["-7-", "Tuy gracious ways,", "O lady of my heart, have\nO'er all my, thought theor golden glamour cast;\nAs amber torch-flames, where strange men-at-arms\nTread softly 'neath the damask shield of night,\nRise from the flowing steel in part reflected,\nSo on my mailed thought that with theo goeth,\nThough dark the way, a golden glamour falleth.", "Within the iambic limits, there are no two lines in the whole poem that have\nan identical rythm.", "We turn from this to a poem in \"Exultations\", the \"Night Litany\":", "O God, what great kindness\nhave we done in times past\nand forgotten it,\nThat thou givest this wonder unto us,\nO God of waters?", "O God of the night\nWhat great sorrow\nCometh unto us,\nThat thou thus repayest us\nBefore the time of its coming?", "There is evident, and more strongly in certain later poems, a tendency toward\n量\n量\n量\n量\n量\n量\n量\n量\n量\n量

-9-

's
of Swinburne, or the mostness of Mallarme, Pound verse is always definite and
concrete, because he has always a definite emotion behind it.

Though I've roamed through many places,
None there is that my heart growth
Fair as that wherein fair growtheth
One whose land here interlaces
Tuneful words, that I've essayed.
Let this tune be gently played
Which my voice herward upraises.

At the end of this poem the author appends the note: Thnxlfxxnxkt

The form and measure are those of Pierre Vidal's "Ab l'sen tir vas ne l'aire".

The song is dixxxfixiax fit only to be sung, and is not to be spoken.

There are, here and there, deliberate archaisms or oddities (as e.g. "herward")
there are deliberately arbitrary images, having their place in the total effect
of the poem

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

The lotos that pours
Her fragrance into the purple cup...

Black lightning... (in a more recent poem)

but no word is even chosen merely for the tinkle; each has always its part in
producing an impression which is produced always through language. Words are
perhaps the hardest of all material of art: for they must be used to express
both visual beauty and beauty of sound, as well as communicating a granmtatical
statement. It would be interesting to compare Pound's use of images with
Mallarme's; I think it will be found that the former's, by the contrast, will
appear always sharp in outline, even if arbitrary and not photographic. Such
images as those quoted above are as precise in their way as

Sur le Noel, morte saison,
Lorsque les lours vivent de vent...

and the rest of that memorable Testament.

P10-

So much for the imagery. As to the "freedom" of his verse, Pound has made
several statements in his articles on Dalmetsch which are to the point:

Any work of art is a compound of freedom and order. It is perfectly ob-
vious that art hangs between chaos on the one side and mechanics on the other.
A pedantic insistence upon detail tends to drive out "major form". A firm
hold on major forms makes for a freedom of detail. In painting men intent
on minutiae gradually lost the sense of form and form-combination. An attempt
to restore this sense is branded as "revolution". It is revolution in the
philological sense of 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 opposi-
tion between free and strict. There are not, as a matter of fact, two kinds of
verse, the strict and the free; there is only a mastery which comes of being so
well trained that form is an instinct and can be adapted to the particular purpose
in hand.

After "Exultations came the translation of the "Sonnets and Ballade of Guido
Cavalcante". It is worth noting that the writer of a long review in the "Quest"
speaking in praise of the translation, yet found fault with the author not on
the ground of excessive mediaevalism but because
rather

he is concerned with the future than with a somewhat remote past, so that
in spite of his love for the mediaeval poets, his very accomplishment as a dis-
tinctly modern poet makes against his success much as a wholly acceptable
translator of Cavalcante, the heir of the Troubadours, the scholastic.

Yet the *Daily News*, in criticising "Cansini", had remarked that Mr Pound
seems to us rather a scholar than a poet, and we should like to see him giving
his unmental talent more to direct translation from the Provençal.

and Mr J.C. Squire (now the literary editor of the *New Statesman*) in an apprecia-
tive review in the *New Age* had counselled the poet that he would
gain and not lose if he could forget all about the poets of Dante's day, their
roses and their flames, their gold and their falcons, and their literary amo-
rousness, and walk out of the library into the fresh air.

In "Ripostes" the first book of original verse that the author published after

-11-

"Exultations" there are traces of a different idiom. Superficially, the work may appear less important. The diction is more restrained, the flights shorter, the dexterity of technique is less arresting. By romantic readers the book would be considered less "passionate." But there is much more solid substratum to this book; there is more thought; greater depth, if less agitation on the surface. The effect of London is apparent; the author has become a critic of men, surveying them from a consistent and developed point of view; he is more formidable and disconcerting; in short, much more mature. That he abandons nothing of his technical skill is evident from the translation from the Anglo-Saxon, the "Seafarer". It is not a slight achievement to have brought to life alliterative verse: perhaps the "Seafarer" is the only successful piece of alliterative verse ever written in modern English; alliterative verse which is not merely a clever tour de force, but which suggests the possibility of a new development of this form. Mr Richard Aldington (whose own accomplishments as a writer of vers libre qualify him to speak) called the poem "unsurpassed and unsurpassable", and a writer in the New Age (a literary organ which has always been strongly opposed to metrical innovations) called it "one of the finest literary works of art produced in England during the last ten years". And the rough stern beauty of the Anglo-Saxon, we may remark, is at the opposite pole from that of the Provençal and Italian poets to whom Pound had previously devoted his attention.

> May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
> Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
> Hardship endured oft.

But we can notice in "Ripostes" other evidences than of versatility only; certain poems show Mr Pound turning to more modern subjects, as in the "Portrait d'une femme", or the mordant epigram "An Object!" Many readers are apt to confuse the maturing of personality with desiccation of the emotions,

-12-

There is no desiccation in "Ripostes". This should be evident to anyone who reads carefully such a poem as "A Girl". We quote it entire without comment.

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown low in my breast -
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Now you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child - so high - you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

"The Return" is an important study in verse which is really quantitative. We quote only a few lines.

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

"Ripostes" belongs to the period when Mr Pound was being attacked because of his propaganda. He became known as the inventor of "Imagism", and later, as the "High Priest of Vorticism". As a matter of fact, the actual "propaganda" of Mr Pound has been very small in quantity. The impression which his personality made, however, is suggested by the following note in "Punch", which is always a pretty reliable barometer of the English middle-class Grin:

Mr Wolkin Mark (exactly opposite Long Jane's) begs to announce that he has secured for the English market the debilitating works of the new Montana (U.S.A.) poet, Mr Ezekiel Ton, who is the most remarkable thing in poetry since Robert Browning. Mr Ton, who has left America farrakkaakka to reside for a while in London and impress his personality on English editors, publishers and readers, is by far the newest poet going, whatever other advertisements may say. He has succeeded, where all others have failed, in evolving a blend of the imagery of the unfettered West, the vocabulary of Wardour Street, and the sinister abandon of Borgiac Italy.

In 1913 someone writing to the *New York Nation* from the University of Illinois illustrates the American, more serious, disapproval. This writer begins by

-13-

expressing his objections to the "principle of Futurism". (Pound has perhaps done more than anyone to keep Futurism out of England. His antagonism to this movement was the first which was not due merely to unintelligent dislike for anything new, and was due to his perception that Futurism was incompatible with any principles of form. In his own words, Futurism is "accelerated impressionism"). The writer in the *Nition* then goes on to analyse the modern "hypertrophy of romanticism" into

The exaggeration of the importance of a personal emotion.

The abandonment of all standards of form.

The suppression of all evidence that a particular composition is animated by any directing intelligence.

As for the first point, here are Mr Pound's words in answer to the question, "do you agree that the great poet is never emotional?"

Yes, absolutely; if by emotion is meant that he is at the mercy of every passing mood...The only kind of emotion worthy of a poet is the inspirational emotion which energises and strengthens, and which is very remote from the everyday emotion of sloppiness and sentiment...

And as for the platform of Imagism, here are a few of Pound's "Don'ts for Imagists:

Pay no attention to the criticisms of men who have never themselves written a notable work.

Use no superfluous word and no adjective which does not reveal something. Go in fear of abstractions. Don't retail in mediocrate verse what has already been done in good prose.

Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music.

Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright or try to conceal it.

Consider the definiteness of 'write's presentation as compared with Milton's. Read as much of Wordsworth as does not seem to be unutterably dull.

If you want the gist of the matter go to Sappho, Catullus, Villon when he is in the vein, Gauthier when he is not too frigid, or if you have not the tongues seek out the loisurely Chaucer.

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

The emphasis here is certainly on discipline and form.

The "Chicago Tribune" recognised this as "sound sense" adding

-16-

to some

has "Lustra" been a disappointment; though it manifests no falling off in tech-
nique, and no overissulement of feeling. Some of the poems (including several
of the "Contemporanea") are a more direct statement of views than Pound's verse
had ever given before. Of these poems Jean de Boischere writes

met

egotism,

Everywhere his poems incite to exist, to profess a becoming
without which there can be no real altruism.

I beseech you enter your life.

I beseech you learn to say "I"

When I question you.

For you are no part, but a whole;

No portion, but a being.

...One must be kamble of reacting to stimuli for a moment, as a real, live
person, even in face of as much of one's own powers as are arrayed against one;

...The virile complaint, the revolt of the poet, all which shows his emotion, -
that is poetry.

Speak against unconscious oppression,

Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,

Speak against bonds.

Be against all forms of oppression,

Go out any defy opinion.

This is the old cry of the poet, but more precise, as unexpression of frank
disgust:

Go to the adolescent who are anothered in family.

O, how hideous it is

To see three generations of one house gather together!

It is like an old tree without shoots.

And with some branches rotted and falling.

Each poem holds out of those cries of revolt or disgust, but they are the result
of his still hoping and feeling:

Let us take arms against this sea of stupidities.

Pound...has experience of the folly of the Philistines who read his verse. Real
pain is born of this stupid interpretation, and one does not realise how deep
it is unless one can feel, through the ejaculations and the laughter, what has
caused those wounds, which are made deeper by what he knows, and what he has
last...
jocund

The tone, which is at once jazzier and keener, is one of Pound's qualities. Ovid,
Catullus - he does not disown them. He only uses these accents for his fa-
miliars; with the others he is on the edge of paradox, gamblerterring, indeed
of abuse...

This is the proper approach to the poems at the beginning of "Lustra", and to
the short epigrams, which some readers find "pointless", of certainly "not poetry".

-17-

They should read them the "Dance-Figure", or "Near Perigord", and remember
that all these poems come out of the same man.

Thine arms are as a young sapling under the bark;
Thy face as a river withlights.

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 Auvezero
Poppies and day's-eyes in the green email
Rose over us; and we knew all that stream,
And our two horses had traced out the valleys;
Knew the low flooded lands squared out with goanders,
In the young days when the dep sky befriended.
And great wings beat above us in the twilight,
And the great whells in heaven
Bore us together... surging... and apart...
Believing we should meet with lips and hands....

There shut up in his castle, Tairiron's,
She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands,
Gone, ah, gone - untouched, unreachable!
She who could never live save through one person,
She who could never speak save to one person,
And all the rest of her a shifting change,
A broken bundle of mirrors...!

Then turn at once to "To a Friend Writing on Cabaret Dancers".

It is easy to say that the language of "Cathay" is due to the Chinese.
If one looks carefully at (1) Pound's other verse (2) other people's translations from the Chinese (e.g. Gilos's) it is evident that this is not the case.
The language was ready for the Chinese poetry. Compare for instance a passage from "Provincia Desert"

I have walked
into Perigord
I have seen the torch-flames, high-leading,
Painting the front of that church,-
And, under the dark, whirling laughter,
I have looked back over the stream
and seen the high building,
Seen the long minarets, the white shafts.
I have gone into Ribeyrac,

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of the two dead lovers in "Nishikigi":

Tangled are an angled. Whose fault was it, dear? tangled up as
the grass patterns are tangled in this coarse cloth, or as the little
Mushi that lives on and chirps in dried seaweed. We do not know where
are today our tears in the undergrowth of this eternal wilderness. We nei-
ther wake nor sleep, and passing our nights in a sorrow which is in the end
a vision, what are these scenes of spring to us? this thinking in sleep of
some one who has no thought of you, is it more then dream and yet surely
it is the natural way of love. In our hearts there is much and in our bodies
nothing, and we do nothing at all, and only the waters of the river of tears
flow quickly.

and the fine speech of the old Kagekiyo, as he thinks of his youthful valour:

He thought, how easy this killing. He rushed with his spear haft gripped
under his arm. He cried out, "I am Kagekiyo of the Heike". He rushed on
to take them. He pierced through the helmet vizards of Miyanoya. Miya-
noya fled twice, and again; and Kagekiyo cried: "You shall not escape me!"
He beaped and wrenched off his helmet. "Mya!" The wizard broke and remained
in his hand, and Miyanoya still fled afar, crying in terror, "How terrible,
how heavy your arm!" And Kagekiyo called at him, "How tough the shaft of
your neck is!" And they both laughed out over the battle, and went off each
his own way.

The "Times Literary Supplement" spoke of Mr Pound's "mastery of beautiful diction" and his "cunningly rhythmically prose", in its review of the "Nog".

Even since "Lustra" Mr Pound has moved again. This move is to the epic;
of which three cantos appear in the American "Lustra" (they have already appeared
in "Poetry" - Miss Monroe deserves great honour for her courage in printing
an epic poem in this twentieth century - but the version in "Lustra" is re-
vised and is improved by revision). We will leave it as a test: when anyone
has studied Mr Pound's poems in chronological order, and has mastered "Lustra"
and "Cathay", he is prepared for the Cantos - but not till then. If the reader
then fails to like them, he has probably omitted some step in his progress,
and had better go back and retrace the journey.