Mike directs us to explore the central Dionysian section of Canto II, the meaning of the story & why EP wdve chosen this one over the many others in the Metamorphoses. Narrates:
The ship landed in Scios,
men wanting spring-water
. . . .
lynx-purr amid sea...
Presents a map of the Med., situating, as Pound, the tale in the real world. Then to a number of mentions of Dionysus throughout The Cantos, with the idea of Dionysus following Aphrodite.
A timeline:
Pound’s Canto, 1925.
Golding’s Translation, 1567.
Ovid’s Met., 8.
Euripide’s Bacchae, 406 BC.
Homeric Hymn No. 7, 7th c. BC with earlier oral history, translated from Greek to Latin by Gregorios Dartono of Crete, which Pound had bound into his Odyssey.
Dionysus is found across three Homeric Hymns, each with epiphany, each seeing a power structure low to high, paralleling Pound’s use: Eleusinian, bust thru from quotidien… and again, starting with uncertainty, of identity, to sureness. The epiphany in 7 accompanied by a series of sensations; this pattern persisting through Ovid, Golding, and Pound.
Located in the middle of the sea; a point of entry into the divine world; a place of boundaries between mundane and divine. We discuss the dolphins, as symbols of navigation between boundaries, water & air. That seen in Pound less, but in Ovid all the crew seem turned to dolphins. From Ben, in CXVI, Came Neptunus / his mind leaping / like dolphins, / The concepts the human mind has attained.
Dionysus, human & divine, ideal symbol of connection between temporal & permanent worlds.
The final line of the Homeric Hymn, “There’s no way one can forget you and still compose such sweet songs” ties in to the creative act of the deity & the mortal, & the bursting vegatation of the story.
Mike continues, that EP said the Metamorphoses were his religion, a sacred book, and guided his metaphysics & philosophy. Neoplatonism in light of the Metamorphoses.
Golding: many of his other translations were Christian, & he wrote how the Met. could be reconciled with Xtianity.
We read Golding, and Mike quotes Pound from The Spirit of Romance:
Ovid ushers in his gods, demigods, monsters and transformations. His mind, trained to the system of empire, demands the definite. The sceptical age hungers after the definite, after something it can pretend to believe. The marvellous thing is made plausible, the gods are humanised, the annals are written as if copied from a parish register; their heroes might’ve been acquaintances of the author’s father.
and from Guide to Kulchur:
A great treasure of verity exists for mankind… in the subject matter of Ovid’s long poem, and… only in this form could it be registered.
Mike perceives the rapidity of the passage heightening in each of the successive versions. That Pound pulls out the more physical lines, marking the reality of it. That Pound focuses on the human witness of the epiphany & the experience. But why this story, here?
Mike sees Pound’s economics, his Neoplatonism, his anti-materialism — the nous, the permanent world, the world of forms. “Natural abundance” cogent to Pound’s monetary theories. / Functions as a lesson on neglecting the divine, the misapplication of directio voluntatis. This lesson in Acoetes, etc., but also Helen, etc.
& the form of II to I, dovetailing off I. Mike shows a table of the characters, pointing out that Lycabs is a member of Odysseus’ crew, the only one to feature in Golding’s Ovid, and that Medon isn’t mentioned in Golding but is an elsewhere character in Homer; that Pound’s characters are Odyssean and not Ovidian (tho Lycabs intersectional).
The crew break away into discussions of form:
Ben highlights the excess of repetition in Pound’s Canto, that the musical and historical repetitions converge in the Dionysian current, the long poem also.
Tyler returns to II vs. I, as Kay Davis, from dromena to epopte, descent in I and the goddess Aphrodite of the underworld, the god Dionysus’s entry to the terrestrial in II; fem vs. masc., nous & sofia.
Louis on the sexuality of the canto, Eleusinian, but the return to the snipes, and the quietness of the canto’s close: the surge of metamorphosis as climax, followed by calmness. Counterpoint to the idea of the form of the canto as a rise; Pound’s eroticism is just as interested in the state of mind after the sexual act.
Mike regains the sails. Three forms of Dionysus in Athenean worshiping: Zagreus, Bromios, Iacchus. This god symbolic of metamorphosis, often linked with ressurection, twice-born, palangenesis, newness, the new god. & to wine, Lyaeus, loosener (from carry, anxiety), & abundance. Discussion of the chaotic / structure of the divine, the perfectability (-ability) in cyclical form, with reference to John Barleycorn. Dio. symbolised as youth depicts new growth, as opposed to the maturity of the harvest. + Protean, formlessness of shape!
Ben & Julius on the Urcantos, the Sordello as the original beginning. Function of this word ending Canto II, “And…”: Julius, wondering on relation to the ending of JJ’s Ulysses; or to the opening of Canto I / the advantage of the reworked 3 are that they reduce didacticism; that I..III perform as triptych with their devices “So that:”, “And…”; that I and II function as female/male roots for the whole poem; VIII ending “and…”
Anderson to Anne Carson’s “i wish i were two dogs then i could play with me” (provided by Mike as illumination on Dionysus), as gloss on Canto II, and in Carson Dionysus as a figure that ‘makes the world appear,’ conflation of Ovid & Dionysus! Tyler draws out “before the beginning” as creative energy prior to directio voluntatis; later toward structure, later to deconstruction by the same (cyclical) force.
We discuss the urgency, focus on detail, fragmentation, sculptural experience of II. & the delerium, the occasional image, the slowness of this metamorphosis (opposed to Canto IV’s one lined metamorphosis as she (Seremonda) falls from the tower / rises as a bird). Rapidity in the fragmentation, yet we spend a long time; some psychedelic experience.
All this with the Apollonian in mind, the Dionysian in the fingertips.
EO questions II as invocation of muse, under esoteric tradition of Eleusinian matriachal cult, further compared to Mesmerism (EP & R. Browning). ldb upon the paradise tier in the Salone dei Mesi, and the pad foot of lynxes. Mike supports the initiatory role of II with the reader’s. Tyler noting III as reach of the quotidien, having descended from the divine ruminations. Ben reminds us of Pound’s preparing the palette. Elijah highlights the use of these paints in Canto X, and/so that, the mythologising of S. Malatesta.
Elijah also on Canto XII, Baldy Bacon & the scales of justice; Pound’s disdain for those who cannot recognise the transcendent.
Pietro brings us Salve o Pontifex from ALS, in which Swinburne is called “High Priest of Iacchus,” thus their shared worship of one god, and Dionysus as a link between Pound’s belief in Christianity & Paganism.
Et c’est ça.