Jonathan Bate ENGLISH LITERATURE A Very Short Introduction OXFORD “UNIVERSITY PRESS , a‘aghh Ltr a, _— English Romantic poetry was a deeply collaborative phenomeame It first wave, inthe 1790s, was associated with the Lake Shor Grordewor, Coleridge, and Robert Southey, its send, drag the Regency, with the Satanic Schoo! (Lord Byron and the Shells) and the Cockney School (Keats, Leigh Hunt, Willan Provided a preface for her novel Frankenstein. Some ofthe ‘olo-authored works were the product of creative dddogue Wordoworths epi autobiographical poem, known pesto ‘8 The Prelude (published 1850), was conceived as a meditation auressed to Colesidge; Wordsworth in turn contributed a key ‘Stanza to Coleridge's most famous poem, ‘The Ancient Marin’, Even the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet John Clare, a ‘olitary-seeming figure if ever there was one, relied on his better-educated friends to help him polish his work, Modernism A revolution in poetic diction and a collective literary endeavour With its aims encapsulated ina series of manifests: these wee ao CDaracterstis ofthe Modernist revolution of the easly 2oth century. Jn the autumn of 1912, the American poet Ezra Pound metin the tearoom ofthe British Museum with his former net Hs, Doolitl and the young English writer Richard Aldngton All Aires were Keen to strip English poetry ofthe florid exces lo hich late Romanticism hed sunk. They ha found new modes inancient Chinese, Japanese, and Greek ire poetry, and in the Etamle of moder French Symbolist verse, which hed recently ‘been championed in powerfil essay by another member of 0 ther del, the working-class auto-didact FS, Flint, who had sed the virtues of free verse and concentrated imagery. aod wasecing on behalf ofthe Chicago magazine Poetry. Heread ssaeof Doolittle’ lapidary neo-Greek lyrics, signed them ‘LD. TImagiste” (the pared-down initials themselves an emblem of laugst minimalism), and dispatched them to Harriet Monroe, the ediorin Chicago. Examples ofboth H. Dis work and Aldington's ‘ereson in print in Poetry. The April 191 issue included Pound's «n'Tna tation ofthe metro, which compacts into its two lines a sagpstion of Japanese art, the ghosts ofthe classical underworld, tale modern ety commuter, the elements of the image spaced onthe page as gesture towards Chinese ideograms: of these faces in the crowd bough . ‘The apparition Peals on a wet, black ‘formal manifesto for the Imagist movement had appeared in ‘be previous month's issue, Though drafted by Pound, it ‘smpeaed under Mints name (they later argued over their debt bth to each other and to T: E, Hulme, another member of the Boop): 1 Direct treatment of the ‘thing’ whether subjective or objective. 2) Touse absolutely no word that does not contribute to the resentation. 3) Asregarding rhythm: to compose inthe sequence of the ‘musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. ‘An"Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional ‘onplexin an instant of time’, Pound added in a companion piece «aled‘A Few Don's for an Imagist' isthe presentation of sucha ‘comple instantaneously which gives that ease of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time ints and space iis; that sense of sudden grow, which werr ee gh erature experience inthe presence ofthe greatest works ofa. Itis beter present one Image in lifetime than to produce Voluminous works: Fracture, fragmentation, disruption of temporal sequence, a stripping away of old decorums and elaborations: these signs ‘of modern times were magnified by the Great War, which cast its shadow over almost everything written in the 1920s. .S.Elits The Waste Land (1922), the central text in the repertoire of ‘Modernist poetry ~ the draft was revised by Pound ~ isa heap of ‘broken images, a collection of fragments shored against the ria of the post-war world, a Babel of voices dramatizing the nervous breakdown ofa poet and an age. Yet itis also an act of homage ‘to the long tradition of Western poetry, written in accordance with Pound's prescription ‘Be influenced by as many great artis as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt ‘outright, orto try to conceal it. ‘twas only in the late 1920s thatthe term ‘Modernist was appli ‘to Imagism and its successor movements such asthe ‘Vorticism’ promulgated by the irascible Wyndham Lewis during the war. The ‘context was a critique writen by two other poets, Robert Graves ‘and Laura Riding. H.D. had made a virtue ofthe fact thatthe work ‘of the foundational lytic poet of ancient Greece, Sappho, only ‘survived in the form of fragments, Because a fragment was incomplete, obscure, evocative but elusive, it was regarded as somehow more beautifil than a complete poem. Pound took this ‘dea to an extreme in the fragmentary lyric ‘Papyrus, published in his collection Lustra (1916). Graves and Riding were not impressed: ‘When modemist poetry or what, not so long ago, passed for ‘modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following: Papyrus Spring... ‘Too long... Gongula: 2 nso offered asa poem, there is ome justification forthe plain reader and orthodox crite who are frightened avray fom anything hich may be labeled ‘modernist’ ether in terms of condemnation Urappraation. Who or whttis Gongul?Isita name ofa person? of town? of musical instrument? Or sit the obsolete botanical word ‘neni spores’? Oris ita mistake for Gongora, the Spanish poet from whom the word ‘gongoriam'i formed, meaning ‘an affected elegance of sje also called “cultsm""? And why "Papyrus? ‘Rather than answer any of these questions and be driven tothe ‘ame faced buf of making much out of litle the common-sense reader retires to surer ground. (Robert Graves and Laura Riding, A Survey of Modernist Poetry, 927) Tea ad ed pnt no fie Raa racket Geng pen omen egintim con Geeageearronns side f wd nthe Engen coon ed Sintec | oy ashy onsen be i ders sd he Noes iy Sopa 2