CHAPTER IVIm a g is m i n P ra c t ic e

IMAGISM IN PRACTICE

In the previous chapter an attempt has been made to examine the

moving philosophy behind the Imagist movement in the writing of poetry

and the role taken by Ezra Pound in the formulation of the concepts and

techniques of this movement. In that examination a comprehensive enquiry

was made to see how far the poets involved in the movement, particularly

Ezra Pound, tried to explore the poetic potentials of Images and Language in

the writing of a new kind of poetry in the twentieth century. In this chapter

ten of the best Imagist poems of Ezra Pound will be taken up and subjected

to a critical assessment to see how and to what extent Ezra Pound suceeded

in writing the kind of poetry that he wanted to write in his age. The poems

that have been taken up for analysis are, 'The Tree', 'Acopia', 'The Return',

'Tenzone', 'The Garden', 'Les Millwin', 'Liu Ch'e', 'In a Station of The Metro',

'Fan-Piece for Her Imperial Lord', and 'Papyrus'.

137

THE TREE

I STOOD still and was a tree amid the wood,Knowing the truth of things unseen before ;Of Daphne and the laurel bough

And that God feasting couple old.The grew elm-oak amid the wold.‘I was not until the gods had been Kindly entreated, and been brought within Onto the hearth of their heart’s home,That they might do this wonder thing ;Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood And many a new thing understood That was rank folly to my head before

I Collected Early Poems, 19261

The first poem to be examined is 'The Tree' which was one the earliest

poems of Pound. This poem has stood first in the many collections of his

poems that Pound published after 1908. The poem which has been regarded

as one of the early successful poems of Ezra Pound, was written before

Pound's Imagist period, but the technique of presenting intense emotional

states and upsurges in the form of verbal pictures and inviting the attention

of the readers to a psychic and emotional experience has shown a definite

movement towards Imagism. In this poem Pound has tried to explore the

intimate relationships of the natural objects as adequate symbols for human

emotions and other internal experiences. In this connection it will be proper

to remember that the use of myths of metamorphoses as correlatives to subtle

138

human emotions and feelings is a favourite technique of the Imagists. Pound

was deeply involved in such intellectual exercises into various myths and

cultures. In this respect, the present poem can be read along with other

poems of Pound like, 'La Fraisne', 'Masks', 'Piere Vidal Old', 'A Girl', 'Dance

Figure', 'Constellations of Heaven', and some parts of the 'Hugh Selwyn

Mauberley' and the 'Cantos', in which the myth of metamorphoses has been

used as an important pivot of the poetic structure. Pound himself in his Spirit

of Romance expressed the view that the Greek myth originated, 'when

someone having passed through delightful psychic experience, tried to

communicate it to others and found it necessary to screen himself from

persecution'.1

'The Tree' has poetically embodied this theory of myth. The story in

the Metamorphosis of Ovid has been recollected and creatively used by

Pound in tis poem. In that mythological story Apollo tried in vain to seduce

Daphne, a chaste and beautiful nymph, who was the daughter of the river

God Penieus. When she refused to submit to Apollo he attempted to ravish

her, but she fled. Appolo chased and overtook her and when the poor girl

felt the eager arms of the God around her, she called on the venerable Gaea

(Mother Earth) to help her. Immediately the earth gaped opened, Daphne

disappeared, and in her place a laurel tree sprang up from the ground.

Ezra Pound, Spirit o f Romance. Quoted in Christine Froula, A Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Poems (NewYork : New Directions, 1983) p.22.

139

Apollo made the plant sacred to him.2 This myth has been used by Andrew

Marvell in his poem The Garden' :

The gods, that mortal beauty chase,Still in a tree did end their race :Apollo hunted Daphne so,Only that she might laurel grow :

[The Garden]

According to Marvell the myth has been invented by the poets because

Laurel is the emblem of poetry, and Apollo, the God of poetry. Pound on the

other hand has claimed that by virtue of his own transformation into a tree,

he could visualize the myth.

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,Knowing the truth of things unseen before.

There is also a reference to another story of Ovid's Metamorphoses in the

poem. In Ovid's story, an old couple, Philemon anf Baucis earned their

immortality together by their kindness to the weary travellers while the

travellers were Mercury and Jove in disguise.

And that god-feasting couple old That grew elm-oak amid the wold ‘T was not until the gods had been kindly entreated, and been brought wither Unto the hearth of their heart’s home.

Robert Graves, The Greek Myths : v o l.] (1955 rpt; Harmondsworth : Pcmguin Books Ltd.. 1977) p.7X.

140

Thus we find two kinds of transformations in the poem. One is the

transformation of Daphne and the old couple while the other is Pound's own

transformation. Pound distinguishes and confronts these two kinds of

transformations. By changing himself into a tree, the poet is enable to see the

gods changing human life into perpetual forms of organic life. Such

metamorphoses of percieved natural objects is Pound's favorite way of

building up 'image complexes' in his Imagist poems. His imagination is

extraordinarily volatile and equally his capacity to distinguish imaginative

modes extremely acute. In this respect Pound bears comparison with Robert

Browning. Michael Alexander has said:

The coda of the poem is a staged gesture from Browning;

but the dramatic persona who speaks the beginging is

near to its maker's heart's home.3

He is also of the view that Pound was as conscious as that of Milton's

'Lycidas' or Marvell's in 'The Garden', when Pound made Daphne making

her famous bow here ; she was never to be far away from Pound's

imagination.

However, Thomas H. Jackson is of the opinion that the poem is a direct

soot from Yeats' poem 'He Thinks of His Past Greatness' :4

3 Michael Alexander. The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p .21.

4 J 10ma^ o , JaCkc°n’ m Eady P° e,ry °f E z m Pound' A b r i d g e , Massachusettes : Harvard University Press. 1968) p. 151.

141

I have drunk ale from the country of the young And weep because I know all things now :I have been a hazel tree and they hung

The pilot star and the Crooked Plough Among my leaves in times out of mind:

[The Wind Among the ReedsJ

In spite of Pound's successful emulation of Yeats in the treatment of

symbolism Pound's poem remains too abstract. 'The Tree of Pound is

different from the original poem of Yeats in two fundamental respects. First,

Yeats is more concrete in his portrayal of the tree symbol and it has no

apparent connection with the myth of metamorphoses ; and it is an ordinary

tree which has leaves. It is worth mentioning here, that W.B. Yeats has also

used the tree as one of his most favourite symbols indicating old age. But

Pound's poem is a general statement of an event. The transformation of

Daphne into a laurel tree and that of Bauci and Philemon, whom Zeus

rewarded for their kindness by changing them into two intertwining trees

upon their death are the incidents Pound wanted to emphasize in the poem.

So the tree of Pound is more of an image in the line of Imagist poetics.

However, -the phenomenon of metamorphoses is not convincingly

demonstrated by Pound in both the cases of Daphne and the old couple.

Perhaps that may be the reason why Jackson says that the Tree could almost

have been written by Yeats trying to write like someone else.6 Secondly, the

5 W .B . Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds, 1899.

6 Thomas H. Jackson, The Early Poetry o f Ezra Pound, p. 152.

142

technique of 'The Tree' approaches 'the direct treatment of the Thing'. Ft is

simple, precise and the implications can be extended to encompass a larger

perspective of human emotions.* Besides the Greek mythology, it also

corresponds to the Hindu mythology. The imprisonment of human souls into

trees as a result of a divine curse and the consequent redemption by another

supernatural interference are the stories frequently found in the Upanishads.

But in the Hindu mythology their transformations into trees are never

■regarded as rewards as in Ovid's Metamorphoses. And, God descending on

earth and changing into human form as seen by Pound through his own

transformation also strikes a similar note in the Hindu concept of Avatara

(incarnation). Thus the poem explores a very vast realm of the psychology of

the readers by providing 'Luminous details' to the consciousness.

Pound, at this stage asserts that he has seen god ; he takes the

Metamorphosis seriously enough and wishes to explain how his experience

differs from Ovid's. This can be known from one of his essays on 'Arnold

Dolmetsch'. Pound started the essay with the sentance 'I have seen the god

(sic) Pan and it was in this manner' and narreted his experience in the forest

where he came across the God.

It was only when men began to distrust the myths and

to tell nasty lies about the Gods for a moral purpose that

these matters became hopelessly confused. Then some

unpleasing Semite or Parsee or Syrian began to use

143

myths for social propaganda, when the myth was

degraded into an allegory or a fable, and that was the

beginning of the end. And the Gods no longer walked in

men's gardens. The first myth arosed when a man

walked sheer into 'nonsense', that is to say, when some

very vivid and undeniable adventure befell him, and he

told someone else who called him a liar. Thereupon, after

bitter experience, perceiving that no one could

understand what he meant when he said that he 'turned

into a tree' he made a myth — a work of art that is — an

impersonal or objective story woven out of his own

emotion, as the nearest equation that he was capable of

putting into words.

'The Tree' embodies this theory of myth. The speaker walks 'sheer into

nonsense' and suddenly understands the myth. According to Christine

Froula Pound has sensed that vital, almost sexual, sympathy bewteen divine,

human and natural forms. He makes himself the indicator of such sympathy.

It is worth mentioning here that Animisim and Pantheism of this sort was

very common during the ninteenth century England. Victorians believed in

fairies, Edwardians in Fauns. It is reported that, even Lawrence and Foster

saw caperings among the flora , Foster with a frisson and Lawrence

without anxiety as to whether it was "rank folly to anyone's head".8 But

Pound said :

1 Ezra Pound, Literary Essays, ed. T.S. Eliot, p.431.

8 M icheal Alexander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p. 21.

144

That was rank lolly to my head before.

With reference to this Michael Alexander has commented that 'Rank folly'

betrays the date of The Tree', as clearly as growth-ring.9 However the tree as

an image is quite familiar. The imaginative identification with a natural thing

leads to illumination, an illumination expressed in fantacy. One tree

perceived the rapt poet is a girl, another pair of trees has grown together, and

dreamer now understands the stories of Metamorphosis in Ovid. But the

juxtaposition of these images to form another compact and whole image

requires a skillful handling of language: When Jackson had said that Pound

has diluted Yeats' poem his observation was mainly concerned with the

language from the point of view of traditional poetry of the nineteenth

century. He also gave a hint of Rossetti in Pound's language from the sixth

line to the end of the poem. But he did not examine Pound's exploration of

language as an image. Michael Alexander has also commented :

The language of The Tree' is indeed dusty, the mode a

little musty, yet it is a charming poem. It is a slight

enough gesture, but well made, and an appropriate

gesture to welcome guests to Pound's world.10

But Pound's world of iconoclasm as we find in the Blast period has

not yet arrived. That is why Micheal Alexander continued :

Michael Alexander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p.21.

Michael Alexander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p.21.

145

The diction is archaic, though not consistently so ; if

words are old-fashioned, their combinations are

picturesque, as in 'god-feasting' and 'elm-oak'.11

Moreover, it is pertinent to mention here that the rhythmic and syntactic

confidence, with which these conventional materials are handled, raises them

into something very definite. Moreover, the emphasis given in the first line is

dramatic. Once detected the theme of the poem will arouse interest to any

reader who can understand the significance of the pivot, which is the myth of

Metamorphosis. Old English words such as 'wold' (Wood) may conceal to

some extent the poem's charm, as well as what may be called its thought. Xet

the poem runs from beginning to end as a single utterance, in a sense a

unified single Image,

Later on, Pound dismissed the poem along with other early poems as

'Stale Creampuffs'.

" Michael Alexander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p.22.

146

Acopia

BE in me as the eternal moods of the bleak wind, and not

As transient things are — gaiety of flowers.

Have me in the strong loneliness of sunless cliffs

And of grey waters.Let the gods speak softly of us

In days hereafter,The shadowy flowers of Orcus

Remember thee.

[Selected Poems, 1926]

'Doria' is a poem first appeared in the Ripostes of 1912. It was also

included in the collection of Des Imagistes published in March, 1914. In this

first Imagist anthology, there was no preface or introduction to explain the

new techniques of Imagism. Moreover the title of the poem, given in Greek,

seemed to be too precious and cryptic.

As observed by F.S. Flint, this is one of the three best poems in the

volume of Ripostes (the other two being 'Apparuit' and The Return'), 'they

stand, I think, as Mr. Pound's finest work'.12 But he did not explain why

'Doria' is considered as one of the finest poems of Ezra Pound, except that it

translates pure emotion perfectly. 'In it he has attained a skill in handling

words that is astonishing to those who understand' wrote Flint, and also

F.S. Flint, review. Poetry and Drama, March, 1913. Eric Homburger, ed.. The Critical Heritage, (London Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1972) p.96.

147

commented that 'from the Personae to the Ripostes, there is evidence of a

determination towards a mastery of his medium'. And this is related to

Pound's belief in a principle that runs throughout his early poetry and

underlies even the Cantos. Apart from being absorbed in the Imagist

technique of a perfection in style and diction, Pound here, expresses his belief

that the poetic power apprehends a transcendent flow of spirit, or energy, or

divine power and he calls it 'the gods'. 'His poetic imagination attempts to

live in an animate universe', says Louis L. Martz, in the introduction to the

Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound, 'where things of nature and beyond

nature can be merged with inner man'.14

The Dorians were one of the ancient Greek peoples living in Sparta

and Crete. And it was from the dialect of their language that the Greek choral

lyric appeared. In course of time, they evolved a culture that valued

discipline, simplicity, and strength. It gave birth to the rich and glorious

tradition and the remarkable cultural heritage of Sparta, which is marked by

valour and straightforwardness. Perhaps Pound was inspired by Victor

Plarr's book In the Dorian Mood, and he took the title from it. Christine

Froula says, 'Pound knew Victor Plarr's In the Dorian Mood and was also

familiar with T.E. Hulme's theory of abstract art'.15 The early writings of

13 Eric Homburger, ed„ The Critical Heritage, p.96.

Louis L. Martz, ‘Introduction’, Collected Early Poems o f Ezra Pound, cd.. MichacI John King (1926 rnlLondon : Faber and Faber. 1977), xiv

15 Christine Froula, A Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Poems, p.39.

I4X

Hulme and Pound show that they were seeking not objects to correlate with

their emotional states, but a means of presenting objects that in some sense

embodied emotion.16 However the objects, when they become the

embodiments of emotions, naturally come closer to the Symbolist line of

interpretation. Certain controversies and vaguesness can not be avoided as to

what type of objects would evoke a particular kind of emotion. Here the

reader's personal judgment will play an important role. This element of

subjectivity can be eliminated only when the symbols have fixed values.

And, according to Pound 'the natural object is always the adequate symbol'.

Here,the poem seems to address a beloved in a ceremonial invocation

of a ritualistic traditon. It is the thirst for an eternal bond between them ; and

as it is not an easy union, the invocation of the soul or inner spirit of the lover

required rituals and ceremonies. It is the Pagan tradition. It has been

suggested that Pound wrote this poem for his bride-to-be, Dorothy

17Shakespear. Pound here makes the experiment in the 'equation' of imagery

and emotion. The language appears to have been chiselled and words having

a certain starkness in their attributes. The eternal moods of the 'bleak wind' is

contrasted to the transient things — the gaiety of flowers. Here the words

'bleak' and 'gaiety' are given as epithets to denote the qualities of

permanence and temporariness respectively. A bleak wind is cold and

16 Alan Robinson, Symbol to Vortex, (New York : St. Martin’s press) p.221.

17 Christine Froula, A Guide to Ezra Pound's Selected Poems, p.39

149

cheerless. Figuratively, it also means 'dreary'. 'The eternal moods of the

bleak winds' is therefore, a new amalgamation of 'eternal moods' and the

'bleak winds', associated with the symbol of dreary, dull and gloomy aspects

of life and contrasted to 'gaiety'. And with this forced fusion Pound tried to

give the image of a desirable state of mind, the emotional fulfilment, of the

permanence of love.

Be in me as the eternal moodsof the bleak wind, and not

As transient things are — gaiety of flowers.

This is brought by Pound in comparison to the 'gaiety' of flowers,

traditionally associated with merry, lively and cheerful countenance. It also

gives us a hint of the showy and sportive nature of the lover, light hearted

and addicted to pleasure. Pound, like the traditional romantic poets was

worried about the fickleness of beauty and pleasure, which are transitory. So

the images of 'sunless cliffs' and 'grey waters' give the significance of the

everlasting relationship of love ; and without the interference of other

complexities, mingled with pleasure:

Have me in the strong loneliness Of sunless cliffs

And of grey waters ...

Pound here attains a new dimension of consciousness in his emotionally

surcharged sensibility, for he wants to escape from this world. His craving

150

for 'eternal things' makes him detached from the transient gaiety of earthly

beauty. The poem therefore ends in a highly abstract form, an experiment in

the equation of imagery and emotion.

Let the Gods speak softJy of us In days hereafter,

The shadowy flowers of Ocrus Remember thee.

The poetic association of the beloved with the eternal flowers of the

underworld, as opposed to the transient gaiety of earthly flowers gives the

impression of 'Bergsonian Theory of Art', which was probably supplied by

Hulme to Pound.18 In it Bergson asserted that, 'art lifts man into a zone of

activity', where 'perceptions become habituated and require the new eyes of

the artist to liberate them', and when the 'human perception gets crystallised

along certain lines, it has certain fixed habits, certain fixed ways of seeing

things, and is so unable to see things as they are'.19 This was the leading idea

of the source of Imagism,because 'the intellectual and emotional complex' of

the image could be formed out of such introspection. In 'A Lecture on

Modern Poetry', Hulme said that the modern poetry 'has become definitely

and finally introspective and deals with expression and communication of

momentary phases in the poet's mind' and also in 'Notes on Language and

Style', he said that poetry 'is a transitory artificial impression' which is

18 Thomas H. Jackson. The Early Poetry o f Ezra Pound, pp.108-109.

1V Thomas H. Jackson, The Early Poetry o f Ezra Pound, p.146.

151

deliberately cultivated into an emotion and written about.2" The duty of the

poet is to catch the experience on the wing ; and for Pound, 'the mytho-poetic

mentality'21 is true to the evanescence of real experience. In an essay on

'Arnold Dolmetch', Pound wrote, 'The undeniable tradition of

metarmophoses teaches us that things do not always remain the same. They

22 • *become other things by swift and unanalysable process. It also gives rise to a

concept of the harmony of the universe, and the natural laws controlling it,

corresponding to the theory of oneness in the Hindu philosophy, where the

Jagati (ceaselessly moving world) becomes the partial manifestation of Ekam Sat

(the Ultimate and the Absolute One Being).23 The exact nature of this Absolute

One Bieng, whether feeling or unfeeling, conscious or unconscious, intelligent or

unintelligent can not possibly be definitely known, nor can it be directly

contacted by the ways of the world (Jagaf). Indeed the driving power or force of

the world itself is cognized not directly but only inferentially as the cause of the

sensations which alone are experienced directly and intimately. The Absolute

power is thus, impenetrably veiled from us. Having failed to attain this Absolute

and Omnipotent Being [the Hindus call it Ishwara], we try to understand the

universal laws on physical terms in our quest for permanent values in this

T.E. Hulme, Further Speculations, ed., Sam Hines, (Meanopolis : University of Minnesota Press 1995) pp.72, 94.

21 The term is used extensively by Thomas H. Jackson. See The Early Poetry o f Ezra Pound.

22 Ezra Pound, Literary Essays, p. 431.

-3 J.C. Chatterjee, The Wisdom of the Vedas, (New Delhi : Vikas Publishing House) p .l .

152

creation and all changing perceptions. Pound wrote in a note in his San Trovaso

Notebook :

... of such perception rise the ancient myths of the origin

of demi-gods. Even as the ancient myths of meta-24morphosis rise out of flashes of cosmic consciousness.

However, Pound was referring to the Greek mythology rather than the

Hindu mythology when he talked of the myths of metamorphosis. But the

theory of cosmic consciousness bears close resemblance to the Sanskrit word,

chit, (meaning awareness or consciousness) from which derived the concept

of Sat-chit-ananda, obviously regarded as the true nature of Ishwara

[Almighty god]. Pound has got a yearning for this state of supreme bliss,

which in eternal. As in this poem throughout the early phase of his poetic

career, Pound's longing for eternity can be seen. Pound also wrote in the San

Trovaso Note Book:

All art begins in the physical discontent (or torture) of

loneliness and partiality [i.e. being only a separate past

of existence].

It is to fill this lack that man first spun shapes out

of the void. And with the intensity of this longing

gradually came into him power, power over the essences

Quoted by Louis L. Martz, ‘Introduction’, Collected Early Poems o f Ezra Pound, ed., Michael lolin Kinu xiv.

153

of the dawn, over the filaments of light and the wrap of

melody .. .25

Though Pound hated emotions to be expressed in the straight manner he was

a highly emotional poet in his love poems. He often adopts the image of an

ideal woman as his inspiration, after the manner of Dante or Cavalcante or

the troubardours of Provence.

In the present poem, the immediate experience of a sublime desire of

becoming one with the beloved, gives birth to a concept; and the conceptual

discourse, for obvious reasons congeals into an image. Such an image gives

us the advantage, that it presents us, in the concrete and understandable

form:

The shadowy flowers of Orcus

Orcus is Hades, the underworld and the flowers are shadowy and

suggets the darkness. It is to be understood in correlation with the 'bleak

wind', 'sunless cliff' and 'grey waters' and intutively it evokes the sense of

affinity to an eternal world different from our temporal world. Here the

desire to transcend the flux of nature and the longing for immortality is

ultimately to be evoked. The technique of using certain equations for certain

moods and the creation of appropriate images for various conceptions make

~5 Quoted bV Louis L - Martz- ‘Introduction’ , Collected Early Poems o f Ezra Pound, ed„ Michael John King. xiv.

154

the poem an example of perfect Imagist poetry. Ealier in his essay on

'Vorticism' Pound wrote:

By the 'image', I mean such an equation ; not an equation

of mathematics, not something about a, b, and c, having

something to do with form, but about sea, cliffs, night,26having something to do with mood.

'Doria' is a perfect example of this statement. The poem expresses the

personal feeling, but the imcapabilities it reaches towards are given

classicised values, and these values tend to objectify the otherwise private

feelings.

Just as Pound has an easy command over rugged language in

translation in Old Enlglish, so too in 'Doria' he asserted substantively rugged

positions, especially rugged in view of the consistent romanticism of his

earliest poetry. K.K. Ruthven says that in this little poem, the Greek title is

ambiguous, possibly meaning a 'gift', possibly meaning in the 'Dorian

manner', possibly being a reference to Dorothy Shakespear. Pound 'rejected

the transient attractions of romantic love in favour of something that is closer

to harsh reality and therefore more likely to be durable. But the language as

well is tougher, leaner'.27 Pound's desire to have 'poetry as much like granite

-‘’ Ezra Pound, ‘Vorticism’, Ezra Pound : A Critical Anthology , ed., J.P. Sullivan, (London : Faber and Fa!>cr 1970) p.57.

27 Burton Raffel, Ezra Pound: The Prime Minister o f Poetry. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books. 1984) p.38.

155

as it can be' becomes something more than a mere precept in poems like this.

Burton Raffel wrote, "The rhetorical tone is controlled, sparce ; and the

rhythms are strong not unlyrical so much as securely powerful. The prosody

too is securely measured, in units very speechlike, composed 'in the sequence

28 • • t of the musical phrase, not in squence of a metronome". Pound did not like

the rhythmic structure destroying the shape of the words, or their natural

sound or their meaning. In a letter to Harriet Monroe, he wrote :

Rhythm must have meaning. It can't be merely a careless

dash off, with no grip and no real hold to the words and

sense, a tumty-tum-tumpty-tum-tum ta .

Burton Raffel, Ezra Pound: The Prime Minister o f Poetry, p.38.

K/ra Pound, Selected Utters, ed. D.D. Paige (1950 rpt. ; London : Faber and Faber, 1978) p.49.

15ft

THE RETURN

SEE, they return ; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet.

The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering !See, they return, one, and by one, with fear, as half-awakened;As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind,

and half turn back;These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,”

Inviolable.Gods of the winged shoe !With them the silver hounds,

sniffing thr trace of air !Haie! Haie!

These were the swift to harry;These the keen-scented;These were the souls of blood.Slow on the leash,

pallied the leash-men!

[ Collected Shorter Poems, 1926)

'The Return' is one of the best known poems of Ezra Pound in his

Imagist period. Ezra Pound said that he had written this poem in a quarter of

an hour. Yeats saw it as soon as it was published in the English Review in

June, 1912. It was one of the favorite poems of Yeats and when he read it

aloud at a Poetry banquet in Chicago in 1914, he commended the poem as

'the most beautiful poem that has been written in the free form, one of the

few in which I find a real organic rhythm'.30 Philips Grover commented that

30 Philips Grover, ed., Ezra Pound Conference, 1st, Sheffield University, 1976. p.27.

157

this poem was 'an excellent example of the development from the static or

spatial image to the dynamic or kinetic image.31 The poem has recorded a

visionary experience rather than a sense experience.

The poem can be distinguished from the other shorter Imagist poems

not merely in length only but by the destinctive free-verse rhythm, and 'a

musical cadence of the sort which a two or three line poem can not exhibit to

any notable degree'.32 Many critics on Pound's shorter poems quote the

comment given by Pound himself on 'The Return', that appeared in the

Forthrrightiy Review (September, 1914) in which he observed that the poem

is 'an objective reality and has a complicated sort of significance, like Mr.

Epstien's 'Sun God' or Mr. Brzeska's 'Boy with a Coney'. Pound composed

the poem before he knew the work of Brzeska. So, the statement given here

by Pound seems to be difficult to analyse, and many of the interpretations arei%/j

'as opaque as Pound's own statement'.

When Pound claimed that he had written the poem in a quarter of an

hour, he also mentioned that he had been shaping it to the rhythms of Henri

de Regnier's introductory poem to Les Medailles d'Argile. John Espey gives

31 William Pratt, ‘Ezra Pound and the Image’, Ezra Pound : The Umdon Years 190S-1920 ed Philip Grover (New Y ork : AMS Press ) p.27.

32 William Pratt, ‘Ezra Pound and the Image’, Ezra Pound: The London Years 1908-1920. p.28.

33 John Espey, “Some Notes on ‘The Return’”, Paideuma, 15 (1) Spring, 1982, p.35.

I5X

the opinion that 'perhaps the very openness of this admission has led to its

being ignored.34 And he continued to say :

But a glance at Regnier's lines suggest^ffwtat least some

of the less complicated aspects of the 'The Return' may

be explicated through them ; and over the past thirty

years this excercise has proved a fruitful one in the

classroom for illustrating Pound's use of a 'source' as he

adopts in both directly and in reverse, as well as his

tendency to fasten or whatever visual detail is present,

and to range farther than his precise citation, carrying35away echoes of image, language and theme.

Regnier's original poem, 'La Couronne' as reproduced in Paideuma [15(1)

Spring, 1982] has 51 lines. But Pound Compresses it in 21 lines, less than half

of his original model to be pedantic in his 'poem'. John Espey says, 'The

Return' has the effects of echoing rhythm and metric of Regnier's poems Les

Medailles d ' Argile. This collection was largely made up of poems written in

standard metres and stanzas but most probably Pound did not read all.

When Pound wrote, 'See, they return, one, and by one/With fear half

awakened', the repitition of 'one, and by one' might have been influenced by

the line ' Une a Und from the Madrigal Lyrique. It is a favourite mannerism

of Regnier to repeat words in such way as tour a tour and John Espey brings

14 John Espey, “Some Notes on 'The Return” ’, Paideuma, 15 (1) Spring, 19X2, p.35.

35 John Espey, “Some Notes on 'The Return’”, Paideuma, 15 (1) Spring, 1982, p.35.

159

out similar phrases as examples throughout The Return'. And for the

hesitating paces of the succession of semi-divine figures,

The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering!

Espey points out another expression ‘a pas lentd from Le Centaure, among

other similar expressions from Regnier. According to Espey, while writing

the phrase 'Gods of the winged shoe', Pound would have come upon both

‘La rapide sandale ou vibre et tremble encor/L'aile double jadis qui 1'a fait

divine'and ‘La sandale terrestre a I'aile aeriennd in La Pensee. 'If he needed

a further reminder', Espey continues, 'he would have found it in la sandale

ailee, the closing phrase of Via. in Regnier's book. When Pound Wrote :

Gods of the winged Shoe !With them the silver hounds.

Sniffing the trace of air !

Epsey further commented that though the silver hounds can hardly be

related to the pointer, the spaniel, and the mastiff found in Regnier's ‘Le

Chasseur1, the title itself is suggestive of Pound's returning huntsman, and

the colour'of the hounds echoes one of the metals Regnier uses for a

medallion, just as the pallor of the leashmen seems to reflect ‘pale', one of

Regnier's favourite adjectives as well as his use from time to time of the verb

'paliz'.36

John Espey, “Some Notes on 'The Return”', Paideiuna, 15 (1) Spring, 1982, p.36.

160

The poem is subjective and visionary in origin, but the image is

concrete and dynamic. It depicts a picture of the return of the gods to earth,

like hunters coming back wearily from a chase. Tts effectiveness depends

upon the co-ordination of the rhythm and imagery, with the trouble and

hesitant motion of the gods and their hounds, returning exhausted, it seems,

from the hunt, like ghostly figures in a snowy landscape, yet carrying with

them a sense of bravery and prowess, of being "Wing'd-with-A we' and

'Inviolable', virtues still visible even in defeat.37 The first stanza of the poem

exemplifies the sort of thing Pound meant, attempting to align form and

emotion precisely. He troubles the pace of the first line with imperatives,

interjections, commas, and semicolon:

See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet,The trouble in the pace and the uncertain

Wavering!

Black Lelend, referring to it wrote :

In keeping with the motion that gods/states of mind,

when then take form, appears to the sense of vision —

what he calls the phantastikon, or phanopoeia — he

directs us to 'See'. We are commanded to see the

rhythmic, temporal,, linguistic processes and techniques

of the poems as if they were divine figures. From the

William P ratt,‘Ezra Pound and the Image’. Ezra Pound : The London Years 1908-1920 ed Philip Grover pp. 28-29.

161

very beginning this poem evokes both the visual and

religious dimensions of the Icon, and Pound Imagism

and Iconicity here aspire not to a merely visual but to a

visionary condition.38

Pound wrote:

I made poems like 'The Return', which is an objective

reality and has a complicated sort of significance, like

Mr. Epstien's 'Sun God', or Mr. Brzeska's 'Boy with a

Coney'.39

Here we find the 'objective reality' of Ezra Pound as a combination of

'organic and inorganic forms'. The comparision of this poem with Epstein's

'Sun God' or Brzeska's 'Boy with a Coney' illustrates the correspondences

between the aims of the visual and verbal parts of the Vorticist movement.

Christine Froula, in this regard, says:

Just as Gaudier's small statue (two photographs of which

appear in Gaudier-Brzeska [(G.B.), plate XXIII] abstracts

the natural forms of the kneeling boy and the rabbit he

. holds to a 'hasmony of planes in relation', Pound's poem

abstracts a narrative of the revenants into a harmony of

carved verbal rhythms. It is these rhythms, and not

narrative events, which emobody the return, and the

38 Blake Lelend, “Psychotic Apotheosis : Visionary Iconicity and Poet’s Fear in Ezra Pound’s ‘The Return ". Twentieth Century Literature [38(2) Summer, 1992] pp. 179-180.

39 Ezra Pound, ‘Vorticism’, Ezra Pound: A Critical Anthology, ed. J.P. Sullivan, p.50.

163

Whether Pound copied it from an unknown Greek poem or Regnier s

French poem is not very significant and how seriously we should take

Pound's 'quarter of an hour' in composing the poem, is unimportant. But

what is clear about the poem even in the first reading is its fineness of

imagery and sauvity of music, its elegant visual and verbal harmony. The

exploration of language can be seen in forming new verbal coinages to give a

visual equivalent of the image :

These were the "Wing’d-with-Awe"Inviolable

As Christine Fraula has suggested in this, Pound has imitated (or abstracted)

the Homeric epithet, the formulaic descriptive phrase attached to the names

of mortals and immortals, and used repeatedly as a metrical unit ; e.g.,

'many-minded Odysseus', 'grey-eyed Athena', 'Helen shaped by Heaven',

and so on. His use of quotation marks measures the conscious distance of his

own poem form the ancient poetry to which the phrase alludes.

Haie! Haie!These were the swift to harry

These the keen-scented;These were the souls of blood

Slow on the leash pallid the leash-men!

163

Whether Pound copied it from an unknown Greek poem or Regnier's

French poem is not very significant and how seriously we should take

Pound's 'quarter of an hour' in composing the poem, is unimportant. But

what is clear about the poem even in the first reading is its fineness of

imagery and sauvity of music, its elegant visual and verbal harmony. The

exploration of language can be seen in forming new verbal coinages to give a

visual equivalent of the image :

These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe"Inviolable

As Christine Fraula has suggested in this, Pound has imitated (or abstracted)

the Homeric epithet, the formulaic descriptive phrase attached to the names

of mortals and immortals, and used repeatedly as a metrical unit ; e.g.,

many-minded Odysseus', 'grey-eyed Athena', 'Helen shaped by Heaven',

and so on. His use of quotation marks measures the conscious distance of his

own poem form the ancient poetry to which the phrase alludes.

Haie! Haie!These were the swift to harry

These the keen-scented;These were the souls of blood

Slow on the leash pallid the leash-men!

164

The interjection, 'Haie !' is explained by Robert Fitzgerald in an interesting

way, " 'Ai ! 'Greek for 'Ha !' English — he put them together".44 The colour

words 'silver' and 'pallid' give the image the quality of an etching or line-

drawing, a sort of brief twilight of the Gods sketched in grey and white.

Pound says 'see', and invites the readers to follow his vision, irrespective of

when or why it happened to come to him. 'Much of Pound's poetry does

have this kind of obscurity about it, of seeming detached and isolated from

time', says William Pratt, 'but this, too, may be seen as the Imagist principle

at work: it is the moment of vision or perception crystallized and 'liberated'

from time, extracted from the flux or continuity of experience which

surrounds it'45 And the image, thus given, out of the Poet's experience we

are expected to supply the context out of our own experience. In the case of

the present poem, we need not be at a loss for long. The image of the heroic

defeat is a tragic one, compelling admiration and sympathy, an image of lost

grandeur out of the past. Christine Froula also says, 'The Return' is, 'the

return of a past which survives only as fragments of an ancient statue

survive, and which is transfigured by the modern poetic landscape which

• / 46contains i t .

Christine Froula, A Guide to Ezra Pound's Selected Poems, (New York : New Directions, 1983) p.43

William Pratt, 'Ezra Pound and the Image’ , Ezra Pound: The London Years, 1908-1920 p 29

46 Christine Froula, A Guide to Ezra Pound's Selected Poems, p.43.

165

This past glory is recovered momentarily through the poet's evocation,

preserving it in the memory for all time. Yeats provided his own context for

the poem when he printed it at the end of the preface entitled, A packet for

Ezra Pound' in his later edition of A Vision, where it served as a symbol of

the cyclical motions of his gyres of history and human personality. In

presenting it he said :

You will hate these generalities, Ezra, which are

themselves, it may be, of the past — the abstract sky —

yet you have written 'The Return' and though you but

announce in it some change of style, perhaps, in book

and picture it gives me better words than my own. (.A

Vision, 1937, p. 29).47

Pound himself provided a further context for the poem when he wrote, in

one of the very last Cantos, near the end of his immensely productive,

controversial, and personally tragic life:

The Gods have not returned. ‘They have never left us'They have not returned.

[Canto CXIII]

The strength of the poetic image, as Pound conceived it, is that, being

independent of time, it can endure through time, gathering meaning as it

goes.

47Quoted in William Pratt, F.zra Pound and the Image'. Ezra Pound: the London Years, pp.29-30

166

TENZONE

WILL people accept them ?(i.e. these songs).As a timorous wench from a centaur

(or a centurion),Already they flee, howling in terror.

Will they be touched with the verisimilitudes ?Their virgin stupidity is untemptable.

I beg you, my friendly critics,Do not set about to procure me an audience.

I mate with my free kind upon the crags ; the hidden recesses

Have heard the echo of my heels, in the cool light,

in the darkness.

[Selected Poems, 1926]

'Tenzone' is one of the twelve poems published in Poetry, in April,

1913 as 'Contemporania', which included the best known imagist poem 'In a

Station of the Metro' and other well known poems like 'Salutation', 'A Pact',

'Dance Figure' and 'The Garret'. It is the first poem in Lustra, published in

October, 1916, in London. Lustra appeared in print later than Cathay, a series

of translations, from the notes of Earnest Fenollosa and the decipherings of

the professors Mori and Ariga (1915).48 But Lustra represents original work

48 Ezra Pound wrote in the introduction of Cathay ‘CATHAY, TRANSLATION BY EZRA POUND. FOR THE MOST PART FROM THE CHINESE OF RIHAKU, FROM THE NOTES OF THE I-ATF ERNFST FENOLLASA, AND THE DECIPHERINGS OF THE PROFESSORS MORI AND ARIGA’................................

167

done before the translations, as well as the work done at approximately the

. . 49same time.

'Tenzone' is often described as Pound's counter-attack, though in a

mild way, on the public consciousness! It also illustrates the workings of his

mind. Pound is always considered to be an impersonal poet and is an expert

in wearing masks and his beautiful poems are all spoken by a persona.

However, in Lustra we can hear Pound's voice more often and in that sense

Lustra is a mixed book and 'Tenzone' is an original composition ; it is filled

with echoes from Latin., Provencal, and the late nineteenth-century English

poets. Glenn Hugh says, ' ... not mere imitations but echoes,in which the

voice of Pound is blended with older voices'.50

'Tenzone' is truely Pound's song. Pound who was called 'a poet in

rebellion against emotion' by Carl Sandburg becomes undoubtedly emotional

in this poem.51 For more than twenty years he has conducted a running fight

with the public — a fight in which he, naturally enough, has taken more

interest than the public and in which he has done the running.52

49 Glenn Hughes, Imagism and the Imagists, (New York : The Humanities Press, 1960) p. 236.

“ Glenn Hughes, Imagism and thelmagists, p.239.

51 Eric Homberger, ed., Ezra Pound: The Critical Heritage, (London : Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.. 1972) p. 126.

5‘ Glenn Hughes, Imagism and the Imagists, p.239.

168

A 'Tenzone' is a provencal poetic form, a dialogue or debate in verse

which may either be interiorized (as in soliloquy or monologue) or take place

between two rivals. In the present poem it is interiorized. Pound uses it to

treat the antagonism between the modern poet and the society in a larger

context. But it reflects his own personal sentiments and self-introspection.

Will people accept them ?(i.e. these songs)

As a timorous wench from centaur.( or a centurion),

Already they flee, howling in terror.

The mythological creature, Centaur, half man and half horse, was

Pound's image for poetry, which required the union of Apollonian clarity

and order with Dionysian instinct and sensuality. Pound wrote in his essay

'The Serious Artist' :

Poetry is a centaur. The thinking word-arranging,

clarifying faculty must move and leap with the

energizing, sentient, musical faculties. It is precisely the

difficulty this of amphibious existence that keeps down

the census record of good poets ...

Likewise if a good marksman only mounted a few

times he might never acquire any proficiency in shooting

from the saddle. Or leaving metaphor, I suppose that

what, in the long run, makes the poet is a sort of

169

persistence of the emotional nature, and, joined with this,53a peculiar sort of control.

Here Pound is emphasising the importance of experiments in the

craftsmanship of poetry where emotions are to be evoked and controlled.

According to Pound a lyric poet,who experiences new and interesting

emotions at the early age seldom continues to write in the emotional nature

after thirty years of age. Because as the mind gets heavier, a greater volatage

of emotional energy is required to harmonise a constantly more complicated

structure. But Pound was not yet thirty when he wrote this poem. He said, 'It

is certain that the emotions increase in vigour as a vigorous man matures'.54

Perhaps, that may be the reason why Pound introduced the Image of centaur

in his poetry. Here the centaur is not only the symbol of wisdom and strength

but an image also. In addition to the Satyrs and Sileni, centaurs formed a part

of the corteges of Dionysus. Their monstrous apearance with the torso and

head of a man and the rest of the body of a horse were of later origin. They

had not always been like this. The first representations of centaurs show

them as giants with hairy bodies ; then they were depicted as men with the

hind-quarters of a horse. Some have interpreted all this as a Hellenistic

equivalent of the Vedic Gandharvas. But it is more likely that the centaurs

whose name etymologically signifies those who round up bulls, were a

53 Ezra Pound, Literary Essays, cd. T.S. Eliot (London, Faber & Faber Ltd., 1968), p.52

54 Ezra Pound, Literary Essays, p.52

170

primitive population of cowmen, living in Thessaly, who like American

cowboys, rounded up their cattle on horseback. Their behaviour was rudt

and barbarous.

Micheal Alexander says that a 'Tenzone' is a challenge to a flyting, or,

in the case of Bertnans de Born, to actual fighting. Pound is less serious. He

further says:

Propertius will make the mock-heroic aside and the

overheard query familiar ; likewise the de-mytho-

logizing transposition of 'Centaur' into 'Centurion' and

the hyperbole of 'timorous', 'already' and 'howling'.56

The comparision with Propertius is the Latin transliteration of the

well-known legend in the manner of Horatius and Catullus. When the

American critic Floyd Dell praised the series of Lustra first published in

Chicago Evening Post, (11 April, 1913) as having brought back into the

world a grace which probably never existed, but which we discover by an

imaginative process in Horatius and Catullus,57 Pound found his praise

'very consoling' and astute in detecting 'the Latin tone'.58

Will they be touched with the verisimilitudes ?

55 Michael Alexander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p.84.

56 Michael Alexander, The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound, p.84.

57 Eric Homburger, ed., Ezra Pound : The Critical Heritage, (London : Routledge & Regan Paul I97">) p p

98-99

* Pound wrote to Harriet Monroe on 12“* April, 1913. ‘Dell is very consoling. It is clever of him to delect ihc Latin tone’ . Ezra Pound, Selected Letters, p. 19

171

Their virgin stupidity is untemptablc.Michael Alexander, again points out the words 'procure' and 'recesses' in the

lines which follow and gives the comment that it is 'also part of

conspirational joking relationship with the Latin epigramatists Tenzone

59continues in similar vein with a play on virgo intacta.

According to Michael Alexander in English poetry this play with

invisible inverted commas and the provenance of phrases is done best by

Pope and he quotes an incident in the Epistle to Arbuthnot (11. 39-44) when

the poet, besieged by poetasters who importune him for a recommendation

for their plays, is forced to reply:

And drop al last, but in unwilling ears,This saving counsel, keep your piece “nine years”.Nine years ! cries he, who high in Drniy-lane Lull’d by soft Zephyrs thro’ the broken Pane,Oblig’d by hunger, and Request of friends,Rhymes e’re he wakes, and print before term ends.

Pound writes:

I beg you, my friendly critics,Do not set about to procure me an audience.

Pope's play on 'saving' and 'piece' both re-states and improves on Horace's

advice to poets, without making fun of it. Pound's assimilation of the spirit of

Catallus exemplifies the vitality of his amateur knowledge of the classics

and the freedom of his use of them. At the same time, curiously, his comic

59 Michael Alexander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p. 11.

172

use of translatorese acknowledges their antiquity and remoteness, their need

to be brought up to date. Yet his mock-heroic style is not by a modern use of

the classics.60 In fact Pound affects an aloof insouciance about his lack of

audience, which he pictures fleeing from his poems and their 'verisimilitude'

; he wrote to Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry, "I don't know that America is

ready to be diverted by the ultra modern, ultra-effete tenuity of

'contemporania'" .61

Michael Alexander, The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound, p. 85.

61 Ezra Pound, Selected Letters, p. 11.

173

THE GARDENEn robe de parade.

Samain

LIKE a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,

And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anaemia.

And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.Hot boredom is exquisite and excessive.She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.

[Selected Poems, 1913]

This poem is one of the well known Imagist poems of Pound. The

poem presents an encounter with a contemporary woman and its approach

to her is both pointedly satirical and more than compossionate . The tone of

the poem is a detached impersonal observation. This almost excessive air of

detachment in the poem gives an impression of coldness, of almost bitter

allofness from the common run. However, his rebelliousness is purely

aesthetic and intellectual. As observed by G.W. Cronin it is against 'stupidity

and banality — one suspects ----- against simplicity itself'.62 Pound is

determined to accept no emotion at its face value. Carl Sandburg called

6‘ G.W. Cronin, ‘Classic Free Verse’ , Eric Homburger, ed„ The Critical Heritage, p.126.

174

Pound, 'A poet in rebellion against emotion'.63 With his Imagist technique of

viewing the characters from an external point of view, Pound wanted to

recreate an inner experience on the reader and his new approach was more

objective. 'The Garden' is a poem as an example of such an objective

approach. Here, the woman's social position has schooled her in rules so

narrow and repressive that she is trapped by her own fear and scorn.

Christine Froula says, "The 'Garden' of title, epigraph, and opening line

quickly turns to a satiric scenario of a bourgeois sensibility delicately

decaying amid the robust avatars of the future".64 The epigraph comes

from the French poet Albert Samain's Au Jardin de l'lnfante, which as a full

sentence reads —Maan ame est une infante en robe de parade — (my soul is

a child in promenade dress). There is a moment of identification with the

women suggested at the poem. Pound praised the original French poem in

The Little Review in 1918, but later criticised Samain in an article on 'The

Hard and Soft in French Poetry' first published in Poetry, 1918, for his going

'soft' by following the hard lines of Heredia. Pound wrote, "Samain follows

him and begins to go 'soft', there is just a suggestion of muzziness".65

63 Eric Homburger, ed.. The Critical Heritage, p. 112.

Christine Froula, A Guide to Ezra Pound's Selected Poems, p.45

65 Ezra Pound, Literary Essays, p. 285.

175

The first section of the poem focusses on the movement of the woman

and it is seen from a perspective, which is fascinating at the beginning, but

immediately revolting and dull.

Like a skein of loose silk blown againts a wall She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional ansmia.

The first two lines establish her position precisely, as she walks in

Kensington Gardens like 'silk blown againts a wall', B. Foggleman has

observed that with a flexibility that the formal patterns and archaisms of

much of his earlier verse did not quite allow, each of the four lines presents

facets of the woman's character.66 As Foggleman has pointed out in the first

half of the first line, the delicate interply of s, k, and 1 sounds projects the

lilting elegance of her appearence, which is violently ruptured by the

perception of her helplessness, 'blown against a wall'.67 But the second line

projected the compulsive quality of her movement, keeping in line 'by the

railing of a path'. It is not the majestic movement of 'Kung' in the Cantos:

Kung Walkedby the dynastic temple

and in to the Cedar groveand then out by the lower river

[Canto XIII]

Bruce Foggleman, Shapes o f Power : The Development o f Ezra Pound’s Poetic Sequences (Ann. A rbor: UMI Research Press, 1988) p.27.

67 Bruce Foggleman, Shapes o f Power, p.27.

176

but rather a diminutive step, without vitality or self-direction. James F.

Knapp is of the opinion that, had the silk been a discarded newspaper, and

the walk in Soho instead of the elegant Kensington, her nature would have

seemed very different indeed.68 But Pound uses a cloth which is rich and

insubstantial and the next two lines reveal two more facets. She is not

simply dying, but dying 'piece-meal', since she can do nothing fully, and

'her malaise is a hybrid, cultivated deficiency, a sort of emotional anaemia'.

The next section introduces 'the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very

poor' who frighten and disgust this delicate lady. And it is recorded

decisively, yet unobtrusively from her point of view.

And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poorThey shall inherit the earth.

"Another poet might have written, 'And round about her is a rabble' ", said

Foggleman, 'but we are given the scene through her eyes'.70 Here, we

know that all that she sees in contrast with herself : 'a rabble' lacking her

social correctness, 'filthy, sturdy' and 'unkillable', not, like her, delicate and

'anaemic'. Ironically, Pound is saying that these weak people shall inherit the

earth ; but it is a point of view of the meek and their reason is the Biblical

prediction in Mathew 5:5 :

68 James F. Knapp, Ezra Pound, (Boston : Twayne Publishers, 1979) p.67.

69 Bruce Foggleman, Shapes o f Power, p.27.

70 Bruce Foggleman, Shapes o f Power, p.27.

177

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth

However, according to those who are 'very poor', the earth is 'filthy' and

these weaklings are rooted in the earth.71 Then 'with the sharp pun of the

next line, 'the end of breeding', the poem returns to an observer's perspective

and Pound's techniques becomes clearly Imagistic. The woman's character

and her internal crisis with a mounting sense of desperation becomes a

subject to be analysed more carefully. The poem is a response that moves

beyond empathy and it progresses toward action.

In her is the end of breeding.Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I

will commit that indiscretion.

The break in the final line, 'I/will commit', pivoting its emphasis on 'will',

implies a contrast between the observer's reponsiveness and the woman's

anaemia, and suggests a desire to help which she is equipped to perceive

• • * 72only as an 'indiscretion'. This can be compared with another situation in

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,

No instinct has survived in her Older than those her grandmother Told her would fit her station.

[Mr. Nixon, XI]

71 Bruce Foggleman, Shapes o f Power, p.27.

72 Bruce Foggleman, Shapes o f Power, p.28.

178

Here, the ideogrammic method is at work not only in the portrayal of

the woman through juxtaposed facets of her character as observed in her

movement, but also in the poem's presentation of an encounter between the

speaker (may be Pound) and the character (the woman) through

juxtaposition of their perspectives. The ideogrammic method also clarifies the

perspectives and introduces the poem's central current of empathy.

However, the greatest misunderstanding of Imagism, by readers as well as

by poets who quickly began to imitate it was that they concentrated on

visual images to the virtual exclusion of every thing else. For Pound,

Imagism meant the achievement of a precise, economical, verbal equation

for a motion and idea. Though he often used visual images, the Image

was not a picture, but a structure of words. It was also a 'direct treatment

of the thing whether subjective or objective'. His doctrine was far more

flexible and subtle than what some of his imitators understood. The

concluding stanza of 'The Garden' is a good illustration. James F. Knapp

says:

, While the first two lines do sound closer to

generalisation than we might expect the rest of the stanza

evokes the subtle complexity of the woman's social and

emotional life by creating a complex of words which is

73 Bruce Foggleman, Shapes of Power, p.28.

179

fully as 'luminous' as any detail of physical

description.74

The ambiguity of the phrase 'almost afraid' the suggestion of restriction in a

syntax appropriate only to the very formal usage that I will commit that

indiscretion' — of language, the connotations of 'indescretion' itself, a word

used mostly to define the social properties of the upper classes also

contribute to the complex personality of the woman. Just as her spontaneous

humanity has been stifled by the demands of her class, the pathetic

temptation for human contact that 'she would like some one to speak to her',

is drowned out by the very words and patterns of words. And has it kept her

fearful and isolated.75 If the 'Garden' dismisses her, it does not do so lightly,

for she represents an aesthetic of refinement out of existence, as it were, into

exclusion, with which some of Pound's early works have an affinity'. Even

up to the period of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley during 1920, Pound was

struggling to explore this aesthetic of refinement.

For three years, out of key with his time,He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry ; to maintan “the sublime”

[E.P. Ode Pour L ’election De Son Sepulchre]

The precision of characterisation and feeling in this poem and the

completeness, depth and complexity of its presentation testify to a strength of

74 James F. Knapp. Ezra Pound, p.68.

75 James F. Knapp. Ezra Pound, p.68.

1X0

vision that comes from the attempt to reproduce exactly the thing which has

been clearly seen. The structure of the poem is perfectly suited to the

inner form of its vision, because Pound does not talk about the woman s

world ; he shows it to us in the very kind of language which had shaped her

view of its reality. His friend Rchard Aldington parodied 'The Garden in

The EgoJstin 1914, as follows :76

Like an armfiil of greasy engineer’s-cottonRung by a typhoon against a broken crate of ducks’ eggsShe stands by the rail of the old Bailey dock.Her intoxication is exquisite and excessive,And delicate her delicate sterlityHer delicacy is so delicate that She would feel affrontedIf I remarked nonchalantly, “Saay, stranger,

ain’t you dandy”77

Pound enjoyed the parodies, In an earlier letter to Harriet Monroe, in October

1913, Pound wrote, 'In fact, good art thrives in an atmosphere of parody.

Parody is, I suppose, the best criticism — it shifts the durable from the

78apparent'. Perhaps Pound wanted all to go together and to present the best

in the midst of the recalcitrent materials, as Kenner said, 'Things explain

themselves by the company they keep".79

Christine Froula, A Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Poems, p. 45.

77 K.K. Ruthven, A Guide to Ezra Pound’s Personae (1926), (Berkeley : University of California Press 1969) p. 168.

H K/.ra Pound. Selected Letters, p .13

' Hugh Kenner, 77ie Poetry of Ezra Pound, p. 220.

LES MILL WIN

THE little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet The mauve and greenish souls of the little Millwins Were seen lying along the upper seats

Like so many unused boas.

The turbulent and undisciplind host of art students —The rigorous deputation from “Slade” —Was before them.

With arms exalted, with fore-armsCrossed in great futuristic X ’s, the art studentsExulted, they beheld the splendours of Cleopatra.

And the little Millwins beheld these things;With their large and anaemic eyes they look out

upon this configuration.

Let us therefore mention the fact,For it seems to us worthy of record.

[Selected Poems, 1926|

This poem portrays the recalcitrent and dull attitude of the Millwins,

against the art students' axhilaration at a performance of a Russian Ballet,

Cleopatra. Christine Froula has written :

Pound, here follows Henry James in the role of American

expatriate as social observer, a role which turns a

detached point of view and unaccustumed eye to the

•advantage.80

Chns,ln̂ — ;—” tide to Ezra Pound's Selected Poenvs. p. 49.

1X2

The Millwins are socialites who attend the ballet out of a sense cultural duty,

without proper appreciation of the ballet as art. They belong to a particular

class of bourgeoise. 'Les Millwin' relates to a passing remark by Ezra Pound

on the social relativity of value in Patria Mia, The Russian dancers present

their splendid luxurious paganism, and everyone with a pre-Raphaelite or

Swinburnian education is in raptures'.81 As an Imagist poem, it has an

objective image which can be contrasted with an image which represents a

subjective response. The central contrast is between two different kinds of

spectators at the ballet, each characterised by a startling image. The passive

Millwins, whose limp souls and inactivity, conveyed by the image of 'unsued

boas' [boas are long, narrow wraps of dyed fur or feathers, usually worn by

woman], are contrasted with the enthusiastic art students, conveyed by

'Slade' (The Slade School of Fine Art in London) and their actions are

equated with a religious ceremony. The students consider the ballet as an art

form worthy of their adoration. On the other hand, the Millwins are spiritless

and can't comprehend the ballet.

The mauve and greenish souls of the little Millwin.

The Millwins are weak, exhausted and diluted (mauve and greenish soul) as

against the 'primary colours' of the art students' response.82 Pound

disapproves both. The Millwins are condemned for being ostentatious. Their

81 Ezra Pound, Selected Prose. 1909-1965. ed„ William Cookson (New York : New Directions, 197!!) P.l<)3.

"■ Christine Froula, A Guide to Ezra Pound's Selected Poems, p.50.

1X3

cultural pretence is like a boa, worn only for appearance. The students are

condemned for thinking that a gaudy production is great art. Therefore, their

display of enthusiasm is just as inapropriate as the apathetic response of the

Millwins.

The turbulent and undisciplined host of art students The rigorous deputation of the ‘Slade’.

Here the students from the Slade School of Fine Art in London are over-

enthusiastic, almost to the point of disapproval.

With arms exalted, with fore-armsCrossed in great futuristic X ’s, the art studentsExulted, they beheld the splendours of Cleopatra.

Christine Froula comments on the futuristic X, 'The Italian Futurist

movement hit London in 1912 with the Sackville Gallery's Futurist Exhibition

• • • 83and lectures by F.T. Marinetti, its leader'. Pound did not like furturism as it

was 'a kind of accelerated impressionism' and 'a surface art as opposed to

vorticism'. He wrote :

I have no doubt that Italy needed Mr. Marinetti, but he

did not sit on the egg that hatched me, and as I am

wholly oppossed to his aesthetic principles I see no

reason why I, and various men who agree with me,

should be expected to call overselves futurists.84

** Christine Froula. A Guide to Ezra Pound's Selected Poena. p.50.

H/xa Found. ‘Vorticism', E v a Pound : A Critical Anthology, ed. J.F. Sullivan, p.50.

1X4

That is why Pound condemned the 'luxurious paganism' of the ballet

Cleopatra** as he condemned the inactivity of the 'the little Millwins . When

the little Millwins attend the Russian Ballet production of Cleopatra in

London, they sit in the upper seats where they can be apart from the rest of

the audience and look down upon both the audience below and the

performance. At this elevated position, they too are 'exalted like the

students, but passively. They have come only to view the event rather than

to indulge in enjoying it. The Millwins' assumption of social superiourity is

undercut by Pound's comparision of their souls to 'unused boas'. Robert

Coltrane, wrote in Paideuma :

The description of the souls as 'mauve and greenish'

suggests the colors [sic] of bruised skin or perhaps the

reptile which the scarf resembles. The comparision of

souls to boas reinforces our recognition of the Millwin's

inability to experience art, for their souls are like clothing

worn only for decoration and then draped casually over

the back of the seat when not in use.86

Down below are the students who by means of their enthusiastic

response represent the opposite reaction from that of the Millwins. In contrast

to the image which associates the Millwins with Boas (dull and lowly

85 Cleopatra was a one-act ballet first performed by Ballet Russe in 1909 and is a production of Diaghilev. Christine Froula A Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Poems, and Paideuma. 18(3) Winter, 1989, p. 125.

“6 Robert Coltrane, ‘The Imagist Relationship between Pound’s ‘Les Millwin’ and Kliot’s ‘Morning at the Window-. Paideuimi 18(3), Winter, 1989, p. 126.

185

snakes), the students create an entirely different image, one associated with

religious fervour. For them the ballet is a religious experience, suggested in

the stanza three by the words 'exalted' and 'exulted'. The waving of arms in

which the students 'exalt' the ballet has the religious connotation of 'to praise

and glorify'. To exult is literally to 'leap for joy', but in a religious context, it

also means to rejoice. In Hindu mythology too, god loves singing and

applauding (with raised arms):

87mad bhakta jatra gayanti tatra tisthami, Narda.

The students are waving their arms above their heads (arms exalted)

so that their forearms cross to form a series of X's, which Pound calls

'futuristic'. According to Pound, it was a mechanical process which had no

depth ( a surface art). The poem suggests that the art students are creating a

mechanical art form with their bodies. Since ballet also creats art through

body movements the comparision condemms Diaghilev's production of

Cleopatra, by associating it with the mechanistic action of the students.

K.K. Ruthven says that this ballet was famous for its 'exotic sumptuousness'88

and was effective through a surface appearance and spectacle rather than by

being the creation of a genuine work of art. As students of art, they should have

87 Lord Krishna said to Narda, 'I am there where my devotees go in procession and sing’.

WK.K. Ruthven, A Guide to Ezra Pound's Personae (1926), (Barkeley : University of California Press. 1969)p.68.

186

been able to see the difference. Thus "Furturistic X's" is a comment on the ballet

and on the students w ho are reacting mechanically.

Regarding the sharp contrast of images, this poem can be compared

with Eliot's poem, 'Morning at the window' (1916). In a letter to Marianne

Moore written in 1918, Pound stated that his poem 'Les Millwin' had directly

influenced Eliot's 'Morning at the window'. Pound wrote, "T.S.E. first had

his housemaids dropping like the boas in my 'Millwin' and it was only after

inquisition of this sort that he decided, to the improvement of his line, to

have them sprout".89 According to Grover Smith, this poem was the first

poem 'in which Eliot showed any indebtedness to Ezra Pound.90

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,And along the trampled edges of the street I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.

The brown waves of fog toss up to me Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts An aimless smile that hovers in the air And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

[Morning at the Window, 1916 |91

Eliot's poem about an early morning in London presents a contrast

between things unseen that creats objective impression (stanza one) and

119 F.zra Found, Selected letters, p. 142.

Grover Smith, T.S. kliot s Poetry and Plays : A study in Sources and Meaning. (1950, rnl. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1956), p.31.

91 T.S. FJiot. Complete Poems and Plays (New York : Harcourt Brace, 1958) p.16.

1X7

M 2 • t *

things seen that create subjective response (stanza two). Eliot's primary

debt to Pound can be seen, as Pound noted, in the poem s most effective

image 'the damp souls of house maid'. The image recalls Pound s depiction

of the little Millwins having 'mauve and greenish souls'. Robert Coltrane

points out that the influence of Pound's poem is even more evident in the

first published version of 'Morning at the Window' (September, 1916 issue of

Poetry), where the housemaid's damp souls are described as 'hanging

despondently', calling up an image of wet laundry. Eliot's change from

'hanging' to 'sprouting' eliminates the association with the passivity of the

Millwins, and suggest) the more repulsive connotations of soggy weeds or

fungus resulting from the dampness. The change implies not only inactivity

but also decay, an association which further contributes to the negative

impression of London portrayed in the poem.93 Pound discouraged those he

knew from borrowing poetically from him or each other as indicated in the

letter to Marianne Moore cited above.94 But, Robert Coltrane says :

while an earlier example of Eliot's debt to Pound may

exist, such debt have apparently been intentionally

obscured by mutual agreement. The relationship

between 'Les Millwin' and 'Morning at the Window' is

- Robert Coltrane. ‘The Imagist Relationship Between Pound’s ‘Les Millwin’ and Eliot’s ’Morning at the Window’, Paideuma, 18(3) Winter, 1989, p. 124.

M Robert Coltrane, Paideuma. 18(3) Winter, 1989, p. 124.

4 H/.ra Pound, Selected Letters, p. 142.

I8S

the earliest provable example of Pound s direct influence

on Eliot's Poetry.95

Structurally, Pound's poems consists of fourteen lines, which fall into

units of 4 lines, 3 lines, 3 lines and 2 lines. Pound may have intended the

poem to be a free verse sonnet in which a contrast is offered in the first

twelve lines, followed by a comment on this contrast in what would

traditionally be the concluding couplet. Stanza one describes the little

Millwins followed by two three-line stanza, devoted to a description of the

students. The fourth stanza is a couplet and joins the two contrasting

groups in a manner similar to that of the two lines Imagist poems modelled on

the Japanese haiku. And a general statement is given:

And the little Millwins beheld these things.

It is made concrete in the following line.

With their large and anaemic eyes they look out upon this configuration

The things which the little Millwins beheld are the activities of the

students in front of them ; and the word 'anaemic', suggests the primary

Millvvin characteristics. And the description of the 'things' that these

'anaemic eyes' behold is a 'configuration', of a series of X's formed by the

students' arms, an image which has identified and characterised them, just as

15 Robert Collrane, 'The Imagist relationship between Pound’s ‘Les Millwin’ and Kliot’s Morning at the window’. Paideuma, 18 (3) winter, 1989. p. 127

1X9

the boas characterised the Millwins. And these images are based on the

explorations of language, because Pound believed that the speech itself is the

Image.

190

LIU CH’E

THE rustling of the silk is discontinued,Dust drifts over the court-yard,

There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves Scurry into heaps and lie still.And she the rejoicer of heart is beneath them :

A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.

[Selected Poems, 1926|

This is one of the many poems Pound composed in the Chinese

manner and also in the haiku technique. This poem was included in Des

Imagiste and is a very beautiful example of Imagism.

The poem gives a series of delicately suggestive images super­

imposing each other giving in effect a more beautiful one. The first five lines

present a scene both actual and emotional, according to the Imagist hygiene,

which will give the 'intellectual complex'. Martin A. Kayman thinks that the

first stanza, "with the controlled presence of metonymic signifiers of 'natural

objects' and sensual inpressions, in their presence and absence, invoking a

concrete scehe of the couryard and its drama",96 examplifies the technique of

transforming metonymic details into a metaphor. After this stanza comes a

gap and the last line. As readers of the poem we are confronted with a

syntactical discontinuity. But it is overridden by an emotional coherence,

* Martin A. Kayman, The Modernism o f Ezra Pound, p.44.

191

and the overall strategy of the poem. In this regard, John T. Gage is of the

opinion that, "As far as the 'image' itself is concerned, the strategy in97 « . • •

question is the use of comparision as a figure of speech". What is in issue in

reading the poem is not how one recreates the poet's emotion or experience,

based on the inadequate evidence, but how one responds to the formal

strategies of the poem. The persistent motion of the image as a special device

for rendering the poet's emotion through sensual evocation allows the reader

to neglect the fact that their interpretation depends more on what they have

in common with other kinds of poetry than on how they differ. The first four

lines suggest the absence of life's activities, where once 'the rustling of silk'

was there. Only the wind is blowing gathering dust and the 'leaves/scurry

into heaps and lie still'. There is no sign of vitality. The opening lines of

Canto CXX,

Do not moveLet the wind speak.

can be helpful in explaining the significance. The movement of the wind and

the succession of emotive patterns associated with it becomes the sole image

upon which the later sense of stillness is imposed.

And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them.

97jobn T-Ga«c* ln ‘^ A n rs lm g Eye : The Rhetoric o f bmgism (Baton Rouge : Louisiana Slate University P re s s 19X1) p.83. 1

192

If 'she' is the cause of the activiy which has just been replaced by stillness,

then what does it mean to say she is 'beneath them'? Does it mean that she is

dead and buried under the leaves in the courtyard ? Or does it mean that she

feels beneath them, that her power to make the heart rejoice, or her dignity

somehow, is beneath theirs. There are other possibilities too. The readers

hope that the final line might clarify some of these puzzling questions and

lead to a conclusion at least. But Pound gives a colon and then a pause. John

T. Gage calls it the 'characteristic colon' of Pound. It is a signal that what

follows is to be equated with what has gone before. What follows in a

comparision by juxtaposition of the possible concepts. But it does not resolve

the ambiguity.

If she is dead, then the comparision serves to tell us how the speaker

feels. He compares her to the leaf to inform us of the poignancy of his grief,

'perhaps' : the threshold representing the frame of his consciousness, the

tangibility of her recent memory and the intangibility of her recent loss'.98 If,

however, the other meaning of beneath is recalled, the comparision functions

to inform us about how she feels. So the essential ambiguity of the fifth line,

therefore, renders the whole imagistic comparision equivocal, in that it might

be said to be an 'equation' for the emotions of either the speaker of the poem

or its subject.

" John T. Gage, In the Arresting Eye: Die Rhetoric of hmgism, p.68.

193

Besides these possibilities of emotional equations the discontinuity of

the last line is also worth considering. The dominant effect of the first stanza

is that of dryness ('scurry'), a lack of energy ('drift') and absence. But the

last line is a contrast:

A wet leaf that clings to the threshold.

Here the significance, contrary to that of the first stanza, is a notion of

presence, wetness and energy ('Clings'). The point is that these contrasting

'tones' are both signified by the same 'object'. Martin A. Kayman says,

‘everythingin the last line belongs metonymically in the scene as presented

in the first stanza; yet its state and function have been changed. We can view

the poem as a whole metaphor'.99 The first image of lifelessness, which is

represented by the association of dry leaves gives a picture of a typical

autumn day signifying the end of activities and fall (death). But in a larger

sense it also gives the idea of an another phase. A beginning, a reawakening

of the spirit is inevitable. The second image, with the metaphorical term 'wet

leaf' and so on is brought into an organic relation by a problematically silent

emotional adjunct. The relation can not be strictly continunous. And in its

literal sense it can not be interpreted in metonymic terms, unless we insert

an intervening story. Here it will be interesting and productive to compare

Martin A. Kayman. llw Modemistn o f Ezra Pound, p.45.

194

the poem with another English version of the same Chinese Original, the

version on which Pound apparently worked, that of Herbert Giles.

The sound of rustling silk is stilled,With dust the marble courtyard tilled ;No footfalls echo on the floor.Fallen leaves in heaps block up the door...For she, my pride, my lovely one is lost, m And I am left, in hopeless anguish tossed.

John T. Gage says that by substituting the concrete 'image' for the abstract

name of the emotion, Pound has created an ambiguity which is not found in

Gile's version. However, when Hugh Witemeyer said that Pound avoided

the metrical monotony of Giles couplets with his unrhymed vers libre and

gave a more powerful equation for sorrow than Gile's rhetorical inversion.

'In hopeless anguish tossed'.101 John T. Gage is of he opinion that Pound's

poem cannot be as simple as that. Although Pound might have worked from

Giles' version, the poem is not a direct translation. We must not fail to notice

that Pound does not necessarily equate the clinging leaf with the speaker:

Because in Pound's version, it is not 'I', who is left. Pound version, of course,

allows the possibility that the image renders the speaker's anguish, but it

renders this emotion with less certainty as we cannot rule out other

possibilities. John T. Gage says, "He may have found the phrase 'hopeless

John T. Gage, In The Arresting Eye :lh e Rhetoric of Imagism, (Baton Rouge : Louisiana Stale University Press 1981) p.69. > r , . . .

111 John T. Gage, In 'Pie Arresting Eye .Die Rhetoric of Imagism, p.69.

195

anguish' vague, but his own version replaces this vagueness with an

uncertainty".1"2

But many critics have agreed that it is only by reference to Giles' poem

that we can resolve with any certainty what and whose emotion is being

presented. If Pound wanted to correct Giles' failure to communicate the

precise emotion of the speaker we must conclude that it fails to do so, as John

T. Gage observed. But Pound's purpose is different. He has made an attempt

to shift the emotion away from the speaker, or the subject, and fix it

somehow in the scene. Having left alone so, we might well conclude that the

poem is more 'powerful'.

The readers have to understand the relationship of the girl, who is 'the

rejoicer of the heart' and lies 'beneath' the leaves on the dry and dusty earth,

with the speaker of the poem. Thus, because of the change of state, but in as

much as it is the same scene transformed, there is a more radical metonymic

continuity.

Martin A. Kayman, illustrates the point by comparing this poem with

William Carlos Williams' poem, 'The Young Housewife':

"• John T. Gage, In The Arresting Eye :'I'he Rhetoric of Imagism, p.69.

1%

She stands

Shy, uncorsctcd, tucking in Stray ends of hair, and I compare her to a fallen leaf

The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over

103dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

Martin A. Kayman writes:

The leaf which appears first as an explicit metaphor is

subsequently demystified when it reappears meto-

nymically. The effect is disjunctive : 'an assertion of

objective realities and difference over subjective

relations. In 'Liu Che', on the other hand, the leaf is first

introduced as a metonymy, and then transformed into a

metaphor — which continues, in a sense as a, 104metonymy.

The energy of Pound's poem is released in our participation in relating

the shift at the level of emotional connotation. The effect is an elegiac

resolution of discontinuity, the dominance of the subjective transformations

over the denotations of the actual. This is achieved without recourse to

didacticism, mysticism, allegory or abstract comment— without conspicuous

subjectivism and without the loss of the concrete values of the signifiers. It is

a question not merely of the presentation of 'natural objects', but of making

‘nt Martin A. Kayman, The Modernism o f Ezra Pound, p.45.

1 u Martin A. Kayman, The Modernism o f Ezra Pound. p.45.

197

the object function at two levels. So, what we seem to have in Pound's

Image and his hierarchy of metaphors is a process in which the metaphorical

or metonymic roles of signifiers are inverted. And we see that the Image has

replaced the descriptive limitations of an objective language, with an

activised transformation. The achievement may not be as interesting

qualitatively as it is technically.

198

IN A STATION OF THE METRO

THE apparition of these faces in the crowd ;Petals on a wet, black bough.

fSelected Poenis, 1926]

This little poem is one of the most famous Imagist poems of Ezra

Pound, and is often considered by the critics as a poem showing the

quintessence of Imagism. Pound himself wrote an account of its composition,

which is quite well known and often quoted by many critics.105 The incident

that inspired Pound to write the poem was just a simple experience of

meeting some beautiful ladies and a child at a Metro Station at La Concorde

on a visit to Paris. Unable to express what he felt at that time he took more

than one year to compose the poem after repeated draftings, revisions and

prunningj With the Japanese haiku in mind, Pound ultimately has composed

the poem, which, according to Hugh Kenner, 'needs every one of its twenty

words, including the six words of its title'. 106 What Pound was trying to

convey to the readers was the organic evolution of the form of the poem,

rather than arbitrary arrangement of words. Whether the history of the poem

is a truth or a myth, the piece has become a famous document of Imagism.

Pound's story of how a 'sudden emotion', which inspired the poem, led first

The story is given in Chapter III ot this Thesis, Ezra Pound and the Imagist Movemen, p.l 18.

' Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (Barkeley : University of California Press, 1971) p. 184.

I9y

to an equation in colour' and later on to a precise 'verbal equivalent, has

much in common with certain contemporary developments in the visual arts.

That is why it became the priviledged text of Imagism. It illustrates the

' 107linguistic character and 'the metonymic articulation of lmagist verse .

Pound's account of his condensation of the original thirty line poem into a

two-line haiku-like poem is significant. This is the sort of image that Pound

had contemplated when he declared that it is better to present one Image in a

lifetime than to produce voluminous works.108 Pound wrote :

The 'one image poem' is a form of super-position, that is

to say, it is one idea set on the top of another. I found it

useful in getting out of the impasse in which I had been

left by my metro emotion.109

The two images given in the poem, 'faces in the crowd' and 'Petals on a

bough' are presented in a simple and direct way, and they have been

amalgamated to form the 'One image poem'. One of the principles of Pound

was that the rhetorical framework around a metaphor should be stripped

away so that comparision, which is at the core of every metaphor, must be

allowed to stand alone. For him, the fusion of the images can not be an

abstraction ; both must be concrete, precise images which, when juxtaposed,

John Steven Childs, Modernist Fomi : Pound's Style in the Early Cantos (London : Associated University Press. 1986) p.37.

* K/ra Pound, ‘A Few Don’Ls’ , Literary Essays, p.4.

t / i .1 Pound. 'Vorticism’. Ezra Pound: A Critical Anthology, ed. J.P. Sullivan, p.5 1

result in sudden illumination. The readers have to reconstruct the whole

process, which Pound deleted at the time of writing in terms of metonymy.

Regarding the poem Pound comments :

I dare say it is meaningless unless one has drifted into a

certain vein of thought. In a poem of this sort one is

trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward

and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing

inward and subjective'.11U

Donald Davie has pointed out that this transformation (from inward to

outward) is the main difference between Imagism and Symbolism, 'the traffic

being run all the other way from Symbolists?' He writes :

For to Pound it is the outward that transforms itself into

the inward, whereas the devotee of the objective

correlative (Eliot) it is always the inward (the poet's state

of mind, or the state of feeling) that seeks in the outward

world something to correspond to itself.111

The poem, by itself clarifies that the intention in writing it, as the

syntactical dislocation between the two lines permits two comparisions at

once. First, a simple register of the outward, by which the white faces against

the gloom of the underground station are like white petals againts a black

bough , second, a register of the inward state evoked as a response to the

""H /ra Pound, ‘Vorticism', Ezra Pound: A Critical Anthology, ed. J.P. .Sullivan, p.54.

111 Donald Davie, Ezra Pound. (New York : The Viking Press, 1975) p.57.

201

perciever's mind, by which not the faces but the apparition of them stands

out against the gloom of the observer's mind as petals stand out against the

bough. In its original published form Pound used extra spacing between

phrases, as if to underline and emphasize the poem's only partial

resemblance to the world of conventional syntax and traditional poetry .

The apparition of these faces in the crowd.

Petals on a wet, black bough.

But this arrangement seems to be over insistent in the light of Davie's

interpretation as the poem does not need any such mechanical aids. He even

refutes Pound's own comment and said :

it is surely untrue, therefore, that the poem is

meaningless unless one has drifted into a certain vein of

thought'. Its compactness is not superficial, but real and

masterly.112

The title of the poem suggests something that happens in an

underground railway station. And the scene of the underground, quite

contrary to our world above evokes a series of unearthly and

transtemporal references to the serious readers. The opening word of the

poem, The apparition is significant as it is different from normal appearence.

The crowd seen in the underground is not any crowd. The reader remembers

that, Odysseus and Orpheus and Kore saw crowds in Hades. So the conscious

Donald Davie, Ezra Pound, p.57.

202

reader's mind goes roaming till it reaches the 'petals on a wet black bough .

Hugh Kenner says, 'And carrying forward the suggestion of wraiths, the word

'apparition' detaches these faces, and presides over the image that conveys the

quality of their separation.113 If the stream of consciousness of the reader

continues in this direction, the 'petals, will be of the flowers underground,

flowers, out of the sun ; flowers seen as if against a natural gleam.114 While

thinking of the bough's, wetness gleaming on its darkness, the mind may even

reach the place 'where wheels turn and nothing grows' and may be in touch

with a memory of Persephone, as Hugh Kenner suggests or any other

development of the mind's imagination. It is the 'intellectual and emotional

complex in an instant of time' and according to Pound, it is the presentation of

'that sense of sudden liberation ; that change of sudden growth'. It is also 'a

radiant node or cluster and it is the VORTEX, from which and through which,

and into which ideas are constantly rushing'.115

On one level the poem seems to operate through a substitution

relation; 'the apparition of these faces' is like 'petals'. But even on this level,

deletion is apparent in the absense of the marker of the simile, 'like'. Here

John Steven Childs raised a very pertinent question, "Are we meant to

recover this deletion of similitude, a substitution relation, or, rather, are we

111 Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era. (Barkeley : University of California Press, 1971) p. 185.

114 Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era. p. 185

n<;Ezra Pound ‘Vorticism’, Ezra Pound: A Critical Anthology, p.57.

meant to percieve the two lines in a spatial juxtaposition. But the

syntactically parallel construction of the two lines emphasizes the integrity

and not the transposition of each. Pound does not merely intend us to

conceive that 'faces' are like 'petals', but that “through contiguity of 'a thing

outward and objective' and 'a thing inward and subjective the two elements

are spatially juxtaposed.117 'Consciously or not', writes Earl Miner in this

context, "Pound's language here echoe the definition of a sacrament in the

Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer as 'the outward and visible sign of an

inward and spiritual grace".118 Thus the effect of Pound's Imagist theory of

poems, can also be regarded as an extention of the religious symbolism, 'the

modern counterpart of the moment of inspired emotion which had once

produced the lengthier forms of Greek myth and medieval romance'. But unlike

myth and romance, image must be instantaneous and independent of time and

space. Pound's image in this poem consists of a single perception of beauty in the

midst of ugliness.

But it is so much intensified, to form an Image that not everyone can't

agree how such an intense emotional effect is possible in a poem as short as

this one. But one can, by meditating upon it (meditation or reflection, is what

" ‘ John Steven Childs, Modernist Form : Pound's Style in the Early Cantos, p.37.

John Steven Childs, Modernist Form, Pound’s Style in the Early Cantos, p. 37.

William Pratt, ‘Ezra Pound and the Image’, Ezra Pound: The London Years, p.2.5.

204

a short poem demands) we can analyse the poem. Interestingly, William Pratt

deduces an equation for this poem, 'the equation for human emotions

faces Crowd

Petals bough

According to him the faces and petals connote beauty as the crowd and

bough connote ugliness and the emotion evoked is one of unexpected

delight, of human beauty percieved in a sordid city scene. And in this brief

image there is a contrast of light and darkness, which Pound used

extensively in the Cantos, later on. Pound repeated these images so

frequently in different forms that they become equivalents of Heaven and

Hell.

Now, returning to the poem, the reader is presumably expected to

visualize an amalgam of these juxtaposed scences, which is neither petals

nor faces, but a kind of some third image different to both. Hulme called it a

visual chord. Hulme wrote, 'The simultaneous presentation to the mind of two

different images from what one might call a visual chord. They unite to suggest

an Image which is different to both'.119 But the Gestalt psychologists say that the

act of perception of objects in juxtaposition is to be a figure or ground

relationship. Then, as John T. Gage wondered, the synthesis of images into one

Hulme. Further Speculations, Quoted in John T.Gage, In the Arresting Eye (Baton Rouge : Louisiana Slate University Press, 1981) p.61

205

image becom es questionable. The poem , in this respect is com pared to one of the120perceptual processes illustrated by the fam iliar G estalt illusion.

Here the image of the faces or vase can be seen together but it is not possible

to see both the faces and the vase simultaneously. So in a sense it is not a

pictorial fusion of the faces and the vase, but merely an alternating

perception of one or the other, depending on which is percieved in the

foreground. The relation between the parts of the poem appears to be

similarly a ambiguous relation between the figure and the ground, so that

one may choose to consider the faces in terms of the petals, or vice versa.

Although it is evidently a poem about 'faces' the use of colon, at the end of

the first line in place of words 'are like' is what makes this ambiguity

possible. Pound compared this poem to a Japanese Haiku:

The footsteps of the cat upon the snow : (are like) plum-blossoms.

'-"T.H. Hulmc, Further Speculations. Quoted in John T.Gage, In the Arresting Eve. p.61.

206

.ind commented, 'the words 'are like' would not occur in the original, but I

.uld them for clarity" indicating that the comparison was meant to be

understood but that Pound saw some advantage in choosing to imply it by

leaving out the comparative term.121 And the advantage is that it gives the

poem a richness it would not have if it were a simile. Pound believed that in

Japan, where a work of art is not estimated by its acreage and where sixteen

syllables are counted enough for a poem if you arrange and punctuate them

properly'.122 He finally got it in this poem. Earlier, he took three years to find

the words for 'Piccadily' (Printed at the end of Personae of 1909, and not

reprinted): 'Beautiful, tragic faces, Ye that were whole and are so sunken ....

O wistful, fragile faces, few out of so many ... who had forgotton you ?'

And he found himself sentimental in expression.

But the 'Metro' poem, presents, a truely new way of exploring the

possibilities of language in verbalizing experience. Referring to the technique

of parataxis (omission of the connecting words) Hugh Kenner says that, 'This

setting-in-relation is apt to be paratactic'.124 In his opinion, this poeni is not a

sentence, because its structure is typographic and metric. Here words are

used not to deliver the meanings of their common use in isolation and

without context. Without loss of precision, these words are charged with

121 Ezra Pound ‘Vorticism’. .4 Critical Anthology, p.53.

Christine Brooke, ZBC oj Ezra Pound (Barkeley : University of California Press, 1977) p.97.

123 Christine Brooke, ZBC of Ezra Pound, p.97.

114 Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era. p. 186.

207

incepts, that can be translated at different layers of meaning. 'Apparition

extends towards ghosts and goes beyond. It becomes visible revelations. This

word cannot be substituted by a simpler word such as 'sight'. Similary

Petals' cannot be changed to 'blossoms' because it would reduce the energy

generated by the sharp cut of its syllables in the 'Petals'. Kenner Calls it 'a

consonantal vigour', which is again recapitulated in the trisyllabic, 'wet,

black bough'. The words so raised by prosody to attention assert themselves

js words, and make a luminous claim on our attention, from which visual,

tactile and mythic associations radiate.125 As we move through the poem and

read the words one by one, we know a new structure achieves itself.

•' Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era, p .l 87.

20K

FAN-PIECE FOR HER IMPERIAL LORD

OFAN of white silk,Clear as frost on the grass-blade,

You are also laid aside.

[Selected Poems, 1926]

This short poem is also a haiku-like poem included in the Imagist

Anthology, Des Imagiste. It is one of the many poems by Pound in which he

used Chinese images. He adapted this poem from a poem translated by H.A.

Giles, in his A History of Chinese Literature (1901). Pound condensed it from

the original 10-line poem to the present form having only 18 words, and it is

one of the Chinese fragments which Pound produced before reading

Fenollosa and writing Cathay. This epigramatic poem shows the affinity of

Pound with the Oriental classical lyric poets and his love for romantic

varieties. This miniature again relies upon implication for its effect, dropped

into the pool of the reader's mind, the details left to unfold by themselves.126

As in the 'Metro' poem, the title of this poem is also indespensible. The

title informs us that this is a poem inscribed on her fan by a girl who has lost

the favour of the emperor. 'In Chinese', says Micheal Alenxander, 'this forms

part of a large class of occasional epigraph verse, written literally on a

thousand personal things, where fitness and elegance are all that might be

' Michael Alenxander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, pp. 23, 230.

looked for'.127 The starting point of the poem is that the girl and the fan are

compared in their dejection and it is known that eventually both are laid

aside'. The observation itself is figurative and in our attempt to account for

the last line, 'you are also laid aside', makes us to feel the speaker's sorrow,

which is reflected in the abandonment of the fan. The fan is of silk and white

and clear, giving the impression of beauty, softness and cleanliness.

Immediately, we know that the lady is tender and her own characteristics are

those of the fan. But it is not the case of transferred epithet. We can

understand the poem better it we go through the original Giles' poem :

O Fair white silk, fresh from the weaver’s loom,Clear as frost, bright as the winter’s snow —See ! friendship fashions out of thee a fan,Round as the round moon shines in heaven above,At home, abroad, a close companion there,Stirring at every move the grateful gale.And yet I fear, ah me ! that autumn chills Cooling the dying summer’s torrid rage,Will see thee laid neglected on the shelf,

All thoughts of bygone days, like them-bygone.128

The condensation of this poem to an astonishingly limited words, in which

nothing essential has been omitted from the original, can be possible only by

the principles of Imagist economy, and in the hands of a master craftsman,

like Pound.

117 Michael Alenxander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p.23.

IJI John T. Gage. In the Arresting Eye. p. 172

210

In the condensed version, the emotion is further specified because

there is a 'comment' as well as 'presentation', the last line telling us what no

juxtaposition of descriptions could : that in addition to awe, the speaker

finds significance. It is a comparision in which the imagistic moment of

meditative excitement as in the 'Metro' poem provides an opportunity for the

assertion about an altogether different experience from what is being said.

Almost all of Pound's short Imagist poems are filled with his superb

handling and placement of words so that they 'care charge with meaning'

and are presented as verbal equations for 'intense emotions', which caused

'patterns' in the mind according to Pound. As in the "Metro' poem, William

Pratt gives the equation as follows:

fan (lady) grass-blade 129

hand (lord) frost

In this equation, or metaphor, the white silk fan is the lady, the hand holding

it is her lord, and as the white frost coats the tender grass-blade, so the lord's

love for his lady has cooled, and the fan has been discarded for another, 'The

emotion implied in this image is that of sorrow in the loss of love, a contrast

of warmth and coldness, as the Metro image was a contrast of light and

darkness' says William Pratt.130 Moreover, the extension of the word 'also'

from the fan to the lady is the exact rendering of the precise realization of the

i:'’ Philip Grever, ed. , Ezra Pound: The London Years, p.26.

1 Philip Grever, ed. , Ezra Pound: The London Years, p.27.

syllogism. Any decent translation must convey this resemblance with its

emotional potential. The middle term, 'clear as frost on the grass-blade is an

example of Pound's idea that 'the natural object is always the adequate

symbol'131 and 'symbolism in its profounder sense' will give the patterns, 'a

1 ̂ 2 ppiconfiguration through which a particular stream of ideation will pass'.' The

poem, thus, becomes the figure of an ideogram and a vortex which has been

defined by Pound as the 'radiant node or cluster'. This pattern is also a

'word beyond formulated language'. Pound said, 'Any mind that is worth

calling a mind must have needs beyond the existing catagories of

language'.133 In the present poem the language is used with maximum

economy, but the significance of the phrase, i.e. the clearness of the silk

suggesting the possibility of the blamelessness of the girl extends to the fan.

And the reader feels something of the debauchery of the imperial lord or the

plight of a number of imperial concubines, one of them in her 'skills and fine

array' who now writes on her fan this verse. Pound said in his Guide to

Kulchur, that the 'point of writing' was to cause the reader 'suddenly to see'

or to 'reveal the whole subject from a new angle'. This led him into one of his

definitions of ideogramic methods : 'The ideogramic method consists of

presenting one facet and then another until at some point one gets off the

1.1 Micheal Alenxander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p.23.

1.2 Jaftery Walker, Bardic Ethos and the American Epic Poem (Baton Rouge : Louisiana Stale University Press, 1978) p.69.

Ezra Pound, ‘A Retrospect’, Literery Essays, p.4.

212

dead and desensitized surface of the reader's mind onto a part that will

register'. This definition clearly implies an intention to break open the

reader's conventional catagories of understanding and to cause a perception.

'It is in essence': says Jaffrey Walker, 'not the subject itself that is to be

revealed, but the new angle from which it may be seen'.134

If we see this poem from one angle, we contemplate the resemblance.

Both frost and grass-blade are, of course, many things besides 'clear', and

here lies the secret. They are fresh, delicate, minute, pristine, lowly, common,

natural, and short lived. These are the possibilities of properties which can be

transferred both to the silk fan and to the imperial concubine. Like the glass,

the silk and the girl (or the lady) are both wild and uncultivated.

The initial point of resemblance, that both fan and the lady are pretty

things to be discarded at will by the emperor or their lord is further charged

with meaning through the association with the frosted glass-blade, the

natural centre of more wide ranging affinities. Through this somewhat

capricious arrangement of fan, lady and grass in triple juxtaposition, Pound

creates a tension, an energy field, which elicits a considerable radiation of

feeling. In this appeal to the reader's sensibility, however, there is richness

but not, strictly speaking, any ambiguity. Micheal Alexander says, 'Not that

114 Jaffery Walker. Bardic Ethos and the American Epic Poem. p. 69

213

the many suggestions latent in such a poem, its auguries of innocence

experience, can be exhausted'.

From a different angle a new aspect of the 'Fan-Piece' might be

explored: that is its lack of self-pity : the lady is addressing her companion in

misfortune. And her verse for her 'Imperial lord' will be a memento of his

inconsistency and the connotation can be extended even to his mortality.

Thus what he said acquires a universal law with dignity in the common fate

of all things rare'.

This romantic epigram or cameo, thus crudely enlarged, is helpful in

identifying Pound's sensibility. It is not for its attunement, to another cultural

mode as a sample ; it is not for its construction not even becuase it is a

beautiful and touching poem, but for its slightness and simplicity into

which are woven the whole lot of meaning and significance of unfulfilled

love. Pound knew like Milton that poetry should be 'simple, sensuous and

passionate'. Pound helped Eliot to popularise the idea that poetry, like the

novel, should offer a more adult response to the aspects of life, beyond the

compass of the purely lyric mode. It is somewhat more vigorous, intelligent,

complete and critical of the society and self. But the poem does not tell the reader

what to feel and how to feel, but it remains a lyric poem, intended to move,

though the degree of its eloquence depends upon the perceptibility and the

Midieai Alexander, Hie Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p. 23.

214

intelligence of the reader. Pound here definitely demands an intelligent

imagination. Michael Alexander says, 'Blake gazed at the world in a grain of

sand, Pound allows us to catch the transcendent in the trivial'.13,1 But the

importance of having so much in so little a poem, is not seen naturally by all.

What have the ephemeral feeling of a discarded concubine expressed in

emblematic language of a closed courtly society to do with so much

implantation of ideas ? The best answer is provided again by Micheal Alexander:

To the demand for 'relevance' one can reply that the

freshness and precision of Pound's second line show that

the use of natural analogies to express universal human

situations remains a living convention. As for courtliness,

the poem shows that indirect and oblique means can

express deep feeling. Such a transposition of this

characteristic and attractive human gesture into another

human voice, in another time and another language,

enlarges our sympathies137

'Fan-Piece' uses Pound's technique of exploring emotions by the

presentation of objects in relation with each other, using the exact words ;

and the message is conveyed by implication rather than by exclamation.

" ‘’Micheal Alenxander, The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound, p.24.

117 Micheal Alenxander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p.24

215

PAPYRUS

SPRING ...Too long...

Gongula ...

[Collected Shorter Poems, 1926]

This poem is the finest poem as the example of Pound's concentration

of words and images in the whole period of his Imagist experiementation.

The critical history of 'Papyrus' is, in some ways, as interesting as the poem

itself. Indeed, calling this fragment as a poem is likely to raise 'critical

hackles' as observed by John Steven Childs.138 Robert Graves has ridiculed

'Papyrus', as an absurdly short poem. However, Micheal Alexander refuted

it and said that he poem makes sense in the context. He wrote :

It is a squib and a reductio ad absurdum of a method by

self-parody ; but it is also a fragment of a papyrus

containing words of a poem by Sappho, and stands at a

critical point in the line of Greek lyric poems that runs

from 'The Spring' to 'ifi£ppo/, and forms the spine of Lustra.139

Even then, the two main reservations about the little work are that it is a

'satire on H.D.', or that it is yet another example of Pound's playing fast and

1 '" John Steveen Childs. Modernist Form : I'ound's Style in Early Cantos (London : Associated University Press 19Sh)p. 41

IW Micheal Alexander, The Poetic Achievement o f Ezra Pound, p.89.

216

loose with the translation of ancient texts. But whether 'Papyrus' be comic,

and its inclusion among numerous wry vers de societe might support this

characterisation, or whether it be unwarranted as strict translation is

irrelevent to the poem-as-artifact. And Pound does present Papyrus as

artifact ; the tiny fragment represents for him a touchstone of lyrical

condensation. It is a sign of wearing out of a great age of the ninteenth

century poetry. The poem serves as the efficacy of time in purifying the form

in the Imagist manner.

It is a commonplace to say that the translator's work is a complex one.

Invention and disposition, in the sense of traditional rhetoric, have already

been accomplished by the original poet before the translator sets to his task,

but it is wrong to say that translation chiefly involves species of stylistic

resuscitation. Pound's reputation as a translator was not always consistent.

'In fact, some quite successful translations, among them some of Pound's',

says John Steven Childs,'employ at least a redeployment of disposition'.140

Moreover, he is doubful whether invention can in any realistic sense be said

to be solely the independent creation of topoi. If so, in his opinion, all poets

are, therefore, translators. As Aristotle proclaimed in his Rhetoric, the ancient

Greek writers, as a matter of fact, never conceived invention as original

arising from genius, but as the intelligent selection and gifted use of subjects

John Stevens Childs, Modernist Form : Pound's Style in the Early Cantos (London : Associated Universiy Press. 19K6) p.42

at hand. And such a conception, of course, fits Pound's notion of translation

nicely. According to John Stevens Childs, this view is in the line of post

structuralist idea (notably, in Riffatere) that 'all texts are composed on thec | , 141

basis of intertexuality, an earlier text providing hypograms for a later one.

Thus 'Papyrus' may be seen as either the result of the topos (the hypogram)

presented by Sappho's verse, or on the other hand, as the Sapphic verses

themselves, but modified by time and tradition. That was how Pound saw

the poem and translated.

The most prominent feature of the poem is that it goes beyond the

translation of the original Sapphic fragment. It is to emphasize, as later

translators have done, that poetry transmitted to us only in fragments is

irrevocably fragmentary and must not be reduced to a conventional

syntactical ordering which it does not contain. Many of the later translators

were also influenced by Pound in this regard.142 'Papyrus' serves a still more

important role in the poetic currents of the English language underlining in

the most graphic way Pound's insistence on economy of words 'use no

superfluous word ...', and his praise for 'that explicit rendering ... of the

eyewitness'.143Mentioning about this condensation and the apparent

incoherence Burton Raffel wrote :

141 John Stevens Childs. Modernist Form : Pound’s Snle in the Early Cantos, p.42.

14-Burton Raffel. Ezra Pound: The Prime Minister o f Poetry. (Hamden, Conn. : Archon Books, 1984) p.44.

Burs ton Ratfel, Ezra Pound: The Prime Minister o f Poetry, p. 44.

218

The poets of Braith Waite's Anthology of Magazine

Verse, a few of them very good poets, had plainly

none of them so much as thought of lines so utlerly

stripped, so perfectly sparse and furnished. It is

just one of the many technical innovations which

Pound offered to peers and posterity alike; as Dudley Pitts

wrote more than forty years ago, 'No one who cares

anything about poetry, ancient or modern, can afford to•i • 144disregard Mr. Pound's contribution to i t .

Deletion is the salient device of the poem and as a result the poem

seems to be a fragment. It disconcerts many readers. The three dots at the end

of each line give the impression of incompleteness at the first sight ; and a

number of possibilities for subjective interpretation is suggested. 'The two

most obvious readings of the poem accrete along the metaphoric and

metonymic axes', says, John Stevens Childs, "Metaphorically, 'the lines' of

'Papyrus' depend upon the reader's ready substitution of a vast number of

signifieds for each of the highly charged individual signifiers".145 It goes

without saying that the significance and possibilities of 'Spring' within the

universal poetic tradition is vast. On the most basic level, 'Spring' signifies

annual time' and 'a season'. And on a more specific level, it is the time of

renewal'. A more complex level of the meaning gives the possibility of

renewal through love'. As the reader moves to the next line or phrase Too

“ Burston Raffel, Ezra Pound : The Prime Minister o f Poetry, p.44.

John Stevens Childs. Modernist Form : Pound's Style in the Early Cantos, p.42.

219

long further understanding in the line of 'renewal through love' is made

possible. Spring here will become a time appropriate for love. But the adverb

'too' gives an idea of 'excess'. Thus the speaker of the poem comes up

probably with the proposition that 'something is in excess of the time

appropiate for love'. Finally, a dramatic impact is introduced in Gongula ... .

Gongula is one of Sappho's followers. And though the idea existed that

Pound was somehow satarizing H.D.'s experiments in Sapphics by naming

Gongula, he printed the word without explanation. So, naturally, the poem

itself appears as something broken off or away from a larger whole. But it

is also equally true that without 'Gongula', the strong undercurrent and the

dramatic moment that persist powerfully within the movement would

not have been possible. Indeed the poem, in a sense, gives the common theme

of passionate appeal of a lover, who had been waiting for a long time for his

lady, with the last word 'Gongula' which is substituted for 'something' quite

difficult for a general reader. It is not surprising, therefore, that the preceeding

explication seems a laboured way of getting at the simple meaning of a very

simple poem. In fact, the metaphoric process describes the way in which the

reader deciphers the 'Papyrus' as done in the case of ancient Egyptian scrolls.146

And deeper levels of meaning are to be explored by excavating every sense in a

word. So, even without inserting the ellipses or dots after each line, the poem

Pound wrote this poem while the Egyptologists were working hard on the discovery of the famous tomb of Hmperor Tutankhamen.

220

seems to be self-explanatory. But John Steven Childs gives the opinion that these

ellipses, besides suggesting the fragmentary nature of the original, are also the

signifiers by themselves, 'whose signified is attrition' and says that such

attrition points both to the wearing away of cultural dross in the poem itself as

well as to the attrition which might reasonably be experienced in the

poet/lover's expectations'.147 Then, the connotation signified by too long and

the annual time of 'spring' are brought together under the reigning sign of

'attrition' Paradoxically, although it is a poem about the wearing away, the

weariness induced in the lover by longing, is also an eternal emotional complex

in the lover's mind. Perhaps that is why the poem has been reconstructed by

Pound after nearly three millenia of its original composition.

In fact, the subject of the poem is time ; and it has a duel operation in

the poem. On one hand it destroys individuality, and, on the other, it

intensifies the feelings of love, and thereby creates an artistic perfection. That

which remains in 'Papyrus' is the succession of images. And these images

have been purified by an excision of language. In a sense it is the progression

of history itself that brings it to a perfection. Pound's preoccupation with

cultural revivification and the impersonal moulding of human consciousness,

as presented in this poem, can be found throughout his Imagist period and

later even in the Cantos.

14 John Slovens Childs, Modernist Form : Pound's Style in the luirlv Cantos, p.43.