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Man and the Natural World
Whenever Pound mentions the natural world in "Canto II," it seems to be for the purpose of showing us that nature doesn't really care all that much about the drama of human life. While the Trojan War is on the verge of beginning, the seagulls and snipes tend to go about their everyday routines, not minding one way or the other what happens to the Greeks and Trojans. On the other hand, the god Dionysius seems to have an intimate connection with nature. But more than anything else, nature seems to be a weapon he uses against those who would try to imprison him. In any case, Pound definitely doesn't show us a natural world like the one we find in the Garden of Eden. For him, nature is something that chugs along in a cycle of death and rebirth, and human actions don't mean much to it.
In "Canto II," Pound has one thing to say about nature, and that's that nature is completely indifferent to human suffering. Of course, nature doesn't care about his opinions, either…
In "Canto II," Pound shows us that our ideas of beauty have a direct basis in the natural world. In other words, our ideas about what's beautiful aren't cultural; they're hard-wired into our brains. The problem is that culture has warped us into forgetting what's naturally beautiful. Curse you, culture.
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