23.05.2011.doc

LITERATURA USA                                                                                                                              23.05.2011

WYKŁAD

Major poets:

·         Ezra Pound,

·         T.S. Eliot,

·         Amy Lowell,

·         H.D. (Hilda Doolittle),

·         William Carlos Williams,

·         E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)

·         Edward Estlin (played around with form, punctuation, spelling, type style, grammar, imagery, rhythm, syntax)

Modernism & Imagism

Modernism in America began with the publication of Thomas Stearns Eliot’s poem “Portrait of a Lady” in 1911 and proceeded with the publication of the anthology titled “Des Imagistes”  (1914), a collection of poems by British and American writers and edited by Ezra Pound.

·         Ezra Pound advocated the new school of poetry known as Imagism.

·         !!!Imagism – inspired by Japanese Haiku; showed connections with impressionism (light, colour, feelings, mood) and opposed sentimentality (sadness, sympathy, love-unsuirable and obvious) à Ezra Pound

Imagist movement

·         emphases on extreme concision

·         emphases on certain neutrality of description

·         precision

·         restraint

Imagism

·         !!! “Image is sth that presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” – Ezra Pound.

·         poet focuses on strong, concrete images

·         a poet concentrates on an image and is to objectively present an intellectual and emotional reaction caused by a simple object, experience or phenomenon without referring to abstraction or clichés

·         objective correlative – expressing emotion through “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events” T.S. Eliot. In the “love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock “ by T.S. Eliot

·         Prufrock thinks himself that he has measured his life in coffee spoons. Using coffee spoons to reflect humdrum existence and wasted lifetime

Ezra Pound

E. Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (1913) with the title serving as the poem’s first line

William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

·         he was a doctor writing short stories, poems

·         “The Red Wheelbarrow” (1923)

·         Yet Imagism from the outset never quite held to this model of concision and descriptive neutrality. John Gould Fletcher is a clear example of Imagism’s less violently recognized, loosely descriptive, and impressionistic mode.

Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925)

·         “Peace” – anti-war poem ?

·         the beginnings of formulating the principles of imagism may be traced to Nov 1908, when E. Pound outlined them in a letter to W.C. Williams

1.       “to paint the thing as I see it

2.       beauty

3.       freedom from didacticism

4.       it’s only good manners if you repeat, a few other men at last do it better or more briefly”

Imagism

·         in 1911, Pound was looking for some good poems to send to Harriet Monroe in Chicago for her “Poetry: A Magazine of Verse” (Pound was both a contributor to the magazine and the editor of its London edition)

·         he found the poems in the work of Hilda Doolittle (American) and Richard Aldington (British). In 1912, to their surprise, Pound informed them that they were Imagists.

·         in the January 1913 edition of “Poetry”, “Three Poems” were published by Hilda Doolittle under the pseudonym H.D. Imagiste

·         two months later, again in “Poetry”, F.S. Flint wrote “Imagisme” ?,  known as the “Imagist Manifesto”. It defined the new movement and elaborated the rules:

1. “direct treatment of the “thing” whether subjective or objective

2. to use absolutely no word that doesn’t contribute to the presentation

3. as regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome”

Following Flint’s article in the same issue was “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste”, an article written by Pound in which he defined the image as “that which presents an emotional and intellectual complex in an instant of time”

According to Imagists poet had to present firm, concrete images and stick closely to the object described. Imagism advocated for free verse, new rhythmic effects, and colloquial, clear language. When Ezra Pound moved on to Vorticism, Amy Lowell assumed control of the Imagists movement in America.

Adrienne Munich and Melissa Bradshaw, in the Introduction to “Amy Lowell, American Modern” explain the reasons of the feud between Pound an Lowell:

“Initially, Lowell and Pound enjoyed a cordial relationship. When she travelled to England in the summer of 1913 to meet the enigmatic Imagiste poets whose poems and critical writings had appeared in several issues of Harriet Monroe’s Poetry magazine, Pound arranged her introductions, read her work, and offered editorial suggestions, and included her poem In a Garden in his anthology Des Imagistes (1914). Their brief alliance quickly collapsed when Lowell announced plans to publish a yearly imagist anthology, to be brought out by a major U.S. publishing house with each poet receiving an equal allotment of poems and sharing editorial responsibilities. Pound agreed that such a project would dilute the concept of imagism, conflating in with any poem written in vers libre. Having nominally acceded to Pound’s wishes by dropping the final e in imagiste, Lowell went on edit three anthologies of Some Imagist Poets (1915, 1916, and 1917).

In addition to the struggle for dominance between two immense egos, the battle between Lowell and Pound centered on the very concept of an avantgarde. Whereas they both agreed that modern poetry should “make it new” and strip the line of any Victorian excess, Pound imagined poetry as an elite enterprise and accused Lowell of trying to turn imagism into “an uncritical democracy with you as an intermediary between it and the printers.”.”

Amy Lowell “Amygism”

·         the battle was fueled by the fact that Lowell aimed to include and celebrate more poets representing American new voices, but Pound wanted to limit the canon only to the elite.

·         by editing the imagists anthologies, Lowell was promoting the imagist movement, brought it to public attention, and explained its principles. She did it in the two prefaces to “Some Imagists Poets” (1915, 1916) In the 1st one she wrote:

Preface

“In March, 1914, a volume appeared entitled 'Des Imagistes'. It was a collection of the work of various young poets, presented together as a school. This school has been widely discussed by those interested in new movements in the arts, and has already become a household word. Differences of taste and judgment, however, have arisen among the contributors to that book; growing tendencies are forcing them along different paths. Those of us whose work appears in this volume have therefore decided to publish our collection under a new title, and we have been joined by two or three poets who did not contribute to the first volume, our wider scope making this possible.”

Then Lowell mentions that the poets were free to choose their own selections of poems and restates the imagist.

Principles:

These principles are not new; they have fallen into desuetude. They are the essentials of all great poetry, indeed of all great literature, and they are simply these:

·         use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word;

·         to create new rhythms -- as the expression of new moods -- and not to copy old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist on 'free-verse' as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In poetry, a new cadence means a new idea.

Restating imagist principles:

·         to allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good art to write badly about aeroplanes and automobiles; nor is it necessarily bad art to write well about the past. We believe passionately in the artistic value of modern life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing so uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 1911.

·         to present an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It s for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of art.

·         to produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.

·         finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.

The preface to the 1915 anthology of Some Imagist Poets, drafted by Fletcher and edited by Lowell, included extensive explanation of poetic purpose. Imagism was defined as

“ a clear presentation of whatever the author wishes to convey. Now he may wish to convey a mood of indecision, in which case the poem should be indecisive, he may wish to bring before ... the constantly shifting and changing lights over a landscape, or the emotion, then his poem must shift and change to present this clearly,”

Amy Lowell

In order to achieve the desired effect, the poet may manipulate the poetic cadence Reading the poem aloud also may help him. The ... edition of “Some imagist Poets” was published ... a preface. In comparison to the success ... previous collections, this one did not ... impressive sales and marked the end of the “imagist” project. Lowell’s commitment to the imagist movement was essential. She sponsored the publication of the anthologies, explained “imagists” principles, wrote promotional articles and gave public lectures. By doing so, she placed the movement permanently in the literary cannon and brought the poetry to broad public attention (not just the elite) making a lasting difference in the reception of modern poetry.

The practitioners of Imagism:

·         T.E Hulme,

·         E Pound,

·         R. Arlington,

·         H.D (Hilda Doolittle)

·         F.S Flint,

·         Amy Lowell,

·         J. G. Fletcher,

·         D.H Lawrence

T.S. Eliot 1888 – 1965

Life:

·         came from a prominent New England family

·         educated at Harvard, Sorbonne, Oxford

·         Prestigious career as a poet and critic

·         became an English subject in 1927

·         cosmopolitan, international, urban, polyglot, elitist, literary

·         set the terms for the poetry (and prose) of high modernism)

·         published poetry, plays and essays

·         worked for a time with Lloyd’s Bank

·         editor of The Criterion until late 1930s

·         became a director of the London house Faber and Faber

·         awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947

·         in 1928 he made this utterance: “ I am Anglo-Catholic in religion, Royalist in politics and Classicist in Literature”

·         he was also anti–Semitic

·         he speaks of high culture, of canonical works of the European past

·         his poetry is a tribute to the great tradition that reaches back to classical antiquity

·         he is modern as well, because his themes are ... crisis of belief and the breakdown in culture

·         Eliot fuses religious and secular, has conversational voice in his poems, delights in associative logic.

·         His lyricism is checked and choked, but also enriched by this ironic cutting

Poetry:

“The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 1915

·         opening lines – imagery of disease, urban anomie, alienation

·         Eliot has a gift for epigrams, ditties ... songs), refrains

·         culture; sterile, superficial, vain ...

·         chit-chat, cocktail parties, degrades status of high art, recycling of culture

·         Prufrock is honoured by doubts and anxiety, about the possibility of passion or direct utterance.

·         Prufrock is a new kind of protagonist, the second – rater, the man of margins, the onlooker who cannot act

“The Waste Land” (1922)

·         the poem changed the form of modern literature. It consisted of a mix of references, allusions and quotations from earlier texts, cohabiting with Eliot’s own lyricism

·         there are several pages of notes to this poem, explaining his allusions, telling where to look, published with the poem

·         it is the most elitist poem ever written

·         it uses 6 languages: data means “give, dayadhvam means “sympathize” etc...

·         ...