[13] The funeral rite of escorting the dead body.
ANALYSIS
Here, I am going to talk about the different images of the poem, being pregnant with mystery, emptiness and unstillness to identify the purpose of the poet in revealing the emptiness of war and the false ideology created by the authorities to encourage people in attending wars by deceiving them that in the underworld glory is awaiting them.
The poem starts with ‘an image of Lethe.’ The image of Lethe embeds stillness and emptiness. The lines continue with more pictures to complete the image: the fields in the surrounding with faint golden light and grey cliffs. The very existence of faint golden light creates a mysterious atmosphere; something beneath, something glorious, or maybe of revolutionary nature. The gold light lies side by side with the grey color of the cliffs which more or less suggests quietness and stillness.
The next stanza portraits a never ceasing sea the unstillness of which is in contrasts with the stillness of Lethe and more in harmony with the gold light. In the lines coming, there is the moving of high forms which apparently refer to godlike figures, and suddenly the poem warns against “perilous aspect.” As a result, the two poles of mystery and dynamic are represented by the high forms and the warn. The movement of this dynamic aspect is quite perceivable: first there is only the gold light then the unstill sea and suddenly the warn. It moves on as a dead person in the underworld recognizes Actaeon—the famous Actaeon of golden greaves. He is dead and is entering the underworld; coming after him is the silent cortege moving over the “fair meadows and the cool face of that field.” It seems that the dynamic and mysterious aspect has given way to a vain silence aligning with the image of Lethe in the beginning.
In old days people were duped into attending wars by being promised a glorious world after death so the greaves of Actaeon is described as golden, the light as gold in the first stanza, the meadows as fair, and the fields as cool. The warriors should not forget that in the underworld; though not usually the place of gods, there is still present the traces of gods watching over the dear dead sons. The ironical nature of the golden greaves and the fair meadows is foreshadowed in the phrase “Perilous aspect,” which is in harmony with the emptiness of Lethe: wars always threaten to kill and after death, the dead people are washed of being forgotten in the minds of others, and they are not awarded but anything except by their bitter death. Personally, I believe the harshness of the sea as hard as granite also warns against this notorious black-as-granite lie of the false image of a glorious life after death. The poet has used the Greek mythological theme of the underworld, and a personage, Actaeon, to realize that this notion is ever present in human history. Quite interestingly, Pound did not choose a warrior figure but a hunter who is eventually hunted himself. The whole notion would also build the poet’s point of view towards war; that is, the people taking part in it are the hunted ones. No matter how drifted in time and place we are from the ancients, the theme is running smoothly all the way down still to the generations coming.
“The Coming of War: Actaeon” is another of Pound’s poem with a very organized image setting. The poem, following the theme of war, as mentioned above, like “The Return”, is also accompanied by mythological images which add even more to layers of the poem. The image system with setting forth Lethe in the first place suggests the emptiness of the underworld from the beginning and not surprisingly it ends with the silent cortege of dead people. The color gold, which exists side by side with the grey color, is used ironically and aids the poet in manipulating the two spheres of emptiness and an underlying mystery skillfully in order to create a negative image of war. However, as it is the manner of Pound, we can never come up with one absolute reading and other readings could be possible.
Maryam Akbari