EZRA POUND

T.S. ELIOT∗

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EZRA POUNDHIS METRIC AND POETRYBOOKS BY EZRA POUNDPROVENCA, being poems selected from

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Personae, Exultations, and Canzoniere. (Small,Maynard, Boston, 1910)

THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE: An at-tempt to define somewhat the charm of thepre-renaissance literature of Latin-Europe.(Dent, London, 1910; and Dutton, New York)

THE SONNETS AND BALLATE OFGUIDO CAVALCANTI. (Small, Maynard,Boston, 1912)

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RIPOSTES. (Swift, London, 1912; andMathews, London, 1913)

DES IMAGISTES: An anthology of theImagists, Ezra Pound, Aldington, Amy Low-ell, Ford Maddox Hueffer, and others

GAUDIER-BRZESKA: A memoir. (JohnLane, London and New York, 1916)

NOH: A study of the Classical Stage ofJapan with Ernest Fenollosa. (Alfred A.

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Knopf, New York, 1917; and Macmillan,London, 1917)

LUSTRA with Earlier Poems. (AlfredA. Knopf, New York, 1917)

PAVANNES AHD DIVISIONS. (Prose.In preparation: Alfred A. Knopf, New York)

EZRA POUNDHIS METRIC AND POETRYI

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”All talk on modern poetry, by peoplewho know,” wrote Mr. Carl Sandburg inPoetry , ”ends with dragging in Ezra Poundsomewhere. He may be named only to becursed as wanton and mocker, poseur, tri-fler and vagrant. Or he may be classed asfilling a niche today like that of Keats in apreceding epoch. The point is, he will bementioned.”

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This is a simple statement of fact. Butthough Mr. Pound is well known, even hav-ing been the victim of interviews for Sundaypapers, it does not follow that his work isthoroughly known. There are twenty peoplewho have their opinion of him for every onewho has read his writings with any care.Of those twenty, there will be some whoare shocked, some who are ruffled, some

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who are irritated, and one or two whosesense of dignity is outraged. The twenty-first critic will probably be one who knowsand admires some of the poems, but whoeither says: ”Pound is primarily a scholar,a translator,” or ”Pound’s early verse wasbeautiful; his later work shows nothing bet-ter than the itch for advertisement, a mis-chievous desire to be annoying, or a childish

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desire to be original.” There is a third typeof reader, rare enough, who has perceivedMr. Pound for some years, who has fol-lowed his career intelligently, and who rec-ognizes its consistency.

This essay is not written for the firsttwenty critics of literature, nor for that raretwenty-second who has just been mentioned,but for the admirer of a poem here or there,

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whose appreciation is capable of yieldinghim a larger return. If the reader is al-ready at the stage where he can maintain atonce the two propositions, ”Pound is merelya scholar” and ”Pound is merely a yellowjournalist,” or the other two propositions,”Pound is merely a technician” and ”Poundis merely a prophet of chaos,” then there isvery little hope. But there are readers of

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poetry who have not yet reached this hy-pertrophy of the logical faculty; their at-tention might be arrested, not by an out-burst of praise, but by a simple statement.The present essay aims merely at such astatement. It is not intended to be either abiographical or a critical study. It will notdilate upon ”beauties”; it is a summary ac-count of ten years’ work in poetry. The

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citations from reviews will perhaps stimu-late the reader to form his own opinion. Wedo not wish to form it for him. Nor shallwe enter into other phases of Mr. Pound’sactivity during this ten years; his writingsand views on art and music; though thesewould take an important place in any com-prehensive biography.

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Pound’s first book was published in Venice.Venice was a halting point after he had leftAmerica and before he had settled in Eng-land, and here, in 1908, ”A Lume Spento”appeared. The volume is now a rarity of lit-erature; it was published by the author andmade at a Venetian press where the authorwas able personally to supervise the print-ing; on paper which was a remainder of a

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supply which had been used for a History ofthe Church. Pound left Venice in the sameyear, and took ”A Lume Spento” with himto London. It was not to be expected thata first book of verse, published by an un-known American in Venice, should attractmuch attention. The ”Evening Standard”has the distinction of having noticed thevolume, in a review summing it up as:

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wild and haunting stuff, absolutely po-etic, original, imaginative, passionate, andspiritual. Those who do not consider itcrazy may well consider it inspired. Comingafter the trite and decorous verse of most ofour decorous poets, this poet seems like aminstrel of Provence at a suburban musicalevening.... The unseizable magic of poetryis in the queer paper volume, and words are

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no good in describing it.As the chief poems in ”A Lume Spento”

were afterwards incorporated in ”Personae,”the book demands mention only as a date inthe author’s history. ”Personae,” the firstbook published in London, followed earlyin 1909. Few poets have undertaken thesiege of London with so little backing; fewbooks of verse have ever owed their success

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so purely to their own merits. Pound cameto London a complete stranger, without ei-ther literary patronage or financial means.He took ”Personae” to Mr. Elkin Math-ews, who has the glory of having publishedYeats’ ”Wind Among the Reeds,” and the”Books of the Rhymers’ Club,” in whichmany of the poets of the ’90s, now famous,found a place. Mr. Mathews first sug-

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gested, as was natural to an unknown au-thor, that the author should bear part ofthe cost of printing. ”I have a shilling in mypocket, if that is any use to you,” said thelatter. ”Well,” said Mr. Mathews, ”I wantto publish it anyway.” His acumen was jus-tified. The book was, it is true, receivedwith opposition, but it was received. Therewere a few appreciative critics, notably Mr.

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Edward Thomas, the poet (known also as”Edward Eastaway”; he has since been killedin France). Thomas, writing in the ”En-glish Review” (then in its brightest daysunder the editorship of Ford Madox Huef-fer), recognized the first-hand intensity offeeling in ”Personae”:

He has ... hardly any of the superficialgood qualities of modern versifiers.... He

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has not the current melancholy or resigna-tion or unwillingness to live; nor the kindof feeling for nature which runs to minutedescription and decorative metaphor. Hecannot be usefully compared with any liv-ing writers;... full of personality and withsuch power to express it, that from the firstto the last lines of most of his poems heholds us steadily in his own pure grave, pas-

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sionate world.... The beauty of it (In Praiseof Ysolt) is the beauty of passion, sincerityand intensity, not of beautiful words andimages and suggestions ... the thought dom-inates the words and is greater than theyare. Here (Idyll for Glaucus) the effect isfull of human passion and natural magic,without any of the phrases which a readerof modern verse would expect in the treat-

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ment of such a subject.Mr. Scott James, in the ”Daily News,”

speaks in praise of his metres:At first the whole thing may seem to be

mere madness and rhetoric, a vain exhibi-tion of force and passion without beauty.But, as we read on, these curious metres ofhis seem to have a law and order of theirown; the brute force of Mr. Pound’s imagi-

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nation seems to impart some quality of in-fectious beauty to his words. Sometimesthere is a strange beating of anapaests whenhe quickens to his subject; again and againhe unexpectedly ends a line with the secondhalf of a reverberant hexameter:

”Flesh shrouded, bearing the secret.”... And a few lines later comes an ex-

ample of his favourite use of spondee, fol-23

lowed by dactyl and spondee, which comesin strangely and, as we first read it, withthe appearance of discord, but afterwardsseems to gain a curious and distinctive vigour:

”Eyes, dreams, lips, and the night goes.”Another line like the end of a hexameter

is”But if e’er I come to my love’s land.”But even so favourable a critic pauses to

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remark thatHe baffles us by archaic words and unfa-

miliar metres; he often seems to be scorningthe limitations of form and metre, breakingout into any sort of expression which suitsitself to his mood.

and counsels the poet to ”have a littlemore respect for his art.”

It is, in fact, just this adaptability of25

metre to mood, an adaptability due to anintensive study of metre, that constitutesan important element in Pound’s technique.Few readers were prepared to accept or fol-low the amount of erudition which enteredinto ”Personae” and its close successor, ”Ex-ultations,” or to devote the care to read-ing them which they demand. It is herethat many have been led astray. Pound is

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not one of those poets who make no de-mand of the reader; and the casual readerof verse, disconcerted by the difference be-tween Pound’s poetry and that on which histaste has been trained, attributes his owndifficulties to excessive scholarship on thepart of the author. ”This,” he will say ofsome of the poems in Provencal form or onProvencal subjects, ”is archaeology; it re-

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quires knowledge on the part of its reader,and true poetry does not require such knowl-edge.” But to display knowledge is not thesame thing as to expect it on the part of thereader; and of this sort of pedantry Pound isquite free. He is, it is true, one of the mostlearned of poets. In America he had takenup the study of Romance Languages withthe intention of teaching. After work in

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Spain and Italy, after pursuing the Provencalverb from Milan to Freiburg, he desertedthe thesis on Lope de Vega and the Ph.D.and the professorial chair, and elected toremain in Europe. Mr. Pound has spo-ken out his mind from time to time on thesubject of scholarship in American univer-sities, its deadness, its isolation from gen-uine appreciation, and the active creative

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life of literature. He has always been readyto battle against pedantry. As for his ownlearning, he has studied poetry carefully,and has made use of his study in his ownverse. ”Personae” and ”Exultations” showhis talent for turning his studies to account.He was supersaturated in Provence; he hadtramped over most of the country; and thelife of the courts where the Troubadours

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thronged was part of his own life to him.Yet, though ”Personae” and ”Exultations”do exact something from the reader, theydo not require a knowledge of Provencalor of Spanish or Italian. Very few peopleknow the Arthurian legends well, or evenMalory (if they did they might realize thatthe Idylls of the King are hardly more im-portant than a parody, or a ”Chaucer re-

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told for Children”); but no one accuses Ten-nyson of needing footnotes, or of supercil-iousness toward the uninstructed. The dif-ference is merely in what people are pre-pared for; most readers could no more relatethe myth of Atys correctly than they couldgive a biography of Bertrand de Born. Itis hardly too much to say that there is nopoem in these volumes of Mr. Pound which

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needs fuller explanation than he gives him-self. What the poems do require is a trainedear, or at least the willingness to be trained.

The metres and the use of language areunfamiliar. There are certain traces of mod-ern influence. We cannot agree with Mr.Scott-James that among these are ”W. E.Henley, Kipling, Chatterton, and especiallyWalt Whitman”–least of all Walt Whitman.

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Probably there are only two: Yeats andBrowning. Yeats in ”La Fraisne,” in ”Per-sonae,” for instance, in the attitude andsomewhat in the vocabulary:

I wrapped my tears in an ellum leaf Andleft them under a stone, And now men callme mad because I have thrown All follyfrom me, putting it aside To leave the oldbarren ways of men ...

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For Browning, Mr. Pound has alwaysprofessed strong admiration (see ”Mesmerism”in ”Personae”); there are traces of him in”Cino” and ”Famam Librosque Cano,” inthe same volume. But it is more profitableto comment upon the variety of metres andthe original use of language.

Ezra Pound has been fathered with verslibre in English, with all its vices and virtues.

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The term is a loose one–any verse is called”free” by people whose ears are not accus-tomed to it–in the second place, Pound’suse of this medium has shown the temper-ance of the artist, and his belief in it as avehicle is not that of the fanatic. He hassaid himself that when one has the propermaterial for a sonnet, one should use thesonnet form; but that it happens very rarely

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to any poet to find himself in possession ofjust the block of stuff which can perfectlybe modelled into the sonnet. It is true thatup to very recently it was impossible to getfree verse printed in any periodical exceptthose in which Pound had influence; andthat now it is possible to print free verse(second, third, or tenth-rate) in almost anyAmerican magazine. Who is responsible for

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the bad free verse is a question of no impor-tance, inasmuch as its authors would havewritten bad verse in any form; Pound has atleast the right to be judged by the successor failure of his own. Pound’s vers libreis such as is only possible for a poet whohas worked tirelessly with rigid forms anddifferent systems of metric. His ”Canzoni”are in a way aside from his direct line of

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progress; they are much more nearly stud-ies in mediaeval appreciation than any ofhis other verse; but they are interesting,apart from their merit, as showing the poetat work with the most intricate Provencalforms–so intricate that the pattern cannotbe exhibited without quoting an entire poem.(M. Jean de Bosschere, whose French is trans-lated in the ”Egoist,” has already called

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attention to the fact that Pound was thefirst writer in English to use five Provencalforms.) Quotation will show, however, thegreat variety of rhythm which Pound man-ages to introduce into the ordinary iambicpentameter:

Thy gracious ways, O lady of my heart,have O’er all my thought their golden glam-our cast; As amber torch-flames, where strange

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men-at-arms Tread softly ’neath the damaskshield of night, Rise from the flowing steelin part reflected, So on my mailed thoughtthat with thee goeth, Though dark the way,a golden glamour falleth.

Within the iambic limits, there are notwo lines in the whole poem that have anidentical rhythm.

We turn from this to a poem in ”Exul-41

tations,” the ”Night Litany”:O God, what great kindness have we

done in times past and forgotten it, Thatthou givest this wonder unto us, O God ofwaters?

O God of the night What great sorrowCometh unto us, That thou thus repayestus Before the time of its coming?

There is evident, and more strongly in42

certain later poems, a tendency toward quan-titative measure. Such a ”freedom” as thislays so heavy a burden upon every word in aline that it becomes impossible to write likeShelley, leaving blanks for the adjectives, orlike Swinburne, whose adjectives are prac-tically blanks. Other poets have manipu-lated a great variety of metres and forms;but few have studied the forms and metres

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which they use so carefully as has Pound.His ballad of the ”Goodly Fere” shows greatknowledge of the ballad form:

I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men Onthe hills o’ Galilee, They whined as he walkedout calm between Wi’ his eyes like the greyo’ the sea.

Like the sea that brooks no voyagingWith the winds unleashed and free, Like

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the sea that he cowed at Genseret Wi’ tweywords spoke suddently.

A master of men was the Goodly FereA mate of the wind and sea, If they thinkthey ha’ slain our Goodly Fere They arefools eternally.

I ha’ seen him eat o’ the honey-combSin’ they nailed him to the tree.

And from this we turn to a very different45

form in the ”Altaforte,” which is perhapsthe best sestina that has been written inEnglish:

Damn it all! all this our South stinkspeace. You whoreson dog, Papiols, come!let’s to music! I have no life save whenthe swords clash. But ah! when I see thestandards gold, vair, purple, opposing, Andthe broad fields beneath them turn crim-

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son, Then howl I my heart nigh mad withrejoicing.

In hot summer have I great rejoicingWhen the tempests kill the earth’s foul peace,And the lightnings from black heaven flashcrimson, And the fierce thunders roar metheir music And the winds shriek throughthe clouds mad, opposing, And through allthe riven skies God’s swords clash.

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I have quoted two verses to show theintricacy of the pattern.

The Provencal canzon, like the Eliza-bethan lyric, was written for music. Mr.Pound has more recently insisted, in a se-ries of articles on the work of Arnold Dol-metsch, in the ”Egoist,” on the importanceof a study of music for the poet.

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Such a relation between poetry and mu-sic is very different from what is called the”music” of Shelley or Swinburne, a musicoften nearer to rhetoric (or the art of theorator) than to the instrument. For poetryto approach the condition of music (Poundquotes approvingly the dictum of Pater) itis not necessary that poetry should be des-titute of meaning. Instead of slightly veiled

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and resonant abstractions, likeTime with a gift of tears, Grief with a

glass that ran–of Swinburne, or the mossiness of Mal-

larme, Pound’s verse is always definite andconcrete, because he has always a definiteemotion behind it.

Though I’ve roamed through many places,None there is that my heart troweth Fair as

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that wherein fair groweth One whose laudhere interlaces Tuneful words, that I’ve es-sayed. Let this tune be gently played Whichmy voice herward upraises.

At the end of this poem the author ap-pends the note:

The form and measure are those of PiereVidal’s ” Ab l’alen tir vas me l’aire .” Thesong is fit only to be sung, and is not to be

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spoken.There are, here and there, deliberate ar-

chaisms or oddities (e.g., ”herward”); thereare deliberately arbitrary images, having theirplace in the total effect of the poem:

Red leaf that art blown upward and outand over The green sheaf of the world ...

The lotos that pours Her fragrance intothe purple cup ...

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Black lightning ... (in a more recentpoem)

but no word is ever chosen merely forthe tinkle; each has always its part in pro-ducing an impression which is produced al-ways through language. Words are perhapsthe hardest of all material of art: for theymust be used to express both visual beautyand beauty of sound, as well as communi-

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cating a grammatical statement. It wouldbe interesting to compare Pound’s use ofimages with Mallarme’s; I think it will befound that the former’s, by the contrast,will appear always sharp in outline, even ifarbitrary and not photographic. Such im-ages as those quoted above are as precise intheir way as

Sur le Noel, morte saison, Lorsque les54

loups vivent de vent ...and the rest of that memorable Testa-

ment.So much for the imagery. As to the

”freedom” of his verse, Pound has madeseveral statements in his articles on Dol-metsch which are to the point:

Any work of art is a compound of free-dom and order. It is perfectly obvious that

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art hangs between chaos on the one side andmechanics on the other. A pedantic insis-tence upon detail tends to drive out ”majorform.” A firm hold on major form makes fora freedom of detail. In painting men intenton minutiae gradually lost the sense of formand form- combination. An attempt to re-store this sense is branded as ”revolution.”It is revolution in the philological sense of

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the term....Art is a departure from fixed positions;

felicitous departure from a norm....The freedom of Pound’s verse is rather a

state of tension due to constant oppositionbetween free and strict. There are not, as amatter of fact, two kinds of verse, the strictand the free; there is only a mastery whichcomes of being so well trained that form

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is an instinct and can be adapted to theparticular purpose in hand.

After ”Exultations” came the transla-tion of the ”Sonnets and Ballate of GuidoCavalcanti.” It is worth noting that the writerof a long review in the ” Quest ”–speakingin praise of the translation, yet found faultwith the author not on the ground of exces-

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sive mediaevalism, but becausehe is concerned rather with the future

than with a somewhat remote past, so thatin spite of his love for the mediaeval po-ets, his very accomplishment as a distinctlymodern poet makes against his success as awholly acceptable translator of Cavalcanti,the heir of the Troubadours, the scholastic.

Yet the Daily News , in criticising ”Can-59

zoni,” had remarked that Mr. Poundseems to us rather a scholar than a poet,

and we should like to see him giving his un-usual talent more to direct translation fromthe Provencal.

and Mr. J. C. Squire (now the liter-ary editor of the New Statesman ), in anappreciative review in the New Age , hadcounselled the poet that he would

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gain and not lose if he could forget allabout the poets of Dante’s day, their rosesand their flames, their gold and their fal-cons, and their literary amorousness, andwalk out of the library into the fresh air.

In ”Ripostes” there are traces of a dif-ferent idiom. Superficially, the work mayappear less important. The diction is morerestrained, the flights shorter, the dexterity

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of technique is less arresting. By roman-tic readers the book would be consideredless ”passionate.” But there is a much moresolid substratum to this book; there is morethought; greater depth, if less agitation onthe surface. The effect of London is appar-ent; the author has become a critic of men,surveying them from a consistent and devel-oped point of view; he is more formidable

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and disconcerting; in short, much more ma-ture. That he abandons nothing of his tech-nical skill is evident from the translationfrom the Anglo-Saxon, the ”Seafarer.” It isnot a slight achievement to have broughtto life alliterative verse: perhaps the ”Sea-farer” is the only successful piece of allit-erative verse ever written in modern En-glish; alliterative verse which is not merely

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a clever tour de force, but which suggeststhe possibility of a new development of thisform. Mr. Richard Aldington (whose ownaccomplishments as a writer of vers librequalify him to speak) called the poem ”un-surpassed and unsurpassable,” and a writerin the New Age (a literary organ whichhas always been strongly opposed to metri-cal innovations) called it ”one of the finest

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literary works of art produced in Englandduring the last ten years.” And the rough,stern beauty of the Anglo-Saxon, we mayremark, is at the opposite pole from that ofthe Provencal and Italian poets to whomPound had previously devoted his atten-tion.

May I for my own self song’s truth reckon,Journey’s jargon, how I in harsh days Hard-

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ship endured oft.But we can notice in ”Ripostes” other

evidences than of versatility only; certainpoems show Mr. Pound turning to moremodern subjects, as in the ”Portrait d’unefemme,” or the mordant epigram, ”An Ob-ject.” Many readers are apt to confuse thematuring of personality with desiccation ofthe emotions. There is no desiccation in

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”Ripostes.” This should be evident to any-one who reads carefully such a poem as ”AGirl.” We quote it entire without comment.

The tree has entered my hands, The saphas ascended my arms, The tree has grownin my breast– Downward, The branches growout of me, like arms.

Tree you are, Moss you are, You are vi-olets with wind above them. A child– so

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high–you are, And all this is folly to theworld.

”The Return” is an important study inverse which is really quantitative. We quoteonly a few lines:

See, they return; ah, see the tentativeMovements, and the slow feet, The troublein the pace and the uncertain Wavering!

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Mr. Pound was being attacked because ofhis propaganda. He became known as theinventor of ”Imagism,” and later, as the”High Priest of Vorticism.” As a matter offact, the actual ”propaganda” of Mr. Poundhas been very small in quantity. The im-pression which his personality made, how-ever, is suggested by the following note in” Punch ,” which is always a pretty reliable

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barometer of the English middle-class Grin:Mr. Welkin Mark (exactly opposite Long

Jane’s) begs to announce that he has se-cured for the English market the palpitatingworks of the new Montana (U.S.A.) poet,Mr. Ezekiel Ton, who is the most remark-able thing in poetry since Robert Browning.Mr. Ton, who has left America to reside fora while in London and impress his personal-

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ity on English editors, publishers and read-ers, is by far the newest poet going, what-ever other advertisements may say. He hassucceeded, where all others have failed, inevolving a blend of the imagery of the un-fettered West, the vocabulary of WardourStreet, and the sinister abandon of BorgiacItaly.

In 1913, someone writing to the New71

York Nation from the University of Illi-nois, illustrates the American, more seri-ous, disapproval. This writer begins by ex-pressing his objections to the ”principle ofFuturism.” (Pound has perhaps done morethan anyone to keep Futurism out of Eng-land. His antagonism to this movement wasthe first which was not due merely to unin-telligent dislike for anything new, and was

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due to his perception that Futurism was in-compatible with any principles of form. Inhis own words, Futurism is ”accelerated im-pressionism.”) The writer in the Nationthen goes on to analyze the modern ”hy-pertrophy of romanticism” into

The exaggeration of the importance ofa personal emotion. The abandonment ofall standards of form. The suppression of

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all evidence that a particular compositionis animated by any directing intelligence.

As for the first point, here are Mr. Pound’swords in answer to the question, ”do youagree that the great poet is never emotional?”

Yes, absolutely; if by emotion is meantthat he is at the mercy of every passingmood.... The only kind of emotion wor-thy of a poet is the inspirational emotion

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which energises and strengthens, and whichis very remote from the everyday emotionof sloppiness and sentiment....

And as for the platform of Imagism, hereare a few of Pound’s ”Don’ts for Imagists”:

Pay no attention to the criticisms of menwho have never themselves written a no-table work.

Use no superfluous word and no adjec-75

tive which does not reveal something.Go in fear of abstractions. Don’t retail

in mediocre verse what has already beendone in good prose.

Don’t imagine that the art of poetry isany simpler than the art of music or thatyou can please the expert before you havespent at least as much effort on the art ofverse as the average piano teacher spends

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on the art of music.Be influenced by as many great artists

as you can, but have the decency either toacknowledge the debt outright or try to con-ceal it.

Consider the definiteness of Dante’s pre-sentation as compared with Milton’s. Readas much of Wordsworth as does not seem tobe unutterably dull.

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If you want the gist of the matter go toSappho, Catullus, Villon when he is in thevein, Gautier when he is not too frigid, orif yon have not the tongues seek out theleisurely Chaucer.

Good prose will do you no harm. Thereis good discipline to be had by trying towrite it. Translation is also good training.

The emphasis here is certainly on dis-78

cipline and form. The Chicago Tribunerecognized this as ”sound sense,” adding:

If this is Imagism ... we are for estab-lishing Imagism by constitutional amend-ment and imprisoning without recourse toink or paper all ”literary” ladies or gentswho break any of these canons.

But other reviewers were less approving.While the writer in the Nation , quoted

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above, dreads the anarchy impending, Mr.William Archer was terrified at the prospectof hieratic formalisation. Mr. Archer be-lieves in the simple untaught muse:

Mr. Pound’s commandments tend toomuch to make of poetry a learned, self-consciouscraft, to be cultivated by a guild of adepts,from whose austere laboratories spontane-ity and simplicity are excluded.... A great

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deal of the best poetry in the world has verylittle technical study behind it.... There arescores and hundreds of people in Englandwho could write this simple metre (i.e. of”A Shropshire Lad”) successfully.

To be hanged for a cat and drowned fora rat is, perhaps, sufficient exculpation.

Probably Mr. Pound has won odiumnot so much by his theories as by his un-

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stinted praise of certain contemporary au-thors whose work he has liked. Such ex-pressions of approval are usually taken as agrievance–much more so than any personalabuse, which is comparatively a compliment–by the writers who escape his mention. Hedoes not say ”A., B., and C. are bad poetsor novelists,” but when he says ”The workof X., Y., and Z. is in such and such respects

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the most important work in verse (or prose)since so and so,” then A., B., and C. areaggrieved. Also, Pound has frequently ex-pressed disapproval of Milton and Wordsworth.

After ”Ripostes,” Mr. Pound’s idiomhas advanced still farther. Inasmuch as ”Cathay,”the volume of translations from the Chi-nese, appeared prior to ”Lustra,” it is some-times thought that his newer idiom is due

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to the Chinese influence. This is almost thereverse of the truth. The late Ernest Fenol-losa left a quantity of manuscripts, includ-ing a great number of rough translations(literally exact) from the Chinese. Aftercertain poems subsequently incorporated in”Lustra” had appeared in ”Poetry,” Mrs.Fenollosa recognized that in Pound the Chi-nese manuscripts would find the interpreter

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whom her husband would have wished; sheaccordingly forwarded the papers for him todo as he liked with. It is thus due to Mrs.Fenollosa’s acumen that we have ”Cathay”;it is not as a consequence of ”Cathay” thatwe have ”Lustra.” This fact must be bornein mind.

Poems afterward embodied in ”Lustra”appeared in ”Poetry,” in April, 1913, un-

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der the title of ”Contemporanea.” They in-cluded among others ”Tenzone,” ”The Con-dolence,” ”The Garret,” ”Salutation the Sec-ond,” and ”Dance Figure.”

There are influences, but deviously. Itis rather a gradual development of expe-rience into which literary experiences haveentered. These have not brought the bondageof temporary enthusiasms, but have liber-

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ated the poet from his former restricted sphere.There is Catullus and Martial, Gautier, Laforgueand Tristan Corbiere. Whitman is certainlynot an influence; there is not a trace of himanywhere; Whitman and Mr. Pound areantipodean to each other. Of ”Contempo-ranea” the Chicago Evening Post discrim-inatingly observed:

Your poems in the April Poetry are87

so mockingly, so delicately, so unblushinglybeautiful that you seem to have broughtback into the world a grace which (prob-ably) never existed, but which we discoverby an imaginative process in Horace andCatullus.

It was a true insight to ally Pound tothe Latin, not to the Greek poets.

Certain of the poems in ”Lustra” have88

offended admirers of the verse of the ”Per-sonae” period. When a poet alters or devel-ops, many of his admirers are sure to dropoff. Any poet, if he is to survive as a writerbeyond his twenty-fifth year, must alter; hemust seek new literary influences; he willhave different emotions to express. This isdisconcerting to that public which likes apoet to spin his whole work out of the feel-

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ings of his youth; which likes to be able toopen a new volume of his poems with theassurance that they will be able to approachit exactly as they approached the preceding.They do not like that constant readjust-ment which the following of Mr. Pound’swork demands. Thus has ”Lustra” been adisappointment to some; though it mani-fests no falling off in technique, and no im-

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poverishment of feeling. Some of the poems(including several of the ”Contemporanea”)are a more direct statement of views thanPound’s verse had ever given before. Ofthese poems, M. Jean de Bosschere writes:

Everywhere his poems incite man to ex-ist, to profess a becoming egotism, withoutwhich there can be no real altruism.

I beseech you enter your life. I beseech91

you learn to say ”I” When I question you.For you are no part, but a whole; No por-tion, but a being.

... One must be capable of reacting tostimuli for a moment, as a real, live person,even in face of as much of one’s own pow-ers as are arrayed against one;... The virilecomplaint, the revolt of the poet, all whichshows his emotion,–that is poetry.

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Speak against unconscious oppression,Speak against the tyranny of the unimag-inative, Speak against bonds.

Be against all forms of oppression, Goout and defy opinion.

This is the old cry of the poet, but moreprecise, as an expression of frank disgust:

Go to the adolescent who are smotheredin family. O, how hideous it is To see three

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generations of one house gathered together!It is like an old tree without shoots, Andwith some branches rotted and falling.

Each poem holds out these cries of re-volt or disgust, but they are the result ofhis still hoping and feeling:

Let us take arms against this sea of stu-pidities. Pound ... has experience of thefolly of the Philistines who read his verse.

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Real pain is born of this stupid interpreta-tion, and one does not realize how deep itis unless one can feel, through the ejacu-lations and the laughter, what has causedthese wounds, which are made deeper bywhat he knows, and what he has lost....

The tone, which is at once jocund andkeen, is one of Pound’s qualities. Ovid,Catullus–he does not disown them. He only

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uses these accents for his familiars; with theothers he is on the edge of paradox, pam-phleteering, indeed of abuse....

This is the proper approach to the po-ems at the beginning of ”Lustra,” and tothe short epigrams, which some readers find”pointless,” or certainly ”not poetry.” Theyshould read, then, the ”Dance Figure,” or”Near Perigord,” and remember that all these

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poems come out of the same man.Thine arms are as a young sapling under

the bark; Thy face as a river with lights.White as an almond are thy shoulders;

As new almonds stripped from the husk.Or the ending of ”Near Perigord”:Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezere

Poppies and day’s-eyes in the green emailRose over us; and we knew all that stream,

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And our two horses had traced out the val-leys; Knew the low flooded lands squaredout with poplars, In the young days whenthe deep sky befriended. And great wingsbeat above us in the twilight, And the greatwheels in heaven Bore us together ... surg-ing ... and apart ... Believing we shouldmeet with lips and hands ...

There shut up in his castle, Tairiran’s,98

She who had nor ears nor tongue save inher hands, Gone, ah, gone–untouched, un-reachable! She who could never live savethrough one person, She who could neverspeak save to one person, And all the restof her a shifting change, A broken bundleof mirrors...!

Then turn at once to ”To a Friend Writ-ing on Cabaret Dancers.”

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It is easy to say that the language of”Cathay” is due to the Chinese. If onelooks carefully at (1) Pound’s other verse,(2) other people’s translations from the Chi-nese (e.g., Giles’s), it is evident that this isnot the case. The language was ready forthe Chinese poetry. Compare, for instance,a passage from ”Provincia Deserta”:

I have walked into Perigord I have seen100

the torch-flames, high-leaping, Painting thefront of that church,– And, under the dark,whirling laughter, I have looked back overthe stream and seen the high building, Seenthe long minarets, the white shafts. I havegone in Ribeyrac, and in Sarlat. I haveclimbed rickety stairs, heard talk of Croy,Walked over En Bertran’s old layout, Haveseen Narbonne, and Cahors and Chalus, Have

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seen Excideuil, carefully fashioned.with a passage from ”The River Song”:He goes out to Hori, to look at the wing-

flapping storks, He returns by way of Seirock, to hear the new nightingales, For thegardens at Jo-run are full of new nightin-gales, Their sound is mixed in this flute,Their voice is in the twelve pipes here.

It matters very little how much is due102

to Rihaku and how much to Pound. Mr.Ford Madox Hueffer has observed: ”If theseare original verses, then Mr. Pound is thegreatest poet of this day.” He goes on tosay:

The poems in ”Cathay” are things of asupreme beauty. What poetry should be,that they are. And if a new breath of im-agery and handling can do anything for our

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poetry, that new breath these poems bring....Poetry consists in so rendering concrete

objects that the emotions produced by theobjects shall arise in the reader....

Where have you better rendered, or morepermanently beautiful a rendering of, thefeelings of one of those lonely watchers, inthe outposts of progress, whether it be Ovidin Hyrcania, a Roman sentinel upon the

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great wall of this country, or merely our-selves, in the lonely recesses of our minds,than the ”Lament of the Frontier Guard”?...

Beauty is a very valuable thing; perhapsit is the most valuable thing in life; but thepower to express emotion so that it shallcommunicate itself intact and exactly is al-most more valuable. Of both these qualitiesMr. Pound’s book is very full. Therefore,

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I think we may say that this is much thebest work he has done, for, however closelyhe may have followed his originals–and ofthat most of us have no means of judging–there is certainly a good deal of Mr. Poundin this little volume.

”Cathay” and ”Lustra” were followedby the translations of Noh plays. The Nohare not so important as the Chinese poems

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(certainly not so important for English); theattitude is less unusual to us; the work isnot so solid, so firm. ”Cathay” will, I be-lieve, rank with the ”Sea-Farer” in the fu-ture among Mr. Pound’s original work; theNoh will rank among his translations. It israther a dessert after ”Cathay.” There are,however, passages which, as Pound has han-dled them, are different both from the Chi-

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nese and from anything existent in English.There is, for example, the fine speech of theold Kagekiyo, as he thinks of his youthfulvalour:

He thought, how easy this killing. Herushed with his spearshaft gripped underhis arm. He cried out, ”I am Kagekiyoof the Heike.” He rushed on to take them.He pierced through the helmet vizards of

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Miyanoya. Miyanoya fled twice, and again;and Kagekiyo cried: ”You shall not escapeme!” He leaped and wrenched off his hel-met. ”Eya!” The vizard broke and remainedin his hand, and Miyanoya still fled afar,and afar, and he looked back crying in ter-ror, ”How terrible, how heavy your arm!”And Kagekiyo called at him, ”How toughthe shaft of your neck is!” And they both

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laughed out over the battle, and went offeach his own way.

The ”Times Literary Supplement” spokeof Mr. Pound’s ”mastery of beautiful dic-tion” and his ”cunningly rhythmically prose,”in its review of the ”Noh.”

Even since ”Lustra,” Mr. Pound hasmoved again. This move is to the epic, ofwhich three cantos appear in the American

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”Lustra” (they have already appeared in”Poetry”–Miss Monroe deserves great hon-our for her courage in printing an epic poemin this twentieth century–but the version in”Lustra” is revised and is improved by re-vision). We will leave it as a test: whenanyone has studied Mr. Pound’s poems inchronological order, and has mastered ”Lus-tra” and ”Cathay,” he is prepared for the

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Cantos– but not till then. If the reader thenfails to like them, he has probably omittedsome step in his progress, and had bettergo back and retrace the journey.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OFBOOKS AND PARTIAL BIBLIOGRA-

PHY OF NOTABLE CRITICAL ARTICLESBY EZRA POUNDPOEMS

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A LUME SPENTO (100 copies). An-tonelli, Venice, June, 1908.

A QUINZAINE FOR THIS YULE. First100 printed by Pollock, London, December,1908.

Second 100 published under Elkin Math-ews’ imprint, London, December, 1908.

PERSONAE. Mathews, London, Spring,1909.

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EXULTATIONS. Mathews, London, Au-tumn, 1909.

PROSETHE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE. Dent, Lon-

don, 1910.POEMSPROVENCA (a selection of poems from

”Personae” and ”Exultations” with new po-ems). Small Maynard, Boston, 1910.

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CANZONI. Mathews, London, 1911.THE SONNETS AND BALLATE OF

GUIDO CAVALCANTI (translated). SmallMaynard, Boston, 1912.

A cheaper edition of the same, Swift andCo., London, 1912. The bulk of this editiondestroyed by fire.

RIPOSTES. Swift, London, 1912. ( Note .–This book contains the first announcement

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of Imagism, in the foreword to the poemsof T. E. Hulme.)

OTHER PUBLICATIONS”A FEW DON’TS BY AN IMAGISTE,”

in ”Poetry,” for March, 1913.”CONTEMPORANIA” (poems), in ”Po-

etry,” April, 1913.POEMSPERSONAE, EXULTATIONS, CANZONI,

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RIPOSTES, published in two volumes. Math-ews, London, 1913.

FIRST OF THE NOTES ON JAMESJOYCE, ”Egoist,” January, 1914.

FIRST OF THE ARTICLES CONCERN-ING GAUDIER-BRZESKA, ”Egoist,” Febru-ary, 1914.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS”DES IMAGISTES,” poems by several

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authors selected by Ezra Pound, publishedas a number of ”The Glebe,” in New York.February, 1914.

Alfred Kreymborg was at this time edi-tor of ”The Glebe.” The first arrangementsfor the anthology were made through thekind offices of John Cournos during the win-ter of 1912-13.

The English edition of this anthology118

published by The Poetry Book Shop. Lon-don, 1914.

ARTICLE ON WYNDHAM LEWIS, ”Ego-ist,” June 15, 1914.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO FIRST NUM-BER OF ”Blast,” June 20, 1914.

”VORTICISM,” an article in ”The Fort-nightly Review,” September, 1914.

”GAUDIER-BRZESKA,” an article in119

”The New Age,” February 4, 1915.CONTRIBUTIONS to second number

of ”Blast,” 1915.POEMSCATHAY. Mathews, London, April, 1915.

(Translations from the Chinese from the notesof Ernest Fenollosa.)

OTHER PUBLICATIONSTHE CATHOLIC ANTHOLOGY, edited

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by Ezra Pound. Mathews, London, Decem-ber, 1915.

GAUDIER-BRZESKA, a memoir. JohnLane, London and New York, 1916.

LUSTRA (poems) public edition, pp. 116.Mathews, London, 1916. 200 copies pri-vately printed and numbered, pp. 124.

CERTAIN NOBLE PLAYS OF JAPAN.Cuala Press, Dundrum, Ireland, 1916. Trans-

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lated by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound,with an introduction by William Butler Yeats.

NOH, or Accomplishment. A study ofthe Classical Stage of Japan, including trans-lations of fifteen plays, by Ernest Fenollosaand Ezra Pound. Macmillan, London, 1917.Knopf, New York, 1917.

PASSAGES FROM THE LETTERS OFJOHN BUTLER YEATS, selected by Ezra

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Pound, with brief editorial note. Cuala Press,1917.

LUSTRA, with Earlier Poems, Knopf,New York, 1917. (This collection of Mr.Pound’s poems contains all that he now thinksfit to republish.)

There is also a privately-printed editionof fifty copies, with a reproduction of a draw-ing of Ezra Pound by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

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(New York, 1917).PAVANNES and DIVISIONS (Prose),

in preparation. Knopf, New York.

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