape nerve. > > Tim Romano > > > > At 04:41 PM 10/12/03, Daniel Pearlman wrote: > >>I wonder if Canto 2's Bacchus comes more out of Pound's vision of a virile > >>Christ, > >>as in "Ballad of the Goodly Fere," rather than in response to Prohibition. > > >__________ NOD32 1.533 (20031011) Information __________ > >This message was checked by NOD32 Antivirus System. >http://www.nod32.com