to Enter Arcanum : Gnosticism In Ezra Pound\u27s cantos

Despite the painstaking work of Pound scholars, the mythos of the Cantos has yet to be properly understood, because its occult sources have not been examined sufficiently. The occult here includes the body of speculative, heterodox religious thought which lies outside all religious doxologies--including Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Cabalism, and Theosophy. As well, occultism involves belief in gnosis or direct awareness of the Divine which can be attained through myesis or ritual initiation.;Drawing upon recently published material and unpublished Pound letters, the thesis traces Pound\u27s intimate engagement with specific occultists (Mead, Upward, and Orage) and their ideas, and argues that speculative occultism helped shade his aesthetic theories and poetry. Special attention is paid to Mead\u27s work on Gnosticism and its contribution to Pound\u27s extraordinary aesthetic and religious sensibility much noticed in Pound criticism.;The discussion falls into three sections. Chapter I sees the Cantos as palingenesis and argues that the poem should be read symbolically. Chapter II and III discuss the intense public interest at the time of Pound\u27s arrival in London. Chapter II also details Pound\u27s interest in particular occult movements and describes modern philosophical occultism. Then Chapter III establishes, first, that Pound\u27s contact with the occult began at least as early as his undergraduate years and that he came to London already primed on the occult, and second, that many of his London acquaintances were unquestionably occultists. They include Upward, Mead, Orage, Yeats, and Olivia and Dorothy Shakespear (Pound\u27s future mother-in-law and wife). The occultism of Upward and Mead was most congenial to Pound and was adopted in the Cantos. Chapters IV and V examine selected cantos (17, 23, 45-51, and 90-91) in light of Pound\u27s occult interests. Chapter IV outlines a triparite schema for the Cantos called katabasis/palingenesis/epopteia. It is argued that the Cantos are structured on the model of an initiation rather than a journey, but that the poem does not so much describe an initiation rite as enact one for the reader. The last chapter is an analysis of cantos 90 and 91. The emphasis is placed here on the spiritual drama enacted by the illuminated soul undergoing an initiation. The discussion of canto 90 reveals that it can be read palingenetically and a reading of canto 91 interprets that canto as an account of paradise as a higher plane of being in occult terms

Niera's prophecy

Niera's Prophecy is a novella-length fiction about jealousy, integrity and the acceptance of self. It is set in an arid land where the civilized live in walled city-kingdoms and the "uncivilized" live nomadically in the more inhospitable regions of the desert. Niera, the king's unrecognized daughter, suffers from her father's indifference and from envy of her half sister, Princess Meriope. When Niera becomes the apprentice of the court soothsayer, she believes she has finally found a way to distinguish herself. She soon discovers that being a soothsayer requires an impartiality and selflessness that are difficult to achieve. Her own prophetic sight is partial and incomplete, reflecting her inability to let go of her desires. When the court soothsayer is expelled from the palace, Niera finds herself in the position to make a judgement that will affect Meriope's future. Her actions lead to an unforeseen tragedy from which she gains an understanding of herself. Although Niera's Prophecy does not explicitly critique gender and class relationships, inequalities in both form the background of the story (e.g. the role of the female soothsayer in government, Meriope's bride price, women's mobility, Niera's view of the commoners, and the prejudice against the nomadic tribes

Alemtuzumab induction and tacrolimus monotherapy in pancreas transplantation: One- and two-year outcomes

BACKGROUND. Alemtuzumab (Campath-1H) induction with tacrolimus monotherapy has been shown to provide effective immunosuppression for kidney, liver, lung, and small bowel transplantation. This drug combination was evaluated in pancreas transplant recipients. METHODS. Sixty consecutive pancreas transplants (30 simultaneous pancreas-kidney, 20 pancreas after kidney, and 10 pancreas alone) were carried out under this protocol between July 2003 to January 2005. The mean follow-up was 22 months (range 17-33). RESULTS. One-year patient, pancreas, and kidney allograft survival were 95%, 93%, and 90%, respectively. With 22 months follow-up, patient, pancreas, and kidney survival were 94%, 89%, and 87%, respectively. The rejection rate was 30% (18/60), with four patients (7%) experiencing steroid-resistant rejection. Major infection occurred in three (5%) patients resulting in two (3.3%) deaths from disseminated histoplasmosis and a herpes virus infection. One patient with cryptococcal meningitis was successfully treated. Seven (11.7%) patients experienced cytomegalovirus infection, all of whom responded to treatment with ganciclovir. One (1.7%) case of polymorphic posttransplant lymphoproliferative disease was seen, which regressed with a temporary discontinuation of tacrolimus and high-dose ganciclovir. The mean serum creatinine of the 30 simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplants at one year posttransplant was 1.37±0.33 mg/ml. The preexisting creatinine in pancreas after kidney transplants was not adversely affected by this immunosuppressive protocol. CONCLUSION. A single dose of perioperative alemtuzumab followed by daily tacrolimus monotherapy provides effective immunosuppression for pancreas transplantation, but the optimal use of this drug combination is not yet clear. © 2006 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc

Psychometric properties of the parent-infant caregiving touch scale

Recent work in animals suggests that the extent of early tactile stimulation by parents of offspring is an important element in early caregiving. We evaluate the psychometric properties of a new parent-report measure designed to assess frequency of tactile stimulation across multiple caregiving domains in infancy. We describe the full item set of the Parent-Infant Caregiving Touch Scale (PICTS) and, using data from a UK longitudinal Child Health and Development Study, the response frequencies and factor structure and whether it was invariant over two time points in early development (5 and 9 weeks). When their infant was 9 weeks old, 838 mothers responded on the PICTS while a stratified subsample of 268 mothers completed PICTS at an earlier 5 week old assessment (229 responded on both occasions). Three PICTS factors were identified reflecting stroking, holding and affective communication. These were moderately to strongly correlated at each of the two time points of interest and were unrelated to, and therefore distinct from, a traditional measure of maternal sensitivity at 7-months. A wholly stable psychometry over 5 and 9-week assessments was not identified which suggests that behavior profiles differ slightly for younger and older infants. Tests of measurement invariance demonstrated that all three factors are characterized by full configural and metric invariance, as well as a moderate degree of evidence of scalar invariance for the stroking factor. We propose the PICTS as a valuable new measure of important aspects of caregiving in infancy

Burnt and Blossoming: Material Mysticism in Trilogy and Four Quartets

This paper brings two WWII poems into dialogue: H.D.'s Trilogy and Eliot's Four Quartets. Both poems express a creative response to the destruction of war. My reading of Trilogy suggests a material mysticism in which vision and renewal are situated within the natural world, rituals and bodily experience. Bringing this understanding of mysticism to bear on Four Quartets reveals tension between transcendence and materiality. For Eliot, redemption comes through time and location, while for H.D., redemption lies within material particularity. Four Quartets oscillates between an apophatic discourse that seeks to transcend desire and history and an emphasis on material particularities

Withdrawal of Immunosuppression in Pediatric Liver Transplant Recipients in Korea

Purpose: We identified pediatric liver transplant recipients with successful withdrawal of immunosuppression who developed tolerance in Korea. Materials and Methods: Among 105 pediatric patients who received liver transplantation and were treated with tacrolimus-based immunosuppressive regimens, we selected five (4.8%) patients who had very low tacrolimus trough levels. Four of them were noncompliant with their medication and one was weaned off of immunosuppression due to life threatening posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorder. We reviewed the medical records with regard to the relationship of the donor-recipients, patient characteristics and prognosis, including liver histology, and compared our data with previous reports. Results: Four patients received the liver transplantation from a parent donor and one patient from a cadaver donor. A trial of withdrawal of the immunosuppressant was started a median of 45 months after transplantation (range, 14 months to 60 months), and the period of follow up after weaning from the immunosuppressant was a median of 32 months (range, 14 months to 82 months). None of the five patients had rejection episodes after withdrawal of the immunosuppression; they maintained normal graft function for longer than 3 years (median, 38 months; range, 4 to 53 months). The histological findings of two grafts 64 and 32 months after weaning-off of the medication showed no evidence of chronic rejection. Conclusion: The favorable markers for successful withdrawal of immunosuppression were 1) long-term (> 3 years) stable graft function, 2) no rejection for longer than 1 year after withdrawal of immunosuppression

Acquired immunologic tolerance: with particular reference to transplantation

The first unequivocally successful bone marrow cell transplantation in humans was recorded in 1968 by the University of Minnesota team of Robert A. Good (Gatti et al. Lancet 2: 1366–1369, 1968). This achievement was a direct extension of mouse models of acquired immunologic tolerance that were established 15 years earlier. In contrast, organ (i.e. kidney) transplantation was accomplished precociously in humans (in 1959) before demonstrating its feasibility in any experimental model and in the absence of a defensible immunologic rationale. Due to the striking differences between the outcomes with the two kinds of procedure, the mechanisms of organ engraftment were long thought to differ from the leukocyte chimerism-associated ones of bone marrow transplantation. This and other concepts of alloengraftment and acquired tolerance have changed over time. Current concepts and their clinical implications can be understood and discussed best from the perspective provided by the life and times of Bob Good