LIT 3101

ImagismLIT 31011OverviewOriginsAesthetic programmeCharacteristicsExamples2OriginsPoets Club / School of Images1909TE Hulme, Edward Storer, FW Tancred, FS Flint1912: Pounds Ripostes including complete works of Hulme1913: Flints article in Poetry1914: First anthologyDevelopmentThe Egoist, May 1915 Flints History of ImagismSense of disgust at 19th c. poetry. Pound:a rather blurry, messy sort of period, a rather sentimentalistic, mannerish sort of period.Saw contemporary verse as affected by Victorian legacy

Egoist: Imagism numberPound, Literary Essays, p.11, quoted by Dettmar, K., Introduction to Rereading the New: A Backward Glance at Modernism, ed. By Kevin Dettmar (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1992, p.9)

4French SymbolistsBaudelaire, Mallarm:Concentration on immediate experienceFree verseConvey impressions through suggestion

But connection between symbolists and imagists is vague see Wallace Martin, PMLA Vol. 85, No. 2, Mar., 1970 5PoundThe common verse in Britain from 1890 was a horrible agglomerate composta doughy mess of third-hand Keats, Wordsworth, Heaven knows what, fourth-hand Elizabethan sonority, blunted, half-melted, lumpy(Jones, Imagist Poetry, p.14)SwinburneAsk nothing more of me, sweet; All I can give you I give. Heart of my heart, were it more, More would be laid at your feet Love that should help you to live, Song that should spur you to soar.

All things were nothing to give, Once to have sense of you more, Touch you and taste of you, sweet, Think you and breathe you and live, Swept of your wings as they soar, Trodden by chance of your feet.

I that have love and no more Give you but love of you, sweet. He that hath more, let him give; He that hath wings, let him soar; Mine is the heart at your feet Here, that must love you to live.

7Romanticism and ClassicismHulme: "I object even to the best of the Romantics. I object still more to the receptive attitude. I object to the sloppiness which doesn't consider that a poem is a poem unless it is moaning or whining about something or other." Romanticism and Classicism in Faulkner, P., (ed.) The English Modernist Reader 1910-1930, (London: Batsford, 1986) p.47Instead-The great aim is accurate, precise and definite description. the concentrated state of mind, the grip over oneself which is necessary in the acrtual expression of what one sees. To prevent one falling into the conventional curves of ingrained technique key features: precision and concentrationFrom Hulmes article Romanticism and Classicism Quoted in Faulkner, P., A Modernist Reader (London: Batsford, 1986) pp 50-519Flint (1913)1. Direct treatment of the thing, whether subjective or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: To compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. (presented by Flint as from an imagiste)From Flints article in Poetry, March 191310Pounds A Few DontsAn Image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.... It is the presentation of such a complex instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art. A Few DontsUse no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something. ... go in fear of abstractions. Don't retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths.SoIntellectual origins of imagism lie in Hulmes essays and Pounds pronouncementsImagists aimed at clear, concentrated representation of experienceFor the concrete as opposed to the abstract13How do these ideas translate?Crucial influence of Japanese ideas: haikuEastern influence very prevalent: Japanese admirer had written to Amy Lowell of the pleasure he had taken in the descriptive power of her verse evocations of JapanHaiku-like poemsFlint specifies pure vers libre and Japanese forms as the basis of the new concentration on the image.Aldington argues against the intellectualist poetry of our time and cites in contrast many Japanese poems that are almost unalloyed sense impressions.From Aldingtons introduction to The Complete Poems of Richard Aldington. (London: Wingate, 1948)See http://themargins.net/bib/B/BB/bb13.html15Aldington: ImagesIIThe blue smoke leapsLike swirling clouds of birds vanishing.So my love leaps forth toward you,Vanishes and is renewed.IIIA rose-yellow moon in a pale skyWhen the sunset is faint vermilionIn the mist among the tree-boughsArt thou to me, my beloved. T.E. Hulme: ImagesOld houses were scaffolding onceand workmen whistlingHulme: Above the DockAbove the quiet dock in midnight,Tangled in the tall mast's corded height,Hangs the moon. What seemed so far awayIs but a child's balloon, forgotten after play.

Close readingOne image - compare Pounds StationBut quite regular- rhymes, syllable countMoon - associations? Romantic?Reduction of superfluous verbiageSeeking out the luminous detail (Pound, in The New Age X (7 Dec 1911) p.130Hulme, The EmbankmentOnce, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.Now see IThat warmths the very stuff of poesy.Oh, God, make smallThe old star-eaten blanket of the sky,That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.ReadingAttacks the usual Romantic tropes- think about the usual connotations of sky and heavensAs in Above the Dock, the universe is brought back to earthHeavens are reduced to a blanket- this also discards the religious notions traditionally associated with the skyIronic juxtaposition of physical need and the metaphysical Romantic associations of the starsKey features of Imagist poetryBrevityConcentration on the image, not as decoration, but as the very essence of an intuitive language (Hulme)Free verse formHaiku-like economy of language

May Sinclairs viewFor all poets, old and new, the poetic act is a sacramental act with its rubric and ritual. The Victorian poets are Protestant. For them the bread and wine are symbols of Reality, the body and blood. [] The Imagists are Catholic; they believe in Trans-subtantiation.For them the bread and wine are the body and the blood. They are given. The thing is done.Two Notes in The Egoist II, 5.1 (1 June 1915, p.89)23Was there a legacy?Arguably, imagism:Established vitality of free verseShifted the focus of English poetryBroadened the scope of the poetic subjectInfluenced the work of e.g. Eliot and JoyceThe Legacy?Flint: There are at least three stupid things about Imagisme: the word itself is stupid; the tables of the law of Imagisme laid down by Mr Poundare stupid; and the crowning stupidity of all is Mr Pounds beliefthat his was the dynamism that created both the the law and the works exemplifying the law which he managed to publish, in 1914, in a book called ungrammatically, and with the silly title of Des Imagistes(in Press, A Map of Modern English Verse, p.45)PoundImagism was a point on the curve of my development. Some people remained at that point. I moved on.Hughes, G. (1931) Imagism and the Imagists p.3826