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Ezra Pound
circa 1909-1950

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound#/media/File:Ezra_Pound_by_Alvin_Langdon_Coburn,_1913.jpg

Missing section from the poem: Mauberley 1920

Terms | Life | Times | Class Discussion | Group Questions | Links | Pictures | Quotes from Critics

Terms to Know
cubism: Revolutionary, 20th-century art movement. It originated In c.1907 when Picasso and Braque began working together to develop ideas for changing the scope of painting. Abandoning traditional methods of creating pictures with one-point perspective, they built up three-dimensional images on the canvas using fragmented solids and volumes. In 1908, Braque held an exhibition of his new paintings that provoked the critic Louis Vauxcelles to describe them as bizarre arrangements of 'cubes'. The initial experimental, 'analytical', phase (1907-12), of which Picasso and Braque were the main exponents, was inspired mainly by African sculpture and the later works of Cezanne. They treated their subjects in muted grey and beige so as not to distract attention from the new concept. The 'synthetic' phase (1912-14) introduced much more colour and decoration and the techniques of collage and papiers colles were very popular. Cubism attracted many painters as well as sculptors. These included Leger, Robert Delaunay and Sonia Delaunay-Terk and Frantisek Kupka. The most important cubist sculptors (apart from Picasso) were Archipenko, Lipchitz and Ossip Zadkine. Although it was not an abstract idiom, cubism revolutionized artistic expression, and lent itself easily to adaptation and development. It is probably the most important single influence on 20th-century progressive art.

"cubism."  World Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Ocean County College.  16 March 2009 

modernism: A general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century, including Symbolism , Futurism , Expressionism , Imagism , Vorticism , Ultraismo , Dada , and Surrealism , along with the innovations of unaffiliated writers. Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader: the conventions of realism, for instance, were abandoned by Franz Kafka and other novelists, and by expressionist drama, while several poets rejected traditional metres in favour of free verse . Modernist writers tended to see themselves as an avant-garde disengaged from bourgeois values, and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles. In fiction, the accepted continuity of chronological development was upset by Joseph Conrad , Marcel Proust , and William Faulkner , while James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters' thoughts in their stream-of-consciousness styles. In poetry, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions . Luigi Pirandello and Bertolt Brecht opened up the theatre to new forms of abstraction in place of realist and naturalist representation.

Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, and often expresses a sense of urban cultural dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological theories. Its favoured techniques of juxtaposition and multiple point of view challenge the reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms. In English, its major landmarks are Joyce's Ulysses and Eliot's The Waste Land (both 1922 ). In Hispanic literature the term has a special sense: modernismo denotes the new style of poetry in Spanish from 1888 to c .1910 , strongly influenced by the French Symbolists and Parnassians and introduced by the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario and the Mexican poet Manuel Gutierrez Najera . For a fuller account, consult Peter Childs , Modernism (2nd edn, 2007 ).

"modernism."  The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online . Oxford University Press.  Ocean County College.  6 March 2009

Imagism: poetic movement of England and the United States, flourished from 1909 to 1917. Its credo, expressed in Some Imagist Poets (1915), included the use of the language of common speech, precision, the creation of new rhythms, absolute freedom in choice of subject matter, the evocation of images in hard, clear poetry, and concentration. Originating in the aesthetic philosophy of T. E. Hulme, the movement soon attracted Ezra Pound, who became the leader of a small group opposed to the romantic conception of poetry and inspired by Greek and Roman classics and by Chinese, Japanese, and modern French poets. In the U.S., the group was represented in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse by Pound, H. D., John Gould Fletcher, and Amy Lowell, and by such English poets as F. S. Flint, Richard Aldington, and D. H. Lawrence. Pound collected some of their work in Des Imagistes: An Anthology (1914), after which his interest began to wane; Amy Lowell then assumed active leadership, advocating that the group subscribe to a fixed program and hold together for at least three years. Under her guidance were published several anthologies, all entitled Some Imagist Poets.

"Imagism." The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature. James D. Hart. Oxford University Press, 1986. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Ocean County College. 10 March 2009

For a more thorough overview, see Scott Ashley "Imagism and American Poets"   The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature . Jay Parini. Oxford University Press 2004. Oxford Reference Online . Oxford University Press. 

stream of consciousness: The continuous flow of sense-perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind; or a literary method of representing such a blending of mental processes in fictional characters, usually in an unpunctuated or disjointed form of interior monologue . The term is often used as a synonym for interior monologue, but they can also be distinguished, in two ways. In the first (psychological) sense, the stream of consciousness is the subject-matter while interior monologue is the technique for presenting it; thus Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) is about the stream of consciousness, especially the connection between sense-impressions and memory, but it does not actually use interior monologue. In the second (literary) sense, stream of consciousness is a special style of interior monologue: while an interior monologue always presents a character's thoughts 'directly', without the apparent intervention of a summarizing and selecting narrator, it does not necessarily mingle them with impressions and perceptions, nor does it necessarily violate the norms of grammar, syntax, and logic; but the stream-of-consciousness technique also does one or both of these things. An important device of modernist fiction and its later imitators, the technique was pioneered by Dorothy Richardson in Pilgrimage (1915 - 35) and by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922), and further developed by Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1925) and William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury (1928). For a fuller account, consult Robert Humphrey, Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel (1968).

"stream of consciousness." The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 15 March 2009

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The Life
See the introduction in the textbook -- and pay attention to who he was associated with.

The Paris Review 1962 interview of Pound
Another in this excellent series.

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The Times
Much of Pound's poetry is referential. Two poems from other writers that are important to Pound's work are Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum est."

Additionally, to understand why Pound was so moved by WWI, view this photo essay on World War I. If link doesn't work, click here for PDF. 

And Now?

I'm fully behind Pound's caricature of modern life's emptiness and love of kinema over reality.

I'm also aware that a support/embrace of classical learning can be used to mask hatred and intolerance.  A (supposed) love of classical learning doesn't make a person good.

Two views here, one from a not so distant (and terrifying) past, the other from the (terrifying) present.

And from 2023:

Same year, here at home:

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Class Discussion
"To Whistler, American"
Like Pound, Whistler was an expatriate American.

• What's the "game"
• Why " Greece "
• What and why is "good to know"
• Why "Abe Lincoln"?

"A Pact"

• What is a pact?
• Who's Walt Whitman?
• Why a "grown child"?
• Who is a "pig-headed father"? Why?
• Why is Whitman "new wood" and why does the speaker of the poem want to carve it? What's the difference between wood and carving?
• Why "commerce"?

"In a Station of the Metro"

• What's an apparition? How many definitions are at play here?
• Who uses Metros? The wealthy?
• What time does this poem seem to take place? Morning? Night? Mid-day?

"The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter"

• What images of love are in this poem?
• What images of death?
• How much hope is there for the river merchant?

"Hugh Selwyn Mauberly"
Think of this work as a story/narrative of a poet's life as he grows increasingly aware that his current views are hollow and will not be appreciated. Note that even though the poem refers to an E. P. who is a poet, and even though the poem describes many aspects of Pound's life, the E. P. figure is a persona (Personae is the title of one of Pound's earlier poetry collections).

Fragmented poem.

"Ezra Pound's 1920 poem "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" is a landmark in the career of the great American modernist poet. In the poem, Pound uses two alter egos to discuss the first twelve years of his career, a period during which aesthetic and literary concerns fully engaged Pound's attention. The poem reconstructs literary London of the Edwardian period, recreating the dominant feeling about what literature should be and also describing Pound's own rebellious aesthetic beliefs. The poem also takes us to the catastrophe of the early twentieth century, World War I, and bluntly illustrates its effects on the literary world. The poem then proceeds to an "envoi," or a send-off, and then to five poems told through the eyes of a second alter ego.

In the first section of the poem, Pound portrays himself as "E. P.," a typical turn-of-the-century aesthete, and then in the second he becomes "Mauberley," an aesthete of a different kind. Both E. P. and Mauberley are facets of Pound's own character that, in a sense, the poem is meant to exorcise. After composing this poem, Pound left London for Paris and, soon after, for Italy , where his view of his role as a poet changed dramatically. No longer would his work be primarily concerned with aesthetics; after 1920, he started to concentrate on writing The Cantos and on studying politics and economics. "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" is not just Pound's farewell to London ; it is Pound's definitive good-bye to his earlier selves."

• Definitely cubist: how so?
• Poem often works by contrast -- an idealized version of art/life versus the reality
• How is this stream of conscious?
• Why "half savage" and "lilies from acorns"?
• What is he describing in sec. IV?
• What is the advice of Mr. Nixon? (and no, he's not that Nixon)
• What is an envoi?

"Overview: 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'." Poetry for Students . Ed. David M. Galens. Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center . Gale. OCEAN COUNTY COLLEGE. 15 Mar. 2009

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Group Questions

1. How does "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" echo the cubist and other modernist art movements?
2. Wendy Stallard Flory makes the following argument

In part two [Mauberley 1920] of the sequence he presents and decisively disowns Mauberley, the ineffectual, self-absorbed hedonist whom Pound intends to be the exaggerated projection of the kind of writer E.P. might have become had he kept to his purely aesthetic concerns. By creating this caricature, Pound was justifying his belief that a failure to make his poetry more socially conscious would be poetically self-destructive. Mauberley's energies ebb away" (Flory)

Look for quotes that prove this part -- especially the idea that Mauberley is an "ineffectual, self-absorbed hedonist" who needs to move away from "purely aesthetic concerns"

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Links
Ezra Pound
From Modern American Poetry -- a great general site for, well, Modern American Poetry

Ezra Pound reading
Page with several excerpts of Pound

Missing section from the poem -- Mauberley 1920

Critical Essay on "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" . Greg Barnhisel. Poetry for Students . Ed. David M. Galens.  Vol. 16.  Detroit: Gale, 2002.  From Literature Resource Center .
Fine overview on the poem -- helps you understand it, yet retains the mystery of the work.
If the link does not work, use the Library Link from the menu, go to Literature Resource Center, and search for the essay with the information included above.

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Pictures, Pictures, Pictures
Click to enlarge images

Modernist paintings

Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending Staircase 1912

Piet Mondrian Tableau I 1921

Pablo Picasso Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910

Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)

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Quotes from Critics

Pound

"Ezra Pound had a lot to say about the place of reading in the poet's life. In Guide to Kulchur he insisted that before attempting anything new, a writer needed to read not only in one's own literary tradition but also in the traditions of other cultures, so that one "might acquire some balance in not mistaking recurrence for innovation."8 On the need for intelligent literary comparison as a means . of thoughtful evaluation of new work, he resorted to that favorite of the Modernists, the scientific example: "You can't judge any chemical's action merely by putting it with more of itself. To know it, you have got to know its limits, both what it is and what it is not."9 He also said, in a letter to Marianne Moore, "The idea of civilization includes an occasional exchange of knowledge,"10 and, in ABC of Reading: "You would think that anyone wanting . to know about poetry would do one of two things or both. I.E., LOOK AT it or listen to it. He might even think about it?"11 And, as a final word on reading, here is Pound on the works he would include in his ideal literature textbook: YOU WILL NEVER KNOW either why I chose them, or why they were worth choosing, or why you approve or disapprove of my choice, until you go to the TEXTS, the originals.

And the quicker you go to the texts the less need there will be for your listening to me or to any other long-winded critic.12" American Poetry Review, The, Mar/Apr 2006 by Levin, Dana

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© David Bordelon 2009