Imagism and Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Imagism and

Ezra Pound

IMAGISM

The Anglo-American Imagist movement developed in the prewar years (World War II) as a reaction against the subjective impressionism and decadent Romanticism of the Victorian era. The Imagists called for a new poetry to be distinguished by

Classical hardness and precision

Objectivity

Economy of language

Freedom of form

They were based in London, but there was also an American outlet in Harriet Monroes literary periodical Poetry: Magazine of Verse (initiated in Chicago, 1912). The March 1913 issue contained Pounds famous definition of the image: that which represents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. Here were also stated the principles of the new literary movement. The three tenets, as Pound called them, appeared under the name of F.S. Flint, although Pound later said that he, Richard Aldington, and Hilda Doolittle had agreed upon them as early as 1912. The tenets were:

I. Direct treatment of the thing, whether subjective of objective.

II. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.

III. To compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in that of the metronome.

The 1^st theoretician of Imagism was T.E. Hulme, who had studied philosophy at Cambridge and on the continent and was a casualty of World War I in 1917.

He attacked vagueness, high level abstraction, windy rhetoric and Victorian moralizing and advocated a return to concrete images.

Hulmes Poets Club began to meet in a London restaurant in the spring of 1908. Pound joined the group soon and published a volume called Ripostes in 1912.

- Des Imagistes is published. It is an anthology, whose editor is Ezra Pound, including ten poets. Among them there are Americans like: Hilda Doolittle, Amy Lowell, and William Carlos Williams.

Amy Lowell also issued anthologies entitled Some Imagist Poets, published successively in 1915, 1916, 1917. In the Preface to her 1915 anthology Amy Lowell included an Imagist manifesto consisting of six articles/poetic rules initiating the imagist poetry creed. Imagist poetry, according to this document, is supposed to:

Use the language of common speech, employing always the right word.

Create new rhythms (free verse is recommended) to express the individuality of the poet.

Have absolute freedom in the choice of the subject of the poem.

Present images, and not vague generalities.

Write hard and clear, not blurred and indefinite, poetry.

Use concentrated poetic expression.

Here is some criticism of three of Pounds famous poems:

Portrait dune Femme

A description of a woman who has lost her individuality and whose personality consists entirely if the ideas and attitudes she has acquired as a result of twenty years acquaintance with the London intelligentsia (lines 1-50.

A modern vignette depicting the emptiness and sterility of the life of a cultured woman, surrounded by an exotic assortment of objects of art (lines 1-3). Despite her acquisitions, often the fee of casual alliances with cultured lovers, the lady is without a sense of identity or fulfillment (lines 28-30).

The subject/theme anticipates Eliots Waste Land (1922) hollow men and women as human representations of a decadent meaningless age.

In a Station of the Metro

An excellent illustration of Pounds definition of the image, and adaptation of the haiku: short Japanese poetic form developed about the middle of the 17^th century. It consists of 17 syllables in three lines of five, seven and five syllables (the classical rhythm of Japanese poetry). A style of condensation, ellipsis, suggestion, image, and symbol.

Pounds understanding of the haiku was confined to the imagistic technique. The role played by the haiku in the formulation of his theories about Imagism may be perceived in this poem. In a description of his experience in the metro, he speaks of the loveliness of that sudden emotion and the later discovery of the expressionnot in speech but in sudden splotches of color. A perfect match for his definition of the image.

A Pact   (

An acknowledgement of American roots; the link with the American poetry tradition.

Whitman as the pioneer who conquered the Frontier of American poetry (It was you that broke the new wood), and himself as the representative of the new generation of American poets whose task was to refine, to deepen the American poetical achievement (Now is a time for carving).

Still he feels the need to draw his inspiration, the very life of his poetry, from Whitmans perennial genius; it is a necessary exchange involving conversation with tradition (last two lines).

The poem completes an illuminating essay he wrote on Whitman, entitled What I feel about Walt Whitman (1909).

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Pound published the poem when on the verge of leaving London. He declared that it was modeled partly on the technique of Henry James prose fiction: it presents its subject through the medium of a characters mind or voice, a center of consciousness whose mind and standards are also part of the subject being treated and are exposed themselves to scrutiny and assessment.

It is organized in two main parts.

VORTICISM

1914 Pound started finding Imagism too limiting. He turned to Vorticism (vortex: mass of water forming a vacuum at its center) established by Wyndham Lewis, British painter, novelist, and journalist (1882-1957) in 1914.

Vorticism was an avant-garde movement in British art drawing on futurism, cubism, and expressionism as a celebration of German aesthetics and the principles of energy, visual violence, and dynamism. It was represented by the journal Blast, edited by Lewis.

For Pound Vorticism meant energy and emotion expressed in pure form. The image was now defined as a radiant node or cluster; it is what I can, and must perforce, call a vortex, from which and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.