WEBVTT 00:12.140 --> 00:15.630 Professor Langdon Hammer: Last Wednesday, 00:15.627 --> 00:19.707 talking about the poetry of World War I, we were talking 00:19.708 --> 00:23.118 about poems written in the period 1914 to 1918, 00:23.121 --> 00:26.981 pretty much the period of the First World War. 00:26.980 --> 00:30.680 This is a period that we've already had a certain amount to 00:30.683 --> 00:34.033 say about. It is the period in which Frost 00:34.026 --> 00:37.676 starts writing, publishes A Boy's Will 00:37.684 --> 00:42.094 in London and then North of Boston in 1915. 00:42.090 --> 00:47.810 It's the same period in which Yeats's work undergoes its 00:47.812 --> 00:54.062 important stylistic shift in development in the volume called 00:54.055 --> 00:59.565 Responsibilities and other books from the teens 00:59.569 --> 01:04.459 exemplified in that little poem "A Coat." 01:04.459 --> 01:10.739 It is a period in which, in London itself, 01:10.736 --> 01:18.236 are gathered Frost, Yeats, Pound and Eliot – all 01:18.238 --> 01:27.728 poets we'll study – not simply gathered but interacting, 01:27.730 --> 01:31.290 talking to each other, reading each other's work and 01:31.288 --> 01:34.078 giving each other ideas and criticism. 01:34.080 --> 01:42.190 Another figure in this milieu and of this moment is the poet 01:42.194 --> 01:48.744 H.D. Here, she is in a photo from 01:48.737 --> 01:56.697 1915 with a locket in a poetical pose. 01:56.700 --> 02:02.390 Let's see, I've some other photos of the poet here. 02:02.390 --> 02:06.180 02:06.180 --> 02:07.670 Let's see. 02:07.670 --> 02:14.850 02:14.849 --> 02:24.029 This is as an older woman and in a familiar place, 02:24.033 --> 02:27.723 seated. She's on the left, 02:27.716 --> 02:32.926 well, on your left, my right, with her companion 02:32.930 --> 02:35.260 Brhyer right here. 02:35.259 --> 02:39.499 And that nice man in the middle is one of my predecessors in 02:39.504 --> 02:42.314 this position, Norman Holmes Pearson, 02:42.310 --> 02:47.770 a professor of modern poetry: one of the founders of American 02:47.772 --> 02:53.332 Studies at Yale and one of the people involved in the creation 02:53.326 --> 02:58.516 of the incredible archive of modern poetry in the Beinecke 02:58.515 --> 03:03.725 Library, where we have the papers of 03:03.725 --> 03:08.885 Ezra Pound; H.D.; lots of materials from Williams; 03:08.890 --> 03:16.440 03:16.440 --> 03:21.870 Langston Hughes; and many other figures. 03:21.870 --> 03:27.210 Let's see, there she is on her seventieth birthday in the nave 03:27.214 --> 03:29.934 of Sterling Memorial Library. 03:29.930 --> 03:34.590 Well, and this is over in the Beinecke, too. 03:34.590 --> 03:36.170 That is her death mask. 03:36.169 --> 03:40.339 Well, we've gone a long way from that young woman with the 03:40.338 --> 03:42.018 locket to this point. 03:42.020 --> 03:45.430 Let's return to her in her youth. 03:45.430 --> 03:49.420 This is also over in the Beinecke. 03:49.419 --> 03:54.849 It's a photo of H.D., and it is inscribed, 03:54.854 --> 04:01.884 "To Marianne Moore," her friend and Pound's friend. 04:01.879 --> 04:07.299 On your handout, you'll see the interesting 04:07.297 --> 04:12.197 anecdote relayed from Hilda Doolittle's 04:12.198 --> 04:18.428 Autobiographies: I had never heard of 04:18.430 --> 04:24.780 vers libre until I was discovered by Ezra Pound. 04:24.779 --> 04:30.109 [Pound did a lot for modern poetry, including naming H.D.] 04:30.112 --> 04:34.792 I did a few poems that I don't think Ezra liked, 04:34.790 --> 04:38.920 but later he was beautiful about my first authentic verses 04:38.919 --> 04:42.179 and sent my poems in for me to Miss Monroe. 04:42.180 --> 04:46.680 [That is Harriet Monroe, the editor, a very powerful 04:46.682 --> 04:49.602 woman, of Poetry magazine.] 04:49.595 --> 04:53.475 He signed them for me, "H.D., Imagiste." 04:53.480 --> 04:54.700 The name seems to have stuck somehow. 04:54.701 --> 04:55.991 [H.D., Autobiographies] 04:55.990 --> 05:00.440 Well, this is a wonderful anecdote, sometimes told 05:00.444 --> 05:03.634 differently, in which Pound and H.D. 05:03.626 --> 05:08.896 – as she would come to be known – were conversing about 05:08.899 --> 05:11.899 her poems in a coffee shop. 05:11.899 --> 05:19.299 And Pound put at the end of H.D.'s poems a new signature to 05:19.299 --> 05:26.949 them ("H.D.," that is) and at the same time named the kind of 05:26.954 --> 05:32.444 poet she was ("Imagiste") and promptly, 05:32.439 --> 05:35.759 since Pound is a great entrepreneur, 05:35.757 --> 05:40.307 sent the poems off to be published and to found a 05:40.307 --> 05:46.167 movement. It's an interesting and telling 05:46.165 --> 05:50.065 story. I suppose if--This was 05:50.071 --> 05:56.971 Poetry magazine, its cover, where you see poems 05:56.965 --> 06:04.245 by Pound and others that included H.D.'s work in the same 06:04.249 --> 06:08.499 volume. There are a couple of things to 06:08.498 --> 06:11.618 be said about this little anecdote. 06:11.620 --> 06:15.160 First of all, there's the kind of complicated 06:15.163 --> 06:19.513 literary exchange of a man telling a woman what to call 06:19.513 --> 06:21.673 herself, and, in fact, 06:21.671 --> 06:26.621 doing it for her and sending it, her name and her work, 06:26.619 --> 06:33.619 to be published. The name "Imagiste" is funny. 06:33.620 --> 06:37.740 It seems to, well, it seems to evoke 06:37.736 --> 06:43.496 something excitingly and pretentiously foreign. 06:43.500 --> 06:49.470 And you could remember the force of French painting in this 06:49.473 --> 06:52.373 period. You know, everything that was 06:52.371 --> 06:54.751 modern came from Paris, it seemed. 06:54.750 --> 07:00.530 And here is Pound trying to, in effect, create something, 07:00.530 --> 07:06.930 some similar kind of public relations excitement for poetry. 07:06.930 --> 07:11.340 "Imagiste" highlights, well, it highlights the word 07:11.344 --> 07:16.824 "image," and it highlights the visual, as if poetry were a kind 07:16.817 --> 07:20.227 of painting. That's important. 07:20.230 --> 07:26.640 And then there's the fact of Hilda Doolittle's transformation 07:26.644 --> 07:30.374 into H.D. I don't know. 07:30.370 --> 07:34.230 Is the name Hilda Doolittle insufficiently poetic? 07:34.230 --> 07:42.800 The compression of that kind of wonderfully homely American name 07:42.801 --> 07:47.701 into the enigmatic initials "H.D." 07:47.699 --> 07:53.639 seems emblematic of Imagist aesthetics in general, 07:53.642 --> 08:00.682 which depend on the radical compression of language and the 08:00.676 --> 08:06.956 conversion of, well, the prosaic and everyday 08:06.959 --> 08:09.419 to the essential. 08:09.420 --> 08:16.320 And you could say that here Pound is trying to do something 08:16.319 --> 08:23.219 with the same ideal of extreme economy with H.D.'s name. 08:23.220 --> 08:26.880 What was Imagism? 08:26.879 --> 08:32.899 This is a, well, these are copies of H.D.'s 08:32.898 --> 08:39.778 poems as they appeared in Poetry magazine, 08:39.777 --> 08:44.647 the poem "Hermes of the Ways." 08:44.649 --> 08:48.439 H.D. was – and there's her 08:48.435 --> 08:54.875 initials right here, this new pen name she went 08:54.884 --> 09:01.294 under – she is writing, even in this very early phase, 09:01.293 --> 09:05.743 poems that have classical subjects and antecedents and are 09:05.744 --> 09:09.434 sometimes, in fact, translations from 09:09.427 --> 09:15.067 classical sources from the Greek anthology and others. 09:15.070 --> 09:17.910 Here is one, "Epigram," after the Greek, 09:17.913 --> 09:22.073 and then here's H.D.'s name followed by the "Imagiste," 09:22.070 --> 09:27.480 in quotation marks, identification that Pound has 09:27.475 --> 09:30.055 introduced. Imagism was, 09:30.062 --> 09:35.862 initially, marketed – I think that's the fair word to use – 09:35.860 --> 09:40.910 in a series of anthologies that collected this new, 09:40.909 --> 09:46.699 exciting, representatively, it seemed, modern poetry in an 09:46.702 --> 09:51.072 anthology called Des Imagistes--again 09:51.072 --> 09:55.592 French-ified. And then, you can see this is 09:55.588 --> 10:00.778 from 1914, and it's published in London and New York. 10:00.779 --> 10:03.799 And then, well, I'll tell you its table of 10:03.799 --> 10:08.049 contents. It's got poems by H.D.'s friend 10:08.051 --> 10:13.491 and lover, also a soldier poet, Richard Aldington, 10:13.490 --> 10:15.380 H.D. herself, F.S. 10:15.377 --> 10:19.927 Flint and others, including Amy Lowell and 10:19.928 --> 10:23.368 William Carlos Williams. 10:23.370 --> 10:27.980 James Joyce appears here, and Ezra Pound, 10:27.979 --> 10:34.779 who here has at least a couple of poems that you've read for 10:34.777 --> 10:38.477 today. This was followed a little bit 10:38.475 --> 10:42.965 later by this book called Some Imagist Poets in 10:42.971 --> 10:45.381 1915. At this point, 10:45.376 --> 10:50.556 Pound is no longer the master entrepreneur, 10:50.556 --> 10:57.216 and the movement has rather been taken over by the very 10:57.216 --> 11:04.986 amply represented Amy Lowell who has become the primary exponent 11:04.986 --> 11:09.176 of Imagism already by 1915. 11:09.179 --> 11:14.859 And Pound has more or less despaired of his own creation, 11:14.864 --> 11:21.064 Imagism, and now complains of it as being merely "Amygism," as 11:21.056 --> 11:23.286 he referred to it. 11:23.289 --> 11:28.919 Amy, well, you can see in this a kind of, oh you know, 11:28.924 --> 11:33.074 envy and competition on Pound's part. 11:33.070 --> 11:37.870 He's unhappy that his little group has been taken over by Amy 11:37.865 --> 11:42.975 Lowell, and so he doesn't want to have anything to do with it. 11:42.980 --> 11:47.390 Amy Lowell herself would later become distressed at the 11:47.388 --> 11:51.548 proliferation of Imagism and Imagists and attempt to 11:51.552 --> 11:56.132 copyright the name, which she was unable to do. 11:56.129 --> 12:01.649 Well, this was her longest statement of poetics, 12:01.646 --> 12:08.566 presented as a preface to that volume, and I recommend it to 12:08.571 --> 12:13.171 you. It's an interesting statement 12:13.166 --> 12:16.956 of Imagism. And here's a photo of Pound 12:16.955 --> 12:18.805 from the same period. 12:18.809 --> 12:23.929 Pound, despite Amy Lowell's taking over of Imagism, 12:23.927 --> 12:29.347 remains the real theorist of Imagism and the one whose 12:29.352 --> 12:35.292 formulations we still return to in order to understand what 12:35.288 --> 12:38.848 Imagism was and, to an extent, 12:38.853 --> 12:44.313 to understand some of the essential aesthetic ideas and 12:44.309 --> 12:47.239 criteria of modern poetry. 12:47.240 --> 12:52.160 On our handout, you have Pound's rules – he 12:52.156 --> 12:58.186 liked to make rules – for writing an Imagist poem. 12:58.190 --> 13:05.530 Happily, there are just three of them, not too many: 13:05.529 --> 13:12.669 (1) Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective 13:12.666 --> 13:17.086 or objective. (2) To use absolutely no word 13:17.091 --> 13:21.191 that did not contribute to the presentation. 13:21.190 --> 13:27.270 [We can see even in his telegraphic rules here he's 13:27.268 --> 13:30.428 trying to be economical. 13:30.429 --> 13:32.659 And:] (3) As regarding rhythm: 13:32.657 --> 13:36.037 to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, 13:36.037 --> 13:39.337 not in sequence of the metronome. 13:39.340 --> 13:45.650 Well, these are each suggestive and, as I say, 13:45.647 --> 13:51.377 important ideas. And they're worth dwelling on 13:51.382 --> 13:57.362 to understand some of what directs Pound's thinking and 13:57.364 --> 14:02.904 some of Pound's important influence early on in the 14:02.903 --> 14:06.673 development of modern poetry. 14:06.669 --> 14:10.899 First of all, that focus on the "thing." 14:10.899 --> 14:16.079 A poem is imagined here as an image of a thing. 14:16.080 --> 14:21.140 There's a kind of empiricism in this, isn't there? 14:21.139 --> 14:25.339 A kind of vaguely scientific language. 14:25.340 --> 14:28.910 And if you look in Pound's retrospect, when he goes back 14:28.911 --> 14:33.071 and reprints some of his writing about Imagism and reflects on it 14:33.068 --> 14:36.638 in that essay that's in the back of your anthology, 14:36.639 --> 14:42.399 you'll see Pound talking about his wish to ally poetry with 14:42.396 --> 14:45.966 science rather than advertisement. 14:45.970 --> 14:52.400 And here you can see him really trying to do so in this stress 14:52.404 --> 14:56.944 on objectivity or the aim or objectivity. 14:56.940 --> 15:01.990 Notice that the "thing" may be, as he says, "subjective or 15:01.988 --> 15:06.258 objective." But when we call it a "thing," 15:06.256 --> 15:11.866 this has the effect of turning even the subjective into 15:11.865 --> 15:17.055 something objective, something oddly objective. 15:17.059 --> 15:19.609 And there's also, in that first rule, 15:19.612 --> 15:22.592 a kind of emphasis on directness, you know, 15:22.589 --> 15:24.999 direct treatment of the thing. 15:25.000 --> 15:27.050 That's important. 15:27.049 --> 15:32.139 All this leads to, in Pound's second principle 15:32.138 --> 15:37.338 there, the idea of concision, of efficiency. 15:37.340 --> 15:42.130 Nothing that does "not contribute to the presentation": 15:42.127 --> 15:46.467 you know, "Hilda Doolittle, your name is too long; 15:46.472 --> 15:50.262 H.D." "Presentation"; 15:50.259 --> 15:53.919 Pound doesn't say "representation." 15:53.920 --> 15:56.730 He says, "presentation." 15:56.730 --> 16:02.900 Again, there's an emphasis on immediacy, directness, 16:02.902 --> 16:07.262 an ideal of presence, if you will. 16:07.259 --> 16:12.299 There is, in Pound, a will to override or do away 16:12.295 --> 16:15.965 with mediation, to bypass, in a way, 16:15.966 --> 16:19.336 the medium; to make the word a thing; 16:19.340 --> 16:23.290 to make the word an image and the image a thing. 16:23.289 --> 16:29.619 "Direct" also implies a kind of stripping down of rhetorical 16:29.623 --> 16:34.613 ornament – the idea, again, that we saw in Frost 16:34.611 --> 16:40.061 that the truth is something you arrive at through reduction, 16:40.059 --> 16:45.179 or in Yeats's little poem "A Coat." 16:45.179 --> 16:51.299 And remember that Yeats and Frost are coming to these ideas 16:51.296 --> 16:57.726 at just the same time that Pound is finding these formulations 16:57.729 --> 17:00.259 for his own poetics. 17:00.259 --> 17:05.359 These ideas in Frost, in Stevens--excuse me, 17:05.363 --> 17:10.113 in Frost, in Yeats – not in Stevens, 17:10.109 --> 17:15.259 importantly – and here centrally expressed by Pound, 17:15.257 --> 17:21.277 these ideas all point to a kind of radical skepticism in modern 17:21.279 --> 17:26.329 poetry towards imagination and towards rhetoric. 17:26.329 --> 17:32.079 There's a skepticism about poetry's own illusion-making 17:32.081 --> 17:35.341 powers. There's a kind of linguistic 17:35.336 --> 17:41.676 skepticism here. And good poetry has a kind of 17:41.679 --> 17:51.749 ascetic dimension for Pound, or so it seems at this point. 17:51.750 --> 17:56.090 Finally, that third point about prosody, that's important too: 17:56.091 --> 18:00.431 what Pounds calls the kind of priority of "the musical phrase" 18:00.432 --> 18:03.352 over "the sequence of the metronome," 18:03.349 --> 18:09.459 the musical phrase over a kind of bigger and regularized 18:09.459 --> 18:13.859 pattern. That's a kind of privileging of 18:13.861 --> 18:20.231 the part, the smaller thing over the whole and certainly over 18:20.233 --> 18:24.043 repetition. It's a privileging of 18:24.042 --> 18:28.912 individual detail over pattern or sequence. 18:28.910 --> 18:34.060 It's a privileging of this idea of the musical phrase over the 18:34.063 --> 18:37.953 abstract, or a kind of continuous structure, 18:37.950 --> 18:43.570 which is viewed as a kind of mechanical discipline. 18:43.569 --> 18:47.859 All of these ideas are rehearsed, again, 18:47.863 --> 18:52.493 by Amy Lowell, and given sometimes somewhat 18:52.487 --> 18:55.017 different emphases. 18:55.020 --> 18:58.680 And you can compare her account. 18:58.680 --> 19:08.500 Well, let's look at some of H.D.'s poems to see Imagism at 19:08.499 --> 19:16.939 work, as it were, at least as practiced by H.D. 19:16.940 --> 19:22.110 19:22.109 --> 19:27.589 A number of the early poems here in your anthology come from 19:27.585 --> 19:33.025 her book, Sea Garden, a wonderful and fascinating 19:33.025 --> 19:38.925 first book that imagines the poems themselves as constituting 19:38.926 --> 19:44.576 together a kind of, well, sea garden – a kind of 19:44.577 --> 19:51.547 enclosed space – that offers reflection on symbolic objects 19:51.552 --> 19:58.762 that suggest a kind of allegory of poetic activity for H.D. 19:58.759 --> 20:04.089 in which flowers stand for kind of poems, certainly kinds of 20:04.087 --> 20:06.957 feeling. And the garden itself 20:06.963 --> 20:12.513 constitutes a certain kind of pastoral, imaginative space. 20:12.509 --> 20:15.849 And H.D. has classical sources for this, 20:15.852 --> 20:17.912 Greek models for this. 20:17.910 --> 20:22.770 And the crucial poet for her is Sappho. 20:22.769 --> 20:25.909 And like Sappho, H.D. 20:25.908 --> 20:31.398 is a lyric poet of sexual desire. 20:31.400 --> 20:41.020 You can see her translation of Sappho's fragment 68 on page 20:41.015 --> 20:46.015 389. Let's look at the poem "Garden" 20:46.020 --> 20:53.910 on page 396, which gives a sense of H.D.'s aesthetic--ascetic, 20:53.913 --> 20:56.633 aesthetic program. 20:56.630 --> 21:00.270 21:00.269 --> 21:06.169 Here, there's an address to the rose, the traditional symbol of 21:06.171 --> 21:09.221 romantic beauty: I You are clear 21:09.220 --> 21:15.160 O rose, cut in rock, hard as the descent of hail. 21:15.160 --> 21:19.750 I could scrape the colour from the petals 21:19.750 --> 21:22.770 like spilt dye from a rock. 21:22.770 --> 21:27.260 If I could break you I could break a tree. 21:27.260 --> 21:32.260 If I could stir I could break a tree-- 21:32.260 --> 21:38.750 I could break you. II O wind, rend open the heat, 21:38.750 --> 21:41.950 cut apart the heat, rend it to tatters. 21:41.950 --> 21:45.660 Fruit cannot drop through this thick air-- 21:45.660 --> 21:49.760 fruit cannot fall into heat that presses up and blunts 21:49.760 --> 21:53.420 the points of pears and rounds the grapes. 21:53.420 --> 21:56.120 Cut the heat-- plow through it, 21:56.120 --> 22:01.090 turning it on either side of your path. 22:01.089 --> 22:07.009 The rose, image of romantic beauty: you could compare it to 22:07.009 --> 22:10.479 the rose in Yeats's early poems. 22:10.480 --> 22:13.400 But here the image is transformed. 22:13.400 --> 22:19.250 H.D.'s emphasis is not on its softness or sweetness or sensual 22:19.250 --> 22:23.470 abundance, its richness of color or touch. 22:23.470 --> 22:29.060 Instead, the rose is "clear" and "hard," just as an Imagist 22:29.060 --> 22:31.470 poem is supposed to be. 22:31.470 --> 22:33.390 It is cut in rock. 22:33.390 --> 22:38.510 You could compare it to "Sea Rose" on page 395, 22:38.513 --> 22:42.553 the page before: Rose, harsh rose, 22:42.550 --> 22:47.570 marred with stint of petals, meager flower, thin, 22:47.569 --> 22:49.819 sparse of leaf, [where again, 22:49.822 --> 22:53.202 it seems H.D. is writing about her poem and 22:53.201 --> 22:55.441 its properties] … 22:55.440 --> 22:58.950 Stunted, with small leaf, you are flung on the sand, 22:58.950 --> 22:59.970 you are lifted in the crisp sand 22:59.970 --> 23:01.770 that drives in the wind. 23:01.770 --> 23:06.510 Can the spice-rose drip such acrid fragrance 23:06.510 --> 23:12.280 hardened in a leaf?" This is a poetry that wishes to 23:12.277 --> 23:18.687 convey to us an acrid fragrance in hardened forms. 23:18.690 --> 23:28.400 In "Garden," too, H.D. 23:28.400 --> 23:33.800 is interested in a kind of experience that is harsh or 23:33.795 --> 23:39.595 astringent, that would open itself to elemental forces – 23:39.597 --> 23:45.397 here represented by the wind – forces that suggest human 23:45.400 --> 23:53.170 passion as much as weather, and that would transform the 23:53.170 --> 24:03.090 poet's torpor and heat and do so specifically through the action 24:03.094 --> 24:07.344 of cutting, which is important. 24:07.339 --> 24:13.369 Here, and really in all these early poems, H.D.'s poems take 24:13.373 --> 24:17.873 place as a kind of lyric drama of apostrophe: 24:17.872 --> 24:21.532 that is, the act of address through 24:21.525 --> 24:27.305 which a speaker finds her voice by speaking in some relation to 24:27.310 --> 24:32.060 a part of the object world; speaking to a thing, 24:32.057 --> 24:37.317 which she identifies with or struggles against or both, 24:37.316 --> 24:41.796 as is the case, I think, in the poems I've just 24:41.796 --> 24:46.036 read. Here, too, you could see these 24:46.042 --> 24:50.412 images in H.D.'s poems as, in some sense, 24:50.405 --> 24:55.635 things "subjective or objective," to take Pound's 24:55.641 --> 24:59.211 phrase. The extreme compression of 24:59.210 --> 25:03.730 these poems expresses a kind of wish for intensity, 25:03.730 --> 25:09.560 as if by compacting things you made them more fierce--sometimes 25:09.564 --> 25:14.714 a wish for breaking or cutting, and, you might say, 25:14.713 --> 25:20.523 fragmenting of things to get down to essential parts; 25:20.519 --> 25:27.879 to do away with the, let's say, lassitude of mere 25:27.882 --> 25:33.402 rhetoric; and to cut to what is essential. 25:33.400 --> 25:45.260 Well, "Oread" is maybe H.D.'s most famous poem from her early 25:45.263 --> 25:56.933 work and a poem often presented as a paradigm of Imagism. 25:56.930 --> 26:05.080 If so, it makes us see Imagism in somewhat different terms from 26:05.083 --> 26:08.243 those Pound presented. 26:08.240 --> 26:11.790 It is, like the other poems I've just been discussing, 26:11.786 --> 26:15.596 a kind of dramatic monologue, which was not something that 26:15.599 --> 26:17.539 Pound's ideas emphasized. 26:17.539 --> 26:23.549 Here "Oread" is the name for a wood nymph, and it indicates the 26:23.548 --> 26:28.768 speaker of the poem who says: Whirl up, sea-- 26:28.770 --> 26:34.450 Whirl your pointed pines, Splash your great pines 26:34.450 --> 26:38.400 On our rocks, Hurl your green over us, 26:38.400 --> 26:43.800 Cover us with your pools of fir. 26:43.799 --> 26:48.979 Again, there's a kind of lyric act of apostrophe, 26:48.978 --> 26:54.588 of address, where what is implored would be a kind of 26:54.589 --> 26:57.609 overwhelming experience. 26:57.610 --> 27:02.520 Who or what exactly is Oread? 27:02.520 --> 27:05.660 Is this nymph addressing? 27:05.660 --> 27:10.210 It's hard to say. 27:10.210 --> 27:13.580 Is she speaking, in fact, to the sea as she 27:13.577 --> 27:16.587 seems to be? "Whirl up, sea--… / splash 27:16.588 --> 27:18.408 your great pines over us." 27:18.410 --> 27:23.990 Or is she speaking to the woods and the pines as if they were 27:23.990 --> 27:28.070 the sea? It's hard to decide. 27:28.069 --> 27:38.129 It is a poem that presents a kind of enigma on that level and 27:38.130 --> 27:45.340 doesn't resolve the question it provokes. 27:45.339 --> 27:50.579 The very brevity of the poem expresses a kind of wish for 27:50.582 --> 27:56.202 intensity that is right on the edge of canceling the poem, 27:56.200 --> 28:01.510 you could say, leaving us nothing there at 28:01.512 --> 28:04.332 all. A speaker, in this case, 28:04.325 --> 28:08.905 who wishes to be covered up, to be subject to a greater 28:08.906 --> 28:12.936 force. And the poem leaves us with 28:12.943 --> 28:19.253 this cognitive problem, the difficulty of identifying 28:19.248 --> 28:25.428 what is figure or ground, what is literal or what is 28:25.432 --> 28:29.762 metaphor. That is, whether she is 28:29.759 --> 28:35.819 speaking to sea or pines, seeing the sea like pines or 28:35.817 --> 28:38.787 the pines like the sea. 28:38.789 --> 28:48.049 "The Pool" is another enigmatic poem here, one that poses 28:48.046 --> 28:53.436 questions. Well, this problem that "Oread" 28:53.440 --> 28:58.280 raises is, in fact, one that you see in other 28:58.279 --> 29:03.229 Imagist poems, the question of what is literal 29:03.230 --> 29:06.310 and what is figurative. 29:06.309 --> 29:12.959 Pound, again, theorizes this--the effects 29:12.955 --> 29:17.935 that I'm trying to describe. 29:17.940 --> 29:26.820 In the middle quotation on your handout, he speaks of the idea 29:26.817 --> 29:31.617 of instantaneity or suddenness. 29:31.619 --> 29:36.209 He talks about the poem as constituting a "complex" of 29:36.207 --> 29:40.877 elements held together, made in some sense simultaneous 29:40.882 --> 29:44.742 with one another; rather, you know, 29:44.741 --> 29:51.951 as "Oread" holds sea and pines together in a way that asks us 29:51.946 --> 29:56.146 to see these elements as joined. 29:56.150 --> 29:59.540 Pound says: An "Image" is that which 29:59.542 --> 30:04.212 presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant 30:04.209 --> 30:08.039 of time. [And when he uses that word 30:08.037 --> 30:12.967 "complex," it has, perhaps, certain resonances 30:12.965 --> 30:19.275 from psychoanalysis and also, perhaps, from chemistry.] 30:19.280 --> 30:25.690 It is the presentation of such a "complex" instantaneously 30:25.687 --> 30:30.967 which gives that sense of sudden liberation; 30:30.970 --> 30:35.640 that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; 30:35.640 --> 30:39.790 that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the 30:39.787 --> 30:42.857 presence of the greatest works of art. 30:42.859 --> 30:46.689 [And then he says (one of my favorite quotations):] 30:46.688 --> 30:50.818 It is better to present one image in a lifetime than to 30:50.824 --> 30:55.424 produce voluminous works [Pound, "A Few Donts by an Imagist," 30:55.418 --> 31:00.368 Poetry] You could see "Oread" as a poem 31:00.365 --> 31:05.695 wishing for and seeking that "sense of sudden liberation" 31:05.704 --> 31:08.664 that Pound talks about here. 31:08.660 --> 31:14.090 It's important, again, that Pound emphasizes 31:14.086 --> 31:18.706 presentation. It is the presentation rather 31:18.709 --> 31:24.639 than the representation of such a complex, as he describes it. 31:24.640 --> 31:28.030 How is presentation different from representation? 31:28.029 --> 31:35.119 For Pound, the literary image is not a memory of a prior 31:35.117 --> 31:40.027 reality, a reflection; but is rather something more 31:40.029 --> 31:41.979 like a new experience itself. 31:41.980 --> 31:47.940 Not an imitation of a thing, but itself a kind of thing. 31:47.940 --> 31:52.070 Again, in Pound, as Pound thinks about these 31:52.065 --> 31:57.145 things, there's a drive specifically through technique 31:57.150 --> 32:02.620 to arrive at a kind of transparency beyond technique. 32:02.619 --> 32:07.839 This is also, it should be emphasized, 32:07.844 --> 32:10.814 a Romantic project. 32:10.809 --> 32:15.179 The image gives a kind of epiphany, a visionary 32:15.182 --> 32:18.892 experience, for both poet and reader; 32:18.890 --> 32:26.210 gives us sudden liberation from historical particularities of 32:26.210 --> 32:28.650 place and of time. 32:28.650 --> 32:37.500 Let's look at Pound's own poem "In a Station of the Metro," 32:37.503 --> 32:46.203 which is on page 351 as an important test case and example 32:46.204 --> 32:49.414 for this poetics. 32:49.410 --> 32:57.670 32:57.670 --> 33:05.060 It has the honor of being the shortest famous poem in modern 33:05.062 --> 33:10.142 poetry. You can memorize it. 33:10.140 --> 33:16.060 "In a Station of the Metro" and wonderfully, when I've said the 33:16.055 --> 33:20.535 title I've already said a third of the poem: 33:20.539 --> 33:23.259 The apparition of these faces in the crowd; 33:23.259 --> 33:28.439 Petals on a wet, black bough. 33:28.440 --> 33:32.920 "In a Station of the Metro." 33:32.920 --> 33:39.480 "The apparition of these faces in the crowd," semicolon, 33:39.482 --> 33:43.422 "petals on a wet, black bough." 33:43.420 --> 33:45.150 Not many elements. 33:45.150 --> 33:48.530 The title--how does it function? 33:48.529 --> 33:52.539 It functions as a kind of locator. 33:52.540 --> 33:54.730 It places us somewhere. 33:54.730 --> 33:59.290 It places us specifically in the Paris underground, 33:59.287 --> 34:01.837 in a station of the metro. 34:01.839 --> 34:08.969 As I said, that title really is, well, you could understand 34:08.968 --> 34:16.588 it as standing outside the poem or really as a part of the poem 34:16.588 --> 34:19.598 itself. Lines one and two, 34:19.597 --> 34:24.657 again, pose for us this question of, "what is the figure 34:24.662 --> 34:26.782 and what is ground?" 34:26.780 --> 34:31.840 What is being observed and what is the metaphor it is 34:31.835 --> 34:35.155 generating? Are we, in fact; 34:35.159 --> 34:42.949 is Pound observing faces and comparing them to petals on a 34:42.952 --> 34:45.552 wet, black bough? 34:45.550 --> 34:51.210 Is he seeing both those things in some sense? 34:51.210 --> 34:57.410 We have here two elements joined and compressed, 34:57.407 --> 35:02.367 radically. Probably, it's wrong to speak 35:02.369 --> 35:06.559 here of metaphor or, for that matter, 35:06.564 --> 35:10.814 simile. But rather, we can use the word 35:10.806 --> 35:13.586 that Pound uses, "image," or, 35:13.586 --> 35:19.136 as he would later call it, "ideogram," borrowing from his 35:19.144 --> 35:22.424 ideas about Chinese writing. 35:22.420 --> 35:28.160 The key to this poem, as to other Poundian poems, 35:28.164 --> 35:32.124 is syntax. Syntax is the temporal ordering 35:32.119 --> 35:36.509 of language, the ordering of a sentence's unfolding and 35:36.508 --> 35:40.568 consequently the definition of its elements and the 35:40.571 --> 35:43.011 relationships among them. 35:43.010 --> 35:48.280 Pound has here a kind of abbreviated parataxis, 35:48.275 --> 35:51.705 that is, a syntax of series. 35:51.710 --> 35:56.380 Here, only two elements are in that series. 35:56.380 --> 36:00.410 The series is joined by an "and," usually. 36:00.410 --> 36:02.820 But here there is no "and." 36:02.820 --> 36:08.000 Here, the syntax is compressed in the service of rendering what 36:08.002 --> 36:11.922 is, in effect, a new kind of perception: 36:11.924 --> 36:16.894 a perception that is modern, urban, of the crowd, 36:16.886 --> 36:21.676 momentary; but also, as Pound conceives 36:21.680 --> 36:26.360 it, timeless, pointing us allusively to 36:26.363 --> 36:30.803 historical and cultural overlays. 36:30.800 --> 36:35.850 We're in Paris, but this literary form draws on 36:35.851 --> 36:42.221 Japanese verse models and Japanese pictorial aesthetics. 36:42.219 --> 36:46.199 The time is now, the present, 36:46.197 --> 36:51.147 "these faces." This is self-consciously an 36:51.147 --> 36:57.197 image or picture of modernity, but it's also the picture of an 36:57.197 --> 37:03.047 underground that inevitably recalls the classical underworld 37:03.048 --> 37:08.998 and so also recalls the long poetic history of comparing dead 37:08.998 --> 37:14.428 souls to leaves, which you find in Homer, 37:14.430 --> 37:17.450 Virgil, Dante, Milton. 37:17.449 --> 37:23.779 Here, it's as if an epic simile from one of those great poems 37:23.777 --> 37:30.207 had been taken out and presented to us in fragmentary form. 37:30.210 --> 37:32.940 All of this, this kind of rich, 37:32.936 --> 37:37.026 allusive overlay, is created through a kind of 37:37.026 --> 37:42.566 stripping down to the poem's essential, primary elements. 37:42.570 --> 37:47.650 Pound gives us the story of the poem's composition here, 37:47.653 --> 37:52.653 which, whether it's true or not, is an important poetic 37:52.645 --> 37:56.245 fable that stands behind this poem. 37:56.250 --> 37:58.180 He says: Three years ago [in your 37:58.177 --> 37:59.937 footnote] in Paris, I got out of a 37:59.935 --> 38:03.365 'metro' train at La Concorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful 38:03.373 --> 38:06.783 face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful 38:06.779 --> 38:09.589 child's face, and then another beautiful 38:09.594 --> 38:11.844 woman, [you know, a whole series] 38:11.838 --> 38:15.698 and I tried all that day to find words for what this had 38:15.697 --> 38:18.437 meant to me, and I could not find any words 38:18.441 --> 38:21.131 that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden 38:21.131 --> 38:23.121 emotion. [Again, suddenness.] 38:23.116 --> 38:26.656 And that evening… I was still trying and I found, 38:26.657 --> 38:29.697 suddenly, [another experience of suddenness] 38:29.703 --> 38:32.683 the expression. I do not mean that I found 38:32.679 --> 38:35.679 words, but there came an equation… not in speech, 38:35.679 --> 38:38.079 but in little splotches of colour…. 38:38.079 --> 38:42.209 The 'one-image poem' is a form of a super-position, 38:42.205 --> 38:45.835 that is to say, it is one idea getting out of 38:45.836 --> 38:50.866 the impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion. 38:50.869 --> 38:53.659 I wrote a 30-line poem and destroyed it…. 38:53.659 --> 38:56.499 Six months later I made a poem half that length; 38:56.500 --> 38:59.970 a year later I made the following hokku-like 38:59.974 --> 39:02.064 [haiku-like] sentence. 39:02.059 --> 39:08.779 So there, interestingly, this poem that purports to 39:08.784 --> 39:14.664 present – and "present," again, is the right word rather 39:14.660 --> 39:18.610 than "represent" – a moment of intense, vivid spontaneous 39:18.608 --> 39:22.028 emotion is arrived at, as Pound describes it, 39:22.028 --> 39:25.308 through laborious technique and overtime. 39:25.309 --> 39:30.109 And that technique is concentrated specifically on 39:30.113 --> 39:32.053 what? Compression, 39:32.045 --> 39:36.505 cutting things down and eliminating words. 39:36.510 --> 39:43.440 Again, as in Frost's "Mowing," the truth is something you get 39:43.438 --> 39:48.748 down to by cutting away rhetorical ornament. 39:48.750 --> 39:54.100 Pound takes Japanese and Chinese poetries as models for 39:54.100 --> 39:57.370 this aesthetics of compression. 39:57.369 --> 40:02.159 And it's worth stressing that on the one hand Pound is 40:02.155 --> 40:07.655 polemically writing in protest against late nineteenth-century 40:07.664 --> 40:12.544 drawing rooms that are crowded with bric-a-brac and the 40:12.540 --> 40:17.790 ornamental aestheticism of, well, of a poet such as 40:17.792 --> 40:21.252 Swinburne or even the early Yeats. 40:21.250 --> 40:26.020 And yet, Pound's taste for Japanese and Chinese art comes 40:26.023 --> 40:29.863 right out of Victorian decadence and--well, 40:29.860 --> 40:34.550 you can see this yourselves if you look at the paintings of 40:34.547 --> 40:36.807 James Whistler and others. 40:36.809 --> 40:42.899 Pound is a polemical modernist artist who is also really, 40:42.899 --> 40:48.009 as he looks right here, a Victorian decadent. 40:48.010 --> 40:55.910 For Pound, compression in Japanese and Chinese poems means 40:55.909 --> 40:59.769 implication. And that's what he's really 40:59.765 --> 41:01.605 interested in getting at. 41:01.610 --> 41:06.170 In your RIS handout, you'll see his translation of 41:06.167 --> 41:11.467 Li Po's "Jewel Stairs' Grievance," as Pound renders it. 41:11.470 --> 41:17.040 In Pound's handling, he says: The jewelled steps are 41:17.038 --> 41:20.868 already quite white with dew, [Again, this is a dramatic 41:20.865 --> 41:23.645 monologue] It is so late that the dew 41:23.650 --> 41:27.770 soaks my gauze stockings, And I let down the crystal 41:27.770 --> 41:31.300 curtain And watch the moon through the 41:31.304 --> 41:35.164 clear autumn. And then Pound, 41:35.164 --> 41:40.804 ever the teacher, in his poems as elsewhere, 41:40.797 --> 41:46.297 says in his presentation of this poem: 41:46.300 --> 41:50.360 Note.--Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. 41:50.360 --> 41:54.130 Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. 41:54.130 --> 41:57.280 Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady [is 41:57.280 --> 42:01.330 doing the complaining], not a servant who complains. 42:01.329 --> 42:04.619 Clear autumn, therefore, he [he for whom she 42:04.616 --> 42:07.896 was waiting] has no excuse on account of the 42:07.902 --> 42:10.752 weather. Also she has come early, 42:10.749 --> 42:14.449 for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, 42:14.448 --> 42:16.618 but soaks her stockings. 42:16.619 --> 42:21.049 The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct 42:21.049 --> 42:25.049 reproach. Here, as Pound unfolds it for 42:25.048 --> 42:30.778 us, does his explaining for us, the human situation is inferred 42:30.776 --> 42:35.576 from the scene because it is so exactly rendered. 42:35.579 --> 42:39.539 And the power of sentiment is felt, not through its direct 42:39.541 --> 42:43.921 expression but rather through a kind of deliberate restraint, 42:43.920 --> 42:47.000 "The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct 42:47.002 --> 42:49.192 reproach." Narrative here, 42:49.188 --> 42:54.348 in this poem as in other instances of Pound's work, 42:54.352 --> 43:00.412 is displaced by the pictorial, or you might say is not so much 43:00.412 --> 43:02.982 displaced as condensed in it. 43:02.980 --> 43:08.090 All that matters of the story of a lover's grief can be told 43:08.093 --> 43:12.143 in a quatrain. Well, I'm going to finish in 43:12.135 --> 43:16.395 just a moment, but I want to suggest a further 43:16.403 --> 43:22.003 dimension to this aesthetic that I'm trying to describe. 43:22.000 --> 43:27.470 In other translations from the Chinese, Pound – who didn't 43:27.471 --> 43:31.461 know Chinese, and I'll say a little bit more 43:31.459 --> 43:37.209 about that next time – builds a kind of layered narrative out 43:37.209 --> 43:41.289 of discrete images and finds a way to, 43:41.289 --> 43:47.739 in a sense, not simply create a poetry of radical compression, 43:47.739 --> 43:53.339 but rather a poetry that expands out of this Imagistic 43:53.342 --> 43:56.352 basis. The "River Merchant's Wife: 43:56.347 --> 44:00.317 A Letter" on page 352 is an example, and it's one of the 44:00.315 --> 44:03.485 really great love poems of modern poetry. 44:03.489 --> 44:07.759 Like the "Jewel Stairs' Grievance," it is a dramatic 44:07.760 --> 44:13.120 monologue for a female speaker, but these are different poems. 44:13.119 --> 44:17.869 By the end of this one, the wife speaks very directly, 44:17.866 --> 44:22.066 not in reproach but in self-knowledge and pained 44:22.074 --> 44:25.484 desire. The leaves fall early 44:25.478 --> 44:27.448 this autumn, in wind. 44:27.449 --> 44:31.439 The paired butterflies are already yellow with August 44:31.440 --> 44:33.810 Over the grass in the West garden; 44:33.810 --> 44:38.120 They hurt me. I grow older. 44:38.119 --> 44:42.209 If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang, 44:42.210 --> 44:46.630 Please let me know beforehand, And I will come out to meet you 44:46.630 --> 44:52.160 As far as Cho-fu-Sa. Of the paired yellow 44:52.162 --> 44:57.242 butterflies, the wife says with sublime simplicity, 44:57.242 --> 45:01.482 "They hurt me. / I grow older." 45:01.480 --> 45:05.560 It's possible to forget that the speaker who says this is 45:05.557 --> 45:07.447 sixteen, not thirty-six. 45:07.450 --> 45:10.520 But her age makes no difference. 45:10.519 --> 45:14.939 She is already grasping – as you too will have – through, 45:14.938 --> 45:18.178 in this case, the pain of her separation from 45:18.178 --> 45:22.668 her husband that the essential experience of living in time is 45:22.670 --> 45:25.510 loss. With this recognition, 45:25.514 --> 45:31.164 Pound's poem reaches out of the confines of its Imagism toward 45:31.157 --> 45:33.467 something much larger. 45:33.469 --> 45:37.999 And at the same time, you see him carrying forward 45:37.999 --> 45:40.309 the Imagist's "don'ts." 45:40.309 --> 45:43.959 This poem is a direct treatment of feeling. 45:43.960 --> 45:47.480 It uses absolutely no word that does not contribute to the 45:47.480 --> 45:49.830 presentation, and it is composed in the 45:49.828 --> 46:00.298 sequence of the musical phrase, not that of the metronome, 46:00.299 --> 46:14.999 with those dramatically varying line lengths.