Some Imagist Poets, 1916 Part 1

Some Imagist Poets, 1916.

by Richard Aldington and Hilda Doolittle and John Gould Fletcher and Amy Lowell and D. H. Lawrence and F. S. Flint.

PREFACE

In bringing the second volume of _Some Imagist Poets_ before the public, the authors wish to express their grat.i.tude for the interest which the 1915 volume aroused. The discussion of it was widespread, and even those critics out of sympathy with Imagist tenets accorded it much s.p.a.ce. In the Preface to that book, we endeavoured to present those tenets in a succinct form. But the very brevity we employed has lead to a great deal of misunderstanding. We have decided, therefore, to explain the laws which govern us a little more fully. A few people may understand, and the rest can merely misunderstand again, a result to which we are quite accustomed.

In the first place "Imagism" does not mean merely the presentation of pictures. "Imagism" refers to the manner of presentation, not to the subject. It means 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 his reader the constantly s.h.i.+fting and changing lights over a landscape, or the varying att.i.tudes of mind of a person under strong emotion, then his poem must s.h.i.+ft and change to present this clearly. The "exact" word does not mean the word which exactly describes the object in itself, it means the "exact" word which brings the effect of that object before the reader as it presented itself to the poet's mind at the time of writing the poem. Imagists deal but little with similes, although much of their poetry is metaphorical. The reason for this is that while acknowledging the figure to be an integral part of all poetry, they feel that the constant imposing of one figure upon another in the same poem blurs the central effect.

The great French critic, Remy de Gourmont, wrote last Summer in _La France_ that the Imagists were the descendants of the French _Symbolistes_. In the Preface to his _Livre des Masques_, M. de Gourmont has thus described _Symbolisme_: "Individualism in literature, liberty of art, abandonment of existing forms.... The sole excuse which a man can have for writing is to write down himself, to unveil for others the sort of world which mirrors itself in his individual gla.s.s.... He should create his own aesthetics--and we should admit as many aesthetics as there are original minds, and judge them for what they are and not what they are not." In this sense the Imagists are descendants of the _Symbolistes_; they are Individualists.

The only reason that Imagism has seemed so anarchaic and strange to English and American reviewers is that their minds do not easily and quickly suggest the steps by which modern art has arrived at its present position. Its immediate prototype cannot be found in English or American literature, we must turn to Europe for it. With Debussy and Stravinsky in music, and Gauguin and Matisse in painting, it should have been evident to every one that art was entering upon an era of change. But music and painting are universal languages, so we have become accustomed to new idioms in them, while we still find it hard to recognize a changed idiom in literature.

The crux of the situation is just here. It is in the idiom employed.

Imagism asks to be judged by different standards from those employed in Nineteenth-Century art. It is small wonder that Imagist poetry should be incomprehensible to men whose sole touchstone for art is the literature of one country for a period of four centuries. And it is an illuminating fact that among poets and men conversant with many poetic idioms, Imagism is rarely misconceived. They may not agree with us, but they do not misunderstand us.

This must not be misconstrued into the desire to belittle our forerunners. On the contrary, the Imagists have the greatest admiration for the past, and humility towards it. But they have been caught in the throes of a new birth. The exterior world is changing, and with it men's feelings, and every age must express its feelings in its own individual way. No art is any more "egoistic" than another; all art is an attempt to express the feelings of the artist, whether it be couched in narrative form or employ a more personal expression.

It is not what Imagists write about which makes them hard of comprehension; it is the way they write it. All nations have laws of prosody, which undergo changes from time to time. The laws of English metrical prosody are well known to every one concerned with the subject. But that is only one form of prosody. Other nations have had different ones: Anglo-Saxon poetry was founded upon alliteration, Greek and Roman was built upon quant.i.ty, the Oriental was formed out of repet.i.tion, and the j.a.panese Hokku got its effects by an exact and never-to-be-added-to series of single syllables. So it is evident that poetry can be written in many modes. That the Imagists base much of their poetry upon cadence and not upon metre makes them neither good nor bad. And no one realizes more than they that no theories nor rules make poetry. They claim for their work only that it is sincere.

It is this very fact of "cadence" which has misled so many reviewers, until some have been betrayed into saying that the Imagists discard rhythm, when rhythm is the most important quality in their technique.

The definition of _vers libre_ is--a verse-form based upon cadence.

Now cadence in music is one thing, cadence in poetry quite another, since we are not dealing with tone but with rhythm. It is the sense of perfect balance of flow and rhythm. Not only must the syllables so fall as to increase and continue the movement, but the whole poem must be as rounded and recurring as the circular swing of a balanced pendulum. It can be fast or slow, it may even jerk, but this perfect swing it must have, even its jerks must follow the central movement.

To ill.u.s.trate: Suppose a person were given the task of walking, or running, round a large circle, with two minutes given to do it in.

Two minutes which he would just consume if he walked round the circle quietly. But in order to make the task easier for him, or harder, as the case might be, he was required to complete each half of the circle in exactly a minute. No other restrictions were placed upon him. He might dawdle in the beginning, and run madly to reach the half-circle mark on time, and then complete his task by walking steadily round the second half to goal. Or he might leap, and run, and skip, and linger in all sorts of ways, making up for slow going by fast, and for extra haste by pauses, and varying these movements on either lap of the circle as the humour seized him, only so that he were just one minute in traversing the first half-circle, and just one minute in traversing the second. Another ill.u.s.tration which may be employed is that of a j.a.panese wood-carving where a toad in one corner is balanced by a spray of blown flowers in the opposite upper one. The flowers are not the same shape as the toad, neither are they the same size, but the balance is preserved.

The unit in _vers libre_ is not the foot, the number of the syllables, the quant.i.ty, or the line. The unit is the strophe, which may be the whole poem, or may be only a part. Each strophe is a complete circle: in fact, the meaning of the Greek word "strophe" is simply that part of the poem which was recited while the chorus were making a turn round the altar set up in the centre of the theatre.

The simile of the circle is more than a simile, therefore; it is a fact. Of course the circle need not always be the same size, nor need the times allowed to negotiate it be always the same. There is room here for an infinite number of variations. Also, circles can be added to circles, movement upon movement, to the poem, provided each movement completes itself, and ramifies naturally into the next. But one thing must be borne in mind: a cadenced poem is written to be read aloud, in this way only will its rhythm be felt. Poetry is a spoken and not a written art.

The _vers libristes_ are often accused of declaring that they have discovered a new thing. Where such an idea started, it is impossible to say, certainly none of the better _vers libristes_ was ever guilty of so ridiculous a statement. The name _vers libre_ is new, the thing, most emphatically, is not. Not new in English poetry, at any rate. You will find something very much like it in Dryden's _Threnodia Augustalis_; a great deal of Milton's _Samson Agonistes_ is written in it; and Matthew Arnold's _Philomela_ is a s.h.i.+ning example of it. Practically all of Henley's _London Voluntaries_ are written in it, and (so potent are names) until it was christened _vers libre_, no one thought of objecting to it. But the oldest reference to _vers libre_ is to be found in Chaucer's _House of Fame_, where the Eagle addresses the Poet in these words:

And nevertheless hast set thy wyt Although that in thy heed full lyte is To make bookes, songes, or dytees In rhyme or elles in cadence.

Commentators have wasted reams of paper in an endeavour to determine what Chaucer meant by this. But is it not possible that he meant a verse based upon rhythm, but which did not follow the strict metrical prosody of his usual practice?

One of the charges frequently brought against the Imagists is that they write, not poetry, but "shredded prose." This misconception springs from the almost complete ignorance of the public in regard to the laws of cadenced verse. But, in fact, what is prose and what is poetry? Is it merely a matter of typographical arrangement? Must everything which is printed in equal lines, with rhymes at the ends, be called poetry, and everything which is printed in a block be called prose? Aristotle, who certainly knew more about this subject than any one else, declares in his _Rhetoric_ that prose is rhythmical without being metrical (that is to say, without insistence on any single rhythm), and then goes on to state the feet that are employed in prose, making, incidentally, the remark that the iambic prevailed in ordinary conversation. The fact is, that there is no hard and fast dividing line between prose and poetry. As a French poet of distinction, Paul Fort, has said: "Prose and poetry are but one instrument, graduated." It is not a question of typography; it is not even a question of rules and forms. Poetry is the vision in a man's soul which he translates as best he can with the means at his disposal.

We are young, we are experimentalists, but we ask to be judged by our own standards, not by those which have governed other men at other times.

RICHARD ALDINGTON

EROS AND PSYCHE

In an old dull yard near Camden Town, Which echoes with the rattle of cars and 'busses And freight-trains, puffing steam and smoke and dirt To the steaming, sooty sky-- There stands an old and grimy statue, A statue of Psyche and her lover, Eros.

A little nearer Camden Town, In a square of ugly sordid shops, Is another statue, facing the Tube, Staring with a heavy, purposeless glare At the red and white s.h.i.+ning tiles-- A tall stone statue of Cobden.

And though no one ever pauses to see What hero it is that faces the Tube, I can understand very well indeed That England must honour its national heroes, Must honour the hero of Free Trade-- Or was it the Corn Laws?-- That I can understand.

But what I shall never understand Is the little group in the dingy yard Under the dingier sky, The Eros and Psyche-- Surrounded with pots and terra-cotta busts And urns and broken pillars-- Eros, naked, with his wings stretched out Just lighting down to kiss her on the lips.

What are they doing here in Camden Town In the midst of all this clamour and filth?

They who should stand in a sun-lit room Hung with deep purple, painted with G.o.ds, Paved with white porphyry, Stand for ever embraced By the side of a rustling fountain Over a marble basin Carved with leopards and grapes and young men dancing; Or in a garden leaning above Corinth, Under the ilices and the cypresses, Very white against a very blue sky; Or growing h.o.a.ry, if they must grow old, With lichens and softly creeping moss.

What are they doing here in Camden Town?

And who has brought their naked beauty And their young fresh l.u.s.t to Camden Town, Which settled long ago to toil and sweat and filth, Forgetting--to the greater glory of Free Trade-- Young beauty and young love and youthful flesh?

Slowly the rain settles down on them, Slowly the soot eats into them, Slowly the stone grows greyer and dirtier, Till in spite of his spreading wings Her eyes have a rim of soot Half an inch deep, And his wings, the tall G.o.d's wings, That should be red and silver Are ocherous brown.

And I peer from a 'bus-top As we splash through the grease and puddles, And I glimpse them, huddled against the wall, Half-hidden under a freight-train's smoke, And I see the limbs that a Greek slave cut In some old Italian town, I see them growing older And sadder And greyer.

AFTER TWO YEARS

She is all so slight And tender and white As a May morning.

She walks without hood At dusk. It is good To hear her sing.

It is G.o.d's will That I shall love her still As He loves Mary.

And night and day I will go forth to pray That she love me.

She is as gold Lovely, and far more cold.

Do thou pray with me, For if I win grace To kiss twice her face G.o.d has done well to me.

1915

The limbs of G.o.ds, Still, veined marble, Rest heavily in sleep Under a saffron twilight.

Not for them battle, Severed limbs, death, and a cry of victory; Not for them strife And a torment of storm.

A vast breast moves slowly, The great thighs s.h.i.+ft, The stone eyelids rise; The slow tongue speaks:

"_Only a rain of bright dust;_ _In the outer air;_ _A little whisper of wind;_ _Sleep; rest; forget._"

Bright dust of battle!

A little whisper of dead souls!