Introduction youth and childhood

4. Ezra Pound’s The Garden Poem
While it might be thought desirable to define who or what is covered by the term 'Romanticism', literary history has shown only too clearly the confusions and contradictions that arise from attempts to do so. Ernest Bernbaum, for instance, in Guide through the Romantic Movement sets out a long list of possible and conflicting definitions, which simply illustrates the variety rather than the unity of the attempted delineations. For our purpose it is more important to examine results and repercussions where appropriate, and to draw conclusions where necessary, than to attempt a cohesive definition. The period of critical opinion under consideration is not intended to be a clearly definable one, since we are only concerned with the most general trends and attitudes which would have come to Pound's attention. Thus, a span covering the years from approximately the turn of the century to the mid-1930's at the latest is all that is dealt with. Before this time Pound was too young to have followed the changes of critical taste, and by 1930 he had been out of the intellectual milieu of London for ten years, and~central Europe for six. This is clearly reflected in his writings which show no recognition of new schools of poetry (such as the Surrealists and Social Realists) or even of individual writers (e.g. Dylan Thomas). Therefore it is reasonable to assume that he was equally out of touch with current critical speculations.¹⁰ Indeed, in this respect, Eliot finally refused to publish his articles in The Criterion because of their waywardness. Between the turn of the century and the Second World War the Romantics have suffered sorely at the hands of two main groups; the Humanists and the New Critics. While there were other shades of opinion to be noted, they were not nearly so dominant or voluble, and tended not to fall into the centre of the critical fracas. The Humanists, or neo-Humanists, led by Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt, were the first to attack the generally favourable view of the Romantics, mostly by way of essays, pamphlets and articles rather than by complete books. Romanticism, as More described it in,_ the Shelburne Essays, VIII (1913), was 11 the illusion of beholding the infinite within the stream of nature itself, instead of apart from that stream 11 - an indictment that was repeated in Babbitt's Rousseau and Romanticism (1919). Ernest Bernbaum tells us that Babbitt insisted thai the Romantics' worst characteristic was:
"the glorification of an uncritical, irresponsible aesthetic, and centrifugal imagination, uncontrolled by reason or good sense, and encouraging man's impulsive egotism and wishful illusions."¹¹ He also accused the Romantics of weakening the 'inner check' and thereby allowing the will free reign. Of course, the Humanists were not left free to trample unchecked over Romanticism, and powerful defences from scholars such as Herford, Fausset and Hyde, who, arguing from a sounder knowledge of Romanticism and with wider historical, aesthetic and ethical perspectives (for example, linking Humanism with discredited neo-classical contemporaries of the Romantics) largely demolished the Humanist objections. However, if disciples of the Romantic movement felt that the battle had been won, and that they were.free to bask again in the sunshine of Romantic pleasures, then they reckoned without the fresh ons Laught of the New Critics. This group, which later included the Southern Agrarians, continued a much more widespread and sustained assault against the Romantics than their predecessors. Shelley and Wordsworth formed the main targets for their criticism, although Coleridge came under fire whilst his best ideas were distorted and converted to the New Critics' own uses. Ernest Bernbaum writes of them: ~they assert that romantic literature as a whole (including Shakespeare) is too emotional, too soft too hopeful that the good in man's nature may overcome the evil, too desirous of simplifying human experience into intelligible designs ... and above all, too certain that Imagination, co-operating with Reason, could reveal such truths through the Beautiful."¹² The first shots were fired in 1924 by T.E. Hulme with Speculations when he announced that he objected to even the best of Romantics. He contrasts classical and imagist theories of poetry with the Romantic output, the detriment of the Romantics: ''I object to the sloppiness which doesn't consider that a poem is a poem unless it is moaning or whining about something or other The thing has got so bad now that a poem which is all dry and hard, a properly classical poem, would not be considered at all." ( 3) Later, he makes his famous pronouncement: ''I prophesy that a period of dry, hard, classical verse is coming.” When Richard H. Fogle says of Hulme: "His attitude towards the Romantics, for example, his love of definiteness and concreteness in imagery, and his desire for 'a period of dry, hard, classical verse' , are all apparent in the essays of T.S. Eliot.''¹³ he is noting an often-recognised similarity between the (2) The English Romantic Poets ed E.Bernhaum p.31 (3) RH Fogle "Romantic Bards and Reviewers" in English Literary History XII, 3,Sept.1945, p.222 (4) TE Hulme Speculations(London and New York 1924) p.133 (5) RH Fogle "Romantic Bards and Reviewers" ELH p.224 23 two figures. Although Eliot's views were largely formed before the appearance of Hulme's book, there is little doubt that they would have been strengthened by it. His attitude towards the Romantics, for instance, is clearly set out in The Sacred Wood (1920): ' 1 the only cure for Romantic ism is to analyze it. What is permanent and good in Romanticism is curiosity ... there may be a good deal to be said for Romanticism in life, but there is no place for it in letters. '' ( 6) The narrowness of definition was bolstered by the theories of I.A. Richards (especially the Principles of Literary Criticism (1924)) and colleagues '!lllch as Ogden and Wood, and the movement spread with the support of the Southern Agrarians (principally John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate))and the influence of critics such as Empson, Cleanth Brooks and even Leavis. The reaction to their encroachment upon literary territory gathered force outside our period, in the middle and late 1930's, and onwards, and need not concern us. Keats' reputation has fluctuated very slightly in both critical and general opinion since the turn of the century, and has, if anything, become more resplendent as the mutterings of detractors were suffocated beneath a growing acclaim. There has, though, been a noticeable shift of emphasis away from belletristic and appreciative essays to a more scholarly and academic approach. (6) TS Eliot The Sacred Wood (London 1920) pp.31-32 Late Victorian writers were generally appreciative of Keats' ability, with the exception of disciples of the Arnoldian school, who saw Keats dwelling unnecessarily and ineffectually in luxuria. But writers such as Crosse, Symons, Woodberry, Binyon, Bridges and others held a favourable opinion. At the turn of the century there was little doubt that Keats was regarded as a major poet, which made his work available for academic research, and led to the publication of ·~uch new information about him. Continental writers, too, started to take a considerable interest in his poetry. Periodicals from Bookman, TLS, PMLA and Englische Studien to the more popular Nineteenth Century and McLure's Magazine also began to print articles about him. A Shelley-Keats house was erected in 1909 in Italy and prestigious patrons (King Edward VII among them) showed enthusiasm towards his verse. In 1921, on the centenary of Keats' death, there was a plenitude of appreciative articles and paeans of praise, especially from the Continent. Since then, critics such as Amy Lowell, Masefield, A.C. Bradley, F.R. Leavis, Allen Tate and Cleanth Brooks have all shown favour towards his writings. Even T.S. Eliot, who is 'not happy about Hyperion',¹⁴ and who omits to praise Keats as a poet, says of h)~_; letters: 25 ''There is hardly one statement of Keats' about poetry, which, when considered carefully and with due allowance for the difficulty of communication, will not be found to be true.~(7) Criticism of Byron has undoubtedly been swamped by the unusual interest in his personal affairs, and to some degree with the question of his sanity, a discussion which was re-ignited by the publication of Astarte in 1905, and again in 1921 by Byron's grandson, the Earl of Lovelace. Apart from this, in the early years of the twentieth century there is a generally favourable, if cautious, assessment of his poetic achievements which gave way to a growing enthusiasm. We find this appreciation in J.F.A. Pyre's article, for instance, in 1907 in the Atlantic Monthly and from A.A. Symons in the Romantic Movement in English Poetry (1909). In 1910, the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica attempted to explain why Byron had failed to retain his original and once powerful hold on English Literature, but concluded that his unorthodoxy was no longer considered alarming. In the same year, W.J.Courthope, in the History of English Poetry noted the two predominant aspects of Byron as his intense self-consciousness and his imaginative expression of the society about him. Also in 1910, the University College of Nottingham founded a Byron Chair. In 1912 Oliver Elton in his Survey of English Literature speaks of Byron as an 'inspiration and a livingforce' but muses on the decline of Byron's reputation. The aforementioned tenets are clearly reflected in November. Lowell describes this cold and dark month of the year and how she feels through some concrete images and a simple language. The setting is her house; she is sitting at her window looking out. The first picture she takes is of ‘vine leaves’ which are rusty, broken and dead. She borrows the colour ‘rusty’ from metals to describe the autumn leaves which are changed and rent asunder. After they fall and get hurt, the leaves crawl and assemble under the pine trees to be protected from the rough wind that sweeps the lilac-bushes against the stars¹⁵. T. S. Hulme in ‘Autumn’, uses red colour to portray a beautiful tableau, but Lowell uses colour red (rust) to show a sorrowful scene; death of the leaves in autumn (November). The stars and the lamp create another picture in the mind of the reader which is of a November night. The image has two sides: the first side is the description of some natural elements she sees at that moment (lilac, stars, cat, rain) and the second side is the description of her solitude; even the cat prefers the rain rather than staying in the room with her. The feeling is attached to the second picture to keep it harmonious with the cold wind and the darkness and again it is compatible with the first picture which shows the lifeless plants seen outside her house because only in a situation like this one feels isolated and depressed (the emptiness of my heart). The cat prefers that thin edge of the window (meagre), at least it gives the cat the sense that there is something in the world that cares about it, but it cannot build any intimacy with the owner (the speaker of the poem) because she is downhearted. Maybe it has something to do with her life because she never married and even she was a social outcast because of her masculine and ugly features and for being called lesbian. Snodgrass states “Lowell earned a reputation for violating conservative standards by flaunting her obesity, swearing, smoking cigars, and having a samesex lover, actress Ada Dwyer Russell, with whom Lowell remained all her life” (2000). In this poem, H.D. invokes nature and mythology. Oread is the mythological mountain nymph and the speaker of the poem. The tool used to draw the picture is four commanding verbs (whirl, splash, hurl and cover). The poem is short and the image is clear; land covered with sea water, but not smoothly. The verbs connote violent actions and make the meaning of the poem ambiguous. Childs and Fowler argue “the poem projected by Imagism is a laconic complex in which ‘painting or sculpture seems as if it were just coming over into speech’. achieved by the simplicity of the language and the familiarity of the subject matters. In all the samples, the poets capture certain moments through the lens of their cameras. The pictures are taken so carefully and the accuracy is so high that readers feel as if they were watching a movie or they are live audience to the events. For instance, readers can clearly see the people at the metro station, the sunset of the autumn evening, the falling leaves of the pine trees, the Oread sitting on his chair solemnly orders the sea to water the earth and the ruined houses and the scared soldiers. Behind each concrete picture, there is also an abstract image drawn by the words. As a model, Pound chose the ‘Oread’ by H. D.” (2006). According to this explanation, H.D. is probably drawing a picture of Oread sitting on top of the mountain and orders the sea to dash masses or particles of water on the cliffs of its thrown (mountain). The poem is only one sentence divided onto six poetic lines, and the focal point is ocean water near the shore. In the second and the third lines, H.D. used ‘pine’ to refer to the sea water because pine is always green and the colour of water near the shore is also seen as green. In the last two lines the author directly manipulates ‘green’ to refer to the water ‘hurled your green’ because green is abstract and cannot be hurled and sea only owns water to throw it, nothing else. The word ‘fir’, an evergreen tree, is also utilized to refer to its colour. The writer used repetition as a stylistic technique to talk about the motion of water and its colour near the shores. Both water and the colour green are symbols of life and renewal. The speaker addresses the sea and orders it to bring back peace and life to the barren world which is represented by the ‘rock’ in the text.¹⁶ This interpretation is logical because the poem was written in 1915 during the First World War and the world was in chaos. It seems that the poet does not trust human power to end the war and thus she believes that only a supernatural power ‘Oread’ can end the turmoil. The figurative creature orders the sea to throw its powerful waves at land and erase the traces of war.