Modernism and the Ideology of History: Literature, Politics, and the Past

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MODERNISM AND THE IDEOLOGY OF HISTORY Louise Williams explores the nature of historical memory in the work of five major Modernists: Yeats, Pound, Hulme, Ford and Lawrence. These Modernists, Williams argues, started their careers with historical assumptions derived from the nineteenth century. But their views on the universal structure of history, on the abandonment of progress and the adoption of a cyclical sense of the past, were the result of important conflicts and changes within the Modernist period. Williams focuses on the period immediately before the First World War, and shows in detail how Modernism developed and why it is considered a unique intellectual movement. She also revisits the theory that the Edwardian age was a difficult period of transition to the modern world. Finally, she illuminates the contribution of non-Western culture to the literature and thought of the period. This wide-ranging and inter-disciplinary study is essential reading for literary and cultural historians of the Modernist period.    is Assistant Professor of British and Intellectual History at Central Connecticut State University.

MODERNISM AND THE IDEOLOGY OF HISTORY Literature, Politics, and the Past

LOUISE BLAKENEY WILLIAMS Central Connecticut State University

   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521814997 © Louise Blakeney Williams 2002 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2002 - isbn-13 978-0-511-07347-2 eBook (EBL) -  eBook (EBL) isbn-10 0-511-07347-X - isbn-13 978-0-521-81499-7 hardback - isbn-10 0-521-81499-5 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For my parents

Contents

page viii ix

Acknowledgements Abbreviations



Introduction 

“Immaterial pleasure houses”: the initial aesthetic dilemma



 “A more dream-heavy hour”: medievalist and progressive beginnings



 “Pedantry and hysteria”: contemporary political problems



 “A certain discipline”: radical conservative solutions







“A particularly lively wheel”: cyclic views emerge

 “Our own image”: the example of Asian and non-Western cultures 

In “the grip of the . . . vortex”: the proof of Post-Impressionist art

 

 The “cycle dance”: cyclic history arrives



 “The Nightmare” and beyond: the First World War and mature cyclic theories



Conclusion



Notes Index

 

vii

Acknowledgements

It is impossible to acknowledge all of the people who made this project possible. But I especially would like to thank David Cannadine; without his acute criticism and patient encouragement of the extraordinarily lengthy first version of this book it would never have been completed. Laurence Dickey’s fascination with intellectual history, his exacting academic standards, and his confidence in my abilities as a writer and thinker were invaluable in inspiring me to take the approach I have. Robert O. Paxton, R.K. Webb, J.W. Smit, and Steven Marcus all provided essential assistance by suffering through the first draft and making insightful suggestions for its improvement. This book, however, would never have been begun without Stephen Koss. His sheer delight in all aspects of British history and culture was infectious, and his ability to combine academic rigor with humor and kindness was inspirational. His early death was truly a great loss to the historical profession. I also would like to thank the staff at the British Museum for their help in providing access to unpublished papers, and the librarians at the British Library, University of Keele, University of Hull, Cambridge University, Oxford University, Columbia University, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin all for their important assistance. Finally, I must thank my family and friends for their support through such a long project, the faculty of the History department at Central Connecticut State University for being friends as well as colleagues, and my parents for their unflagging interest in, and unquestioning encouragement of, everything I do. Last, but hardly least, none of this could have been done without Dr. No, who never once used that word about this book.

viii

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in the notes: CEP E&I ELH Letters I

Letters II

P/SL

UPI UPII

Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound ed. Michael John King (New York: New Directions, ). W.B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York: Collier Books, ). English Literary History The Letters of D.H. Lawrence. vol. ., ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). The Letters of D.H. Lawrence. vol. ., ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: The Letters, –, ed. Omar Pound and A. Walton Litz (New York: New Directions, ). W.B. Yeats, Uncollected Prose Vol. I, ed. John P. Frayne (New York: Columbia University Press, ). W.B. Yeats, Uncollected Prose Vol. II, ed. John P. Frayne and Colton Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, ).

ix

Introduction

Edwardian Britain, despite a century’s distance with which to judge it, remains an enigmatic period for the historian. As early as  George Dangerfield challenged the simplistic myth of “the Edwardian garden party,” the “golden afternoon” before the deluge remembered through the tarnished lenses of those who had experienced the First World War. Dangerfield found the story of Britain between  and  to be “a far more curious drama” than that of a country “dancing its way into war, to a sound of lawn-mowers and ragtime, to the hum of bees and the popping of champagne corks.” Rather, the period as he described it was one of confrontation and conflict, tension and transition. For Dangerfield above all the drama revolved around the fact that “true pre-war Liberalism” “was killed, or killed itself, in .” A similar murder was committed in the intellectual history of the period. Among one group of thinkers in particular a “strange death” occurred in their concept of history. On or about the year  the idea of progress died. Fortunately, death is not the only story in Edwardian Britain. And it is possible to view the age not simply as the sunset of the preceding century, but also as the dawn of much that we consider modern. As Dangerfield himself acknowledged, the “extravagant behavior of the post-war decade, which most of us thought to be the effect of war had really begun before the War. The War hastened everything – in politics, in economics, in behavior – but it started nothing.” The emergence of the Labour Party, the foundation of the Welfare State, even the origins of fascism have been the emphasis of historical studies of the pre-war period as much as has been the demise of the Victorian era. Birth was evident in the literary history of the age as well. Modernism, the characteristic literary movement of the first half of the twentieth century, had its origin in the years immediately preceding the First World War. Those features of literature that are associated with the “high” Modernism of British writers in the s and s, such 



Introduction

as non-representationalism, “abstraction and highly conscious artifice,” “abrupt juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated particulars,” “stream-ofconsciousness narrative in the novel” and unrhymed verse, originated in the “drama” of Edwardian Britain. It was in this movement, British literary Modernism, that can be found one group of Edwardians among whom the idea of progress died and a different concept of history was born. In opposition to progressive notions, the Modernists found much more reality in cyclic views of the past. As one literary critic has succinctly pointed out, “modernism . . . abandons the idea of a linear historical development, falls back upon notions of a universal condition humaine or a rhythm of eternal recurrence.” Moreover, it is commonplace to be informed that such characteristic Modernist practices as the “mythical method,” the “method of ideogram and anachronism,” and the “time shift technique,” in addition to the explicitly circular structures of many novels and long poems, reflect a non-progressive concept of time and the past. It is important to note that the Modernists were not merely innovative creative writers devising a new and unusual literary technique. They thought and wrote a great deal about politics, society, religion, and philosophy. And their abandonment of progress and adoption of a cyclic sense of the past went well beyond technique alone. The Modernists formulated their views of the universal structure of history as a result of a complex emotional and intellectual response both to the tradition in which they had been brought up, and to the important conflicts and changes of the Edwardian age. In observing the disturbing and often confusing challenges of this period, the first British Modernists found progress to be an historical structure unsuited to their needs and perception of reality. Cycles were far more satisfying. This is a work of intellectual history, which examines the origins of this new historical view among the Modernists in an attempt to illuminate one aspect of the “curious drama” of Edwardian Britain. Thus, it is an intellectual history of intellectuals and history. While the Modernists’ attitudes towards history have been the subject of studies in the past, most commonly the concern has been to shed light on the writers’ mature creative work. As a result, chronology and historical background are often ignored. This work, however, considers the Modernists as thinkers, as well as artists. Moreover, it applies the techniques of intellectual history, which have provided much insight into the writings of philosophers and political theorists, to the work of creative writers. It is hoped that what has resulted is a new understanding not only of this group of very important

Introduction



literary figures, but also of the nature of the period in which they were living. This, therefore, is a work of history, not literary criticism. Moreover, it takes the form of a collective intellectual biography. By examining all the writings of a representative group of thinkers over a short span of time it attempts to point out how and why their thought collectively changed direction. In the end this study illustrates Dangerfield’s thesis of the Edwardian age as a period of disturbing transition. The Modernists themselves viewed the time in which they lived as one of chaos and confusion. Ultimately, they used history, and in particular the idea of cycles, as a means not only to discover order in the face of disorder, but also to innovate in their own creative writing, to ensure themselves, and artists in general, a more important place in the world, and, finally, to provide a sense of hope for the future. While some observers may judge the Modernists’ critical writings and their uses of history as superficial and naive, they are important for a number of reasons. First, the development of their views of history illuminates some of the problems of the period as they were felt by informed observers who were not necessarily professional politicians or philosophers. Moreover, the Modernists’ writings also can illustrate some of the subtle ways in which history has been and can be used – to solve perceived problems and meet a variety of, often unconscious, needs. Finally, Modernist views of history were crucial in the development of one of the most important innovations in artistic practice of the twentieth century. All of this warrants a full study of the genesis of their historical thinking. Five authors have been selected as a representative group of Modernists to form the focus of this study: W.B. Yeats, Ford Madox Ford (n´e Hueffer), Ezra Pound, T.E. Hulme, and D.H. Lawrence. They have been chosen for a number of reasons. First, they are all acknowledged by literary critics as having made important contributions to Modernist theory and practice. In addition, because this is a study of the origins of Modernist views of history, the representative group must have lived and published works in Britain well before the beginning of the First World War. This is true only of the group selected. Other acknowledged Modernists such as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf either were not in Britain before  or had not published anything substantial by that date. Moreover, the five Modernists selected were part of the same generation. They were all born within twenty years of one another (Yeats and Ford in  and  respectively, Hulme in , and Pound and Lawrence both in ). And although they originally came



Introduction

from different areas of Britain or America, they all lived and worked in London for much of the time between  and . Finally, these five authors have been chosen collectively to represent early Modernism because they were, in fact, part of a loose intellectual group. Although they were not a self-conscious coterie agreeing on a name or a strict program to describe their work, Yeats, Ford, Pound, Lawrence, and Hulme had close personal and professional connections with one another. They all knew each other or knew of one another. They were all well aware of one another’s work and ideas. They wrote for the same set of journals, went to many of the same places professionally and for entertainment, and they had many of the same friends in common. Moreover, they felt an affinity between their work and ideas. Among those authors actively publishing literature in London in those years, the five Modernists acknowledged one another, and were acknowledged at the time by others, as having many ideas in common, as being different from other writers, and as representing an important new trend in literature and thought. These five authors, therefore, had the opportunity and desire to share their views and theories with one another. Although their ideas originally may have developed from their own individual interests and backgrounds, they all were brought closely together immediately before the war. It is not surprising, therefore, that a common set of assumptions about history resulted. It is these common ideas, emotions, or attitudes that are the focus of this work. What has been sacrificed, therefore, is a comprehensive analysis of the very real differences between the authors and those features of their thinking that make each unique. This has been intentional, both in the interest of space, and because this is the study of a group; the emphasis, thus, is on the commonality of their opinions. Much critical writing has been done on each individual author and this body of work should be consulted for an understanding of the differences between them. Because it is the origins of the Modernist view of history that is under consideration, this study focuses on the years  to , although it has been necessary to discuss some ideas well before  and some after . Nineteen hundred and nine has been chosen as a starting date because it was then that the five Modernists first met, or became aware of, one another;  is the ending date, naturally, because it is the start of the First World War. Moreover, because the Modernists have been treated as intellectuals as well as literary figures, all of the works of the five Modernists have

Introduction



been considered in these years to point out their changing ideas of history. This includes journal articles, letters, private papers, memoirs, and non-fiction, as well as their poetry, drama, stories, and novels. It is important to note, however, that the genesis of their historical views was a complex process involving emotional and intellectual responses to contemporary developments in a wide variety of areas including politics, society, religion, and aesthetics. Thus the discussion of their ideas of history necessitates a consideration of their attitudes towards all of these topics as well. As a work of contextual intellectual history, moreover, it has been necessary to examine the social, political, and intellectual context to which the authors responded, in order to discover what might have prompted the changes in their ideas. The construction of this context has been carefully limited by the five Modernists’ own writings. Only those subjects and events that they commented upon explicitly or that they took an interest in have been considered part of the context. Unlike a literary critic such as Sanford Schwartz who studies a wide “matrix” of ideas which were “in the air” at the time and that he has selected because of a perceived similarity to the thought of the Modernists, I have only discussed those ideas and occurrences either that the authors wrote about or of which there is strong indication that they were aware. Therefore, not all of the features of Edwardian England have been included as part of the context considered. For example, some of the five Modernists wrote explicitly about the Boer War, the  Parliament crisis, the ideas of Henri Bergson, or the Theosophical Society. All of this has been examined. Articles in journals they were known to have read and on subjects in which they were interested at the time also have been considered. But if Einstein’s theory of relativity has not been mentioned, or if Nietzsche or the Suffragette movement are considered only briefly, it is because the five Modernists either did not discuss these ideas or events or mentioned them infrequently. The study follows a roughly chronological organization, although it does not do so strictly. This is because it is a collective, rather than an individual, biography. In order for the common thought of all five authors to emerge, the chapters are organized around topics, rather than around writers. Because the five Modernists did not comment on all topics, or did so at different times, it has not been possible to proceed in a strictly chronological manner or to include every author in every discussion. What this means is that some Modernists feature more in some discussions than others. For example, D.H. Lawrence seems remarkably absent



Introduction

in the beginning of the work, but, like Athena from the head of Zeus, emerges suddenly almost fully grown at the end. Ford Madox Ford, on the other hand, fades from view somewhat as the study progresses. In the end, the presentation of the origins of the historical thinking of the five Modernists in this work may resemble Ford Madox Ford’s “Impressionistic” rendering of the past more than anything else. It aims at giving the reader an impression or general feeling of the chronological development and of the common ideas and emotions of the authors. However, unlike Ford’s histories, the impressions and conclusions of this work are based on careful research done for each author in a strictly chronological fashion. The genesis of the five Modernists’ views of history occurred slowly and often was quite subtle. It is important at the outset, therefore, to be aware of what are the general components of different views of history in order that the often minor changes in their thinking can be properly weighed. That the five Modernists theorized about the nature of history was hardly innovative. In fact, they were joining the ranks of numerous artists, as well as philosophers, theologians, and historians who constructed speculative philosophies of history. In this the Modernists were doing more than just reflecting poetically on “the mutability and transience of all things.” Rather, they were attempting to answer fundamental questions “about patterns and purpose and meaning” in the past, in order “to render the whole historical process meaningful in the sense of ‘intelligible’.” Moreover, the Modernists’ conclusion that history moves in cycles also was not particularly new. In fact, it has been argued that “there are three possible patterns” of history; “either history has proceeded in a certain direction, or it has repeated itself in succeeding peoples and periods, or it has been formless and chaotic.” The latter view does not lend itself to speculative philosophies of history, the fundamental aim of which is to reduce “the whole of the past to an order” and to predict “things to come.” As a result, speculative histories are almost exclusively either progressive or cyclic. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the British literary Modernists of the early twentieth century were not the first to speculate that cycles were the fundamental feature of the past. Nevertheless, while the five Modernists were not unique in holding cyclic philosophies of history, they were the first to do so in quite a long time. Since the eighteenth-century Enlightenment the most common pattern of history was that of progress. There have been, however, a number of different progressive views. Inspired by the discovery of laws

Introduction



of nature for the physical world during the Scientific Revolution and encouraged by the belief that similar laws could be found for all areas of human existence, European thinkers such as Turgot, Lessing, Smith, Condorcet, Herder, and Comte developed theories of linear progressive improvement. In other words, they speculated that if the scientific method was applied properly and existing conditions were changed according to the laws uncovered by that method, the world would rapidly improve. Such views of progress culminated in the nineteenth-century Darwinian and social Darwinian theories of positive evolution, and in the progressive assumptions of British Whig historians such as Buckle, Macaulay, Freeman, and Maitland who carefully plotted the development of the British political system from its primitive origins to its perfection in the present day. The “optimistic belief in progress which laid its mark on so much nineteenth-century historical thinking” was reflected occasionally in literature. For example, Tennyson wrote in his  poem “Locksley Hall” of the “glorious gains” that British civilization had achieved through the growth of wisdom and science, and he expressed confidence that if he could look “into the future, far as human eye could see” he would witness “all the wonder that would be.” George Eliot, writing in , was optimistic that “every phase of human development is part of the education of the race in which we are sharing; every mistake, every absurdity into which poor human nature has fallen, may be looked on as an experiment of which we may reap the benefit.” However, few nineteenth-century thinkers or artists were entirely unequivocal about positive progress, and a number had become so disillusioned that they even speculated about the linear decline of civilization. One historian even argues that a “European-wide . . . anxiety about degeneration” existed, which “reached something of a crescendo in the s.” The fact that an entire school of artists were named “Decadents” says much about theories of history at the end of the century. These writers did not, however, abandon underlying assumptions of progress. The only difference was a change in direction; the world was growing progressively worse, rather than better. While linear progress was very popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries especially among the general public, it was not the most common pattern of history among artists and thinkers. In fact, the philosophy of history that gained most adherents in the nineteenth century combined linear advance with cyclic regression or repetition to create a spiral pattern. The first widespread group to develop spiral theories were



Introduction

the Romantics. M.H. Abrams, in his extensive study of Romantic theories of history, Natural Supernaturalism, argues that the most characteristic pattern of history of authors such as Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Schelling, Schiller, and Fichte was progress in the shape of a spiral. In this view of history, improvement occurs after a decline or fall from a golden age. When humanity returns to the principles of the former age, a new golden age results, superior to the first one because of the knowledge gained by the fall. No further falls will occur and progress will continue indefinitely. The fall, therefore, is “fortunate” because without it the future could not be permanently better. The early nineteenth-century Romantic writers were not alone in speculating about the spiral pattern of history. In fact, most later Victorian thinkers and artists developed their own varieties of this theory. For example, according to one literary critic, the “paradox of the fortunate fall underlies Ruskin’s whole concept of the Gothic,” because he believed that it was possible to reverse the decline following the Middle Ages and restore the world “to a glory far greater than that possible had there been no prior transgression.” Other Victorians held similar views, but proposed that, not one, but many “fortunate falls” had occurred. Perhaps influenced by Hegel’s dialectic pattern of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, many nineteenth-century authors believed that throughout history two principles, one positive and one negative, alternated with one another. Arnold’s Hebraism and Hellenism, Carlyle’s systole and diastole of faith and unfaith, Pater’s centrifugal and centripetal, Ionic and Doric, Asiatic and European, and Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian impulses all fit this pattern. Each of these thinkers continued to propose that the tradition they found preferable had increased and been perfected over time because of the lessons learned during each negative “fall”. And they were hopeful that the struggle of opposites would be resolved or, to use the Hegelian concept of ‘aufheben’, annulled, preserved, and transcended, and progress would result. Thus, most Romantics and Victorians could not avoid the nineteenthcentury optimism in the likelihood, as Matthew Arnold put it, of “the growth towards perfection.” In fact, Arnold like so many others made it clear that his aim, which was “the aim of great culture,” was progress – “to ascertain what perfection is and to make it prevail.” And despite much pessimism about the present, most Victorian writers were confident, like Thomas Carlyle, that “the happiness and greatness of mankind at large have been continually progressive” and that “a new and brighter spiritual era is slowly evolving itself for all men.”

Introduction



The historical theories of the early twentieth-century British literary Modernists were indebted to many earlier authors and appear similar to them at first glance. However, there are some very significant differences. Despite being called ‘modernist’, their philosophies of history had a greater affinity to pre-modern thinkers than to any eighteenthor nineteenth-century figure. Many literary critics point out the debt that Modernists such as Yeats and Joyce acknowledged to the early eighteenth-century philosopher, Giambattista Vico, who it is claimed developed one of the only modern cyclic theories of the past. However, the Modernists’ theories were quite different from his. A close reading of Vico reveals that within his “corsi e ricorsi,” or repetition of the divine, heroic, and human ages, are common assumptions of progress. Because Vico believed that with greater historical knowledge it was possible to make fundamental changes, improve upon the past, and thus avoid the final degenerative age of a future cycle, his views cannot be considered strictly cyclic, as were those of the Modernists. Some historians even have argued that Vico’s importance is not as a cyclic thinker, but as a precursor of later progressive theories; his “books were the vehicle by which the concept of historical development at last entered the thought of Western Europe.” Similarly, a recent study concludes that his “cycles were not cyclical but spiral-like.” Vico’s theories, thus, resembled Romantic and Victorian views of history more than anything pre-modern or Modernist. It was only in the pre-modern period that thinkers were willing to accept the strictly cyclic nature of the past. This was certainly the case in traditional and non-Western societies, such as those of Persia, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. It also has been argued that “the eternal return is a universal ingredient of mythic thought” and was the most popular theory in the Greco-Roman world. Most pre-Socratic philosophers wrote of a universal pattern of a cyclic coming together into unity alternating with a decay into separation. Plato’s theory of the great year and recurring destruction of worlds, Aristotle’s cycle of political revolutions, Polybius’ rise and fall of states and empires, and the Stoics’ theories of the periodic return to an original state of innocence were all cyclic as well. That some twentieth-century Modernists were aware of the pre-modern origins of their views of history is made clear by Yeats’s  exposition of his theory of history, A Vision, which includes an overview of all of these ancient ideas and more. As with progressive views, there are a variety of cyclic theories of history. Two patterns are most common – the “cycloid” and “sinusoidal” types. A cycloid pattern of history is one in which “history goes



Introduction

through . . . [a] sequence of beginning, middle, and end only to start over with a repetition.” In other words, these theories posit the growth, maturity, and decay of one civilization or tradition and the repetition of that pattern within that civilization or another. These theories were most common in the later Greco-Roman period and the Renaissance. They also can be easily transformed into spiral pattern with the addition of some form of progress over time as occurred in much Romantic and Victorian thought. In the late nineteenth, and especially the early twentieth century this cycloidal thinking re-emerged. For example, Nietzsche’s idea of the Eternal Recurrence suggested that throughout time all events are repeated infinitely. However, Nietzsche did not elaborate on this idea fully enough for it to be considered a speculative philosophy of history, and there is debate about whether he even meant it to be taken literally. Moreover, his theory of the Overman implies an acceptance of progress; a consciously willed evolutionary process that overcomes and transcends the present may result in a better future. Thus, Nietzsche’s thought is not unequivocally cyclic. It is only with Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West in  that a fully developed cycloidal philosophy of history appeared. Spengler found in nine separate cultures a cyclic “pattern analogous to the life cycle of a plant or animal;” all grew, matured, and decayed. Arnold Toynbee in the s and s found a similar organic “pattern of growth, breakdown, and eventual decay and dissolution,” but expanded upon Spengler by examining twenty-one civilizations of the past. The historical theories of the early British literary Modernists, however, were different even from those of other cyclic thinkers in their own era. This is because, rather than claiming that history followed a cycloid pattern, the Modernists, like thinkers of a much earlier period, developed sinusoidal views of history. They accepted an “alternation (or fluctuation) view” of the past in which “there is a movement in history wherein one set of general conditions is regularly succeeded by another, which then in turn gives way to the first.” In other words, rather than theorize about one eternally repeated life cycle, an alternation view postulates the existence of two sets of phenomena, principles, or traditions that cyclically alternate throughout time. One tradition is predominant for a number of centuries or years and then it is replaced by the other tradition. The first tradition will return, the second one will then follow it, and this alternation will continue for ever. The Modernists’ views of history, therefore, were quite unique for the period in which they were written,

Introduction



and they marked a fundamental shift from the ideas of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. This becomes especially apparent when the key assumptions underlying the cyclic views of the early British Modernists are examined. In rejecting theories of progress, the early British literary Modernists also abandoned a number of ideas that formed the basis of those theories. What is common to all progressive notions of history is the belief that significant change takes place over time. When Tennyson declared, “all truth is change” he revealed the basis of his theory of progress. Equally important, progressive change is cumulative; chronologically later periods incorporate the changes (either good or bad) of earlier periods and thus are fundamentally different (either better or worse). Because change is cumulative, therefore, chronology or the sequence of time provides value in history. Upwards progress holds that “whatever is later in time is prior in value”; decadence assumes the reverse – that which is earlier in time is more important. Thus, the place of an occurrence or idea in absolute time is crucial in these views of history. Moreover, because events in the past contribute to the nature of the present and are incorporated into it, the past and present are essentially incomparable. As a result history is fundamentally irreversible. Later time periods are so different from earlier ones that there is no possibility of ever returning to the past. In cyclic views, however, history is reversible because, while change may occur over time, that change is not cumulative. Change occurs when one set of principles or tradition replaces its opposite. While this change can be apocalyptic because it can involve great destruction, it is not so in the sense that something fundamentally different results. Despite any devastation when the two traditions alternate, neither tradition is altered or incorporates within itself anything fundamentally new. As a result, the essential features of the past may return and history can, and does, reverse itself. This does not mean that a tradition when it returns will be exactly identical to its previous appearance. In the early Modernists’ theories in particular, the best description is of “similar recapitulation,” rather than “sheer reiteration.” As historian Frank Manuel explains it, “there is a certain core of meaning that remains the same over the centuries, but only a certain core.” Surface details may vary with each return. The five Modernists believed that the cycle that would appear in the near future would incorporate many features of the modern world, especially industrial technology. However, they made it clear that this did not mean



Introduction

that there would be a fundamental change from the essence of the past tradition that had returned. Because each tradition remains always the same, and because the past neither causes the present nor is incorporated into it, chronological sequence is unimportant in cyclic views. Each tradition is uniform in the sense that all ages within the same tradition are equivalent regardless of when they occurred in time. They are essentially different, not from one another, but only from ages in the alternate tradition. These differences, moreover, are not determined by the place of an age in the chronological sequence (by whether it occurred later or earlier in time), but by the traditions themselves. As a result, events or ideas from periods separated by vast amounts of time can be compared and utilized equally. There can be no anachronism in juxtaposing aspects of two ages that are hundreds or even thousands of years apart as long as they are part of the same tradition because they have identical value. Chronology, thus, is irrelevant. Finally, cyclic views of history differ from progressive ones because they are closed rather than open-ended, and because they are not teleological. In progressive views, it is usually assumed that a final end of history, either in an earthly paradise or utter disintegration, will ultimately take place. In the present day, however, cumulative change is not considered to be finished and the exact nature of the end-result of the historical process is unknown and open. In cyclic views of history, on the other hand, because all values are already in existence in past cycles or in the two traditions, no new ones can develop over the course of time. And because change is not cumulative, there can be no final product to the historical process. Again, history cannot be apocalyptic in the sense that it incorporates significant or final change. Cyclic alternation will continue indefinitely, and there is no possibility of anything new resulting. All that will happen in the future is already known in its essence from the past. History, therefore, is a closed process that easily can be foretold. Sinusoidal theories of human history may have been particularly appealing to pre-modern thinkers because they readily accommodate a belief in the existence of a supernatural realm that contains ultimate truth. In fact, cyclic views of history almost always are accompanied by an assumption that behind the temporary changes of the human world a superior reality is present, which is permanent and unchanging, exists outside of time, and in which all things occur simultaneously. This certainly was the case, for example, in ancient Greece when philosophers “more and more . . . became obsessed with the idea of a changeless universal order;” “almost everything in philosophy became subordinated

Introduction



to . . . explaining the ‘transitory flux’ of experience in terms of the ‘unchanging realities’ that lay behind it.” Thus, while progressive views value change above all, or what the Ancient Greeks would call “becoming,” cyclic views of history give preeminence to a fundamental stability underlying all change – “being.” Change was considered inferior to stability, for example by the preSocratic philosophers, because it was deemed to be the cause of division from unity into destructive struggle. Cyclic views of history reflect this preference for stability because their structure makes the human past, like the cosmos in general, fundamentally changeless despite the appearance of change. Moreover, by positing a stable equilibrium between two opposed principles or traditions that constantly recur, they ensure more harmony than progressive theories, the ultimate goal of which is the overcoming or expulsion of one of the two principles of life – that of evil or strife. Rather than struggle against one of the cosmic opposites, cyclic views balance both into a unified whole that accepts and incorporates each. Strictly cyclic views of history are difficult for the modern mind to accept. With no freedom to enact fundamental change, no hope of permanent improvement, no ultimate expulsion of evil or disorder, no resolution of conflict, and no promise of an earthly paradise, cyclic theories can appear deeply pessimistic. The Modernists’ cyclic theorizing also may not be sympathetic to the Post-Modern sensibility; their strict dichotomizing between two fundamentally opposed principles can appear simplistic and unrealistic. However, these are not the only ways to consider their views of history. In fact, the early British literary Modernists found a belief in historical cycles to be a realistic and optimistic alternative to their deep disillusionment with the contemporary world and their pessimism about the possibility of improving it. By providing order while accepting the inevitability of disorder, cyclic theories seemed a perfectly reasonable way to ensure meaning and stability in a confusing period of change. Moreover, what will become evident from this study is that the five Modernists’ views of universal history were related to their new literary techniques. In fact, there are important similarities between them. Literary critics have shown that Modernism’s apparently random style is far from chaotic but is, rather, a highly ordered and controlled pattern. It is not just a mirroring of a perceived chaos in the modern world. The Modernists did perceive chaos, but their technique was a new way to incorporate it into a meaningful pattern. Their cyclic views of history



Introduction

also were ways to ensure order while accepting the chaos that they perceived around them. For various reasons, the five Modernists feared the changes of the period in which they lived and interpreted them as signs of confusion and anarchy. Their cyclic theories of the past were a defense against that confusion that incorporated, rather than annulled it. From the study of these five authors’ theories of history, therefore, the nature and extent of the break between Modernist and Enlightenment thinking becomes strikingly apparent. The Modernists themselves were cyclically returning to older patterns of thought. Their thought, thus, was simultaneously very old and very new. The cyclic views of the five Modernists examined in this book developed gradually. They all began their careers with fundamentally nineteenth-century historical assumptions and developed their new ideas slowly over a long period of time. As a result, in their early thinking, holdovers of previous ideas, and tensions between old and new assumptions are evident. To plot the development of their historical innovations, therefore, a sensitivity to subtle changes is essential. This is why this study has considered some important elements other than comments openly rejecting progress and suggesting the cyclic nature of history. The following ideas, which are components of cyclic theories of history, have been taken into consideration as evidence of growing cyclic views: the sense that two distinct and constant traditions existed in the past; the idea that the universal order is essentially constant; the dislike of change and belief in, and preference for, a superior permanent and timeless reality; a sense that absolute time or accurate chronology is unimportant or a belief that ages with similar values are equivalent regardless of the passage of time; and a sense that ideas or occurrences in equivalent ages can be compared without anachronism even though separated by a vast amount of time. The development of all of these assumptions has been related to the political, social, and intellectual context that may have inspired them. Who exactly were these five Modernists? How might they have shared ideas and opinions? A brief account of the main characters is necessary at the outset. By  Yeats, Ford, Hulme, Pound, and Lawrence had begun to form a group. This might have been considered surprising. All five authors had very different personalities, came from different backgrounds, and two were of slightly different ages. Initially, therefore, there was no obvious reason why they would get to know one another or share similar attitudes towards history. Two forces served to bring the authors together. One was the vitality of the London art world. The

Introduction



other was Ezra Pound. According to one contemporary, “unaware of the approaching disasters of the First World War, a wave of creative activity seemed to be sweeping London.” And she added that “Ezra’s driving force was everywhere.” In many respects this was true. It was very often Ezra Pound’s “driving force” that acted as a catalyst for the five Modernists. Pound arrived in London in late September  after having traveled from America to Italy the previous year. Prior to that time he had received a Master of Arts degree in Romance languages from the University of Pennsylvania, held a teaching position at Wabash College in Indiana, and pursued post-graduate studies in Proven¸cal and medieval Spanish literature. Despite this academic background, when Pound moved to London at the age of twenty-three he was quite an eccentric figure. He came from a respectable upper-middle-class American family, but, like many a middle-class youth with artistic leanings, when in Europe Pound confidently took on the role of a bohemian. Ford later recalled that at the time Ezra would approach with the steps of a dancer, making passes with a cane at an imaginary opponent. He would wear trousers made of green billiard cloth, a pink coat, a blue shirt, a tie hand-painted by a Japanese friend, an immense sombrero, a flaming beard cut to a point and a single, large blue ear-ring. . . . He threw himself alarmingly into frail chairs, devoured enormous quantities of your pastry, fixed his pince-nez firmly on his nose, drew out a manuscript from his pocket . . . and looking down his nose would chuckle like Mephistopheles and read you a translation from Arnaut Daniel.

Pound had few literary contacts when he first arrived in London. One of his first activities was to deposit a book of his poems (which he had privately printed in Venice the year before) in bookshops around London hoping to gain some attention. In this way he met Elkin Mathews who was a publisher and owner of a bookshop. In turn Mathews introduced Pound to a London literary organization called the Poets’ Club on February , . Although Pound was not very enthusiastic about the Poets’ Club, it did help him to widen his circle of acquaintances. In particular it was through this organization that he met T.E. Hulme. Born and brought up in Staffordshire, Thomas Ernst Hulme was twenty-six years old in . He was from an old landowning family, and, like Pound, had been absent from England prior to , traveling through Canada and Europe. His educational background was not literary; he had attended Cambridge and University College, London in mathematics, philosophy, biology, and physics. By , however, he



Introduction

too had settled in London, had decided that his main interest was poetry, and had become an early devotee of the French philosopher, Henri Bergson. Hulme was also quite an impressive personality. But rather than cultivating Pound’s bohemian extravagance, Hulme developed an image of almost authoritarian strength that was frightening to some people, but that concealed a genuine kindness and humor. The artist, Jacob Epstein, a close friend of Hulme’s, described him about this time: “Hulme was a large man in bulk, and also large and somewhat abrupt in manner. He had the reputation of being a bully and arrogant because of his abruptness. He was really of a candid and original nature like that of Samuel Johnson, and only his intolerance of sham made him feared.” Because of his interest in poetry, soon after arriving in London Hulme joined the Poets’ Club and quickly became its secretary. Early in , however, he had become dissatisfied with the conservative nature of the Club, and by the end of March , he formed his own club, later referred to as the “Secession Club.” This was an informal, loosely organized group that met weekly at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant throughout the spring and summer of . It was on April , , according to Pound’s biographer, that Pound first came across this group and met Hulme. Although Pound’s initial introduction to the club was not an unqualified success, he did attend other meetings sporadically in . Moreover, Pound’s meeting with Hulme was not without result. Their friendship did develop elsewhere and lasted, even though Hulme soon gave up poetry for philosophy, until Hulme’s death. Although Pound was introduced to Hulme first, the person he most wanted to meet when he came to London was W.B. Yeats. He had already studied Yeats’s work and had sent Yeats a copy of the book of poems he had printed in Venice in . Yeats replied, describing it as “charming”. It was over six months later, however, that they actually met. Yeats was forty-four years old in  and was already one of the most famous literary figures of his time. Although he was originally from Ireland, Yeats had been living in London for a number of years. Since well before the turn of the century Yeats also had been deeply involved with Irish nationalism, Irish theater, French Symbolism, and esoteric supernatural studies both in England and Ireland. By  in London he had established his own circle of literary, political, and occult friends who were his age and of a somewhat older tradition. His fame and accomplishments alone made him an impressive figure at the time. When Pound first arrived in London, he spent a good deal of his time working at the British Museum. Through the Museum he “found

Introduction



the Vienna Cafe where museum officials, readers and their friends dined.” These included writers such as Laurence Binyon, Selwyn Image, Ernest Rhys, and May Sinclair, all of whom were friends or acquaintances of Yeats. It was Olivia Shakespear, however, the mother of his future wife (whom Pound had met in February at a party), who made the actual introduction to Yeats. She was one of Yeats’s closest friends for his entire lifetime, and in the spring of  she took Pound to Yeats’s apartment in the Woburn Buildings. According to Yeats’s biographer, “Pound and Yeats got along well from the first, with the younger man assuming towards the older a mixed attitude of admiration and patronage.” This was the beginning of a friendship that would last many years. A similar friendship begun in  was the one between Pound and Ford Madox Ford, called Ford Madox Hueffer at the time. Ford, like Yeats, was somewhat older than Pound and Hulme. In  he was thirty-six and had been living in London for five years, having spent the previous fifteen years in the English countryside. Although not as famous as Yeats, Ford had come from a renowned English artistic family. He also was a close friend and collaborator with the celebrated author Joseph Conrad, and in  he had founded and was the editor of an important and well-received new journal, the English Review. Ford was a bit more extravagant in his personal style than Yeats, but like the older author Ford was a well-established literary figure with his own circle of literary friends and acquaintances, many of whom he had known since childhood. Pound and Ford met in the spring of  through the contacts Pound had made at the British Museum. The meeting was a success and by June, Pound was already published in Ford’s English Review. The last member of the quintet to be introduced was D.H. Lawrence. It was Ford who had “discovered” Lawrence. In , when Lawrence first moved to a suburb of London, he was twenty-four years old – the same age as Pound. He was, however, quite a different type of person from Pound. From a coalmining family in Nottinghamshire, Lawrence was clearly of the working class. Shy and provincial at first, he was a contrast to Pound, Ford, and Hulme who were confident, cosmopolitan, and vociferous. However, like Pound and Hulme, Lawrence had little contact with London or its literary world before . Previously he had worked as a clerk for a surgical goods manufacturer and attended Nottingham University College to receive a teaching certificate. In late  he accepted a teaching post in a grammar school in South London. Although he considered himself primarily a creative writer rather than a



Introduction

teacher and was in the process of writing a number of short stories, poems, and a novel, Lawrence’s move to London did not immediately bring him into contact with London’s literary world. This changed in about October , when his friend Jessie Chambers sent some of his poems to the English Review. Ford admired these poems immediately, published them, and asked to see Lawrence. Very impressed by Lawrence, Ford began to show him off to his circle of friends. He introduced Lawrence to Pound that autumn, and Pound also took up this new find. By the end of , thus, the foundations of a new literary group were set. Through the medium of the contacts established in that year the five different authors were connected, albeit indirectly; in  they all had met Pound. Beyond that, however, there was little contact and they kept to their own circles. This may have been due to the differences between them, which were a result of their distinct personalities and backgrounds. Moreover, they were separated also by age. The two older writers, Yeats and Ford, grew up in a very similar intellectual milieu of which the younger three were aware only second-hand, they had written much more than the other authors, and had more time to think critically and develop their ideas and interests before . It was only gradually between  and  that their friendships became closer and they became aware of one another and their common goals. Nineteen hundred and ten was not a particularly important year for the development of their friendships; Pound, Ford, and Yeats spent most of the year outside of England, traveling in America, Germany, and France respectively. It was only in  that the five Modernists began to coalesce into a literary group. There were many ways in which this occurred. What follows is representative of just a few. One means by which the Modernists got to know one another better was through the gatherings that four of the five held at their homes. In  any one of them could attend the Monday evenings given by Yeats or the Tuesday evenings given by Hulme. Almost anyone could drop in at Pound’s rooms in Kensington at almost any time. In addition, Ford gave frequent parties at South Lodge, the home of his companion, Violet Hunt. Furthermore, there was a growing group of mutual acquaintances who also attended these gatherings and could share ideas with, and communicate them among, the five Modernists. These included friends originally of Yeats’s such as Florence Farr, Ernest Rhys, May Sinclair, and Olivia and Dorothy Shakespear; writers and artists whom Ford had discovered through his English Review such as Wyndham Lewis; and friends and new acquaintances of Hulme’s and Pound’s such

Introduction



as F.S. Flint, Edward Storer, Richard Aldington, H.D., J.G. Fletcher, Skipwith Cannell, and John Cournos. There also were a number of others involved. Pound, as the ringleader, invited them all to his home and took many of them to Yeats’s Mondays, Hulme’s Tuesdays, and Ford’s South Lodge parties. There were also a number of new literary journals that provided a means by which all these artists could get to know one another. In  Ford resigned the editorship of the English Review, which had included the work of many of the five Modernists and their friends. But there were other important new magazines after that date. The most influential probably was the New Age, which had been taken over by A.R. Orage in . Hulme and Pound became regular contributors for it in  and  respectively. Orage also published contributions by, and reviews of the work of, all of the five Modernists and almost all of their mutual friends. He held editorial meetings, dinners, and lunches at which the contributors and occasionally guests could meet and discuss ideas. Orage himself attended some of the gatherings held by the five Modernists. Other important new magazines were the Poetry Review, which had been founded by Harold Monro in , and Monro’s subsequent journal, Poetry and Drama, begun in . Pound was a contributor to these magazines as were Flint, Storer, and Aldington. Although Hulme did not contribute, he was close enough to Monro to be asked to be a judge for a poetry competition given by the Poetry Review in . Monro included reviews of the work of all five of the Modernists. Monro also had a poetry bookshop that Hulme and many of the others frequented and above which Hulme lived briefly. At this bookshop Monro also gave poetry readings and parties at which, at various times, all five of the Modernists and many of their friends were represented or present. Monro knew all five Modernists socially and attended Hulme’s Tuesdays and Yeats’s Mondays as well. Finally, Pound was a great help with the journal, The New Freewoman, which was started in  and was renamed The Egoist in . Pound and, subsequently Aldington, were the literary editors of these magazines and consequently managed to get the work of almost all the five Modernists and their friends published there. Pound also was the foreign correspondent for the new American magazine, Poetry, that was begun in  and published in Chicago. Once again he was able to have the work of Ford, Yeats, Lawrence, and many other friends published in this journal.



Introduction

Between  and , therefore, there were plenty of meeting places, mutual friends, and publications that brought together a London literary scene of which the five Modernists were a part, and which enabled them to feel that they were sharing in a new literary movement. The similarity of their ideas, therefore, was undoubtedly not accidental; they certainly had many opportunities to share their opinions. In the end they all came to the common idea that cyclic structures for history and for art appeared far more realistic than any idea of progress. While coming to this conclusion they all began to effect the fundamental changes in their aesthetic theories and practices that eventually became known as Modernism. We must now see how all of this happened in the “curious drama” of those far from idyllic Edwardian years.

 

“Immaterial pleasure houses”: the initial aesthetic dilemma

When we look back upon the lives of our fathers the first thing that seems to strike us is their intolerable slowness, and then the gloom in which they lived – or perhaps the gloom would strike us first. . . . I do not believe they had sunlight. . . . I do not believe they had any fresh breezes. . . . They could not have had. It was always brown, motionless fog in those days. . . . But in gloom and amidst horror they sang on bravely . . . in amidst the glooms they built immaterial pleasure houses. Ford Madox Ford, Ancient Lights, 

According to Ford Madox Ford, one of his very first memories was of lying in his cradle surrounded by proofsheets of the poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Although this undoubtedly is an example of Ford’s legendary, and often self-serving imagination, it was not beyond the realm of possibility. Much of Ford’s youth was spent at the home of his grandfather, the famous Pre-Raphaelite painter, Ford Madox Brown, in the company of his cousins who were Rossetti’s nieces and nephew. Ford’s early years, therefore, were lived in the shadow of the great figures of the Victorian art world. And despite his deep love for his grandfather, Ford’s recollection of these artists, as the quote heading this chapter indicates, was often of the depression, gloom, and inadequacy he felt in their presence. Early on he wished to escape from their influence. The same could be said of the other four Modernists. In the early days of their careers, as is hardly surprising, one of the primary concerns of all five authors was to distinguish themselves from their predecessors and establish their own place in the history of European literature. Beginning in the late s and s for the elder Modernists, Yeats and Ford, and after the turn of the century for the younger three, Hulme, Pound, and Lawrence, all five authors attempted to outline a unique style and set of ideas for their new generation. It took them quite a while to do this, and they certainly had not succeeded by the time they met in . 



Modernism

Of this fact, they all were well aware. Their aesthetic theorizing, and political and social positions were contradictory and derivative. Their creative work was vague and imprecise. Rather than successfully defining new values and initiating novel aesthetic practices, the most obvious characteristic of the early work of the Modernists was an unoriginal and romantic escapism that led to the creation of just those “immaterial pleasure houses” of the quote above, which Ford Madox Ford criticized his elders for building. The young Modernists did have a number of strong opinions about how they were different from their predecessors. As Ford put it, “the world of twenty-five years ago,” the world of their “fathers,” was “rather a dismal place.” What made it so depressing was the existence of “those terrible and forbidding things – the Victorian great figures.” Ford was particularly happy that the “Ruskins, Carlyles, George Eliots” had disappeared, while the other Modernists agreed and added to the list authors such as Arnold, Tennyson, Browning, and Dickens. The early Modernists also were pleased that a new generation of artists for which they felt much more sympathy had taken the Victorians’ place in the s and s. These less monumental figures included Arthur Symons, Lionel Johnson, Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and other artists who were influenced by European Symbolism and could be included in what was known as the Aesthetic Movement. These artists were encouraging, according to the Modernists, because they heralded a return to the aesthetic values of the early nineteenth-century Romantics after the unfortunate Victorian aberration. Underlying the Modernists’ optimism about the work of the Aesthetic Movement of the late nineteenth century was a belief, expressed most clearly by Ford Madox Ford in , that an “eternal struggle” existed “between . . . Art considered as a thing remote from the external world, and Art that descends for its subjects into the market-place.” This was the key distinction, according to Ford, between “Romantic” and “Victorian” art. All the other Modernists accepted this dichotomy and frequently expressed a preference for the former for a variety of reasons. In this the young Modernists were hardly innovative. Since the late eighteenth century, aesthetic theorists from Shelley, Hallam, and Tennyson, to Arnold, Browning, Ruskin, and Morris had made a distinction between a subjective art that is the expression of the emotions and imagination of artistic geniuses with access to a spiritual realm, and an objective art that displays truths learned by reflection or reason and which concentrates on the immediate concerns of the entire community. Where

The initial aesthetic dilemma



the Modernists were unique was in the simplicity of their theorizing. Although earlier thinkers may have emphasized one form of art rather than the other, none of them proposed the entire exclusion of either side of the dichotomy. In fact, all hoped to find a type of art that could accommodate both. In their early careers the five Modernists appeared to prefer what Ford described as a “Romantic” art of emotion and imagination to the exclusion of a “Victorian” art of reason and social comment. For example, Hulme expressed great distrust of what he considered to be the rationalism and didacticism of the Victorians. He believed that mid-nineteenthcentury thinkers and artists based their work on a deterministic view of the universe which they shared with scientists like Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer, and which assumed that all natural and human phenomena could be explained by a set of simple, orderly material laws. This in turn enabled them to be optimistic about solving contemporary problems and justified a focus on social reform. Hulme not only found this regrettable, but in reading a book that assumed that “Law was universal” he even got “the same kind of sensation as one gets from turning up a stone and seeing the creeping things revealed.” According to Hulme this was because “the nightmare of determinism” denied the mystery of chance and the freedom of human action, and left little role for the concerns of the spirit, such as religion and art. This determinism also may have contributed to the utilitarianism of the Victorians that was Ford’s bˆete noir. Because the Victorian “great” believed “he was going to solve the riddle of the universe,” according to Ford, his “desire [was] to write not so much a good book as a book which will do good.” This led, in the case of an author like Ruskin, to a “continual falsification of aesthetic standards to give body to his ethical doctrine.” The Victorian for Ford, thus, was a writer “of polemics, the preacher” – not a true artist. Or, as Pound put it in a poem of , they were people “who love not a song whate’er its skill be,/ But only love the cause or what cause should be.” In other words, the Victorian artist had become the useful servant of the public and his art had lost all aesthetic value. The other four Modernists agreed on these points – didacticism and social reform were inappropriate because they did not produce great art and because they diminished the importance of artists. Pound, for example, made it clear that real art was not created by any writer who “confounds poetry with rhetoric and bombast” or who is “a tedious theorist” so “affected by the thought of his time” and the life around



Modernism

him that all he can produce is an “encyclopedia of what passed for wisdom” of the day. As Yeats put it “rhetorical and didactic verse,” or in Lawrence’s words “padding and moral reflection,” did not make for great art. And none of the Modernists felt sympathy for what Lawrence called “Realism’s Reign of Terror” which resulted in works that “inevitably light on a wound or a festering sore.” Early in their careers the five Modernists were optimistic that this Victorian “gloom” was being dispersed. As Yeats put it in , “a great revolution of thought” was occurring. He was referring in particular to the work of the members of the Rhymers’ Club, which he helped organize in  and which was part of the new Aesthetic Movement. The other young Modernists also were enthusiastic about the ideals informing what they saw as a return to Romanticism. In particular, they were pleased with the rejection of rationalism, utilitarianism, materialism, and determinism, and the new acceptance of aestheticism and spiritualism. The young Modernists echoed the late nineteenth-century Aesthetic, and earlier Romantic writers, that the universe was much more complex and mysterious than was claimed by rationalists who assumed, as Yeats put it, “that the external and material are the only fixed things, the only standards of reality.” Yeats, rather, preferred a more religious or spiritual view of the universe. He believed that the supernatural or spiritual world, which lies hidden beneath the surface material world and which is much less orderly and much more mysterious, was the true reality. Quoting Shelley, Yeats claimed that “ ‘the painted veil called life’ may be ‘torn aside’ ” to reveal this truth. This could be done, however, only by those people who understand emotional and spiritual relations – in other words by great artists. In fact, for Yeats a symbolic art of intuition was truly a religion because “imagination was the first emanation of divinity . . . the imaginative arts were therefore the greatest of Divine revelations” and “ ‘the only means of conversing with eternity left to man on earth’.” The artist, therefore, was not just a more sensitive creature, but also a magician, a seer, or a priest who has privileged access to a superior truth that only he could bring into this world. According to Yeats, great artists repeat “the revelation of a spiritual world that has been the revelation of mystics in all ages.” Hulme had a similar view, but it was more psychological. He, like many others in the early years of the twentieth century, was deeply influenced by the theories of Henri Bergson. Following Bergson, Hulme claimed that the “materialistic surface of life” was not the true reality. Rather, according to Hulme, within our minds is a more complex and deeper

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“reality . . . [which is] a flux of interpenetrated elements unseizable by the intellect.” Only intuition can discover the truths of this reality, and artists are best able to do this. As Hulme put it, “[b]etween nature and ourselves, even between ourselves and our own consciousness, there is a veil, a veil that is dense with the ordinary man, transparent for the artist and poet.” Therefore, “the function of the artist is to pierce through here and there . . . the veil placed between us and reality.” In this way the artist, rather than the scientist, could discover the most important truths. Early in their careers, the Modernists also thought that the best art must be based on emotion and intuition. As Yeats and Ford put it, the best work “express[es] great passions” and, quoting Arthur Hallam, is a “poetry of sensation rather than reflection”; it is “an illustration of an emotion” rather than a presentation of “ideas.” Pound agreed that “short poems of emotions and expressions of personal feeling” were preferable to any other forms. The advantage of an emotional art, for the five Modernists, not only was that it discovered deeper truths and was aesthetically superior, but also that it was much more effective in improving the world. As Ford put it, the “great defect” of the contemporary Englishman was “his want of sympathetic imagination.” Only an exposure to great art could cure this. All the other Modernists agreed with the fundamentally Romantic notion of the ennobling power of art by means of the development of the faculty of Sympathy, which enables people to imaginatively place themselves in the situation of others and feel their emotions. Sympathy, first, was important for the artist’s ability to truly understand his subject. As Hulme put it (paraphrasing Henri Bergson) “the artist . . . in placing himself back within the object by a kind of sympathy . . . break[s] down, by an effort of intuition the barrier that space puts between him and his model.” Pound agreed, quoting De Quincey, about “ ‘the miracle which can be wrought’ ” by great artists who are capable of “ ‘feeling a thing more keenly, understanding it more deeply, than it has ever been felt before’.” Moreover, according to the five Modernists and the Romantics, Sympathy helps the audience transcend their individual subjectivity and achieve true communication with others. According to Yeats, “sympathy with all living things” and “imagination . . . binds us to each other by opening the secret doors of all hearts.” An art based on sympathy “makes us understand that we are not walled up within our immediate senses, but bound one to another, and to some greater life, by a secret communion of thought and emotion.” Because of this, as Lawrence put

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Modernism

it, “[t]he essence . . . of true human art . . . is a form of sympathy” for it can “convey the emotions of one man to his fellows.” Thus “the mission of Art . . . [is to] bring us into sympathy with as many men, as many objects, as many phenomena as possible.” This sympathetic imagination, in turn, could change the entire world. As Ford put it, there is a “need for romancers” and imaginative writers because “[o]ur laws are good, [but] our manners – our powers of understanding, sympathizing with or aiding one another – might be so very much better.” Lawrence agreed that “we must understand much if we would do much.” With their sympathetic power of understanding, Yeats argued, “the imaginative minority will spread their interests among the majority, for even the majority becomes imaginative when touched by enthusiasm.” A new romantic art, according to Ford, thus would have “ ‘a profound moral significance’.” Great art, therefore, could uncover and communicate deeper truths, aid human communication, make the public more refined, and contribute to the improvement of the world. And it could do this without resorting to rhetoric, didacticism, or logic, but through the creation of aesthetically superior works expressing the artist’s subjective emotions and visions. This in turn made art supremely important and would enable the artist to regain a position of primary importance in the world. According to Ford, if a new Romanticism was adopted, it would herald a return to an age which “held that to be an artist was to be the most august thing in life,” that “still attached something of the priestly to the functionaries of the Fine Arts or the humaner letters,” and that kept alive “the tradition that a poet was a seer and a priest by the sheer virtue of his craft and mystery.” Thus the first aesthetic theories of the five Modernists were hardly different from those of earlier Romantic writers. In addition, side by side with these lofty aesthetic claims, the Modernists also provided other, less philosophic, reasons for why they preferred a Romantic art, which often seemed to be more important to them. Ford summed it up best when he commented that the “mission” of a work of art “is to soothe, to solace, to excite, to move – to do anything that will make us forget our squalid lives, our daily toils, the miseries of our friends, or our intolerable futures. What the artist wishes to do . . . is to take you out of yourself.” Yeats and Pound agreed that poetry was valuable when it could “draw one’s imagination as far as possible from the complexities of modern life and thought,” or when it could “prevent ennui” and provide “an escape from dullness.”

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Art was important, therefore, not to make serious political or social comment by means of the perceptions, or even the fantasies, of sensitive imaginations, as many Romantics had attempted to do. Rather, for the early Modernists, it was a way to effect an escape from the contemporary world by presenting a more beautiful, mysterious, and passionate alternative to it. Lawrence, for example, admired the poet, Rachel Annand Taylor, in  not for any deep theoretical reasons, but mainly because she “lived apart from life . . . withdrawn, sublimating experience with odours.” Her poetry was that of “a choice romanticist” because she “takes the pageant of her bleeding heart, first marches ironically by the brutal daylight, then lovingly she draws it away into her magic, obscure place apart where she breathes spells upon it, filters upon it delicate lights, tricks it with dreams and fancy, and then re-issues the pageant.” Pound was more explicit about his view of the role of artists in a poem of : We, that through all the world Have wandered seeking new things And quaint tales, that your ease May gather such dreams as please You, the Home-stayers. ... New tales, new mysteries, New songs from out the breeze That maketh soft the far evenings, . . .

The five Modernists’ notion of a beautiful alternative to the contemporary world also required an artistic style that was equally remote from the everyday. Pound in particular liked the “profusion” and “bejewelled prose” of “romantic” art, rather than what he described as the “neatness” and “restraint” of “classic” art or a language that might resemble contemporary daily speech. Similarly Lawrence admired work that was “gorgeous, sumptuous” and filled with “sensuous colour.” The Romanticism that the Modernists preferred, therefore, was often an art that, as Pound put it, simply invoked “the beauty of the unusual” rather than “the beauty of the normal.” Quoting Wordsworth, Pound in particular liked poetry that satisfied a desire to hear about “things ‘which never were on sea or land’ . . . more weird and marvellous than any you have yet heard of . . . it is no accurate information about historical things that you seek, it is the thrill which mere reality would never satisfy.” Or, as Hulme put it, they wanted an art filled with analogies “which make an other-world through-the-glass effect” and which “give a sense of wonder,

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Modernism

a sense of being united in another mystic world.” Poems “must appear free movers, and not sprung from that low-thing Earth”; they “must be an imaginary world.” In fact, this withdrawal from the contemporary world could be taken to such an extreme that, according to Yeats, “visible passing life” should be rejected altogether as an appropriate subject for art. In  he even criticized the early Romantics, for being too “full of the pride of the world.” Instead, Yeats supported the creation of a literature “which never mentions an external thing except to express a state of the soul” and in which “the images of human life have faded almost perfectly.” Hulme agreed and claimed that poetry “must be absolutely removed from reality.” If left at this point, the young Modernists appear clearly to be “the last Romantics” as they have been defined by some literary critics, and even by Yeats himself. Moreover, they could be described as last, not just in the sense of coming later in time, but also in respect to the quality of their theory and practice. The dichotomy they posited between forms of art was so simplistic that none of their Romantic or Victorian predecessors would have accepted it. Their aesthetic theories were derivative, and all of their work and ideas tended to an extreme of withdrawal that verged on sentimental escapism. However, this is not the complete story of the five Modernists early in their careers. In many of their writings they clearly were not comfortable with their “Romantic” position, and especially not with an art that suggested removal from the world. Moreover, in contemplating Romantic and Aesthetic work, they drew closer than they cared to admit to the Victorians they rejected. The result was an aesthetic position that appeared contradictory, as well as superficial. Despite pronouncements to the contrary, all the young Modernists were uneasy with art that was vague, sentimental, and escapist. As early as  Yeats remarked that he hated “the soft modern manner” and he realized that his own work fell into this category because “nothing anywhere has clear outline. Everything is cloud and foam.” The other Modernists agreed with Yeats’s evaluation of himself. Although Pound never criticized Yeats directly, he realized that modern symbolism, which used symbols that are “indefinitely suggestive” became “sometimes merely atmospheric suggestion.” Lawrence and Hulme, however, did implicate Yeats. In  Lawrence objected to Yeats because “he is vapourish, too thin” and because his type of poetry “leads to so much vapour of words, till we are blind with coloured wordiness.” Lawrence wished to avoid art that was “undecided, vague, suggestive” and which used esoteric

The initial aesthetic dilemma

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symbols that “do not show what they stand for themselves.” Hulme also had no patience for modern poets, like Yeats, who relied on “big words and common phrases without meaning” and on “the vain decorative and verbal images.” The Modernists also were upset with what Lawrence called “the sticky juice of sentimentality” and melodrama that they found in their own work and in the work of others. This type of art was concerned with “beautiful dying decadent things with sad odours” rather than with real life. Or as Hulme put it, it became an art in which “women whimper and whine of you and I alas, and roses, roses all the way. It becomes the expression of sentimentality rather than of virile thought.” Pound also hated his “enemy” the “drivelling sentimentalist.” And in his poem of , “Revolt. Against the Crepuscular Spirit in Modern Poetry,” Pound parodied “men . . . grown but pale sick phantoms,” “sons . . . grown such thin ephemera” because they “dream pale flowers” or “live only in . . . mists and tempered lights.” Finally, Yeats also agreed with these criticisms. In , he regretted the fact that in the modern world “[t]he poet . . . must sit apart in contemplative indolence playing with fragile things” and that poetry must “separate itself from life.” And even as early as  Yeats associated his own verse with this escapism because it is almost all a flight into fairyland from the real world, and a summons to that flight . . . it is not the poetry of insight and knowledge, but of longing and complaint – the cry of the heart against necessity. I hope some day to alter that and write poetry of insight and knowledge.

In the same years as they advocated a return to Romanticism, and with increasing frequency after , all the Modernists concurred on the type of work they wished to write. It should avoid, as Yeats later described it, “that extravagant style/ He had learned from Pater.” Rather, as he put it in , it should be a poetry of “utter simplicity” in which “everything [is] very hard and clear.” Lawrence and Hulme in  also liked literature in which there is “nothing superfluous, nothing out of place,” and that contains “absolutely accurate presentation and no verbiage.” For Pound two years later, “the true poet” was one who “trusts himself to the simplest expression, and . . . writes without adjectives.” Along with simplicity and precision, the Modernists also liked, as Lawrence put it in , “level-headed, fair, unrelenting realism.” Pound and Hulme admired poets who “attempt to reproduce exactly the thing which has been clearly seen,” and poems in which “each word [is] . . . an image seen.” Artists should be “stern realist[s],” according to Ford, and

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Modernism

represent “an actual moment caught and recorded”; they should “look in the face” of the contemporary world rather than “dream for ever of islands off the west coast of Ireland.” It was precisely for his objectivity and realism, in opposition to Romantic dreaming and subjectivity, that Pound liked the work of the Victorian poet, Robert Browning. The five Modernists, therefore, were conflicted. Or to put it more strongly, as has one commentator on Pound, their “response to the demands imposed upon the poet by the opposed traditions of subjective and objective poetry” was “schizophrenic.” They admired the Romantic alternative to determinism, rhetoric, and naturalism, but they disliked the resultant vagueness, sentimentality, and escapism. Moreover, the Modernists were not entirely confident that the Romantic program of Sympathy and intuition would grant the artist the position of importance for which they had hoped. It was wonderful in theory, but whether it would work in practice was questionable. In fact, it seemed to the young Modernists that the return to Romanticism of the Aesthetic artists was responsible for a decline in the public appreciation of art. According to Ford, fin-de-si`ecle “authors themselves have contributed to the want of interest in literature that the public displays” because they insisted that it “is of necessity obstruse, esoteric, far-fetched and unreadable.” This was not made better by their private lives. The alcoholism, drug abuse, and sexual scandals with which many artists were involved and which seemed to transcend a harmless bohemianism increasingly disturbed the Modernists. Later in his life, Yeats claimed that “our form of lyric, our insistence upon emotion which has no relation to any public interest, gathered together, overwrought, unstable men.” As Pound put it, art was “left to the chance misfit or the much-scorned dilletante.” The result of this, particularly after the trial of Oscar Wilde, according to Ford, was that “the public . . . inseparably connected in its mind the idea of poetry with ideas of vice.” Artists were no longer “regarded as gentlemen, and, indeed . . . they are hardly regarded as men.” Rather, an artist was considered an “effeminate, if not a decent kind of eunuch.” In other words, the average person came to think of artists as morally suspect, weak, and remote and, therefore, not meriting serious attention. In fact, according to Ford, the situation in the early years of the twentieth century was even worse than in the age of the fin-de-si`ecle decadents. At least in that period artists could shock the public. By  even this was no longer possible. “That poets should have lost even the power to irritate the lethargic beast,” Ford concluded, “is a symptom of a lamentable impotence on the part of the poets.”

The initial aesthetic dilemma

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The Modernists realized that the Victorian “Greats” did not have this problem. They may have made social reform more important than art, but as writers and thinkers they had a much more significant impact on the world than did the fin-de-si`ecle artists. The Victorians were respected, they sold books, they made money, they forced their audience to think, and they occasionally even produced results. According to Ford, “[i]n their own day each of them was a great and serious fact. For there was a time – yes, really there was a time! – when the publication of a volume of poems was still an event – an event making great names and fortunes not merely mediocre.” This was because the public still had a “keen . . . belief that the fine arts could save a man’s soul.” But, according to Ford, “[a]ll these things are most extraordinarily changed.” And he concluded that “nowadays, and in England, we have a singular and chilling indifference to all literature.” Yeats agreed as early as  that “[t]he arts have failed; fewer people are interested in them every generation.” Thus the Modernists envied the fact that the Victorians were responsible to the world and were taken seriously. In other words, the young Modernists, despite their critique of Victorian social criticism, were not entirely immune to the attraction of the “market-place.” Yeats, for example, agreed with Shelley’s complaint that “ ‘[p]oets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners and merchants’” because they were no longer considered qualified to discuss political, social, or economic issues, and therefore were excluded from concerns that were rightly theirs. In  Yeats dramatized his own frustration with the role assigned to artists in the modern world in his play, The King’s Threshold; in this work the chief poet of Ireland dies on a hunger strike that he has started in protest at the revocation of the poet’s ancient right to sit on the king’s council as an equal to bishops, soldiers, and statesmen. The five Modernists, therefore, took seriously the role artists could play in the world. Moreover, they themselves wrote about politics, economics, and society, made some open political commitments, and hoped that their opinions on these subjects would be heard. Once again, in this the Modernists were not that far removed from their Victorian predecessors. For example, all the Modernists but Pound claimed to have been socialists of the William Morris school early in their careers. Yeats, moreover, was active in Irish nationalism in the s. The Modernists also were disturbed by many of the same features of the modern world as had been the Victorians (and the Romantics for that matter). On the most basic level they lamented the ugliness of

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Modernism

contemporary urbanization and industrialism, and they suggested the need for some form of a return to a more natural lifestyle. They had no love, as Ford put it, for “a nation electing to spend its life under the foul skies of great cities.” And they agreed with Yeats that “a perfect life” is in “a place where men plough and sow and reap, not a place where there are great wheels turning and great chimneys vomiting smoke” or where “whole districts [are] blackened with smoke like what they call in England their ‘Black Country’.” Lawrence also described the greatest urban center of England, London, as the “pompous, magnificent Capital of Commercialism.” As this indicates, the Modernists occasionally went on to criticize modern British economic theory and practice. Ford, for example, claimed that underlying many of the problems of the modern world was the idea of economic laissez-faire of the “over-utilitarian, didactic, and distinctly militant” English philistines of the Manchester School that was so widely accepted by capitalists. Yeats attributed most contemporary ills to the fact that “the world surrendered to the competition of merchants and to the vulgarity that has been founded upon it.” In fact, in his  play, The Countess Cathleen, Yeats has the devil’s servants, who tempt the starving Irish people to sell their souls for money, take the form of merchants. Finally, the early Modernists were concerned with the social consequences of these trends. Ford and Yeats especially were disturbed by the creation of a new form of poverty. Yeats, quoting Shelley, complained of the fact that “ ‘[t]he rich have become richer, the poor have become poorer’.” Ford, on the other hand, was influenced by Ruskin and Morris, to go further and criticize not just poverty, but also the lack of enjoyment and fulfillment, and the intellectual and psychological consequences, of modern industrial work: In the minds of these workers, work itself becomes an endless monotony; there is no call at all made upon the special craftsman’s intellect that is in all the human race . . . It crushes out the individuality, and thus leisure time ceases to be a season of rest, of simple lying still and doing nothing.

The five Modernists, therefore, did find much to admire in social criticism, despite their belief in the importance of an art of emotion and imagination. But because of the simplistic dichotomy they proposed between Victorian and Romantic values, they found this to be a contradiction that had to be resolved. Rather than follow Ruskin’s suggestion that a thinker must make a choice between “Economic” and “Esthetic” man and concentrate on one side first, the Modernists

The initial aesthetic dilemma

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tried to develop a third position that was a combination of the two. As Yeats put it, he wished to be “a Shelley and a Dickens in the one body.” All five writers hoped to create an art that was of the highest aesthetic standards, but not so remote as to separate the artist from the general public or art from daily life. They wanted all people to be able to appreciate, understand, and be influenced by the best work of artistic genius. Yeats hoped that poets could “have all the subtlety of Shelley, and yet use no image unknown to the common people, and speak no thought that was not a deduction from the common thought.” Pound also regretted not living in a period in which writers “could allude to things that all understood” and “write what will be understood of ‘the many’ and lauded of ‘the few’.” And Ford hoped that the arts could become integrated enough in the everyday world so that the creative artist “will be honored by emperors, and ploughmen will desire to take his hand,” and so that poetry “will become once more human nature’s daily food, instead of being, as it is now, the sweet liqueur at the end of a banquet, or chocolates in the little crystal bowls that nestle neglected among green simlax upon the tablecloth.” The Modernists were far less successful than most Victorian poets in resolving this debate at this point in their careers. Their artistic work remained vague, sentimental, elaborate, and disengaged. Their political and social theorizing lacked specific content or careful analysis. This failure to effect a successful compromise ultimately led them to continue to fall back on escapism. For example, despite Yeats’s theories and his efforts to make political comment in his early work or to write with a degree of simplicity, he was only able to do so successfully in plays such as The Countess Cathleen () and The King’s Threshold (). Most of his poems at the turn of the century, on the other hand, still were written in what Richard Ellmann has described as an “ornate style” in which “no word has any explicit meaning.” As a result, vagueness and detachment remain their key features. This is clearly apparent in the first stanza of Yeats’s poem “The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers” from his  collection, The Wind Among the Reeds: The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows Have pulled the Immortal Rose; And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept, The Polar Dragon slept, His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep: When will he wake from sleep?

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Modernism

Pound employed a similar style. Many of his poems until at least , as T.H. Jackson remarks, were “marked by a kind of naive aestheticism: a tendency to depend on the bizarrerie of the opalescent word, precious aural patterns, quasi-Symbolist images of vague import, and the atmospheric effects, of images of flame, ‘saphirs,’ and symbolical winds.” For example, Pound’s poem “Occidit” from his  collection Personae is as follows: Autumnal breaks the flame upon the sun-set herds. The sheep on Gilead as tawn hair gleam Neath Mithra’s dower and his slow departing, While in the sky a thousand fleece of gold Bear, each his tribute, to the waning god. Hung on the rafters of the effulgent west, Their tufted splendour shields his decadence, As in our southern lands brave tapestries Are hung king-greeting from the ponticells And drag the pageant from the earth to air, Wherein the storied figures live again, Wind-molden back unto their life’s erst guise, All tremulous beneath the many-fingered breath That Aufidus doth take to house his soul.

The vagueness and ornateness of much of Pound’s work at this period may have been related to his “inability to envisage poetry as anything other than dream.” Or, as he himself put it, it might have been a reflection of his “dream-wracked heart,” which did not wish the “bloodred spears-men of the dawn’s array” to drive his “dust-clad knights of dream away.” In “defiance” of realists, Pound declared that his “moated soul shall dream in your despite.” Lawrence and Hulme were the only Modernists of the five who were able to make their work more simple, concrete and realistic, and reflective of their own experiences by . For example, the first stanza of Lawrence’s “Wakened” from his series, “Night Songs,” published in Ford’s English Review in , exhibits a degree of simplicity and realism: Is that the moon At the window, so big and red? No one in the room – no one near the bed? Listen, her shoon Palpitating down the stair! – Or a beat of wings at the window there?

The initial aesthetic dilemma

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Hulme’s poem “Autumn” () reads in its entirety as follows: A touch of cold in the Autumn night – I walked abroad, And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge Like a red-faced farmer. I did not stop to speak, but nodded, And round about were the wistful stars With white faces like town children.

However, despite these breakthroughs, Lawrence’s and Hulme’s work often remained romantic and imprecise. For example, one of Lawrence’s first poems, written in , was reminiscent of Pound and Yeats. In “Guelder Rose” Lawrence’s description of a rose bush, with its “Chaplets of cream and distant green,” turns into a sort of dream as they “impress” him “like the thought-drenched eyes/ Of some Pre-Raphaelite mystic queen/ Who haunts me with her lies.” Hulme too was attracted to dream-worlds, even if he could write of them in a more simple and concrete style. In  he wrote how Over a large table, smooth, he leaned in ecstasies, In a dream. He had been to woods, and talked and walked with trees Had left the world And brought back round globes and stone images Of gems, colours, hard and definite. With these he played in a dream, On the smooth table.

The impression that results from their creative work, once again, is that the Modernists struggled unsuccessfully early in their careers to find a middle ground between aestheticism and social comment, or to engage the real world and change it through the immense power of art. What they really wanted to do was to escape – to another, different, and more interesting world. This also can be seen in their other interests, especially in their early political commitments. Although Yeats, Ford, Hulme, and Lawrence all claimed to have been socialists initially, they were not so in any orthodox sense. In fact, Lawrence and Hulme said little about the details of their beliefs, and Yeats’s and Ford’s socialism was strangely lacking in any comment about the material world. Yeats and Ford made it clear that their socialism was directly influenced by William Morris. This was undoubtedly because Morris, more than other socialists, was concerned with the role of art and morality in

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Modernism

an ideal society. According to one commentator, Morris’s rejection of industrialization and desire to recreate a medieval-style rural way of life, in which all people cooperated in creating beautiful objects for daily use, reflected a more general wish “to simplify life, to make it more rewarding, to make it more beautiful, to make it more just, to make the joy of it available to more and more people.” In his early years, he hoped to do all this, not by means of economic theories or practical politics, but through the immense power of art. This emphasis on aesthetic and moral ideals rather than on economic or political details appealed especially to the young Modernists. Ford later recalled that he “never could understand anything at all about the economic conditions of the Ideal State” and Yeats admitted that he “did not read economics.” And both questioned whether Morris “troubled to understand books of economics” either. But Yeats admired Morris in spite of, or perhaps because of, this. Yeats liked Morris because he believed that Morris “found it enough to hold up, as it were, life as it is to-day beside his visions, and to show how faded its colours were and how sapless it was.” It was this aspect of Morris’s work that encouraged Yeats to become a socialist, but this was about the extent of Yeats’s socialism. In fact, Yeats’s ideal state was best presented perhaps by John Eglinton, whom Yeats praised for so beautifully describing “the youth of States when ‘the young men exercise in the fields, the old men sit in council, and at sunset the daughters leap down the street to the dance’.” Ford’s socialism was similar. In  he recalled how “during that splendid youth of the world in the ’eighties and ’nineties the words ‘the Social Revolution’ were for ever on our lips.” However, this “ultimate revolution . . . our beloved Social one” had little to do with economics. As Ford remembered it, it was an aesthetic revolution “of large women, curtain serge, wheat-sheaves and . . . dream babies.” Ford himself even tried to live this new socialism for a number of years by adopting the “simple life” of small farmer and artist in the country. Again his recollection of this experience was mainly of its aesthetic quality, for example, the fact that he, his wife, and friends “all dressed more or less mediaevally . . . [and] were drinking, I think, mead out of cups made of bullock’s horns.” He admitted later that this was simply escapism. Even more than socialism, Ford’s politics were informed by a sentimental anarchism; Ford wanted to be free of all government, not actively change existing political structures. His political views probably were represented most accurately by his fairy story, The Queen Who Flew (). In this tale, the beautiful young queen escapes from the evil barons,

The initial aesthetic dilemma

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renounces her kingdom, and lives happily ever after with her ploughmanlove in “the land of the Happy Folk” in which everyone is content because there is no government at all. This is hardly the stuff to make the world return “the civic crown” from “reasoners and merchants” to poets. And if this is the type of social content the Modernists wished to add to their poetry as comment on the problems of the world, it could do little to make their work more concrete and less escapist. There is, however, one example of an early Modernist with a more serious commitment to, and theory about, politics. This was Yeats, who was involved with Irish nationalism. However, even in this instance Yeats was not prevented from trying to escape, or withdraw as much as possible, from the reality of the contemporary world. In the late s Yeats was active enough in Irish nationalism to help organize protests against Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and a celebration of the centenary of the Irish nationalist, Wolfe Tone, who committed suicide in prison after his arrest for his participation in the violent rebellion of . Yeats may even have joined the secret and revolutionary Irish Republican Brotherhood. After the turn of the twentieth century, however, Yeats largely gave up an active participation in political movements. Nationalism for Yeats became almost exclusively aesthetic. Rather than practical politics, Yeats concentrated on the cultural elements of nationalism, which he had been exploring since the s and which were crucial in the development of what became known as the Irish Cultural Revival. He focused his efforts on the study of ancient Irish poetry and mythology, fairy- and folktales, on the work of nineteenthcentury Irish nationalist writers, and on the effort to revive a national art in the present day. To the latter end Yeats founded Irish literary societies in Dublin and London and included Irish subjects in his creative writing. Yeats soon had formulated a well-developed theory of the importance of cultural nationalism in effecting real change. This theory complemented his views on art in general. According to Yeats, a focus on Irish art and culture was crucial because it could evoke emotions, such as “love of the Unseen Life and love of country” as well as highlight differences with the English. A great culture, therefore, was much more powerful and would have more widespread results than a political movement that relied on rhetoric and reason. Yeats believed that while politics could affect only two or three thousand people, a cultural revival could move the entire population of the country and make the nation strong enough to finally gain independence. In fact, in  Yeats even claimed

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Modernism

that the new literary movement “in ten or in fifteen years or in twenty years . . . will be strong enough to shake governments.” In hindsight we know that Yeats was right. The leaders of the Easter Rising of  were influenced by the Cultural Revival enough to organize a political action that shook the British government seriously. But the effect of this Cultural Revival was different for Yeats. A focus on aesthetic or cultural concerns simply served to increase the remoteness of his work. He had hoped that the inclusion of Irish themes would make his work more concrete and understandable to the general public, and help him avoid writing of make-believe lands or subjective emotions. But in the end this was not the case. In fact, Dorothy Hoare has argued convincingly that the use of “Irish matter only served to turn Yeats’s mind more in the direction of unreality,” to the “coloured land of dreams.” According to Richard Ellmann, one of Yeats’s classic Irish poems, “The Wanderings of Oisin” (), was little different from his non-Irish work: “the poem is Irish in name and to some extent in scenery, otherwise Pre-Raphaelite in style but Symbolist in method.” Perhaps the vagueness of Yeats’s Irish work was a result of his theory of cultural nationalism. He did not have to provide any details about how Ireland would regain independence from England because the goal of a national art was to evoke nationalist emotions, not provide accurate facts. Thus the beauty, spirituality, and mystery of some undefinable remote Irish world were preferable to any reality. That this did not bother Yeats at the time is clear from his rhetorical question: “Is it not the impracticable dreamer that conquers the world? It is not the impracticable dreamers who take the world up out of its course and turn it from one way to another?” In fact, all five of the Modernists at the beginning of their careers were “impracticable” dreamers, despite their desire to be more. This is perhaps why they were unable to reach any sort of compromise between the “market-place” and aesthetic beauty in their literary work or political commitments. What they were left with, as a result, were dream-worlds and the “immaterial pleasure houses” of their own creation.

 

“A more dream-heavy hour”: medievalist and progressive beginnings

the loveliness That has long faded from the world; The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled In shadowy pools, when armies fled; The love-tales wrought with silken thread By dreaming ladies upon cloth That has made fat the murderous moth; The roses that of old time were Woven by ladies in their hair, The dew-cold lilies ladies bore Through many a sacred corridor Where such grey clouds of incense rose That only God’s eyes did not close: For that pale breast and lingering hand Come from a more dream-heavy land, A more dream-heavy hour than this. W.B. Yeats, “He Remembers Forgotten Beauty,” from The Wind Among the Reeds,

In  there was one particular dream-world that William Butler Yeats regretted he could never see. “That indolent, demonstrative Merry England” when “men still wept when they were moved, still dressed themselves in joyous colours, and spoke with many gestures” was gone for ever. Two years earlier Ford Madox Ford also expressed a desire to be “back in a century – some beatific century that one cannot name – when nothing was hurried, nothing was passion-worn, nothing strove; when everyone was at peace with his neighbors, when the greatest of crimes was that of sitting up late o’nights.” An older way of life, be it joyous and colorful, or slow and peaceful appealed to all five Modernists early in their careers. One reason the Modernists liked this past was because they understood that images from it might be useful in creating a romantic literature 

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Modernism

of great beauty, as Yeats had done in the poem above. But the past also could serve other purposes. It might help provide a solution to the problem that such an art often slips into vagueness and withdrawal. As Yeats himself suggested, “all ancient vision was definite and precise.” If poets used symbols taken from history and ancient mythologies they might be able to create a less abstract and evasive art. In addition, if its content was derived from a common national heritage of the past, art could appeal to a large audience and unify society by providing a subject matter that all people, rich and poor, would understand and enjoy. Finally, like Sympathy, history also could evoke emotions and thus could enable an author to make serious social and political comment on the contemporary world and encourage reform without resorting to reason or didacticism. By carefully depicting a preferable age in the past, poets could provoke the readers’ emotional horror about the present and indirectly spur them on to demand change. In other words, as Pound put it, they could “Make-strong old dreams, lest this our world lose heart.” Or, according to Yeats, if artists used the past and “the magical beryls” of “old legends for their subject” they could exhibit “life, not as it is, but as the heroic part of us . . . hopes it may become.” Thus, an artist who employed imagination and emotion to construct a beautiful past automatically would help improve the present. In a poem of  Ford seemed to suggest just this: (To purge our minds of haste, pass from an age outworn And travel to the depths of tranquil times long past; Sinking as sinks a stone through waters of a tarn, Be fitting things and meet: And, look you, on our walls hang treasures from such depths.)

History, thus, seemed able to provide quite a number of treasures for creative writers and the world as a whole. As Pound put it about his medieval studies, “I, who have laboured long in the tombs,/ Am come back therefore with riches.”  Yet Ford’s stanza, as well as his and Yeats’s descriptions of life in a preferable age of the past included at the start of this chapter, should make us hesitate before applauding the Modernists’ use of history at this point in their careers. Ford “cannot name” the “beatific century” to which he wants to return, and there is no specific indication in his poem

Medievalist and progressive beginnings

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of what treasures are to be gained by the poet. Moreover, the reason for gathering past treasures does not appear to be to effect change, but to provide a release from cares and an escape to the imagined tranquillity of an imprecise, remote world. In short, the early Modernists still, as Pound admitted, looked at the world with “dream-shot eyes.” These examples of the Modernists’ attitudes toward history illustrate a general trend. Their desire for romance, passion, and beauty encouraged the five Modernists, early in their careers, to construct an idealized fantasy world of the past. In consequence, they made little serious comment on the problems of contemporary life by incorporating history into their art. As Yeats later recalled: “I thought that only beautiful things should be painted, and that only ancient things and the stuff of dreams were beautiful.” It was an unreal, dream-like beauty that was most important about the past to the Modernists. Pound even went so far as to describe himself as “the prince of dreams,/ Lord of Shalott,/ And many other things long since forgot.” Thus, despite any hope for its practical effect, history first was used by the five Modernists primarily as an aesthetic tool to add atmospheric effect. The lack of specific political, social, or economic content in their early depictions or discussions of the past, moreover, simply contributed to the escapist quality of their work. In addition, what content their views of history did contain, again, was not much different from that of their predecessors. Not only might the Modernists be called the “last Romantics,” all of them, but Hulme, also were perhaps the last representatives of the nineteenth-century medievalism as practiced by Victorian “Greats” like Scott, Carlyle, Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and William Morris. As literary critic, Alice Chandler, has pointed out, medievalism in the nineteenth century usually took one of two forms. While it often “forced man to imagine a totally different society instead of merely acquiescing in his own,” frequently it was merely decorative and an “attempt to bring color back in the world,” or to relive imagined “pageantry and drama.” It should come as no surprise that early in their careers the Modernists fell into the latter camp. In fact, they were hardly more realistic or less vaguely decorative than the most sentimental of nineteenth-century medievalists. But not only was their use of the past derivative of their predecessors, so too were the Modernists’ first comments on the pattern and direction of history. Despite any critique they might have made of Victorian progressive determinism, in the beginning of their careers all the Modernists, except Pound, had implicit theories of a universal pattern of history that

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Modernism

echoed one or more of the varieties of progress common in the nineteenth century. The only significant difference between their theories of history and those of their predecessors was that the Modernists were primarily concerned with the aesthetic, spiritual, or moral developments of history in which artists and people of intuition, emotion, and genius were the prime movers. Unlike thinkers such as Carlyle or Ruskin, they had very little to say about any form of material change, be it political, economic, or social. The results were theories of history that were one-sided, as well as unoriginal and escapist. As had so many other artists and thinkers, Yeats, Ford, Pound, and Lawrence originally looked to the past to discover a “golden age” that contained a way of life that was near perfect. While all appeared to have found this age, initially they were quite vague about when it had existed. Ford, for example, admired what he described as an “undefined, semimythical period” when kings and queens, beautiful young princesses, and magical animals existed. Lawrence mentioned only Gothic architecture, Vikings, and knights as features of the period he admired. Yeats was even more imprecise. Most often he simply referred to his golden age as existing in “ancient” times, “the primeval world,” or “old” times when the “way of our fathers” was still in existence. Despite a vagueness about historical dating, it was clear that all four Modernists were referring to the Middle Ages. This became more apparent when authors such as Ford, Pound, and Yeats considered their favorite ages more carefully. In  Pound admitted that “some temperamental sympathy” made him prefer “the Twelfth Century, or, more exactly, that century whose center is the year .” In  Yeats thought that “the eleventh and . . . twelfth centuries . . . were . . . the centuries of perfect learning,” while two years earlier Ford claimed the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were the ages that were “the most sustainedly glorious in the history of the nation.” While they might have become more specific about dating, those Modernists who commented on the medieval “golden age” provided few details about the political, social, or economic structure of the time. Despite their interest in socialism, anarchism, or nationalism, they did not enter the nineteenth-century medievalist debates, in which Carlyle, Ruskin, and Morris took part, about whether the Middle Ages were communal or hierarchic, aristocratic or democratic, or what were the ways in which these features might shed light on contemporary problems. The Middle Ages as depicted by Yeats, for example, alternated between “Merry England” and ancient Ireland. However, the relationship

Medievalist and progressive beginnings

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between the two countries, and the unique features of either country’s culture, society, or political structure at the time were not made clear. In fact, Yeats’s references to ancient Irish life are almost identical to England under feudalism as described by nineteenth-century medievalists such as the English Pre-Raphaelites. Ford would later criticize the PreRaphaelites for the fact that “in the gloom and amidst the horror they sang on bravely of Launcelot and Guinevere, Merlin and Vivien, ballads of staffs and scrips, of music and moonlight.” If Irish heroes such as Oisin, Niamh, Cuchulain, the Druids, and the Sidhe are put in the place of Launcelot, Guinevere, Merlin, and Vivien, there is little to distinguish Yeats’s work from that of the most decorative of English medievalists. Ford’s use of the Middle Ages was a bit more specific than that of Yeats, but was equally lacking in content. His most extensive examination of history at the time was in his book, The Cinque Ports (), which is a description of five southern English ports, particularly at their height in the Middle Ages. Ford was quite careful about the dating of the wars and decrees of medieval kings and politicians, but he did not seriously examine the political structures they created or changed. Moreover, like Yeats, Ford did not discuss the economy or society, and although he mentioned feudalism briefly he did not describe its workings or consider it seriously as an economic, political, or social system. The same was true of Pound who wrote an entire book about medieval literature, The Spirit of Romance. Aside from mentioning the names of a few historical figures and key battles, however, Pound failed to make any comments on the material background to the period. Rather than describing the political, social, or economic details of the Middle Ages, the Modernists were interested in its aesthetic, cultural, and moral qualities. One feature that Ford in particular admired was the simplicity of the period. It lacked the complexity and disharmony of modern life. Ford took pleasure, for example, in “old towns where the sunlight lies along mellowed walls” because they reminded him of “lazy ages, of leisured times before us, of things gone, things that can never be recalled.” A “new Golden Age” would come about, Ford hoped, when “the fascination of the slow, creaking waggons of the past will grow overpowering, the claims of the simple will be rediscovered.” The five Modernists also liked the beauty and drama of the Middle Ages. It was a time when ceremony, fine manners, and a joy in living were intimate parts of daily life. For Pound, the “pageantry” of “the feudal ceremony” and “perfect chivalric pose[s],” and for Yeats, the “courtly

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Modernism

and saintly ideals of ” the Middle Ages was far superior to the “practical ideals” of the modern age. While the excitement of “the May-day riot of colour and bright laughter of a medieval township” appealed to Ford, it was more peaceful, pastoral scenes, such as “dancing countrypeople . . . cow-herds, resting after the day’s work, and . . . [a] quiet mill-race” that Yeats preferred. According to Yeats, in the Middle Ages one could find “Merry England with its glad Latin heart . . . [and] a time when men in every land found poetry and imagination in one another’s company and in the day’s labour.” Echoing Ruskin and Morris, the Modernists also admired the excellence of the medieval architecture and craftsmanship that made towns, buildings, and objects of daily life beautiful, and reflected a more profound religious view of the universe. Ford believed that “the sight of the good craftsmanship” as produced “in the old days before our times” was “absolutely essential to the cure of certain mental maladies fostered by the spirit of [his own] age” and was “essential for the preservation of the old faith” that was responsible for it. For Pound the use of “line, composition and design” rather than mass in Gothic architecture was supremely important because with this technique the builders “raised . . . the temple of the spirit” rather than “the temple of the body.” This religious spirit was essential to the greatness of all medieval art, according to the early Modernists. Lawrence, for example, admired “the ideal, noble emotion which many medieval artists expressed so perfectly in their Madonnas,” and the “aspiring,” “spiritual,” “noble,” and “divine” qualities of Gothic architecture. According to Pound it was because medieval poets were in touch with “the superhuman,” “the things of the spirit” that their poetry was great; for them a poem was “a key to the deeper understanding of nature and the beauty of the world and of the spirit.” But above all the Middle Ages was attractive to the Modernists because of its “romance.” Pound found this in what he considered to be the best medieval literature, which was a type of art that was mysterious and magical and that did not portray the details of actual events that might have occurred. This was a literature in which “one expects and demands, haunted fountains, bewitched castles, ships that move unguided to their appropriate havens.” Lawrence also loved “the old world of romance” in which one could imagine oneself in a place “where you might find a Viking asleep, where there are outlaws and knights in armour and ladies who exist solely to be succoured.” It should be evident that the line between romance and escapism was fine. Pound crossed that line

Medievalist and progressive beginnings

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in  when, in searching for “link[s] with the middle ages,” he visited Spain. What he discovered to his pleasure was “an age far from the realities of ‘the real world’,” “a dream Spain, just as real as Spain’s oldglory, and no more tainted with the appearance of modernity than a time-stained parchment psalter leaf.” Thus the Middle Ages for the Modernists was a beautiful but also exciting world of deep spiritual fulfillment to which they might escape the drab ugliness of the present day. Yet, although they agreed on these general characteristics of the Middle Ages, the young Modernists did differ somewhat on how they used this historical period in their creative writing. In  Ford described two different types of Pre-Raphaelite medievalism in a way that could apply to the medievalism of the four Modernists. According to Ford, between them Madox Brown and Rossetti invented a queer and quaint sort of mediaevalism that was realistic always as long as it could be picturesque. Morris, Swinburne, and Burne-Jones however invented the gorgeous glamour of mediaevalism.

Yeats’s work was akin to the second type. While Lawrence did not write anything specifically medievalist, he clearly admired art in this ‘gorgeous glamour’ vein. Ford and Pound, however, alternated between the two types of medievalism. For example, Yeats’s poem quoted at the opening of this chapter, “He Remembers Forgotton Beauty,” cannot be described as anything but ‘gorgeous’ with its kings wearing jewelled crowns, “love-tales wrought with silken threads,” and ladies walking through incense-filled, “sacred corridors” carrying “dew-cold lilies.” Yeats’s other poems of this period also were replete with kings and queens, music and moonlight, roses and lilies, harpstrings and battle-banners. The medievalist poetry Lawrence most liked was written in a similar style. In particular, Lawrence admired Rachel Annand Taylor, who in  he praised for being “mediaeval” and for belonging “to the company of Aucassin and Nicolette and to no other.” He even called her “first among the poets of today.” Lawrence mentioned approvingly the titles of some of her poems, which almost could have been written by Yeats, such as “The Queen,” “Arthurian Songs,” “The Knights at Kingstead,” “Rosa Mundi,” “Chant d’Amour,” “Love’s Fool to His Lady,” and “Reveries.” That the quality of these poems appears to have been less important to Lawrence than their “gorgeous glamour” can be seen in Taylor’s poem “The Queen,” which opens as follows:



Modernism The Queen sinned in a dream, Never a word she spoke; But throned in reverie supreme She sat amid her folk. And yet a rumour ran Through the Castle by the sea; The knights grew pale; the maidens ’gan To brood right rosily. Was it the purple dyes Dropped from the splendid wing Of Love-o’-Dreams in her sleeping eyes, That told the grim old King?

Like Lawrence, Pound and Yeats also very much admired the use of the medievalism in contemporary poetry. For example, Pound praised the work of Frederic Manning specifically because “he has caught much of the old Saxon vigor and some of that mediaeval glamour that lies as April dew upon the works of William Morris.” Yeats admired Lionel Johnson’s work, again for what Ford would call its medieval ‘gorgeousness’ and for its ability to help him escape from the present day. As he put it, Johnson “has made for himself a twilight world where all the colours are like the colours in the rainbow, that is cast by the moon, and all the people as far from modern tumults as the people upon fading and dropping tapestries. His delight is in ‘the courtesy of saints,’ ‘the courtesy of knights,’ ‘the courtesy of love,’ in ‘saints in golden vesture,’ in the ‘murmuring’ of ‘holy Latin immemorial,’ ‘in ‘black armour, falling lace, and altar lights at dawn’.” Pound’s own work reflected his literary interests. His early poetry resembled the medievalist ‘glamour’ of Yeats and Taylor. For example, the first stanza of “Canzon: Of Incense,” a poem Ford printed in his English Review in early , introduces many of the same characters who appeared in Yeats’s work: Thy gracious ways, O Lady of my heart, have O’er all my thought their golden glamour cast; As amber torch-flames, where strange men-at-arms Tread softly ’neath the damask shield of night, Rise from the flowing steel in part reflected, So on my mailed thought that with thee goeth, Though dark the way, a golden glamour falleth.

Medievalist and progressive beginnings

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Pound wrote many early poems filled, as Stuart McDougal remarks, with these sorts of “archaisms . . . and Pre-Raphaelite medievalisms.” However, Pound also wrote some poetry in a more realistic or, to use the Fordian term, ‘picturesque’ style. In this he was influenced by a poet all the Modernists would consider a Victorian “great figure,” Robert Browning. Poems such as “Cino,” “A Villonaud. Ballad of the Gibbet,” “Sestina: Altaforte,” and “Piere Vidal Old” told the life stories of medieval poets in a simpler, less profuse manner, and in a way that often emphasized manly strength and even glorified violence. For example, Pound’s “Marvoil,” about the troubadour Arnaut Marvoil begins: A poor clerk I, ‘Arnaut the less’ they call me, And because I have small mind to sit Day long, long day cooped on a stool A jumbling o’figures for Maitre Jacques Polin, I ha’taken to rambling the South here.

That Ford’s medievalism resembled Pound’s can be seen in two poems. The last stanza of his poem “The Cuckoo and the Gipsy” () is more realistic than “glamorous”: Would your May Days seem more fair Were we chals deep-read in books, Were the cuckoos cawing rooks, All the brakes cathedral closes Where the very sunlight dozes, Were the sounds all organ tone and book and bell and prayer?

However, the first two stanzas of Ford’s “Enough” () is quite reminiscent of a world depicted by Yeats: Long we’d sought for Avalon, Avalon the rest place; Long, long we’d laboured The oars – yea for years. Late, late one eventide Saw we o’er still waters Turrets rise and roof frets Golden in a glory, Heard for a heart-beat Women choirs and harpings Waft down the wave-ways.

Although a vague and sentimental medievalism is the most obvious characteristic of Yeats’s, Ford’s, Pound’s, and Lawrence’s earliest use of

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Modernism

the past, there is another quality of all the Modernists’ views of history that is important to note. While none of the five authors had developed a consistent speculative philosophy of history at this point in their career, there is some sense that they assumed the existence of a universal pattern of history. Despite any criticism of the modern world or desire to escape to a more beautiful past, implicit in the writings of four of the five Modernists under consideration is an optimism about the larger movement of history that is similar to most nineteenth-century thinkers. In other words, those authors who wrote about the overall course of history accepted assumptions of the importance of cumulative change over time and of some form of progress. This does not mean that all five Modernists had identical theories of progress. Rather, each adopted a different variety of progress that echoed nineteenth-century views. Yeats’s implicit pattern was of a Romantic spiral. Ford alternated between aesthetic decline and Whig political progress. Lawrence implied a vaguely religious, positive teleology. And Hulme openly agreed with Bergson’s spiritual evolution. However, as in the rest of their thought and work, the Modernists were quite vague about the pattern of history and were concerned more with aesthetic, psychological, and spiritual progress than with any change in politics or the economy. It is in his comments about the spiritual world that Yeats’s first sense of the pattern of history becomes most apparent. Yeats was interested in spiritualism from an early age and throughout his life. He was not alone; the turn of the twentieth century witnessed a widespread spiritual revival. In his autobiography he claimed that this interest, like that of so many others, began because the ideas of Mill, Huxley, and Spencer had “deprived” him “of the simple-minded religion of [his] childhood.” Yeats began looking for an alternative religious belief, and he found it in the late s and s in the Theosophical Society and his own organization he called the Order of the Golden Dawn. Spiritualism was not simply a hobby for Yeats. In  he wrote that “the mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.” Moreover, it was connected intimately with his plans for Ireland. Not only did Yeats hope for a regeneration of his country with the help of his Irish literature, he also wanted to found a new Irish mystery religion, similar to the Golden Dawn and Theosophy, but with its own particularly Irish temple, rituals, and symbols to contribute to the same goal. The spiritualist groups with which Yeats was originally involved all accepted the idea of progress. They believed that by purification and cultivation of the will and aided by secret knowledge, an individual could

Medievalist and progressive beginnings

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ascend by gradual steps, or through successive incarnations, to oneness with the divine. Moreover, having gained access to this superior supernatural world, they also could control nature and other human beings, perfect themselves, and even improve the world as a whole. The Theosophists believed in a “spiritual evolutionary scale” that “held out . . . the promise of unlimited evolution to a state of absolute spiritual perfection” for the race as well as for the individual, which would complement the physical evolution proposed by Darwin. Yeats translated these spiritual beliefs to the pattern of earthly history, with one change. He modified the pattern to make it less linear. In fact, Yeats’s view of history early in his career was very much like the spiral and “fortunate fall” of so many Romantic artists and thinkers. Because he thought that the modern world was aesthetically inferior to the past, Yeats could not accept the idea of strict progress. In  he declared that “it is one of our illusions . . . that life moves slowly and evenly towards some perfection.” Nevertheless, Yeats did not reject the idea of progress altogether. Rather, he believed that “progress is miracle, and it is sudden,” coming only after a period of decline. In  and  he thought that the world had been in a state of decline since “the first days” and was currently witnessing an age of crisis. He was confident, however, that the miracle of progress was about to occur and that a new golden age was on the horizon. This new age, according to Yeats, “may prolong its first inspiration without renouncing the complexity of ideas and emotions which is the inheritance of cultivated men.” And, in agreement with Blake, Yeats believed it would contain “the simplicity of the first ages, with knowledge of good and evil added to it.” This ultimate progress, moreover, would not be only physical or material; it would also be aesthetic and spiritual. Quoting Shelley, Yeats claimed that “ ‘there should be a perfect identity between the moral and physical improvement of the human species’.” Artists, of course, would be essential to the progress because it was they, as well as religious Irish peasants, who “had been granted by divine favour a vision of the unfallen world from which others are kept apart.” Thus Irish artists, who relied on traditional Irish subjects, would contribute to future perfection Finally, like many Romantics and Victorians, Yeats believed that when progress did occur in the future it would be final; the world would reach its “last autumn” and “men’s hearts and the weather . . . [would] grow gentle as time fades into eternity.” Thus, as a number of commentators have pointed out, Yeats’s first views of history were, as were those of many progressive thinkers, apocalyptic. He assumed that in the future evil would be expunged and history

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Modernism

would end. In short, Yeats postulated a “salvation from the cycles” and a “transcendence of all history.” In  Yeats made this clear when he wrote that “the children of the Fiend” will “have power until the end of time,/ When God shall fight with them a great pitched battle/ And hack them into pieces.” Or, as he put it two years earlier, God “at the end/ Shall pull apart the pale ribs of the moon/ And quench the stars in the ancestral night.” Ford’s earliest ideas about the pattern of history were less welldeveloped and less consistent than those of Yeats. But before  it is possible to discern two patterns implicit simultaneously in his writings. While Yeats combined, in one theory, his sense of decline with a hope for progress (through the belief in a spiral of initial decline but ultimate progress), Ford alternated between the two. As a result, Ford assigned decline and progress to different areas. Within the same work, it is possible to discern both the popular fin de si`ecle belief in the progressive aesthetic decline of Western civilization, and the common Victorian Whig view of the evolution of English political liberty and freedom. Ford’s work of , The Cinque Ports, is primarily the examination of the decline of those ports from their position of preeminence in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries – his golden age. They were once the most important parts of England commercially and militarily, but since had become negligible agricultural backwaters. Aside from dating this degeneration, however, Ford was not particularly interested in exploring the causes for the political or economic decline or speculating about what it meant for history as a whole. In the end, Ford attributed the material decay of the Cinque Ports purely to physical events beyond human control – the silting up of their harbors. Rather than concentrating on material matters, Ford was more interested in aesthetic and spiritual concerns. It was here that he made his most extensive comments on the progressive decline of the modern world. Ford consistently complained that “in these days of hurry and forgetfulness” the artistic impulse has either been lost or has been consciously destroyed. Buildings are made “to suit the ideals of the modern housemaid” and “the years we live in, [are] years sad for the craftsman, sadder for the artist, sadder still for the upholder of any faith whatsoever.” Ford also criticized modern legislation, not for its political consequences, but for contributing to the decline in the aesthetic quality of English life. According to Ford, the contemporary reforms of local political systems and electoral districts had given the vote to ugly modern cities as opposed to old beautiful towns, and by being “aridly rational,” these reforms had

Medievalist and progressive beginnings

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done away with all the old “whimsy,” pageantry, and beauty of local political customs and institutions. Nevertheless, Ford realized that reforms were necessary to put a stop to corruption and nepotism in local government. And despite his professed socialism, when Ford discussed politics in The Cinque Ports, he consistently praised any event that heralded the development of the English system. It is here that a Whig view of history becomes apparent. Ford’s greatest praise for any “Cinque Port” town was reserved for when it “did what it could to forward the evolution of the nation’s constitution, the nation’s freedom.” And his greatest criticism of any institution (for example the Church) was when its members became “mere drags on the progress of the kingdom towards its constitutional destinies.” Implicit in his discussion was the belief that Englishmen, from the very beginning of their history with the Britons, were naturally freedom loving. Periodically, other nations had tried to impose foreign restrictions on that freedom. Ford implied that this happened first with the Romans (“that gross horde of materialists”), then with the Normans who brought French feudalism and an absolute monarchy. However, Ford believed that the British people consistently fought against these impositions on their freedom. The “Cinque Port” towns, in particular, first freed themselves from the restrictions of feudalism (although exactly which restrictions Ford did not make clear). When this freedom enabled them to grow stronger and more powerful they continued the fight against royal encroachments. Finally, they helped other, and future, “citizens . . . play their part in the making of history” by insisting on the reaffirmation of the democratic rights contained in the Magna Carta. Accordingly, Ford claimed that the “Cinque Port” towns were important because they represented a stage in the people’s fight to uphold and expand “their self-granted privileges.” In doing so, they gradually increased, institutionalized, and extended that freedom until the present exemplary constitution and democracy was established. Unfortunately the silting up of the harbors prevented them from going further, and the evolution of the constitution moved into other hands. Thus, while Ford posited aesthetic decline, he did accept the idea of political and social advance. Both views, of linear decay or linear improvement, accept the reality of historical progress. Hulme also believed in evolution, but again it was not political. Rather, his view of progress was more inclusive. It was taken almost entirely from Bergson’s theory of “creative evolution.” Hulme admitted that he

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Modernism

was attracted to Bergson because his theories provided an alternative to the determinism and mechanism of evolutionary theories in which humankind has no free will and does not play a part in its own destiny because it responds mechanically to its environment. Bergson’s theory, on the other hand, posited continuous evolutionary advances that were contingent on the active involvement of human beings. Evolution, for Bergson, was the result of the combination of an original “vital impetus” (“´elan vital”) of energy and creativity, and the free, collective will of all living beings. This type of evolution did not assume that beings only react mechanically to external circumstances. Rather, evolution was a result of humans’ constant will and energy to create. It thus allowed for continuous change, growth, and advance in many different directions for which humans were freely responsible. Because of his faith in Bergson’s form of evolution, Hulme considered retrogressive and wrong-headed any theory that advocated permanence rather than change, or that attempted to devise means to ensure stability or to deny “creative” evolution. In  Hulme believed that any thinker who admired “rest,” “order and organisation,” or “fixity” necessarily was allied on the side of scientific determinism against Bergsonism because the flux is not one of the things that are “fixed entities.” In particular, Hulme disliked Plato’s “Theory of Ideas,” “in which the ideas of love and beauty are eternal,” because this theory was an expression of Plato’s belief that “Stability is more noble than Change.” Hulme thought exactly the opposite. In his “Lecture on Modern Poetry,” probably written in , Hulme made his most impassioned statement about his belief in the reality of change: The ancients were perfectly aware of the fluidity of the world and of its impermanence; there was the Greek theory that the whole world was flux. But while they recognized it, they feared it and endeavoured to evade it, to construct things of permanence which would stand fast in this universal flux which frightened them . . . . We see it in a thousand different forms. Materially in the pyramids, spiritually in the dogmas of religion and in the hypostatized ideas of Plato. Living in a dynamic world they wished to create a static fixity where their souls might rest.

Both deterministic evolutionary laws and cyclic views of history were rejected by Hulme and Bergson. According to Hulme, under the theory of creative evolution the future was absolutely “undetermined.” Therefore, not only could there be no prediction of the future even with a knowledge of all the laws which govern things, but the future would

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never repeat the past. It was a “becoming never the same, never repeating itself, but always producing novelty, continually ripening and creating.” Going beyond Bergson, Hulme also thought that the history of philosophy supported the idea of evolution. He accepted the idea that intellect evolves and that there had been “a philosophic evolution.” This evolution has been one from the incorrect views of Plato and Socrates, whose universal “ideas” posited permanence and stability in opposition to evolution and change, through the thought of Kant and Hegel, to the almost correct views of Nietzsche, and ultimately to its near perfection in Bergson’s ideas of flux and intuition. Hulme believed that art and society evolve as well. He assumed unquestioningly that there have been stages “in the evolution of society” such as the nomadic and city stages. And he believed that verse forms develop and change as thought becomes more and more complex. A new art form is created when thought has developed to such a complexity that the old form can no longer accommodate it. Thus art evolves at the same pace as thought. Like Ford, therefore, Hulme assumed the existence of linear progress. But, despite the fact that he mentioned a few philosophers and historical periods, he added even less specific content to his discussion of the pattern of history. Hulme believed in the value of change and evolution, but it is unclear that he had a concrete sense of how this worked in the earthly past. Lawrence’s ideas of the pattern of history were even more vague than Hulme’s, but again he also believed in progress. In particular, Lawrence thought that there was an underlying purpose to history that moves it forward: “there must be some great purposeful impulses impelling through everything to move it and work it to an end.” And he was “earnestly certain of the wonder of this eternal procession.” His “poor little philosophy” held that “the great procession is marching, on the whole, in the right direction.” Lawrence thought that all people are a part of this process and help it on: “we are for ever trying to unite ourselves with the whole universe, to carry out some ultimate purpose – evolution, we call one phase of the carrying out.” In addition, Lawrence identified this “great purpose,” and the submission to it, with religion. In fact his theory was quite similar to the “immanent teleology” that, as M.H. Abrams points out, was an essential part of Romantic views of history. This sort of teleology was a form of “natural supernaturalism” that was “very like the theological concept of the universal but hidden working of divine Providence, transferred from an eternal personal God as planner and controller to the immanent

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Modernism

operation” of the laws of history. It was also a theodicy in the sense that it held “that if life is to be worth living there cannot be a blank unreason or mere contingency at the heart of things; there must be meaning (in the sense of a good and intelligible purpose) in the occurrence of both physical and moral evils.” Lawrence certainly did believe that there was a mysterious but powerful force “which keeps the menagerie moving onward to better places, while the animals snap and rattle by the way.” And he believed that the goal of this force, and the understanding of it, was part of the “religious interest,” even a proof of the viability of religion. It was with religious sympathy, according to Lawrence, that one could discover in the “history (origin) and destiny of mankind . . . [and in] the laws of nature . . . something of intelligibility and consistent purpose working through the whole natural world and human consciousness.” Early in their careers, therefore, the Modernists were searching through the “more dream-heavy hours” of the past to find “a long-faded loveliness” that was missing from the present day. History was a place to escape and a preferable alternative to the modern age. However, despite their avowed distaste for the period in which they lived, the pattern of history that most of the Modernists assumed existed indicates that they still had a fundamental optimism about the world. Even if there had been a decline, the story of history was of ultimate progress and of improvement to come in the future. But these views and uses of the past were based primarily on aesthetic thinking, rather than on a serious consideration of politics, society, or economics. When the Modernists were eventually forced to look more carefully at the “market-place” of the contemporary world, both their sense of optimism and their views of history would change significantly.

 

“Pedantry and hysteria”: contemporary political problems

In our age it is impossible to create, as I had dreamed, an heroic and passionate conception of life worthy of the study of men elsewhere and at other times . . . There was a time when I thought of a noble body for all eyes, a soul for subtle understandings, and, to unite these two, Eleusinian rites. Instead, the people cry out for stones and vapour, pedantry and hysteria, rhetoric and sentiment. W.B. Yeats, “Journal,” .

On January ,  Yeats was proud to present, in the Abbey Theatre he had worked so hard to found three years earlier, a play by an author he regarded as the greatest living Irish playwright – the Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge. It was to be the culmination of his dream that a great literature of beauty could save the Irish nation. The Irish public, however, did not unanimously share Yeats’s views of the role of this sort of art. The play was interrupted by so much booing and hissing from one section of the audience that the actors could not be heard. On the last night of the performance, five hundred police had to be called in. Street riots followed and continued for a week. Clearly something serious had gone wrong with Yeats’s aesthetic theory. As the quote above indicates, he was well aware of this fact. Problems such as he faced at the Abbey Theatre forced Yeats to consider what was happening in the modern world. This, in turn, led him to think more carefully about the distasteful “market-place” of domestic and international politics. The same was true of the other four Modernists. By  all five had begun to explore the political, social, and economic features of the world in which they lived. What they found disturbed them deeply. Different aspects of the period caused concern for different authors, and some of them, especially Ford, Yeats, and Hulme were more involved in political, social, and economic speculation than others. But regardless of the extent to which they wrote about the contemporary world, all five Modernists shared a common response to current developments. 

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Modernism

There were many possible causes for concern in turn-of-the-century Britain. It could be argued that a general feature of the period was the erosion of the mid-Victorian confidence in the strength, stability, and possible future of Britain and her empire. This began with the agricultural and business depression of the late s. While there is some controversy among historians about the extent and impact of this depression, or whether it existed at all, at the time it was perceived as problematic for a number of reasons. First, it contributed to a marked decline in income for those who made their money from agriculture. This was especially the case for the landed aristocracy. It may, in fact, have been the beginning of the end for many aristocrats, as they had to sell estates in pieces or in entirety, and were forced increasingly to marry into the wealthy middle class. The number of millionaires who were landowners fell from  percent in  to  percent in . While industry recovered from this depression by the late s, businessmen and the public in general had been faced with a great shock. The hope for unending, cumulative economic growth that began with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century commercial, agricultural, and industrial revolutions, and that seemed guaranteed by the British government’s acceptance of the theory of Free Trade in the nineteenth century, was shattered. The reality of business cycles had to be accepted. Moreover, it was increasingly apparent that Britain soon no longer would be the world’s richest nation. A century of outstanding economic superiority over all other nations, which was the result of a large head start in industrialization, was over. Other major powers such as France, and especially Germany and the United States, had now gone through the process of industrialization quickly and far more efficiently than the British. British machines, technology, specializations, and business organization were outdated. The fear that British business might be drowned in a flood of goods “made in Germany” was not farfetched. German industry was modern and efficient. As a result, Germany’s share of world manufacturing surpassed that of Britain around . This is not to say that the British were on the verge of bankruptcy. Increasingly, invisible exports made up for the deficit of manufactured goods. But for the first time the signs were ominous for the future of the British economy. Not only were fears of a flood of German goods far from a wild fantasy, neither was the premise of the spate of books predicting a German invasion. With unification and industrialization Germany was proving to be a new and frightening world power. The Prussian defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war of  was just the beginning. Germans

Contemporary political problems

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were predatory. Just as they imitated British industrialization, they also imitated British imperialism, and were determined to have their “place in the sun” and acquire an overseas empire. Other European countries could not be left out and the “New Imperialism” of the s and s followed. Whatever was left of the world that could be taken was now divided among the Western powers. Once again, Britain had lost her position as unquestioned world leader with the only significant empire to speak of. Moreover, some people feared, not only the results of competition from other empires, but whether the British empire might continue to exist at all in the near future. In the s there was a real possibility that the Liberal government under Gladstone might give the Irish Home Rule, and begin the slippery slope to the dissolution of the entire empire. It also was unclear whether Britain could defend her overseas possessions if challenged by the natives. That this might not be a possibility was apparent when a handful of backward farmers, in a part of South Africa that the British wished to acquire, almost defeated the forces of the British empire in the Boer War that began in . Again, Britain was not in hopeless shape. She still had the largest empire in the world and a highly effective military. Or so she thought, until reports began to appear about the quality of British recruits; almost  percent of British men were deemed physically unfit for army service. More reports appeared. In fact, this was an age unleashing “a torrent” of reports, statistics, and analyses – most of them containing bad news. The number of insane people had risen by over  percent in the last decade of the nineteenth century; almost one third of the population of the largest cities in the world’s supposedly most wealthy and powerful country existed in a state of abject poverty; every “normal” worker with a family of three children “passed through a period of probably ten years when he and his family would be underfed.” Moreover, the unfortunates of the reports, and the working classes in general, no longer seemed quite as passive as they had in the past. They began to participate increasingly in trade unions. Trade union membership not only grew almost four times from  to , but it became much more active in demanding concessions. More frightening even were the efforts of socialists to influence these hordes of hungry workers. Numbers of different groups of socialists, from revolutionary Marxists to evolutionary Fabians, planned to overturn the economic and social system completely. They wished to take wealth from those who had it and give it to those who did not, while organizing everyone into an efficient, identical collectivity. Things did not grow more promising when

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Modernism

trade unionists and socialists combined to attempt to infiltrate the political system with the creation, between  and , of an entirely new political party just for the working classes, the Labour Party. Moreover, there was a real possibility that the workers could vote this party into power, as they were the vast majority of the country amounting to almost  percent of the population, and all but the most unfortunate of them had been granted the right to vote by the  Reform Act – the so-called “Mud Cabin” act. The ability of the aristocracy to halt these movements seemed unlikely because of their diminishing wealth and status. Some socialists, especially the Fabians, took a different tack from the Labour Party. They tried to “permeate” middle-class political parties. They seemed to have succeeded when the Liberal Party won the  election and began to implement a program of social welfare that appeared to many people to resemble socialism. Why did the Liberal Party try to make such radical changes to the existing order? It could be for the same reason that the Conservative Party insisted on imperial expansion and military preparedness – not necessarily to help the country, but to appeal to the newly enfranchised working class. The middle classes increasingly seemed desperate to gain the support of the vast majority of the population, before it took matters into its own hands. Concessions from the Liberals to make the workers’ lives better, or an appeal to patriotism by the Conservatives might work equally well to gain working-class votes. Moreover, it did look like the workers might be on the move. After the turn of the century the number of strikes increased dramatically, as did their violence. And other groups were also causing or threatening violence in the years before the First World War. Women even were demanding to join the working class and be allowed to vote. Moreover, these Suffragettes were not adverse to breaking windows, assaulting members of parliament and committing arson to attain their goal. The Irish, as well, looked as if they might explode. With Home Rule a real possibility under the new Liberal government after , Irish Protestants who did not wish to live in a country ruled by the majority who were Catholics began to arm themselves to resist. Catholic nationalists armed themselves to support the British legislation. Civil war seemed imminent. There was, therefore, quite a bit about which an observer could be concerned in pre-war Britain. Of course, the history of the period could be written quite differently, as there also was much that some people found positive, exciting, and a cause of great optimism. The five Modernists, when they began to consider some of these developments, however, were not optimistic. They viewed the period in which they lived as one of crisis.

Contemporary political problems

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Perhaps more important, they eventually agreed on one underlying cause of all contemporary problems – the consequences of nearly complete democracy. Like J.S. Mill fifty years previously, they were deeply afraid of the “tyranny of the majority.” Democracy seemed to have led to the triumph of incompetent, stupid, cruel, uncaring people both among the public and professional politicians. Simultaneously the great minds and characters of artists, intellectuals, and aristocrats were ignored. The resulting decline in spiritual and aesthetic values made matters worse. In responding to these problems all five Modernists arrived at similar solutions – they adopted radical conservative political positions. As a consequence of their experiences of politics and society in this period, therefore, they set out on a road that would lead some to become interested in fascism in the s and s. With new political views, as well as a more serious consideration of the world around them, it is not surprising that their aesthetic ideas, creative writing, and views of history also began to change. Ford Madox Ford was the first of the five Modernists to experience serious disillusionment about contemporary political trends. What disturbed him initially were developments within the British Empire. Ford became interested in issues of imperialism in the late s. This is not surprising as this was the height of the “New Imperialism.” It was also a period when imperial expansion was actively supported by many people for a number of different reasons. On the most superficial level exciting tales of British adventures in exotic locations were entertaining enough to sell books and magazines. Stories of colonial activities among distant natives also appealed to a sense of British superiority, as they often emphasized the contribution of missionaries and humanitarians to the “White Man’s Burden” of spreading the benefits of British civilization to primitive peoples. The empire appeared to make financial sense as well. In a period of economic competition in Europe a large empire supposedly could ensure new sources of cheap raw materials, expand markets for industrial goods, and provide opportunities for the emigration of superfluous British workers. Finally, imperial success appealed to the patriotism of workers and gentlemen alike. This in turn, could gain a majority of votes at elections for whichever political party supported expansion, and could guarantee that such a party remained in a position of power in government. For these and a few other reasons, imperialism was attractive to a wide variety of politicians. By  the Conservative Party, which was then in office, actively supported expansion of the empire by placing an aggressive imperialist in a position of power for the first time with the



Modernism

appointment of Joseph Chamberlain to the Colonial Office. Liberals also believed in the value of imperialism. The party split in  and a Liberal Unionist Party was created to oppose Gladstone’s plan for Home Rule for Ireland because it appeared to be the first step in the dismemberment of the empire. Of those who remained in the Liberal Party, a growing number of important younger members supported what became known as “Liberal Imperialism.” Even a majority of the socialist Fabian Society eventually came out in favor of imperialism. The fact that imperialist sentiment crossed all political boundaries was especially highlighted in  when the Fabians organized the “Coefficient” club including members from all political parties. Ford Madox Ford’s first comments on the British Empire in  shared this imperial enthusiasm. In his book The Cinque Ports, Ford charted how throughout her history England not only witnessed the progressive growth of freedom, but also was faced by repeated economic and military threats that she overcame despite all odds. This was largely because of her empire and naval capacity. Ford was proud of the fact that “England . . . invariably did rule the waves . . . when she had the intention of ruling them” and that Englishmen from the earliest times had “worked unrealising at building up an empire, mother of empires.” He assumed that this would and should continue. Within a couple of years, however, Ford had become very disturbed by trends in British imperialism. This began a process of deepening his interest in politics. Ford attributed his change of opinion largely to the Boer war of –, which he later described as “the end of everything” and “a chasm separating the new world from the old.” Ford recalled that “since that period the whole tone of England appears to me to have entirely changed, principles have died out of politics, even as the spirit of artistry has died out amongst the practitioners of the arts.” Ford’s extreme reaction to the Boer War was not developed in isolation. He was probably influenced by a new friendship with Joseph Conrad whom he met in . Conrad helped expand Ford’s knowledge and understanding of the deeper workings of imperialism. In the years  through , Ford and Conrad spent a great deal of time together helping each other on their work and collaborating on a number of books. During that time Conrad frequently related to Ford experiences of his past life, including the stories of his trip to the Belgian Congo which formed the basis of the novel he was in the process of writing in  published as Heart of Darkness. From Conrad, Ford learned of the reality of imperialist treatment of African natives by Europeans. According to Ford, Conrad explained

Contemporary political problems

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his entire story to him before it was published and “from time to time, particularly whilst writing ‘Heart of Darkness,’ Conrad would declaim passionately about the gloomy imbecility and cruelty of the Belgians in the Congo Free State.” With this knowledge, the events of the Boer War could be interpreted in a light that was hardly favorable to the British imperial endeavor. On the surface the British involvement in the independent South African state of Transvaal in the s could be seen as part of the larger project of the “White Man’s Burden” to spread the benefits of British democracy and liberty throughout the world. Although the Transvaal was governed by Boers, the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of the seventeenth century, in the late nineteenth century immigration had led non-Boer Europeans, known as Uitlanders, to grow two or three times as numerous as the Boers. These Uitlanders paid nine-tenths of the taxes, but were not allowed to participate in the government. Because many Uitlanders were British, they frequently asked the British government to use its influence to remedy this political injustice and bring them the benefits of democracy. This was the ostensible reason for the British involvement. However, beneath this proclaimed crusade the issues were much more complex and less altruistic. In  gold was discovered in the Rand, and the Transvaal republic seemed about to become one of the richest parts of the world. Many Uitlanders profited, even becoming the infamous Rand millionaires. With two British colonies right next door, Cape Colony and Natal, it was in the British interests, both metropolitan and peripheral, to gain control over the Boer Transvaal and unify it with the other colonies to create one large British-dominated state. It was also a strategic interest to prevent other Europeans, such as the Germans, from trying the same. With this in mind the British government went to war against the Boers. Ford viewed the British involvement in the Transvaal with abhorrence. As he recalled in : “I suppose I was as hot a pro-Boer as any one well could be.” This was for a number of reasons. On the one hand, he was very much upset by the stupidity of the public who supported imperialism. Ford was horrified by the hysteria and “mob violence” of the jingoistic imperialist patriots, and by “the ferocities and barbarities of the English crowds during the Boer War” who cheered British victories, but showed little understanding of the realities of the situation which involved a large country attempting to deprive a small independent nation of its liberty. Moreover, no one showed any concern for the vast majority of the population of South Africa. What were disregarded by British, Boers,

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Modernism

and Uitlanders alike were the African natives who were exploited for their labor by all sides. Ford, having learnt the reality of imperialism from Conrad, was upset by the treatment of Africans. As he later recalled, he “made one or two speeches in the interests neither of the Boers nor of Englishmen, but of the African natives. To them it seemed to me – and it still seems so – the African continent belongs.” But above all, Ford feared the politicians who knew the distasteful truth of imperialism, but lied about it and presented all imperial endeavors in a favorable light in order to cater to the gullible public and to serve their own selfish and power-hungry needs. This simply exacerbated the cruelty and injustice of empire. Ford’s reactions to imperialism were expressed most immediately in his novel of , The Inheritors, which was written with the help of Conrad and finished in mid-March . The Inheritors, according to Ford, is “a political work, rather allegorically backing Mr. Balfour in the then Government; the villain was to be Joseph Chamberlain who had made the war. The sub-villain was to be Leopold II, King of the Belgians.” Thus in one novel, speculation on the Boer War, contemporary British politics, and Conrad’s experiences in the Belgian Congo were united. Ford argued that all of these things were indications of a disturbing new trend characteristic of the new century. The novel is the story of how a “new order” had begun to replace the “old order.” The “old order” includes people like Arthur Balfour, the leader of the Conservative Party. The “new order” is the work of new imperialist politicians like Joseph Chamberlain (with the aid of a set of science-fiction type villains from the “Fourth Dimension”) who are practical, cynical, and immoral. They are “cold, with no scruples, clear-sighted and admirably courageous” and care more for efficiency than for suffering, emotion, or beauty. They wish, above all, to destroy the “old order’s” decency, honesty, heroism, self-sacrifice, and altruism, in order to run the world like a mechanical, soulless machine. The members of the “new order” come up with a plan for how to do this. All they must do is to reveal to the world that the humanitarian motives of the “old order” when dealing with the empire, masked true evil and “that all the traditional ideals of honour, glory, conscience, had been committed to the upholding of a gigantic and atrocious fraud.” For example, the villains will show that the “System for the Regeneration of the Arctic Regions” which the Balfour character unwittingly had supported and which proclaims to be bringing the benefits of civilization to Greenland (“the model state, in which washed and broadclothed Esquimaux would live, side by side, regenerated lives, enfranchised equals

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of choicely selected younger sons of whatever occidental race”) had really only brought “flogged, butchered, miserable natives . . . famines . . . vices, diseases, and . . . crimes.” Having proved this, English people would no longer believe in the old politicians and their morality, and would willingly accept a new efficient, cold, heartless, and artless world. The years immediately after the publication of The Inheritors simply served to support the ideas Ford had expressed in the novel. The neardefeat of the forces of the British empire against a handful of Boer farmers, and news of the inefficiency and complacency with which the war had been carried out, in addition to reports of atrocities against the Boer people and the deaths of women and children in British concentration camps, only could have confirmed Ford’s belief that the principles of the old order had died. This seemed supported in the next few years when “efficiency” in government began to be demanded by former imperialists on both the right and the left as well as by the general public. These were the sorts of people calling for and writing the reports, and gathering the statistics, that so alarmed many contemporaries. Even the Fabian socialists were deeply involved in this new “social efficiency” movement. What all hoped for was that, with more information and better organization (especially by the government), innumerable problems could be solved and Britain again could be a healthy, effective, and militarily well-prepared nation. Ford increasingly began to associate the desire for efficiency with the collectivism of socialism and especially of the Fabians. For the next seven years Ford continued to protest against the war, the jingoism of the philistine British public, the growing sterility of efficient collectivism, and the lack of old and noble principles in modern life. In  Ford presented his most disturbing picture of a possible future Fabian state in which people have numbers rather than names, wear masks so that there will be no discrimination because of looks, and have portable homes for sanitation and efficiency. From his consideration of the British Empire Ford, therefore, was moved to examine domestic politics. Both imperial and domestic concerns helped make his thinking become more concrete. He was now able to pinpoint a specific cause for all of British problems. A government by and for a people who are stupid and selfish eliminated higher ideals, supported cold, cruel behavior, and encouraged the destruction of beauty, individualism, and diversity. Yeats’s reaction to developments in Irish politics was similar to Ford’s in many ways. This is not surprising because, as part of the British empire, Ireland faced problems in the late nineteenth century that were related

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Modernism

to those of imperialism in general. As has been mentioned, Yeats was intimately involved with Irish nationalist hopes for greater independence from Britain since the beginning of his career. Originally nationalism filled him with much satisfaction and optimism. As with Ford’s initial acceptance of imperialism, this may have been due to the nature of the Irish political situation at the time. In the late s, when Yeats began writing, there was a real possibility that Ireland would be granted a form of independence when Charles Stewart Parnell on the Irish side, and W.E. Gladstone on the English side, worked together to try to gain support for a Home Rule Bill in . This likelihood of achieving independence encouraged Yeats and many others to complement the political movement with a cultural one, in which a great Irish art and the remembrance of the Irish past would help a newly independent nation succeed. The situation changed significantly in the s. The split in the Liberal Party over the issue of devolution, the scandal about Parnell’s personal life followed by his death in , the retirement of Gladstone in , and the victory of the Conservative Unionist Party in , on top of the upsurge in imperial enthusiasm, all meant that any hope for a peaceful political solution to the Irish problem was very remote in the s. These developments did not discourage Yeats. According to the historian, Robert Kee, “the period that followed the death of Parnell . . . is often described as a political vacuum.” This may have been disturbing to Irish politicians who had hoped for a parliamentary solution to Irish problems, but it did not stop other nationalists. In fact, this was still a time of great excitement for Irish artists and intellectuals and was the height of the Celtic Revival. Yeats accepted this situation with enthusiasm. As he would later write, “Ireland was to be like soft wax for years to come.” The new-found freedom to mold a novel type of nationalism was very exciting to Yeats as an artist. It was in this period that Yeats developed his theory of cultural nationalism. He believed that the time had finally arrived in Ireland when the previous divisiveness and ineffectiveness of purely political parties could be overcome by an intellectual and artistic movement. This movement would simultaneously sponsor and promote the creation of an Irish art of the highest caliber and would unify the country by giving the Irish a pride in themselves and in the heroic past they all shared. Moreover, this superior culture would enable the Irish to compete with England on its own terms and would ultimately return the golden age to Ireland by making her a nation not only politically independent but

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also respected by all European countries for her spiritual, ethical, and intellectual superiority. With this in mind, in  and  Yeats founded Irish Literary Societies in London and Dublin. And in , with the help of Lady Gregory, whom he had met a few years earlier, he founded the Irish National Theatre Society, which was permanently housed in the Abbey Theatre in . Yeats’s optimism that artists who produced and promoted an art of the highest quality by international standards could contribute to Irish independence and respect was soon to be shattered. It was destroyed primarily because of the controversies that surrounded the Irish National Theatre, which was Yeats’s main hope for a free and proud Ireland. At first, it seemed that the theater might be a popular success. Many plays were well attended by enthusiastic audiences. However, from the start public controversies arose over the theater and its plays. The first production in , of Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen, elicited a pamphlet denouncing the play on religious grounds and in subsequent productions the play was hissed by the audience. This was only the beginning. Increasingly in newspapers and journals Irish nationalists savagely criticized the Abbey plays for political as well as religious reasons. In accordance with Yeats’s aesthetic theories and goal of promoting art of the highest quality, the plays that were produced did not always have overt political messages, and occasionally they had what the nationalists believed were the wrong messages. Originally Yeats took this criticism calmly. He was encouraged by the vitality of the controversy and believed that the Irish poor were still enthusiastic. But as the attacks from the press continued, Yeats grew more and more bitter. This was especially true when in , after renewed controversies, it became clear to Yeats that only simplistic, propagandistic plays sentimentally idealizing the Irish people would be greeted with general enthusiasm. When Yeats produced plays other than these he was accused of not being a true nationalist. One result of this controversy was that two of Yeats’s friends who had initially inspired his nationalism, Maude Gonne and Douglas Hyde, withdrew from the Society. All of this simply supported Yeats’s increasing disillusionment with the quarrels he witnessed among various Irish political groups since before the turn of the century. The problems came to a head in  with the controversy over Synge’s Playboy of the Western World described at the opening of this chapter. As was mentioned, Yeats regarded Synge as one of the greatest living playwrights, but his plays were very controversial. This was especially

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true of Playboy. Many of the nationalists and the general public, as well, were deeply offended by what they thought was a disparagement of the Irish character. By  they were willing to cause a great deal of trouble to protest against the play and Yeats’s theater in general. This situation was very disturbing to Yeats. As he admitted at the time the societies he founded had disappointed him and “became quickly or slowly everything I despised.” In actuality, Yeats had misjudged the nature of the new non-parliamentary nationalism. Despite the popularity of the Cultural Revival, nationalists were not unified in their goals and plans, and they were far less interested in an ideal of Irish culture than they were in immediate practical independence. Moreover, the most vocal nationalists, and the ones who were to gain the most support, thought that Yeats’s program of a superior culture was a compromise with England and English values. It did not help that Yeats wrote in English, spent much time living in London, and looked to the English art world for approval. More important to nationalists than aesthetically sound art in English terms was an art that glorified all things Irish in order to inspire a confidence that would make the people act against England. They were not interested in a vague future unity produced by a superior European art, but in immediate victory. Art, therefore, in their eyes had to be subordinated to didacticism and propaganda for the cause. It soon became clear that the majority of the Irish people preferred this simple message to the distant goals of Yeats. With the victory of the Liberal Party in  there was once again a strong possibility of achieving Home Rule. The passage of the Third Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons in  made it almost certain that some form of independence for Ireland would become law by . This, however, did not make the situation better. In fact, it made it worse. Faced with the hostility of the majority of Irish Protestants who opposed Home Rule, Catholic nationalists grew more extreme and violent. Suspicion of Yeats also increased because, in addition to being a problematic nationalist, he was a Protestant by birth. By this point Yeats’s ideal of cultural nationalism not only was irrelevant, it also was suspect. When the threat of civil war followed the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, the creation of a unified Irish culture for which Yeats hoped seemed very remote. Because of these problems and the reaction to his theory of art, Yeats grew to believe that not only the nationalists, but also the Irish people as a whole, had betrayed his dreams for Ireland. They were more concerned with their different, selfish, divisive immediate desires for political change

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than with Yeats’s higher and broader goals for the future of all of Ireland in the long term. As Yeats commented in , the Irish had “become so absorbed in the politics of the hour . . . that we have forgotten the more eternal and ideal elements of nationality.” At this point Yeats finally admitted that “Ireland’s great moment had passed.” And, in , he poignantly expressed his disillusionment in the passage quoted at the beginning of this chapter, that the “stones and vapour, pedantry and hysteria, rhetoric and sentiment” of the majority of the Irish people had destroyed his noble vision of heroism and spiritual fulfillment in an independent and unified Ireland. This feeling was expressed quite clearly the next year in his play The Green Helmet, the setting of which was “intentionally violent and startling.” The play’s action centers on the growing jealousy and arguments among three great Irish heroes and old companions when a supernatural “spirit” offers a prize of a Green Helmet to the bravest of the three. The dissention soon spreads to their families and followers and threatens to destroy them all. In the end it is Cuchulain who wins the helmet when, despite being betrayed by all the others, he transcends his bitterness and even offers his life to save theirs – perhaps as Yeats himself wished to do for the Irish nationalists of his own day. Once again, as with Ford, it was the majority of the people, who had taken charge of governments and public opinion, that was the greatest disappointment for Yeats. Their selfish, shortsighted attitudes were preventing the world from improving. Politicians and the political parties that might have provided more guidance did little to help. In fact, they made matters worse by catering to the public in order to gain power, which was the only way they could advance themselves within a mass democracy. In  T.E. Hulme also began to express serious dissatisfaction with democracy, because of the nature of the public to which it catered. His initial political comments were made in response, not to imperial problems as with Ford and Yeats, but to a domestic constitutional crisis that further extended the democratic nature of British politics. These developments were also of concern to Ford and led to an expansion of his political thinking as well. Again, the fact that Ford and Hulme were interested in domestic politics between  and  is not surprising considering the events of the time. It was precisely in those years that a decisive questioning, and ultimate modification, of the English constitution occurred, centered around the “House of Lords crisis.” This constitutional crisis originated with the success of the Liberal Party in the  election that ended nearly ten years of Conservative

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rule. Change was inevitable when a landslide victory put into power a number of younger members with innovative ideas. Their new political theory, called the “New Liberalism,” promised justice and government help for those who could not help themselves. Although these ideas may have been inspired by socialism, they also were intended to deflect the working class from other, more extreme forms of the same political doctrine. In  one of these young Liberals, David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced into parliament what was commonly referred to as the “People’s Budget.” The taxes in this Budget seemed to many people to be a socialist attempt to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. This opinion certainly was held by the great majority of the members of the House of Lords who rejected the Budget after it had been passed by the House of Commons. Although technically the House of Lords had the right to veto any legislation, it had not stopped a financial bill for almost fifty years, and there was a tacit assumption that it would not do so. The Lords’ veto of the Budget in , therefore, seemed an act of great audacity. After somewhat disappointing Liberal victories in the elections of January and December , which were fought on the issues of whether the House of Lords should have the right to reject budgets and whether it should be reformed so that it could not do so, the Budget finally was passed and the Liberal Party sponsored a plan to alter the powers of the House of Lords. In February  they introduced the Parliament Bill, which would modify the veto of the House of Lords so that it could not apply to money bills at all, and only delay other legislation for two years – in effect removing the veto altogether. The Bill passed the House of Commons on May ,  and then went to the House of Lords. The Conservative Party in the Commons and the majority of the Lords were firmly opposed to the Bill. But in July  the Liberal Party revealed that they had received the King’s consent to create hundreds of Liberal peers, if necessary, to flood the House of Lords and force acceptance of the Bill if the existing Lords refused to pass it. On learning this, the Conservative leadership abandoned its opposition to the Bill. There was, however, still a great deal of uncertainty about what the Lords would do. Some peers claimed they would accept defeat and a reduction of their powers, while others declared they would abstain from voting on the issue. But there was a vocal movement of “diehards” lead by Lord Willoughby de Broke who were determined to fight the Parliament Bill to the bitter end, despite the threat of the creation of new peers. Up to the last minute it was uncertain what would be the outcome. Finally, on August ,  the Bill was passed by a very

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small majority, with well over half the Lords abstaining. The power of the House of Lords, the last bastion of aristocracy, thus was effectively abolished. Although these events may be interpreted in many different ways, one thing is clear – they effected a fundamental change in British politics. With the removal of the absolute veto power of the House of Lords all remaining obstacles to full democracy were gone in Britain. Nothing could stop “the people,” the majority of whom were in the working and lower middle classes, from using their right to vote to change Britain in their own interests. And nothing could prevent politicians of all parties from putting their efforts into opportunistically catering to this majority. In short, Mill’s “tyranny of the majority” was now a reality. Considering the Modernists’ opinions of the intelligence of the British public in general, it is hardly surprising that this development provoked quite a reaction among some of them. T.E. Hulme certainly had a strong opinion about these events. He had shown little concern with politics early in his career and was much more interested in philosophy and aesthetic theory. Moreover, in , the year before the Parliament Bill, Hulme seemed to have run out of things to say even about philosophy and art, and published nothing of substance. But after that year of near silence, suddenly and with no warning, Hulme started writing numerous articles about political theory. Politics now consumed him so much that he gave up writing poetry altogether. Hulme was very much concerned with the contemporary constitutional crisis. He made it clear that he believed any change in the House of Lords would be disastrous; it would signal the final introduction of “pure,” “unrestrained” democracy in Britain and the destruction of whatever was still valuable in British society. Hulme was opposed to pure democracy because he was convinced that it could not possibly work. As he commented in , “historically, it has always been a failure, for it has never succeeded in maintaining for any length of time a healthy social order.” The reason for this had to do with human nature itself. Hulme accepted a Hobbesean view that humans were fundamentally flawed: Man is by his very nature essentially limited and incapable of anything extraordinary. He is incapable of attaining any kind of perfection, because . . . he encloses within him certain antinomies. There is a war of instincts inside him, and it is part of his permanent characteristics that this must always be so.

Because of this nature, to let the majority of people free to do as they wished and make the decisions they desired without any restraint or

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control would be disastrous. This had been avoided in the past specifically because the aristocracy in the House of Lords had acted as a force independent of, and superior to, the masses of voters. Its veto power made the House of Lords a check on the elected governments that otherwise would cater to the majority’s desires. It was, therefore, the last of “the traditional restraints, the hierarchy, that makes social life possible and healthy.” Because of this, Hulme argued that it should be preserved in all its power. Of course, the House of Lords was not preserved in its powers and almost complete democracy was soon a fact in Britain. This simply encouraged Hulme to continue his political speculations and studies. The House of Lords crisis also provoked a reaction in Ford Madox Ford. Ford like Hulme agreed with the idea that “any tampering with the present Second Chamber would be exceedingly dangerous. Its abolition I should regard as absolutely calamitous.” But Ford’s main response was not only to express his fear of democracy, but also to criticize more severely all political parties. Ford began to discuss domestic, rather than imperial, politics about the time of the House of Lords veto of the “People’s Budget.” Before this time Ford viewed the moderates in the Conservative Party under Balfour as representatives of the political ideas of altruism and idealism that he admired, and the extremists on the right and the left – the imperialist wing of the conservatives under Chamberlain and the Fabian socialists – as representatives of the new trend he detested. His dislike of extremism may have led Ford to support another middle-of-the-road position and to join the Liberal Club in . But he was not satisfied with that party either and he resigned in . Between April  and February , as editor of the English Review, Ford wrote a monthly editorial titled “The Critical Attitude.” The majority of these articles concerned contemporary politics and in them, rather than implicating one political group, Ford began to criticize all members of all the parties. He thought that the weakness, stupidity, opportunism, and greed of their members prevented all parties from dealing effectively and responsibly with the major problems of the day. The Conservative Party was so feeble that it was unable to rally reaction against the House of Lords crisis and break the small Liberal majority at the polls. The Liberals were no better; their actions towards the Suffragettes exhibited “the sheer stupidity of weight . . . discourtesy . . . indifference,” while Lloyd George’s Budget revealed “a timid brain” and a lack of courage and imagination. Moreover, neither party had any real

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principles: “The Conservatives of to-day are no more Tories than the Liberals are Whigs. They are the Opportunists ‘out’ just as the Liberals are the Opportunists ‘in’.” This was bound to have devastating results. One example of opportunism that particularly appalled Ford in April  was the current “panic-stricken fear of the German Empire” which he believed had been “carefully engineered by the two Front Benches in the House of Commons” in order “to force on, at as early a moment as possible, a war with Germany” and appeal to the sensation-loving lower-classes. Not only might this lead to the devastation of war, it also could result in lower-class revolution. More so than ever, Ford feared the consequences of the power and problems of the lower classes. He began to call them the “blackly hating proletariat” and “mob rulers,” and he warned that their emotionalism might lead to hysteria, chaos, or “class war.” Therefore, rather than effectively dealing with problems, according to Ford both parties had abandoned their principles and were acting irresponsibly for their own interests and without regard for the well-being of the country as a whole. As a result, on the one hand, they had become stupid and timid amateurs, taking part in “the English doctrine of muddling through in matters of State.” While on the other hand, they were greedy opportunists: “there is no talk at all of the old traditions or of the finer things . . . from both sides come perpetual cries of ‘Grab’.” Ford concluded that “with the two dominant parties sinking always to lower levels of appeal, there seems to remain no scintilla of hope for anything not purely materialistic in the concerns of the State.” Contemporary domestic politics, thus, added to Ford’s dissatisfaction with the developing British system. It increasingly appeared that a government without higher ideals was catering to an ignorant and violent population. As a result, politicians made serious mistakes on all issues. There seemed little possibility of improvement. The other two Modernists, Pound and Lawrence, did not express many political opinions in this period. Lawrence, however, was increasingly upset by what he thought was the majority of the British people. In , having left England for Germany with his future wife, Lawrence wrote letters to his friends at home in which he was vehement about how he “loath[ed] the idea of England” because of its “enervation,” “hopelessness,” “resignation,” “grubbiness and despair.” In July of that year, Lawrence expressed his feelings about his native country in a manner that was perhaps more brutal than any of the other authors:

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Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They’ve got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery it’s a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn – the gibbers!

Although this tirade may have been prompted by reactions to his personal affairs rather than purely political considerations, it is an indication of an increased dissatisfaction above all with the direction in which modern England was heading. However, Lawrence said little about what caused this dissatisfaction. Pound also began to write explicitly about politics for the first time in  and he continued to do so throughout . Most of his initial thoughts about politics revolved around his hope for, and suggestions about how to effect, an American renaissance. Perhaps because he was American he did not despise the “mob” at first to the same extent as the other three. Pound disliked certain elements of the middle and lower classes (“the idle rich” and “the idle poor”), but admired “the animal vigour,” the energy and wealth of plutocrats, and he was particularly fond of the working classes whom he thought should be given more economic control. Nevertheless, Pound concurred with Ford, Hulme, and Yeats, and perhaps was influenced by them to question democracy. He did not necessarily believe that constitutional governments “founded on the theory . . . that all men are alike” and demanding “the agreement of an innumerable multitude of people” could guarantee freedom or could work. He thought that both the rich and the poor needed guidance and direction and that “weak minded mediocrity” must no longer be “thrust . . . into positions of prominence.” Thus, although Pound and Lawrence were not particularly concerned with politics at this period, they did have opinions that would make them open to the influence of the other, more politically minded, Modernists. Clearly they had a sense that some people in society were superior to others and that those people should direct or control the majority. This certainly was a good basis from which to develop radical conservative ideas. As historians has frequently pointed out, the period between the turn of the twentieth century and the First World War was one of disturbing changes and increased tension. The Modernists were aware of these features of the time in which they lived and were quick to pinpoint an underlying cause of the problems. The vast majority of the population which was now allowed to vote had fundamentally changed the political system, not only through their own stupidity, but also because politicians

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no longer restrained them and instead catered to them for their own opportunistic ends. This, of course, was related to the growing lack of interest in art. The public no more paid attention to the higher ideals of artists and intellectuals than they did to aristocrats and superior politicians. However, rather than simply be content to complain about these problems, all the Modernists who wrote about politics began to theorize about what would be a solution, and especially about what type of political and social system would be preferable to contemporary democracy. This led them back to the past once more. This time, however, they had far more content to add to their historical thinking. Moreover, they were able to use the past to support their political and social theories, rather than merely as a form of aesthetic escape. This, in turn, helped them to develop their creative writing. It also transformed their views of history.

 

“A certain discipline”: radical conservative solutions

The future condition of man, then, will always be one of struggle and limitation. The best results can only be got out of man as the result of a certain discipline which introduces order into this internal anarchy . . . Nothing is bad in itself except disorder; all that is put in order in a hierarchy is good. T.E. Hulme, “A Tory Philosophy,” April , .

In February of  Ford Madox Ford made an astonishing statement: “I find myself wondering whether if the Deity were really beneficent, He would not send us a slaughter, famine or a pestilence that would sweep away all [the] . . . purposeless populations.” He continued, “I should like to see legislation introduced which would press hard upon, which would exterminate, all the purely parasitic classes.” A similar sentiment was expressed by D.H. Lawrence in  when he concluded a tirade about the people of Britain with the comment: “God how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them slime.” It should be obvious that at least two of the five Modernists were extraordinarily disillusioned by the majority of the population among whom they lived. Although these are the two most extreme statements any made, they do illustrate a hostility common to all five authors. However, the Modernists did not just express their discontent. They also began to speculate on preferable political and social systems. This, in turn, drew them back to the past to find models with which to work. In doing so, they took a different approach than previously. Rather than simply sentimentalize over the past or use it as a place to escape, the Modernists began to look more critically at history, and attempted to discern from it precisely what had gone wrong with the modern world and what might be an alternative to it. The conclusion that all the Modernists came to by the beginning of  was that modern problems began when a way of life dominated by a superior aristocracy, who provided control and direction for the masses, and who respected great art, 

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ended. What replaced it was the chaos of a government and society that guaranteed freedom to the selfish and ignorant middle classes and “mob”. The world would be a better place, the Modernists concluded, if the values and structures of an aristocratic age of the past were returned. Of all the Modernists after  it was T.E. Hulme who wrote most consistently about politics and who outlined this belief most explicitly, although by  it was clear that all of the others were in fundamental agreement with him. Hulme did not develop his political theories on his own. He was very much influenced by a climate of radical conservatism that had emerged both in England and in France at the time. Hulme became aware of these ideas in  at the same time as the House of Lords crisis. The “radical” conservatives of this period were different from “traditional” conservatives. While the latter accepted the constitutional system and established order, which they wished to preserve by slowing down the process of change, radical conservatives disliked democracy and hoped not to stop, but to accelerate, change to institute entirely different, generally authoritarian governments and societies similar to ones that existed in the remote past. It was writers of this type, both in Britain and France, who first suggested to Hulme that an aristocratic alternative to democracy was possible and that it had existed and prospered in a pre-modern age. The English conservatives who inspired Hulme included two groups. One was a set of authors who were influenced by the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and who wrote for The New Age, a journal to which many of the Modernists also contributed. In fact, the most prominent English advocates, explicators, and translators of Nietzsche’s thought at the time were closely connected to The New Age. Another group of writers formed the basis of a journal for which Hulme and his friend and fellow-poet, Edward Storer, also wrote, The Commentator. This journal featured ideas very much like those of the conservatives forming the “radical right” and “diehards” of the House of Lords crisis. All of these writers shared similar political opinions. Although he exaggerated somewhat, Edward Storer was accurate in describing The Commentator as “the only paper in London which is avowedly antidemocratic and Conservative which expresses its opinion that in democracy we have the real evil of our time.” Storer himself, in a number of articles for the journal, argued for the need “to stem the evil-smelling tide of democracy which is destroying and vulgarising all the fine things of the world.” Similar opinions were expressed by The New Age Nietzscheans. They claimed that Nietzsche was a genius because he “saw the dragon

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of anarchy and dissolution lurking” behind democracy, and because he had no interest in equality or in allowing “the ‘greatest number’,” “the mob,” “parasites”, or “the dregs of society” to rule the country. Rather, Nietzsche was a “lover of order and tradition” and advocated the return of the manly disciple of an older aristocratic and hierarchic society. But even more than by English conservatives, Hulme was influenced by French thinkers. Hulme was introduced to French writers on politics through his early interest in the ideas of Henri Bergson. Soon Hulme was aware of the ideas of the philosopher, Jules de Gaultier, of Georges Sorel who was the leading advocate of syndicalism, and of the writers of the group known as Action Fran¸caise, such as Charles Maurras and Pierre Lasserre. These French thinkers shared many of the opinions of the English conservatives and many also were influenced by Nietzsche. All opposed democracy and wanted to return to a preferable system that existed in the past. In addition the Action Fran¸caise appeared to be effecting real change along these lines. By  it was a well-established, visible, and vocal organization with a daily paper, L’Action fran¸caise, two journals, an institute, and an action squad, the Camelots du Roi, which had been involved for three years in a highly visible campaign of demonstrations and violent intimidation against any person or movement opposed to their ideas. They also had won the open support of Georges Sorel and the syndicalist workers who accepted his call for a violent general strike to overthrow the government. Even the police at this date saw the Action Fran¸caise as a serious threat to the existing government. Influenced by all of these writers, but especially by Pierre Lasserre of the Action Fran¸caise, in March  Hulme announced his conversion to Toryism. In describing his new political views Hulme relied heavily on the Action Fran¸caise’s rejection of the “Romantic” ideas of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and adoption of the “Classic” tradition that had existed prior to it. According to Hulme, paraphrasing the Action Fran¸caise, the “Classic” tradition was better than the “Romantic” because it correctly realized the weakness of human nature and the fact that the majority need control and guidance that only an elite few are capable of providing. Hulme especially liked the Hobbesean view that “man is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and organisation that anything decent can be got out of him.” This was far wiser than the erroneous “Romantic” “conception of the infinite possibilities of man . . . imprisoned,” which leads to the very dangerous idea, particularly expressed by inferior thinkers such as Rousseau, “that anything that increases man’s

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freedom will be to his benefit.” In other words, according to Hulme the “Romantic” point of view was wrong because it did “not think that man is by nature bad, turned into something good by a certain order and discipline, but that, on the contrary, man is something rather wonderful, and that so far he has been prevented from exhibiting any wonderful qualities by these very restrictions of order and discipline that the classic praised.” Rather, as Hulme argued in the quote heading this chapter, because of the unchangeable flaws of their nature, “the best results” were the product of “a certain discipline” provided by an aristocratic elite. Hulme also agreed with the Action Fran¸caise that the political systems that best expressed these “Classic” truths were those that existed before the French Revolution, and especially in Capetian France. They were based on a hierarchy of rights and privileges, rather than equality and popular representation. These governments provided social order and peace, ensured a well-directed economy, instilled spiritual and moral values, and supported exceptional aesthetic achievement. It was when these types of political system and the principles upon which they were based were abandoned and a set of “Romantic” ideas that were “the exact opposite of this” were adopted, that the problems of the modern world began. Given their previous preferences and ideas it is not surprising that such reactionary views were attractive to the other Modernists as well. Their sense of artistic elitism and desire for spiritual fulfillment, and their disappointment with the hysterical public who could not understand their concerns, all were problems that could be solved by the system outlined by Hulme. Ford certainly agreed, and between  and  he moved toward a similar conservatism. In February  he explicitly declared himself “by temperament an obstinate, sentimental and oldfashioned Tory.” Ford expressed his distaste for “Protestantism and a democratic instrument,” and claimed that “democracy [is] the stuff to fill graveyards.” By  he announced that “parliamentary institutions are discredited . . . and democracy is on its deathbed” because of the overwhelming “discontent with existing modes of thought,” which is “almost uniformly reactionary.” By  Pound was also expressing a similar preference for an elitist and hierarchical political system. He remarked in late , that he preferred “the theory of the dominant cell, a slightly Nietzschean biology to any collectivist theories whatsoever.” He admired the theory of his new friend, Allen Upward, that “the Superior Man,” be he aristocrat, artist, or even religious figure, should control and direct all other people.

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This was in opposition to the “superstition . . . known as the Religion of Humanity” that inspired thinkers like Rousseau to support democracy and equality. Pound also shared Hulme’s negative view of human nature. He believed that because “humanity was unbearably stupid,” any theory that “tried to lead and persuade it; to save it from itself ” was wrong. More specifically, according to Pound “the great mass of mankind are mediocre, that is axiomatic, it is the definition of the word mediocre” and they have brought all of society down to their level by creating “a god in their own image and that god is Mediocrity.” Therefore, “ ‘the religion of Humanity’ ” “ ‘is not the worship of the best man nor of the best in man’ ” but “ ‘the worship of the middling man’.” It contributed to the “pestilent” ideas of Rousseau and all others who believe “that every man is created free and equal with a divine right to become an insignificant part of a social system.” As a result of all of this, Pound explicitly claimed in  that he believed that “a ‘government, of the people, by the people and for the people’ is the worst thing on the face of the earth.” The other Modernists who wrote about politics also agreed with Hulme about a political system preferable to modern egalitarian democracy. As “a sentimental Tory and a Roman Catholic,” Ford admired a much older system – “the old feudalism and the old union of Christendom beneath a spiritual headship” – and he hoped for the return of “Catholicism and the rule of the noble.” This would repair the damage done by the American Revolution, which “was a stupid digression from the broad course of history, an impasse leading to the obviousness of democracy and one that would never have come about had the Stuarts been – as they ought to have been upon the throne.” Ford concluded that “the feudal system . . . [is] the most satisfactory form whether of government or of commonwealth.” This indicates another reason radical conservatism also appealed to the Modernists. It supported their previous admiration for the Middle Ages. Pound, in fact, claimed in  that he had arrived at his political opinions by “a capricious study of mediaeval art and life.” Yeats made his political inclinations and continued interest in the Middle Ages clear in  when he wrote: If we would find a company of our own way of thinking, we must go backward to turreted walls, to Courts, to high rocky places, to little walled towns, to jesters like that jester of Charles V who made mirth out of his own death; to the Duke Guidobaldo in his sickness, or Duke Frederick in his strength, to all those who understood that life is not lived, if not lived for contemplation or excitement.

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He regretted that this older, aristocratic political and social “tradition had become degraded, or rather because a spurious copy had been accepted in its stead.” Throughout this period Yeats, Ford, and Pound continued to contemplate the Middle Ages, with two general results. They were able to provide more details to support the radical conservative political positions they were developing. And they were led to refine their historical thinking, especially of the medieval period. More specifically, they began to abandon the use of the Middle Ages for decoration, romance, and escapism. Their medievalism now much more resembled the less superficial, if still idealized, practices of nineteenth-century authors such as Cobbett, Carlyle, Southey, Digby, Ruskin, and Morris. Yeats, Ford, and Pound now looked more carefully at the political, economic, and social organizations of the Middle Ages and highlighted many of the same features as had these more serious medievalists. Occasionally these three Modernists could still be sentimental about the Middle Ages in an aesthetic and decorative way. This was particularly true of Yeats who called the period “Merry England,” and who described it as a time “when men still wept when they were moved, still dressed themselves in joyous colours, spoke with many gestures,” and had “beautiful haughty imagination and . . . manners, full of abandon and wilfulness.” Similarly, Ford agreed with the fifteenth-century Duke of Norfolk when he said that “it was merry in England” during the Middle Ages. Medieval England for Ford, thus, was a time of the “irresponsible enjoyment of life.” But for the first time Ford explicitly criticized romantic medievalism and advocated a more realistic consideration of the period. He now claimed that in writing about the past an author “must be very careful not to sentimentalise over the picturesque.” In one book review of  he even condemned an author’s representation of the Middle Ages because it “is no more mediaeval Europe than his Court of King Peter is at Yvetot or Brentford. It is a broad, sunlit, coloured, ruffled world of hills and roads tucked somewhere away in a plane, a Fourth Dimension” known only to the author. Pound concurred. The representation of the Middle Ages that he clearly favored was realistic rather than fanciful. In  Pound explicitly expressed an admiration for writers such as Dante and Browning who showed the medieval world “blind with its ignorance, its violence, and its filth.” According to one literary critic this marked an important shift in Pound’s work. Now “Provence, Tuscany, Villon’s Paris are real worlds to be presented for themselves,” used as a critical “mirror

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to hold up to Victorian England,” rather than as “dream landscapes, or soul-scapes, to evoke vague yearnings.” Thus, instead of inventing an entirely fantastical past, the three Modernists tried to pinpoint in detail why the medieval period was preferable to the present. In general, they agreed with Hulme and the other radical conservatives that medieval politics and society were better because they were not based on ideas of the goodness of humans, their equality, or the need to have freedom to flourish. Moreover, because there was no sizeable middle class, kings and aristocrats had the power to rule, control, and direct all others. The period was, as a result, a time of unity, strength, order, and beauty, in opposition to the weakness, divisions, and hostilities of the stupid and ugly modern world. The Middle Ages, thus, provided what Yeats has desired for some time: “ ‘Unity of Being’ in the face of modern chaos.” Underlying their acceptance of this view was the belief that the aristocrats who dominated medieval life were superior to other people. Ford was very much impressed by any person he met, such as Arthur Marwood and Joseph Conrad, who he thought were living examples of the aristocratic continuity with the past. In most of his novels between  and  Ford’s heroes and heroines were members of an ancient English aristocracy. It was Ford’s admiration for the aristocracy that led him to accept a hierarchical view of the universe: The world seems to me to divide itself into a very few individuals who have a certain originating power whether in the provinces of thought or of action; into a larger number but still a comparatively few who have not only a power of production but a delight in production; and into an immense proportion of entirely unnecessary people whose only function in the world would appear to be to become the stuff to fill graveyards.

Yeats also believed in the superiority and value of the aristocracy, especially for Ireland. He was led to this belief partially because of his reading of Nietzsche and partly because of his friendship with a living Irish aristocrat, Lady Gregory. She was the person who was instrumental in finding the money for the Abbey Theatre, and throughout the controversies over it she was continually supportive of Yeats – intellectually, emotionally, and monetarily. Lady Gregory, the aristocrat, showed Yeats only courtesy, manners, style, and generosity at precisely the same time as the Irish nationalists and Irish playgoers were acting particularly rude, vulgar, and disruptive in response to his ideal of cultural nationalism. It was this manner of acting, and the morality and values of aristocrats, that especially appealed both to Yeats and Ford, not just because it was

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more pleasant than the vulgar hysteria of the “mob”, but also because it provided goals and direction for the entire society. As Yeats commented in , modern problems began “because power has passed to men who lack the training which requires a certain amount of wealth to ensure continuity from generation to generation, and to free the mind in part from other tasks.” The middle class and the “mob,” in other words, “small shopkeepers . . . clerks . . . men who had risen above the traditions of the countryman, without learning those of cultivated life,” not only did not have the time and training, they did not possess the ability to provide values for society because they were petty, vulgar, and exhibited a horrifying “new ill-breeding.” The aristocracy, on the other hand, has courage, courtesy, charm, and style, either through their “high breeding” or by inheritance. These values were essential in enabling aristocrats to carry out their most important function, which was to provide superior goals for society and “to explain why the more difficult pleasure is the nobler pleasure.” As Yeats wrote in : No art can conquer the people alone – the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority. . . . We require a new statement of the moral doctrine, which shall be accepted by the average man, but which will at the same time be plainly beyond his power in practice . . . A true system of morals is obviously from the first a weapon in the hands of the most distinguished.

By  Pound also thought an aristocracy was necessary “to keep alight some spark of civilisation at the summit of things” and set “some model of life to the rabble and to ages to come.” But it was Ford who explained more clearly how an aristocracy upheld important values, and ones inherited from a feudal past. Those people who were related to the “castes . . . ranks . . . classes to whom the shedding of blood had given an almost moral significance and stability,” had “a great ideal – an ideal of solidarity, of self-sacrifice, of co-operation – an ideal of a Greatness distinct from the acquisition of riches.” In addition, aristocrats had inherited a system of belief, a code of honour and duty that enabled them to be certain about the best ways to think and act. As one of Ford’s characters explains, aristocrats “form a standard, a rule of conduct, and then . . . live up to it.” They live “a life in which every man and woman knows exactly his part and has exactly his ideas.” Moreover, they are not slaves to passion, but have great self-restraint and thus give an impression of “tranquillity, of opulence and strength.” All of this made them eminently capable of leading and directing society. As Ford wrote in , “your true aristocrat is one who analyzes things from a height. But just because he is an aristocrat he is scrupulous, and just because he is scrupulous he is just.”

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Aristocrats, thus, provided a strong and fair government. This is not to say that they were always kind. Neither Ford, nor his ideal aristocrats, accepted a contemporary political ideology that was corrupted “with humanitarian sentimentalism” and “such watchwords as Fraternity and Equality.” According to Ford, the “old Toryism” of the Middle Ages “was in any humanitarian sense utterly remorseless in its dealing with the weak.” In those better times, politicians did not share the modern problem of having “our fingers too much on our moral pulse when it comes to enacting regulations for the relief of the Unfortunate in the mass.” According to Ford, “it is only because our rulers since then have wavered between statecraft and mercy that we have with us still” this great problem of the poor. By  Ford was pinpointing humanitarianism as one of the fundamental problems of modern government. He claimed that “because humanitarianism came creeping in, our modern State is defective,” and he even went so far as to suggest that politics, “though it need not be actively inhuman, must, as far as possible, put aside sympathy with human weakness.” Other Modernists agreed with him. As early as , in his poem “Picadilly,” Pound admitted about “The gross, the coarse, the brazen,/ God knows I cannot pity them, perhaps, as I should do.” Even Lawrence, who wrote little about politics or society in this period, believed that it was necessary to instill “a bit more flame” in the “cold ash of humanity,” and reject “Humanitarianism and suchlike forms of not-being.” But Ford went well beyond the other Modernists in describing the consequences of his anti-humanitarianism, as indicated in the opening of this chapter. In fact, Ford believed that in the Middle Ages the problem of the poor was solved simply by getting rid of them and he thought that this perhaps might be a good idea to revive in the present. He even commented that he “should like to see all men, except the few that are absolutely necessary . . . all men swept away who make a profit out of other men’s labour.” Ford had a few other plans for the unnecessary part of the population: the necessity for dealing stringently with the non-productive will become imperative. It is incredible that any statesman to-day should venture to say that the unhealthy shall by law be prohibited from breeding . . . Yet some such law rigidly enforced would go very far towards solving the social problem . . . For all of these in the modern State the only logical remedies would be starvation, the axe or the lethal chamber. Civilisation has not time to deal with the criminal or the diseased in any form. . . . degenerates should be either executed or relegated to pest colonies as in the mediaeval time the lepers were.

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This anti-humanitarianism may be disturbing to a modern mentality but it was important, according to Ford, for the strength and stability of the Middle Ages. The success of medieval governments was also provided by effective, even remorseless, leadership. In  Ford claimed that “true Toryism . . . aim[s] at the establishment of a strong State made up of efficient individuals.” This was done with a parliament composed of aristocrats who ruled on the “principle of heredity,” but who also, when necessary “bow to the will of strong individual rulers” and allow the government to be run by the “actual or virtual dictatorship” of one leader. Aristocrats could do this because they rejected “the modern ideal that the State is great where individuals are happy” and correctly understood that “before individuals can be happy the State must be strong and so constituted as to suit the needs of strong individuals.” While it may appear that Ford had moved away from his former concern to protect individuals from coldly efficient collective governments, this is not really the case. Ford made it clear that the type of state he desired was neither collective nor cold. Like medieval governments it would be strong, yet decentralized and personal. Ford was still very much worried that “The Anglo-Saxon-Teutonic-industrial-commercialism that is Modernity” had such a faith in social organization that the central government would continually increase in size and power, and that reformers “would make our corporations more vast, our nations still more boundless, for the sake of fiscal efficiency.” In the Middle Ages this could not have happened because the central government was limited by the independence and strength of the aristocrats who ruled the countryside and often even “made and unmade Kings.” Pound had a similar admiration for medieval-type political systems, which were strong and ruthless, but also decentralized and personal. He admired small states run by the enlightened, educated rich, who were helped by a body or church of subsidized artists, and in which all people worked for themselves and owned their own means of production. And he hoped that “the nations of Europe” could find “some method of cleansing / the fetid extent of their evils” and return to such a system. Yeats also disliked overly powerful central governments. He thought that the development of a state, with its “parliaments and law courts,” “which desires all the abundance for itself ” was a grave modern mistake because it did away with the independence, individualism, and strength of thought of former ages. Even artists succumbed to the power of the state. Edmund Spenser, for example, allowed his art and independence

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of mind to suffer because of his involvement with a centralizing government. He had learned to look to the State not only as the rewarder of virtue but as the maker of right and wrong, and had begun to love and hate as it bid him. . . . Like an hysterical patient he drew a complicated web of inhuman logic out of the bowels of an insufficient premise – there was no right, no law, but that of Elizabeth, and all that opposed her opposed themselves to God, to civilisation, and to all inherited wisdom and courtesy, and should be put to death.”

Medieval governments and life in general, therefore, were preferable to any modern system for the Modernists. An additional reason for their superiority was the absence of the middle classes. According to Yeats, modern problems began when “the counting-house had created a class and a new art without breeding and ancestry and set this art and this class between the hut and the castle, and between the hut and the cloister.” In  Yeats claimed that “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone” because of the increasing predominance of people who “fumble in a greasy till / And add the halfpence to the pence” and because of “the fumbling wits, the obscure spite / Of our old Paudeen in his shop.” The middle classes, according to the Modernists, contributed to many modern ills, but they had an especially negative impact on politics. Ford believed that with the advent of the middle classes politics became the realm of “men of the lowest birth and of the highest arrogance” – who relied on diplomacy, spies, and torture rather than the swift and honorable use of “the sword”. He suggested that this happened in England during the reign of Henry VIII. Between  and  Ford wrote a trilogy of historical novels about the period that began with The Fifth Queen. These novels depict the decline of noble values and the rise of a politics of sordid intrigues and plottings, which occurred when bourgeois politicians such as Thomas Cromwell (“who had been an attorney for ten years after he had been a wool merchant”) determined to increase the power of the king at the expense of the aristocracy. Yeats agreed that the middle classes contributed to disorder in politics. The bourgeoisie, who shared “the mob’s materialism and the mob’s hatred of any privilege which is an incommunicable gift,” engendered “the born demagogue,” who “has always a passion for some crowd, is always deliberately inciting them against somebody.” The chaos caused by these power-hungry preachers, in turn, destroyed the stability of the aristocratic political system. Not only were the middle classes responsible for corrupting politics, they also destroyed a preferable medieval economic and social system. According to Yeats, the vulgarity of “the hot-faced bargainers and the money-changers” introduced selfishness and competition, and upset the

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harmony that had existed between noble, clergy, and peasantry. They also fundamentally altered the distribution of wealth; it was only when “the world surrendered to the competition of merchants” that the extremes of great wealth and poverty were created. Ford agreed about the negative consequences of the “free competition” and selfishness of the middle classes after the medieval period, when the altruistic “ideals of the chivalric age” were replaced by “individualistopportunist” values. One crucial development was that when “men of the lowest birth” entered government for profit rather than public service the physical and spiritual well-being of the mass of the population was ignored. For example, the disasters of the Reformation sale of church property and the enclosure process forced peasants off the land they had tilled for centuries so that landowners, many of them from the newly rich middle class, could raise sheep and make great profits from the expanding wool trade. Thus, wealth that formerly had been used to give material and moral assistance to the poor was divided instead between the new central state and the middle classes who were a part of it. At the same time, according to Ford, the government abandoned those controls on the economy that prevented the “sudden fluctuations of prices that are so unsettling to the labour market” and adopted a policy of economic freedom. Once again, the profits of the middle classes were maximized at the expense of workers’ wages. Pound expressed a similar concern about these features of the modern capitalist system when he declared in : I have no objection to wealth, the trouble is the acquisition, It would be rather a horrible sell To work like a dog and not get it.

In opposition to capitalist economics, Pound, Hulme, and Ford (like Hitler and Mussolini at a later period) all grew interested in a new type of socialist solution that combined elements of right-wing and leftwing thinking. For example, Ford was quite pleased when introduced to the ideas of Georges Sorel because he found that Sorel’s “Syndicalism . . . has become reactionary . . . even aristocratic” and was “violently anti-Parliamentary.” This confirmed his opinion that “true Toryism and true Socialism are the same.” It also gave him hope for the future because “what the extreme Left of France says to-day the rest of the world finds itself repeating about thirty-nine years after.” Pound also admired Sorel’s theories especially because they reminded him of a decentralized medieval system. He liked the idea of a society organized into a hierarchy of syndicates or guilds through which “the community recognises the

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special aptitudes of groups of men and applies them.” A government, the only function of which would be to delegate “certain stupid and honest people” “to look after our traffic and sewage,” also appealed to Pound. But it was Hulme who was most interested in Sorel, so much so that he translated into English Sorel’s most famous work, Reflections on Violence. He admired Sorel for much the same reason as did Ford and Pound; Sorel was “a revolutionary in economics, but classical in ethics.” Because he adopted the “classical, pessimistic” and “religious attitude” of a pre-modern period, his theories provided direction and discipline for the economy and helped unify the elite with the working class. Thus the Middle Ages had much that was missing from the contemporary world. The governments were strong and stable, and provided firm, but fair economic and political direction without interfering unnecessarily in people’s lives. They, plus the absence of a middle class, ensured that society was unified and all members cared for. The medieval period had a few other features the Modernists liked; it was spiritually fulfilled, morally healthy, and aesthetically pleasing. Ford and Yeats particularly admired the role of religion in the Middle Ages. Both authors agreed that medieval Catholicism was far superior to the Puritan Protestantism of the modern world. One reason was because it provided a standard of conduct, similar to that of the aristocrats, which made it easier for all men to know how to act and feel correctly. According to Ford, “Catholicism . . . a religion of action and of frames of minds is a religion that men can live up to” because it provides a simple and clear standard by which people can judge their actions. For Yeats, medieval Catholicism was understandable to the poor because of its semi-pagan mystical content, but it also acted like the aristocracy: “the Catholic Church created a system only possible for saints, hence its prolonged power. Its definition of the good was narrow, but it did not set out to make shopkeepers.” As Yeats’s remark suggests, it was Protestantism and “the religious change that followed on the Renaissance” that contributed to bourgeois morality. While Catholicism encouraged the “humility” produced by “a soul shaken by the spectacle of its sins,” Protestantism was a religion in which men “are troubled by other men’s sins.” It, thus, ushered in “the period of philanthropy and reform . . . pedantic composure . . . rhetoric . . . [and] passionless sentiment.” In other words it encouraged the “vulgar pride,” “moral enthusiasm,” and desire for “selfimprovement” that were the fundamental characteristics of the middle classes. Moreover, according to Ford, as “a religion of ideals and of reason” Protestantism also created a nation of hypocrites; by allowing

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each individual to invent impractical and grandiose goals, it forced its followers to advocate a morality they could not ever follow. Finally, medieval religion was partially responsible for a deep respect for art. Yeats pointed out the importance of the Catholic church as a patron of the arts, in opposition to “Puritanism”, which because of “its zeal and its narrowness, and the angry suspicion that it had in common with all movements of the ill-educated . . . [was] a slanderer of all fine things.” Ford agreed, commenting that Puritanism did away “with the artistic spirit as a factor of life.” However, even more important for art was medieval society. Rule by an aristocracy ensured that all of life was beautiful. According to Ford, the English gentry had inherited a love for the best things in life and a desire to always surround themselves with them. In fifteenth-century Italy, according to Yeats, the aristocracy and artists worked hand in hand to “breed the best.” At that time great dukes vigorously fulfilled their duty of patronizing the arts with little concern for “minds without culture” or with what “the blind and ignorant town / Imagines best to make it thrive.” They correctly understood that they should give liberally to what is best, rather than do what is demanded by the mob. Thus, they actively supported the creation of art, libraries, and schools “where wit and beauty learned their trade.” Yeats and Pound made even stronger connections between the aristocracy and artists. Yeats suggested that three social groups of the Middle Ages were key: Three types of men have made all beautiful things, Aristocracies have made beautiful manners, because their place in the world puts them above the fear of life, and the countrymen have made beautiful stories and beliefs, because they have nothing to lose and so do not fear, and the artists have made all the rest, because Providence has filled them with recklessness. All these look backward to a long tradition, for, being without fear, they have held to whatever pleased them.

In fact, Yeats believed that artists were part of the ideal aristocracy of the past. He revised his and Ford’s previous Pre-Raphaelite belief that artists were “priestly”. Now they were also “the proudest aristocracy upon earth, the aristocracy of artists.” And in  he commented that “every day I notice some new analogy between [the] long-established life of the well-born and the artist’s life. . . . We too despise the mob and suffer at its hands.” Pound enthusiastically agreed with this image of artists. In fact, he hoped for a new aristocracy in the future composed of artists as well as, or instead of, hereditary peers. His understanding of Sorel’s theories led him to believe that it might be possible, not only to revive guilds for workers



Modernism

such as “joiners, etc.” or “guilds of more highly skilled craftsmen,” but also to create “a syndicat of intelligence,” which would be composed of “enlightened men,” “thinkers and authors and artists.” This syndicate would direct the others and would help solve “the traditional struggle” that has existed “from the beginning of the world . . . of driving the shaft of intelligence into the dull mass of mankind.” Moreover, it would do this in an autocratic fashion; it “will be as fanatical almost as the mediaeval religious” and “will hate and contemn the world.” Thus, “the modern artist,” who “knows he is born to rule but he has no intention of trying to rule by general franchise” will be part of a new and powerful ruling elite. Yeats summed up the change from the medieval to the modern world when he criticized Oliver Cromwell. Yeats did not necessarily dislike Cromwell for the reasons that most Irish people did – for killing thousands of Irish Catholics, taking their lands, and giving them to English Protestants. Rather, for Yeats Cromwell was responsible for the destruction of the Middle Ages. According to Yeats, Cromwell and his “kings of the mob” changed England and Ireland completely by destroying the aristocratic way of life: the Great Demagogue had come and turned the old house of the noble into ‘the house of the Poor, the lonely house, the accursed house of Cromwell.’ He came . . . with that great rabble who had overthrown the pageantry of Church and Court, but who turned towards him faces full of the sadness and docility of their long servitude, and the old individual, poetical life went down, as it seems, for ever.

Fear about the direction in which the modern world was heading, therefore, led the Modernists to look for a preferable alternative in the past. At the same time as they developed radical conservative political positions, which emphasized discipline, restraint, and control, in opposition to equality, democracy, and economic liberalism, the Modernists looked again to history and found all they wanted in Europe after the Roman Empire and before the Renaissance. Although this new Modernist medievalism still was as much a fantasy as their earlier medievalism, and hardly original, it served an important purpose. The Middle Ages no longer was just a place to escape. Rather, it provided solutions to the problems the Modernists perceived around them. Not only did medieval politics and society exclude or discipline the hysterical and ignorant “mob” and provide a satisfying sense of order and direction, it gave artists a role of great importance. In this preferable system

Radical conservative solutions



of the past, artists were respected, listened to, and took their rightful place among the ruling aristocratic elite. In short, the “civic crown” was theirs. Their new medievalism also served another important role for the Modernists. It made it easier for some of them to speculate that perhaps the tradition of life they admired in the past, but that was absent in the present, might some day return – preferably in the near future. In this they took an important step towards a cyclic view of history. Hulme and Ford both suggested this. Hulme clearly hoped that the “Classic” tradition of life would replace the current “Romantic” one. He was optimistic that the ideas of the Action Fran¸caise, and the fact that they were so popular among young people in France, indicated that this was in the process of occurring. If these ideas were spread (for example by Hulme) to England and the rest of the world, the return of a better way of life would be undeniable. Ford also fantasized about the return of an older way of life in his  novel, The New Humpty-Dumpty. The hero is Count MacDonald, a Russian-Scottish aristocrat who acts “along lines of the traditions of a gentleman of good breeding.” Like Ford, MacDonald had been a socialist in the s, but since had developed the conviction that “Rome is burning” because parliament had proven to be “such a discredited institution.” MacDonald now adopted the belief that “no men are equal,” that democracy had run the world too long “for the benefit of the weak and the unfit,” and that the best political system is one of strength and complete efficiency. MacDonald is also convinced that the only solution to modern problems is a counter-revolution, and he organizes one as an example in the small Republic of “Galiza,” where he will use the threat of military violence to restore a monarchy under the Bourbon King Dom Pedro II. MacDonald’s counter-revolution is unsuccessful in the end. And Ford made it clear what was the ultimate cause of its failure; MacDonald had not abandoned his fundamentally Romantic view of human nature. MacDonald believed that at heart all people are as good and chivalrous as himself, and therefore can be trusted to do the right thing in the end. This conviction is proven wrong by two lower-middle-class characters. Their hypocrisy, selfishness, vulgarity, greed, and jealousy cause the failure of the counter-revolution and ultimately MacDonald’s death. Thus, while the novel ends in defeat, there is some hope for the future; a knowledge of the cause of the problems may provide the key for ultimate success.



Modernism

For Hulme and Ford, therefore, a cyclic return to the past might be possible with the spread of new ideas or a better organized revolution. In either case, it was this – a return to the past – rather than the hope for continued progress along any existing lines, that was what the five Modernists were coming to believe held out the only hope for the future. The development of their thinking and exploration of other areas of interest in the next few years would serve to support this assumption.

 

“A particularly lively wheel”: cyclic views emerge

Mr. Hulme launched forth on a diatribe against . . . all those who take the Spiral as the symbol of the Nature of man, and declared that if ever he were made a Peer he would take as his insignia a particularly lively Wheel, chastising a complacent Spiral.

Cambridge Magazine, March , .

One day in  a devastatingly handsome young man, who looked a great deal like Lord Byron, suddenly dropped from the sky onto a street corner in London. Police Constable L, who witnessed the miraculous event, could tell from the stranger’s impeccable evening dress and from his disturbingly eloquent speech that this was an aristocrat, despite his odd name of Fybus Poldo. Unknown to PC L, this was no ordinary gentleman. He was, in fact, the Greek god Phoebus Apollo come from heaven to twentieth-century England to determine if religion could be brought back to the modern world. He was promptly arrested. So goes the opening of Ford Madox Ford’s  novel, Mr. Apollo. Despite his arrest, by the end of the novel Apollo is quite successful in his task. He meets a number of young people who are tired of the hopeless materialism of the scientific age in which they live, and who are looking for spiritual fulfillment. A new age of religion, similar to a better period of the past was, therefore, in the process of returning – with the help of an ancient Greek god-aristocrat, of course. As this indicates, Ford, like the other Modernists had begun to hope for and speculate about a cyclic return to a preferable past tradition. In fact, at least one of them was led directly to an explicit cyclic view of history, as is suggested by Hulme’s quote above. It was no accident that Ford had Apollo dress and act like an aristocrat. In fact, this was one of the main differences between Ford’s novel and the works that might have inspired it. In the s and s Walter Pater wrote three stories on a very similar theme; a Greek god (in two stories the god was Apollo and in one Dionysus) reappeared at a later period 



Modernism

in time. The differences between Pater’s and Ford’s stories say much about the new concerns of the Modernists in the early twentieth century. Pater’s gods are more Nietzschean than anything else. They return, not to the modern world, but to the Middle Ages (or to an eighteenth-century German dukedom not yet emerged from the medieval world), and when they take human form they do so, not as aristocrats, but as peasants or servants. Their aim is not to restore religion or the medieval values of order and discipline, but to end the depressing oppression of Catholicism and to bring an Enlightenment-style revival of pagan light, and joy in free natural impulses and fine art. In the end, Pater’s gods do not succeed. Rather, they are killed by the jealous people among whom they live because they also bring misery and destruction in the wake of their liberation. Pater, thus, was still struggling with the conflicting consequences of the Enlightenment – of how a new appreciation for reason, freedom, and democracy could contribute to positive intellectual, scientific, and artistic progress simultaneously with violent and destructive revolution. Ford, however, had moved beyond doubt and uncertainty to a new optimism; a medieval form of aristocracy and religion clearly was preferable to any of the values of the Enlightenment, and radical conservative politics indeed could effect its return. It should come as no surprise that at the same time as they developed new conservative political opinions the early Modernists became more interested in circular views of the past and cyclic structures in general. Two important developments occurred in the Modernists’ views of history at this time. First, some of the five authors openly rejected the idea of progress and advocated circularity. In addition, while the others were not so explicit, they none the less established the foundation for such a view. Their growing dislike of change and admiration for permanence, and their preference for making analogies between features of cultures separated by space and time, rather than any interest in progressive chronology, indicate their increasing belief that history does not exhibit cumulative change in either a positive or negative direction. Hulme was the Modernist who first and most openly abandoned progress for circularity. He was led directly to this position by his new conservative political beliefs. Not only did the Action Fran¸caise and other writers by whom Hulme was influenced posit the existence of two opposed traditions of life in the past, the Classic and Romantic, they also questioned the idea of progress. All these conservative authors argued that theories of automatic, linear progress, whether they were “messianic,” economic or scientific, were “Romantic” and thus wrong.

Cyclic views emerge



According to the Action Fran¸caise, the “Romantic” assumption of the goodness of humans led thinkers mistakenly to believe that if people were free of all restraint then progress would automatically occur without any additional effort. The “Classic” view of the unchangeable weakness of human nature was considered far more realistic by the Action Fran¸caise. This being the case, however, granting freedom in the hope of improvement is a facile and lazy optimism that will lead to chaos as human faults would be given free reign. Progress is, in fact, a dangerous idea. Hulme agreed. He explicitly rejected “the metaphysical notion of automatic progress . . . you get in Hegel and Fourier,” which is identical to “the religious belief in absolute and inevitable progress.” Hulme blamed “the histories I had been brought up on” for leading him to this assumption; “one is handicapped, as far as clear-thinking about politics goes, by being educated in Whig histories. It takes strenuous efforts to get rid of the pernicious notion implanted in one by Macaulay.” In  Hulme had become so disillusioned with ideas of progress that he lost interest in almost all modern philosophy. When he went to a philosophical congress at Bologna that year he was so fascinated by the pageantry and activity outside – the aristocratic parading of princes and troops – that he did not want to go inside. This was because they would be certain to talk inside of progress, while the only progress I can stand is the progress of princes and troops, for they, though they move, make no pretence of moving ‘upward.’ They progress in the only way which does not violate the classical ideal of the fixed and constant nature of man.

In fact, Hulme’s rejection of progress was so fervent that it went well beyond the conservative writers who had suggested the idea to him. None of those writers abandoned progress altogether or developed theories of historical circularity as did Hulme. While they proposed that progress was not automatic, they did assume that it could occur through discipline, order, and reason. For example, the writers for the Action Fran¸caise argued that in the beginning of time men’s instincts and passions were free. The result was a situation of chaos and barbarity. However, with the imposition of order in civil society, and with the development of will and reason, man progressed out of savagery into civilization. Thus, while they did not believe in “Romantic” progress, the Action Fran¸caise did support what Lasserre called the “other” progress – that development from barbarism to civilization through discipline. English Nietzscheans agreed and went on to claim that man could progress even further. As A.M. Ludovici put it, “if it was possible for man to struggle up from



Modernism

barbarism . . . why . . . should he not surpass himself and attain to Superman by evolving in the same degree volitionally and mentally?” Because the conservative writers believed in progress, they also feared the decadence that would result if discipline and order were relaxed, as had occurred during the French Revolution. However, they did not conclude from this that history followed a circular pattern of alternating reversals and advances. Few of the Nietzscheans, or a Modernist like Yeats who had read Nietzsche, discussed extensively or made use of his idea of Eternal Recurrence. Some even explicitly rejected it. The reversals of progress, according to these writers, were mistakes; they were not in the nature of history and they did not form a pattern. Hulme, on the other hand, between the middle of  and throughout , developed a different view. He completely rejected, not only “Romantic” theories, but all ideas of progress whatsoever. In  Hulme made it clear that in his opinion the movement from “barbarism” to “civilization” proposed by the conservative writers did not involve essential change or fundamental progress. Hulme claimed that [of ] course, man is capable of a certain kind of progress. He builds up sciences and civilisation, but the progress is here rather one of accumulation than of alteration in capacity . . . If you compare the intellect to a sponge, it is easy to see that the sponge can be empty or full of water, without its “capacity” being altered. From the moment that the human species has been constituted, its intellectual possibilities were fixed at the same time.

Hulme’s conviction about the absolute constancy of the human species, and the fact that he found “a tremendous consolation in the idea of fixity and sameness,” made a belief in any type of progress impossible. In late  and , again departing from the other conservative writers, Hulme took pains to prove these points. Two arguments were especially important: the idea of original sin and an alternative view of evolution. According to Hulme in April , man “is incapable of attaining any kind of perfection, because, either by nature, as the result of original sin, or the result of evolution, he encloses within him certain antinomies.” It is possible that Hulme was introduced to the idea of original sin by Sorel or by Lasserre, or through his growing interest in Catholicism, which the French writers insisted was a necessary complement to the “Classic” tradition of control, restraint, and hierarchy. For Hulme original sin was a “sane classical dogma” and “absolutely identical with the normal religious attitude” because it made people accept the existence of a transcendent god, rather than assume, as did the “Romantics,” “that man is a god” who can create “a heaven on earth.” Humans can never

Cyclic views emerge



act as gods or improve their world because their imperfections cannot be overcome. According to Hulme, this is an absolute truth wisely acknowledged in the past but forgotten in the present because of the attraction of ideas of progress. As he argued in a  lecture at Cambridge University titled “Anti-Romanticism and Original Sin,” “repeat the word ‘Progress’ often enough and it is easy to delude oneself into denying the truths of the doctrine of Original Sin amidst the mess of hypothetical Utopias, which ignore the principle of the constancy of Man.” In November , Hulme found another support for his belief that the absolute unchangeableness of mankind precluded the possibility of progress in a new theory of evolution. His great discovery was the work of the scientist Hugo De Vries whose “mutation theory” of evolution was a “widely popular alternative” to that of Darwin. Hulme was particularly excited about De Vries’s theory because it was a scientific alternative to the idea of progress. Unlike original sin, which was a religious theory, De Vries’s theory enabled Hulme “to keep the classical view with an appearance of scientific backing.” In particular De Vries enabled Hulme to argue against people who, using Darwin’s “antiquated theory of evolution,” “triumphantly assert that man had evolved from the brute, and that there was no reason to suppose that the evolution had finished.” Because Darwin holds that “each step in evolution has come gradually, by an accumulation of favourable small variations” people conclude “that man himself might, by the accumulation of such variations, gradually change into something better.” De Vries’s “Mutation theory” proves this to be scientifically wrong: “it supposes that each new species came into existence in one big variation, as a kind of ‘sport,’ and, that once constituted, a species remains absolutely constant.” Thus, Hulme concluded, “there would then be no hope at all of progress for man.” But not only did De Vries’s theory disprove the idea of progress, it also provided scientific proof for Hulme’s political theories of radical conservatism. According to Hulme, because “each race of man once having come into existence, is created with a certain mental and moral capacity, which is fixed from the moment of its creation, and never changes or increases,” theories of democracy that assume humans can govern themselves wisely given a proper education or environment must be wrong. As Hulme concluded, “it is then no good planning out any state of society whose successful working would depend on the assumption that the percentage of intelligent and disinterested people can be indefinitely increased.” Moreover, De Vries also supported Hulme’s views “on the question of equality and hierarchy” because he argued that “Not



Modernism

only . . . is the average level of each species absolutely constant, but the percentage of slight variations in different directions also remains constant.” As a result, certain groups in society will be superior to others and the inferior groups cannot improve themselves to join the ranks of the superior. Thus inequality and a hierarchy of talents are scientific facts that must be acknowledged. Using De Vries, therefore, Hulme had supported his beliefs in the uniformity of human nature and the impossibility of improvement over time. He was well aware that most people would not like these ideas because of the “modern disease, the horror of constancy” and the sickness of having “ ‘dynamic’ on the brain,” which “makes a man contemplate the idea of a constant world with such repugnance, so that he insists, in spite of all evidence, in believing that progress is continuous, and that man may and does change.” Hulme, on the other hand, believed that “there is nothing absurd or repugnant in the notion of a constant world, in which there is no progress.” Rather, “there is great consolation in the idea that the same struggles have taken place in each generation, and that men have always thought as we think now.” Thus Hulme had provided himself with supernatural and scientific proof of the impossibility of any type of progress. At this time as well he was given a suggestion for a different pattern of history. This came from his reading of the  book, by “the celebrated Egyptologist” Sir Flinders Petrie, The Revolutions of Civilisation. Hulme thought that this work definitively answered the question of whether it is a fact that “the progress and civilisation of humanity have been slowly and steadily increasing.” According to Hulme, “Dr. Petrie gives an emphatic negative” and finds a different “regular structure behind it all.” Drawing on new archaeological evidence from Egypt and Crete, Petrie was able “to trace the rise, growth, and decay of fourteen civilisations of equal length with the classical one.” “The result of his inquiry,” Hulme claimed, was “that civilisation is a recurrent phenomena, and not an ever-sweeping onward movement.” Here was historical proof that the universal pattern of history was of cycles, not progress. Or so Hulme concluded. Petrie, however, was not so unequivocal. While he did claim that “civilisation is a recurrent phenomenon” with alternating cycles of growth and decay, Petrie also proposed that over time the best features of each cycle had increased in quantity and quality, while the collapse after each cycle had grown less destructive. Petrie believed that “there are lesser intervals of barbarism between the civilisations, and that the civilisation phase in each period is

Cyclic views emerge



longer at each recurrence. This is in accord with the common idea that the world is getting more civilised as the ages go on.” And Petrie concluded that “this is the real nature of human progress.” Petrie, thus, like the conservative writers, did not abandon the hope for progress or happily accept the idea of circularity. In fact, his pattern was like the Romantic spiral, but with many loops. Moreover, in the conclusion to his book Petrie proposed that the science of eugenics might even ensure a more lasting progress. Hulme, however, ignored the progressive element in Petrie’s work and viewed the book only as a proof of the idea of circularity. With his scientific and religious proof of the constancy of human nature across time, and his historical proof of the pattern of past civilizations, Hulme was entirely convinced that the best characterization of history was not progress but circularity. And he was very careful to insist that by circularity, he meant strict circularity. He tolerated absolutely no concept of progress in his theory of history – either linear automatic progress or a combination of recurrence and progress in a spiral view. Both were signs of a weak “Romanticism”; only strict circularity was an indication of “Classic” strength. This is why in the description of the lecture Hulme gave at Cambridge in February  that heads this Chapter, he was reported as saying that “it never occurred to the Classicists to have any illusions about Progress.” It is also the reason why Hulme wished to “take as his insignia a particularly lively Wheel, chastising a complacent Spiral.” Hulme’s theory of the cyclic nature of history by  was the most well-developed of all the Modernists, but it was not complete. He had done no more than state that history moves in cycles rather than progresses. Certain important developments that took place in Hulme’s thinking in the end of  and throughout  would enable him to add depth, scope, and content to his theory of history and would make this theory even more attractive to the other Modernists. Although Yeats, Ford, Pound, and Lawrence had not developed explicit theories of historical circularity by  they were already well prepared to do so. Because of their political opinions they also assumed the existence of an older tradition of life that predated the changes they found so disturbing in present-day Europe. What all the Modernists liked most about this alternative aristocratic or “Classic” tradition of the past was the sense of stability and permanence it engendered. As Yeats put it, aristocrats have a “preoccupation with what is lasting and noble” and “come from the permanent things and create them.” A desire for permanence and stability in opposition to change informed almost all of the ideas of the Modernists at this time. This is



Modernism

clearly evident in their thinking on spiritualism and religion. As we have seen, since the beginning of their careers, all the Modernists sought deeper spiritual fulfillment to counter modern materialism and determinism. At first their spiritualisms were similar to their assumptions of progress in the material world; the more important spiritual reality that existed beyond or behind the distasteful modern world was characterized by movement and evolution, and especially by a progress to truth, perfection, or a union with the divine. However, at about the same time that they began to consider politics more carefully, the representation of the “other” spiritual reality changed for Yeats, Hulme, and Lawrence, and even Pound and Ford expressed religious views that were very much like the others. With unusual similarity, all the Modernists began to describe the true deeper reality, not as progressive, but as a permanent and unchanging realm that contains all of the past simultaneously. Moreover, analogies were made occasionally between this world and the alternative aristocratic tradition they preferred in politics. In this they were expressing attitudes similar to those that provided the basis for Hulme’s cyclic theory. Perhaps the best example of this change in spiritual beliefs was that of Yeats. As we have seen, his first involvement in spiritualism was with groups like the Theosophists and his own Order of the Golden Dawn who promised an evolutionary ascent to oneness with the divine. After the turn of the century, however, Yeats lost interest in both groups and became involved in experiments to communicate directly with the supernatural world. More important, this “other” world that Yeats wished to contact was characterized as the unchanging place where souls go after death, and a storehouse of all knowledge that can be accessed by the living. Yeats had always been interested in a supernatural world filled with beings, such as ghosts and fairies, who interact with humans in the natural world. Now he focused more than ever on the Neo-Platonic idea of the “Great Memory” or “Anima Mundi.” This Great Memory contained all knowledge of everything that had existed, including facts of nature as well as the experiences and insights of individual souls who had died. As Yeats described it, “the Anima Mundi . . . has a memory independent of embodied individual memories, though they constantly enrich it with their images and thoughts.” It also is “a memory of nature that reveals events and symbols of distant centuries.” There were a number of ways in which this Great Memory could be accessed by the living. Occasionally it occurred spontaneously. According

Cyclic views emerge



to Yeats, it was the “dwelling-house of symbols” which periodically float up into imaginative men’s minds. Yeats, however, wished to tap into this knowledge on demand, and to do this he turned in  to another type of spiritualism – s´eances and automatic writing. Automatic writing perhaps was most important to Yeats, as it was the foundation for his most notable philosophical work, A Vision, in . By both methods Yeats was convinced that he could receive answers to his questions, as well as be sent messages, from a vast number of souls who once lived in many different places and ages in the past. Communication with spirits, in turn, was certain proof that the Great Memory existed and that Yeats could learn truths from it about the past, present, and future. In Yeats’s spiritual reality, therefore, there was no progress and no chronological time. Thoughts and symbols from all ages and places existed together without significant difference between them. As one commentator put it, Yeats had established “the timeless and spaceless link between the living and the dead.” Ideas similar to those of Yeats’s Great Memory were apparent in the work of the other Modernists as well. As we have seen Hulme at first was deeply impressed by Henri Bergson’s theory of creative evolution and of the flux of the deeper reality of consciousness. However, in , Hulme began to change his interpretation of Bergson. This was undoubtedly because he had discovered that many radical conservatives disliked Bergson because of “the pernicious political deductions which may be drawn from his more purely philosophical ideas.” It was pointed out to Hulme that Bergson’s concept of the flux as constant change and evolution could be interpreted to mean that the present and future are so different from that past that there can be no comparison between them. Hulme was warned that Bergson’s claim that “the present moment is a unique moment and can be paralleled by nothing in the past,” meant that truths from the past could not be applied to the present and therefore a return to an older historical tradition was impossible. This argument encouraged Hulme, not to abandon Bergson, but to gradually alter his interpretation of Bergson, to emphasise permanence rather than change. Hulme now described Bergson’s ideas as a “religious interpretation of the universe” and perhaps the most “legitimate spiritual interpretation of the world.” Moreover, Hulme claimed that a belief in religion was the same thing as “a ‘belief ’ in the conservation of values” that are eternal. More important, Bergson’s flux, as Hulme now explained it, became more like Yeats’s Great Memory. It was a reality alternative to the material world, and “a permanent, continuous



Modernism

and enduring entity” that was collective, and that connected the minds of all people to each other and extended beyond each. This could be best understood, according to Hulme, with the metaphor of the London Underground system. Individual consciousness was like the various station clerks who, above ground, appear to be isolated and unconnected, but who can communicate with one another and are fundamentally connected beneath the surface by the train lines that run underneath them to which the stations have access. Hulme concluded: if a man could go to the centre of his own mind and penetrate beneath the surface manifestations of his consciousness he would feel himself joined to a world of consciousness which is independent of matter; he would feel himself joined on to something which went beyond himself, and in no sense an isolated point at the mercy of local changes in matter.

This is little different from the Great Memory. In fact, in  Hulme did believe in the existence of a realm where the souls of men go when they die, and that the “ultimate reality is a republic of eternal souls.” He was, according to a friend, becoming increasingly religious. Moreover, he admitted his acceptance of “the immortality of the soul” and “the Dogma of the Resurrection of the Flesh.” Hulme made it clear why he liked these views of religion; they were similar to an aristocratic political tradition because they contained values that had been handed down through the ages. This, in turn, gave Hulme the feeling that he was “no longer afloat on a sea . . . in which all the support I can get depends on my own activity in swimming, but joined by a chain of hands to the shore.” Lawrence also suggested the existence of a type of Great Memory. In April  he claimed that he believed in “a God, but not a personal God,” and that “when we die, like raindrops falling back again into the sea, we fall back into the big, shimmering sea of unorganised life which we call God.” Two years later Lawrence began to formulate more clearly his own, unique view of a “great religion,” which he called “a belief in the blood.” He predicted that “the return of the blood” would bring “hope and religious joy” to the modern scientific and secular world. This “blood” was transcendent and universal; it was “the great impersonal flesh and blood, greater than me.” Like the Great Memory, it included “everything that ever was thought and ever will be thought” and “contains all of the future.” Moreover, it was stable and fixed. Lawrence made clear that his religion was “just the opposite” of “the eternal triumphing over the moment, at the moment, at the very point of sweeping

Cyclic views emerge



it into the flow.” Rather, it is “the moment triumphant in its eternality.” Thus, instead of suggesting that the “other” world was an evolutionary progression in “the right direction” as he had in , Lawrence now described it as unchanging. He admitted that his “soul [was] hungry” for something of the eternal stillness that lies under all movement, under all life, like a source, incorruptible and inexhaustible. It is deeper than change, and struggling. So long I have acknowledged only the struggle, the stream, the change. And now I begin to feel something of the source, the great impersonal which never changes and out of which all change comes.

Pound did not elaborate on his spiritual views as much as did the others, but again similarities are apparent. As the heading to his  book of poems, Exultations, illustrates, Pound admired those things that are eternal and enduring, and transcend the mutability of nature: “I am an eternal spirit and the things I make are but ephemera, yet I endure: Yea, and the little earth crumbles beneath our feet and we endure.” Moreover, Pound preferred the stability and calm of the place to which those who “are grown formless, rise” above the turmoil and change of a world that is like an “overflowing river . . . run mad.” This stable and eternal realm also may have been a timeless community of souls similar to Yeats’s Anima Mundi and to Lawrence’s God; Pound wrote of how “the pale stream/ Of the souls of men” are “fused” into a greater “sea.” Poets especially may be able to tap into this sea of souls or eternal spirits because, according to Pound, “the souls of all men great/ At times pass through us,/ And we are melted into them.” Thus, at the same time the Modernists posited the existence of an unchanging political tradition of the past different from that of the present, they also claimed that an alternative, and more important, spiritual reality also existed, which was timeless and permanent and which contained all of the past simultaneously. Clearly a sense of progress, in which cumulative change over time makes the past and present fundamentally different, was absent from both views. Perhaps the most concrete description of this superior spiritual world was provided by Ford Madox Ford, the Modernist who wrote the least about religion, in his novel of , The Young Lovell: A Romance. The book is set in fifteenth-century England, and it implicitly accepts the idea that a world of spirits, fairies, or ghosts exists and interacts with the natural world of humans. At the end of the novel Ford gives a glimpse into the “other” world these spirits inhabit. After much trouble because of his possession by a witch, the main character, the young Lovell, becomes

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a hermit and his soul is transported to the other world. In this world all of the past, present, and future exist simultaneously. The gods and goddesses are entertained by watching a battle between a Greek hero and a medieval knight. They discuss “times past . . . times to come” while looking out over a sea in which ancient Greek and Renaissance Venetian ships sail. Moreover, according to Ford, “the cities of the plains they saw, and Rome and Delphi and Tyre, and cities to come that appeared like clouds of smoke, with tall columns rising up and glittering.” The supernatural world, again, was one of permanence and the collective residence of the divine and of the souls of all the dead. Ford’s picture of the supernatural world also points to another development in the Modernists’ spiritualism. The gods in Ford’s universe, like Phoebus Apollo in his earlier novel, were not Christian, but from another religious tradition – that of ancient Greece. Like Ford, most of the other Modernists were interested in finding a form of religious expression that was different from modern British Protestantism, which they found distasteful because of its association with democracy and materialism. Moreover, they wanted this alternative religion to contain the universal core of all great religious beliefs from a wide variety of times and places. This led some of the five Modernists to a study of comparative religion, which, in turn, supported their belief in the existence of an alternative tradition of life, thought, and politics, and of the identity of cultures across space and time. The Modernists were not unique in their interest in comparative religion at this time. Around the turn of the twentieth century many people had begun to study a wide variety of religious beliefs, both Christian and non-Western, in an attempt to find a new type of spiritual experience. This was another aspect of the spiritual revival of the time, which the historian, Janet Oppenheim, has argued was part of an effort to return “some sense of meaning, purpose, design, and beneficence in the universe” after nineteenth-century science and positivism had made a literal belief in the divine revelation of Christianity impossible. One person involved in this project who was particularly important for the Modernists was G.R.S. Mead, the founder of the Quest Society and editor of The Quest magazine. He was an old friend of Yeats, a new friend of Hulme, and was particularly important for Pound. Mead wished to show how a universal mystic religion that was “identical in its fundamentals with the Esoteric Philosophy of all the great religions of the world,” existed at many different times in the past. This spiritual tradition was condemned by the Catholic Church and therefore often ignored but, according to Mead, it formed an equally valid religious alternative to

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modern Christianity. Just as important, especially for the Modernists, was the lack of a sense of progress in Mead’s comparative religious studies. Unlike most agnostic comparative religionists and folklorists at the time, some of whom, such as J.G. Frazer and E.B. Tylor, would later become the founders of modern anthropology, Mead did not study older religions in order to point out the roots of modern Christianity in primitive superstition and the ultimate triumph of the progress of science in destroying that superstition – indicating a presupposition of religious evolution. Rather, Mead had no real sense of chronology or evolutionary progress when it came to different types of religion; he regarded all ages of true spiritualism as analogous and as positive regardless of whether they appeared earlier or later in time. He believed in a universal tradition of religious thinking, which takes different forms in different periods and countries, but is essentially the same across time and space. Pound especially was impressed by Mead’s “comparative study of the many attempts throughout the centuries that have been made to realise” the divine. In  and  he echoed Mead’s ideas about religion. Pound believed that “there are . . . only two kinds of religion. There is the Mosaic or Roman or British Empire type, where someone, having to keep a troublesome rabble in order, invents and scares them with a disagreeable bogie, which he calls god.” On the other hand there are much preferable “forms of ecstatic religion” such as were held by the medieval troubadours, who took their beliefs and deities from all major religions. They combined Christianity with ancient pagan mysticism, “memories of Hellenistic mysteries,” cults like that of Bacchus, Isis, or Dionysus, and perhaps an oriental cult from Rome. Pound’s own religious beliefs were much the same: Our creed may run riot somewhat as follows:I believe in the Divine, the ruler of heaven and earth, and in his most splendid protagonist, Christ Jesus our Lord, born of the Virgin Diana, succoured of Pallas Athene, Lord of Horus, Lord of Raa, Prince of the House of Angels.

Lawrence concurred with Pound and developed a strikingly similar “creed”: I worship Christ, I worship Jehovah, I worship Pan, I worship Aphrodite. But I do not worship hands nailed and running with blood upon a cross, nor licentiousness, nor lust. I want them all, all the gods. They are all God.

Lawrence’s religion, therefore, like Pound’s, had many different expressions in different times and places but was not altered fundamentally by the passing of time. As he wrote to a friend, “whatever

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name one gives Him in worship we all strive towards the same God . . . Christians, Buddhists, Mrs. Dax, me, we all stretch our hands in the same direction.” Thus for the Modernists, religion was not progressive. Neither the superior spiritual world, nor the preferable tradition of worship incorporated any cumulative change over time. As a result, there could be no anachronism in juxtaposing references to souls or forms of worship that had existed in vastly different times and places. This attitude to religion, which was similar to an unchanging aristocratic political tradition, was gradually translated into a new sense of history. It was in his discussion of the history of art that Pound first began formulating a new theory of history in general. Art, in fact, was described by Pound much like the superior spiritual realm; it was permanent and unchanging, and contained all of the past simultaneously. Pound came to this view in  by adopting the Bergsonian concept of the existence of two types of time, the “apparent” external time of the material world and a more “real” internal time of human consciousness, and by applying it to art. However, he reversed Bergson’s conclusion that “real” time was one of constant change and flux. According to Pound, while “apparent” time might include linear progress, the “real” time of literature is unchanging because “art and humanity . . . [remain] ever the same” even though “much change had swept over the world.” Pound also adopted another theory of Bergson. Bergson claimed that real time is also characterized by a mixture of the past and present; “inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present.” Pound agreed and concluded that this means there is “basis for comparison” of all sorts of systems and styles of literature. As a result, according to Pound, in art All ages are contemporaneous. It is , let us say in Morocco. The Middle Ages are in Russia. The future stirs in the minds of the few. This is especially true of literature, where the real time is independent of the apparent, and where many dead men are our grandchildren’s contemporaries, while many of our contemporaries have been already gathered into Abraham’s bosom, or some more fitting receptacle.

According to literary critic, Stan Smith, in this quote “ ‘real time’ is an eternal present where all that is truly living exists.” It is “a timeless ‘tradition’ where all art coexists” and to which “literature provides priviledged access.” Because of this different, more ‘real’, sense of time in art, artists can use material from a wide variety of ages and places without anachronism.

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Yeats had a theory very similar to that of Pound. As he wrote in : “Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truths, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.” Because the tradition of great art is permanent and contains all that was best in the past, the artist who uses it in the present is not limited by linear chronology. He can appreciate and use the tradition as it appeared in any age without anachronism; he “can know the ancient records and be like some mystic courtier who has stolen the keys from the Girdle of Time, and can wander where it please him amid the splendours of ancient Courts.” Thus, in art as in religion, progress did not exist for Pound or Yeats. Moreover, when Pound wrote about subjects other than art he also began to treat them in a non-progressive manner. For example, in describing contemporary America in  Pound compared political, social, and artistic features of vastly different ages and places but gave no indication that chronological time produced any differences. The features of America that Pound disliked also were found in “the Dark Ages” and “Spain . . . in the time of the Senecas.” What he admired reminded him of “Imperial Rome,” “Europe, in the day of Clodovic,” medieval Tuscany, “the baths of Diocletian,” and “the spirit of the Pyramids.” Pound’s historical sense, therefore, emphasized the contemporaneity of past and present, rather than cumulative development or progress. It was thinking about politics rather than art that led Ford, as it had Hulme, to a similar rejection of historical progress. For example, in  Ford explicitly abandoned his previous Whig view of history. He realized that the type of history he, his grandfather, and most English schoolboys were brought up with had an implicit assumption of positive evolution: “the Englishman sees his history as a matter of a good-humoured broadening down of precedent to precedent, a broad and tranquil stream of popular advance to power,” “to the Protestant, individualist, free speech, free thought, free trade, political economics of the Victorian era” which was the time of greatest benefit to England. Ford both criticized this Whig assumption of progress and ridiculed those reformers and optimists who “maintain that the world is perfectible.” According to Ford, those people who attempt to change the world to effect progress create disasters. In opposition to progress, Ford, like Hulme, began to consider the possibility that history was cyclic. In  Ford admitted that he had a different view of history than previously and claimed that “for me, my private and particular image of the course of English history in these

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matters is one of waving lines. I see tendencies rise to the surface of the people, I see them fall again and rise again.” Two years earlier he had written that in the arena of Triumphant Principle pendulums swing backwards and forwards: the undisputed right of to-day becoming the open question of to-morrow, and the unquestioned wrong of the immediate future. This is a platitude because it is one of the indisputable verities. In the country they say that large clocks when they tick solemnly and slowly, thud out the words: “Alive – Dead; Alive – Dead” – because in this world at every second a child is born, a man dies. But, in London, a listener to the larger clock which ticks off the spirits of successive ages, seems to hear above the roar of the traffic, the slow reverberation: “Never – Again; Never – Again,” as principles rise and die, and rise and die again. . . . Arts rise and die again, systems rise and die again, faiths are born only to die and to rise once more; the only thing constant and undying is the human crowd.

There are a number of other instances in which Ford made it more clear that his view was in fact circular. In his poem “Grey Matter,” published in The Face of the Night (), Ford presented a conversation between a man and a woman. The woman despairs over “this dead-dawning century that lacks all/ faith,/ All hope, all aim, and all the mystery/ That comforteth.” The man responds that she should be patient “Since, by the revolution of the wheel,/ The one swings under, let us wait content.” Finally, in  in his novel Mr. Apollo, Ford connected his religious and political beliefs to a possible cyclic view of history. As we have seen, the Greek god Apollo was an aristocrat who was attempting to revive a belief in true religion that had been destroyed by the atheism of scientific and evolutionary ideas of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer, and by the concomitant rise of middle-class avarice and lower-class poverty. According to Apollo, atheism first made its appearance in Greece with Plato, and along with this atheism went a belief in progress. However, the last believers in the true religion of the Hellenic divinities had a different view of history. Their most esteemed philosopher was not Plato, but the now-forgotten “Egathistothepompus.” Apollo explains that he it was who especially had promulgated the theory that mankind was perfectible, but moved in cycles, that there had been a Golden Day in Egypt that declined, till in Athens the wheel of humanity was again exalted, and so in Rome, and so doubtless onwards into the unknown future and back into the unchronicled past.

Throughout the novel Ford indicated that perhaps this prophecy soon would be proven true. Apollo is encouraged to start a new age of religion

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by the openness of the younger generation of the s to his ideas, and the fact that they have begun to find the atheism and evolutionary ideas of nineteenth-century scientists distasteful. The young people are much more interested in the religious ideas of Apollo. It appears that the pendulum might be swinging back again from atheism to belief, and a new cycle started. As one member of the older generation, who had spent his life promoting atheism, laments, “ ‘It’s all coming back’.” In other words, a preferable religious tradition in the past that is also aristocratic might return in the future. This, plus the rejection of progress, is essential to a theory of circularity. The other three Modernists did not make explicit statements that history was cyclic at this time, but there are indications in their work that they were increasingly attracted to cyclic theories. For example, Lawrence’s new religion of blood may have been based on a sense of circularity. He hoped for the “return of the blood” and a revival of his alternative religion. Moreover, this religion of the blood also “gives us joy,” according to Lawrence, because “it is not the falling rose, but the rose for ever rising to bud and falling to fruit” in imitation of the cyclic pattern of nature. In  Pound’s poetry also increasingly included the theme of the cyclic renewal of nature in spring time and the hope that a similar rebirth or “new metamorphoses” might apply to the death of other important things such as love, poetry or life in general. Perhaps influenced by Nietzsche (“There is no comfort being over-man”), Pound counseled resignation to a cyclic force that humans cannot control: “Love and desire and gain and good forgetting/ Thou canst not stay the wheel, hold none too long!” Like Ford, Pound also suggested that Greek gods currently may be returning, awakened from their sleep as the spring emerges from winter, only with a greater potential for Paterian vengeance because they are “the swift to harry” with “souls of blood.” Finally, Pound experimented with the image of advancing and receding waves and of the revolving needle of a compass to depict history. In his  poem “The Needle” he suggested that while history had until the present been positive (“we have had our day, your day and mine”) it was about to change (“this land turns evil slowly”) and start “the hour of its decline,” because what “The waves bore in, soon they will bear away.” The only hope is to wait until the tide and compass cyclically return to a preferable time – “Abide/ Under some neutral force/ Until this course turneth aside.” It was perhaps this hope for the cyclic renewal of a better historical period that encouraged Pound at this time more frequently to “sing of risorgimenti.”

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Yeats also expressed a preference for the circular over the linear. In his  article “Discoveries” he wrote that artists must imitate neither saints who seek to go directly to the permanence of the absolute, nor middle-class materialists who are concerned only with the impermanent world. Both follow a linear “arrow” either up to the center of god or down to the natural world. Artists, rather, should take a middle position and concern themselves with those things that are a combination of “the still and fixed,” in other words, with things that recur. They must stay on “the ring where everything comes round again” and which is outside of, and in between, both. This will make their work supremely religious because, according to Yeats, “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere.” It also will make their work noble because aristocrats also act cyclically; they “create now and again for some brief moment” an ideal society. Finally, the Modernists’ developing historical sense was also reflected in their creative writing. The result was that they were led closer to a solution to the problem they had grappled with since the beginning of their careers – how to create a new art that combined the best features of their predecessors while avoiding the worst. Those Modernists who wrote about aesthetic theory at this time were still concerned with the same issues as before. They wanted their writing, as Pound put it, to be “explicit and precise” and “a vital part of contemporary life,” but also beautiful, symbolic, and spiritual. Hulme was the first to discover a way to achieve this, and it was closely related to his new historical views. Even before the change in his political beliefs, Hulme realized that a key feature of “Romantic” art was a reflection of an admiration for flux and change. Hulme learned this from Bergson who suggested that to recover or approximate the flux of internal consciousness literature should emphasize the element of movement; nothing should halt the flow of the words, especially not an individual image. As in his religious interpretation of Bergson, Hulme came to exactly the opposite conclusion. He suggested that a visual image should be a “clear and precise description of external things,” intended to “arrest you, and to . . . prevent you gliding through an abstract process,” rather than an approximation of the flux in which things “run into one another in inextricable blurs, and are not separate and distinct.” Hulme called the theory of aesthetics that he developed from this insight “Imagism”. It was based on an “Image” that was fixed, stationary, and isolated. A poetry of images, according to Hulme, “arrests your mind all the time with a picture” rather than allowing the mind “to run along with the least possible effort to a conclusion.” It “attempts to fix an impression” rather than to tell a story. In distinction

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from Bergson, he thought that “this new verse resembles sculpture rather than music.” It also was similar to the method of a “cinematograph” which Hulme knew Bergson disliked because “a series of static sections are taken, none of which expresses movement.” According to Hulme, however, the poet should “regard each word as a picture, then a succession of pictures.” Thus, Hulme’s new poetry avoided change and, with it, progress. The use of static images could create a new type of poetry, according to Hulme, because they were “not the vain decorative and verbal images of the ordinary poets” of the modern world. Rather, they resembled an older tradition of “Christian Mystics” and “Neo-Platonic philosophers” who were his “true kindred spirits.” This return to an older poetic tradition did something else as well. As did the religious and political tradition Hulme admired, it helped provide a comforting sense of permanence and order in the midst of chaos. As Hulme put it, [i]t is as if the surface of our mind was a sea in a continual state of motion, that there were so many waves on it, their existence was so transient, and they interfered so much with each other, that one was unable to perceive them. The artist by making a fixed model of one of these transient waves enables you to isolate it out and to perceive it in yourself. In that sense art merely reveals, it never creates.

Good art for Hulme, therefore, resembled his new political and religious ideas. It provided stability and a sense of a more important realm of unchanging values, in direct contrast to the confusing surface of flux and change. In this theory Hulme had completely reversed his previous critique of thinkers who “wished to create a static fixity where their soul might rest.” This is precisely what Hulme was now aiming at in art as well as politics. Pound developed a very similar theory in , perhaps under the influence of Hulme, which he named “Imagisme” and which was described as an art that was both precise and suggestive because it expressed emotions or truths of a higher reality with visual concrete images. It too was inspired by artists Pound considered Christian mystics – the medieval Troubadours. Pound particularly admired the Troubadours because they had found a “middle way” between monks in the cloisters who were concerned with “registering movement in the invisible aether” and “grasping at the union with the absolute,” and those poets who only represented “the mortal turmoil” of the material world. The Troubadours, rather, took “something of the manner, and something of the spirit” of the monks and transferred it “to the beauty of life as they found it.”

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Modernism

In February  in the first explicit “Credo” of his aesthetics Pound reiterated his belief that “the natural object” is the “proper and perfect symbol.” He also added something more. In the same year he published a series of articles titled “I Gather the Limbs of Osiris.” As the title suggests, Pound, like Isis, was attempting to gather the scattered fragments of all past literatures to rebuild a new literature for his own day. Pound made it clear that he held “no brief for any particular system of metric”; he liked early Greek, Proven¸cal, Anglo-Saxon, Spanish, Latin, and French verse equally well. And he continued, “it is not beyond the pales of possibility that English verse of the future will be a sort of orchestration taking account of all these systems.” In fact, elsewhere he claimed that “the artist should master all known forms and systems of metric.” However, if all forms of verse that Pound liked were “orchestrated” and static visual images were employed, the result would be an art form that could not have a progressive structure. Forms and images of vastly different time periods and countries would have to be juxtaposed with no sense of movement or chronology. By  Pound had changed his poetry to reflect his new theory. Not only was the diction much closer to common speech and the images more modern, but Pound also began to experiment with the juxtaposition of images without concern for chronology or distance. For example, section III, “Further Instructions” of his poem “Lustra” begins and ends as follows: Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions. .... But you, newest song of the lot, You are not old enough to have done much mischief. I will get you a green coat out of China With dragons worked upon it. I will get you the scarlet silk trousers From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella; Lest they say we are lacking in taste, Or that there is no caste in this family.

Thus, not only have archaic medievalisms and vague symbols been replaced by concrete images in this poem, an assumption of progress, which would find an analogy between ancient China and medieval Italy unrealistic, is absent.

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Ford’s creative work also reflected his new sense of the past. Here he too abandoned progress for circularity. In his novels Ford developed what would become his most characteristic mature theme – an aristocrat who belongs to the alternative tradition of the past, is out of place in the modern world, and wishes to return, cyclically, to the past. This was certainly the case with Count MacDonald in The New Humpty-Dumpty. At the same time as he developed this theme, Ford also began to experiment with the various plot structures that would eventually characterize his mature works. In particular he abandoned the linear progressive structure of his previous novels for a “time-shift technique” and even circularity. A circular structure is evident in Ford’s novel of , Ladies Whose Bright Eyes. In this novel the hero, Mr. Sorrell, a middle-class publisher of the twentieth century, is transported back to the fourteenth century by a train accident. Although Sorrell is disturbed by some of the material inconveniences of the fourteenth century, he finds himself more at home among the aristocracy there than he felt in his own time period and with his own class. Ford presents Sorrell’s ease of communication and understanding of the people and their society in such a way as to suggest that no fundamental progress occurred over the course of the centuries; the only progress was the superficial change of material conveniences. The novel ends where it began – in the twentieth century – when Sorrell wakes up in a hospital bed and proceeds to recreate his life in the present to reflect the best of both worlds; he adopts fourteenth-century values, ideals, and style but with modern plumbing and electricity. Thus, in this novel, not only did Ford deny the efficacy of progress, he adopted a circular structure to do so. In The New Humpty-Dumpty (), although Ford did not use circularity, he did experiment with a time-shift technique. The events of the novel are not reported in a linear chronological fashion. Ford follows one character through part of a day, then moves to another character at the beginning of the same day and follows that person’s reactions to the same events. This continues with a number of different characters throughout the novel. In this way, although Ford is telling a story that moves through a linear series of events, he does it without regard to strict chronology. Ford returned to a circular structure in Mr. Fleight (). In this novel the hero is Mr. Blood, a lazy but brilliant aristocrat who is “an anachronism” and would have been more at home “a hundred years ago.” He is aroused out of his inaction by the incompetent but very wealthy lower-middle-class upstart, Mr. Fleight, who had been with him at Oxford and who desires Blood’s help to get into politics. As the names

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suggest, Blood represents the tradition of stability and permanence, while Fleight represents the alternative one of flux and change. Blood decides to help Fleight in order to prove that politics has become such a sordid and pointless affair that money alone can buy success. Naturally Blood is proven correct and Fleight succeeds in winning a seat in parliament. As with Ladies Whose Bright Eyes, the novel ends where it begins, but even more so – not just in the same century, but in the same exact place six months later. And the sense that nothing fundamental had happened is much greater. In Ladies Whose Bright Eyes there is some suggestion that Mr. Sorrell’s life is better at the end than at the beginning – he has the best of both worlds. In Mr. Fleight this is not the case – although middleclass Mr. Fleight’s life is radically transformed, aristocratic Mr. Blood’s life has not changed in any way. In commenting on Ford’s novels between  and , literary critic Robert Green has suggested that they are flawed by Ford’s inability to create a sense of time passing. In particular, in Mr. Fleight, Green mentions that “a year has passed but Blood still occupies the same chair, thinking the same thoughts at the end as at the beginning. None of the intervening events seemed to have affected him in any way. Nothing seems to have changed.” This may be a fault, but, as Green concurs, because of Ford’s previous ability to express time and his experiments with time in his other novels of this period, it is unlikely that this was simply a technical difficulty. Ford, like the aristocrats in his novels, had rejected the idea of progress and reacted against the impermanence of change. Both were features of an unappealing middle-class way of life. As a result he was attempting to find an effective alternative to the chronological narrative that expresses an acceptance of fundamental progress. His sense of an alternative aristocratic tradition of fixity and permanence, therefore, had made achronicity and circularity a much more of important part of his work. The Modernists, thus, increasingly abandoned theories and representations of progress because their desire for constancy and permanence now informed their thoughts on almost all subjects – on aesthetics and religion, as well as politics. This admiration for stability, in turn, was a result of their fear of the chaos that would follow democracy in an age in which there were no higher spiritual or aristocratic values to provide direction, and no role for artists to promote either. Cyclic structures provided stability and continuity with the past, they were able to provide order amidst the flux of the modern world, and if they characterized the pattern of history they provided hope for a return to a better past.

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In the next few years, from  to , the five Modernists were introduced to a number of new artistic styles and theories that served to confirm all of these ideas. What was to be the first of these new developments in the arts was referred to by Pound in his  poem quoted above – “Further Instructions.” One of his instructions was to get for his new poem “a green coat out of China.” An introduction to the arts of Asia was the next important step in the Modernists’ development of their mature thought and art.

 

“Our own image”: the example of Asian and non-Western cultures

A whole people, a whole civilisation, immeasurably strange to us, seems to have been taken up into this imagination; and yet we are not moved because of its strangeness, but because we have met our own image . . . or heard, perhaps for the first time in literature, our voice as in a dream. Yeats, “Preface to Gitanjali,” September .

“I seem to be getting Orient from all quarters.” When Ezra Pound made this remark in  he was not alone. Many participants of the London art world first were made aware of a variety of products from non-Western cultures at this time. Indian and Japanese poets arrived in the city, amidst much publicity in artistic journals, to give readings of their work and lectures about the arts of their nations. Art exhibits were organized and catalogs written by British critics with the help of a newly hired Asian staff. Numerous books and articles outlining the nature and value of non-Western art forms were published. Clearly “immeasurably strange” civilizations, such as the one referred to by Yeats in the quote above, were attracting much attention. It is hardly surprising that the five literary Modernists would take note of these “strange” civilizations. They could serve just as well as the Middle Ages for an escape from the ugly philistinism of the modern world. However, by , as is clear in the quote heading this chapter, a different attitude had emerged among the Modernists. Yeats specifically noted that he was “not moved because of [the] strangeness” of the distant culture, but because he felt a real sense of familiarity with it. The civilization to which he was referring was contemporary Bengal, but he could have meant any part of India, China, or Japan in the present or the past. Moreover, any of the other four Modernists could have made this remark because at roughly the same time they joined Yeats in a new interest in, and identification with, the art and culture of the non-Western world. 

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An exploration of non-Western civilization served above all to clarify and unify the ideas of the five Modernists. It solidified their new political, social, and religious thinking. It also helped them theorize more clearly about aesthetics and it gave them practical suggestions about how to make their creative work do all they had hoped. Moreover, their knowledge of non-Western culture supported and expanded the five Modernists’ developing theories of history. The “voice” Yeats heard in Bengali civilization was much like that of all ages in the European past they admired, especially the Middle Ages. This encouraged the Modernists to believe that an alternative tradition, which they found more sympathetic than their own, did in fact exist, and its existence was far more widespread than they had imagined hitherto. Clearly, the modern European way of life was not universally valid but might indeed be the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps it also might appear and disappear in many ages and places. In short, non-Western art and culture inspired the five Modernists to innovate in their creative work, and it reinforced their developing cyclic views of history. This is not to say that the “Orient” was unheard of in Britain before this period. However, when the Modernists became interested in it they were introduced to an entirely new interpretation, which marked an important development in the history of Western knowledge of Asia. Not only did Edwardian Britain witness the revival of spiritualism and emergence of radical conservatism, it was also a period of innovation in the study of Asian culture. There had been, of course, a great fascination with the “Orient” throughout the nineteenth century among British and European artists. Many Romantic and Victorian literary figures believed, like Friedrich Schlegel in , that “it is in the Orient that we must search for the highest Romanticism.” The strange mystery and exotic beauty of the Middle East and India inspired poems such as Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” Southey’s “Thalba the Destroyer,” Arnold’s “Sohrab and Rustrum” and “The Sick King of Bokhara,” and Tennyson’s “Persia,” “Timbuctoo,” and “Fatima.” Some artists were so taken by the “Orient” that they agreed with Gustave Flaubert who claimed in  that “modern man is progressing, Europe will be regenerated by Asia.” They hoped that the spiritual values of the East might redeem the rationalism and materialism of modern Western civilization. However, this admiration for Asia was not unequivocal. Fear of the brutality and degeneration of Asian culture, and anxiety about its potential effect on Europeans, underlay much Orientalist work. Moreover,

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the influence of the “Orient” was usually superficial. It was the “entire harvest of new, vague, and symbolic landscapes,” according to Raymond Schwab, that most interested European authors about “the gorgeous East” (to use Milton’s term), rather than any serious political, social, or aesthetic ideas that could be incorporated into their own culture. Or, as John MacKenzie put it about De Quincy and Coleridge, they largely “conceived of the East as a repository of desirable hedonism” or “heightened sensibilities.” In fact, for most of the nineteenth century very little that was truly Asian was evident in British art. Oriental images and themes might appear in poems and paintings, but they were superimposed on fundamentally European styles. Some artists even acknowledged this. As Southey put it about his poem, “The Curse of Kehama,” “the spirit of the poem was Indian, but there was nothing Oriental in the style. I had learnt the language of poetry from our own great masters and the great poets of antiquity.” The first stanza of Tennyson’s “Recollections of the Arabian Nights,” makes this quite clear: When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew Free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flow’d back with me, The forward-flowing tide of time; And many a sheeny summer-morn, Adown the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat’s shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens green and old; True Mussulman was I and sworn, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alrashid.

One reason for the superficial attitude toward Asia may have been a lack of deep knowledge about its culture. Prior to  the “Orient” which was most extensively researched by European scholars was the Middle East. While the most important religious and philosophical works of India, China, and Japan had been translated and studied by the end of the nineteenth century, far less was known of the artistic theory and practice of South and East Asia. Of the visual arts, Japanese crafts and applied arts were most popular in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, for example among Impressionist painters, Symbolist poets, William Morris and his Arts and Crafts Movement, and the public in general. However, as art critics have pointed out, this nineteenth-century “Japonisme” or “Japanism” was not based on a serious study or a comprehensive

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knowledge of the real scope and history of Far Eastern aesthetics. The Japanese art available in the West at the time was mainly woodblock prints and contemporary decorative arts, such as ceramics, lacquers, and fabrics that the Japanese knew were of inferior quality. The best examples of painting and drawing and the works of the great classical ages of Japan were not widely available. The fine arts of India and China were even less well known. The limited British and American knowledge of Asian art in the nineteenth century was due to the fact that, while many people, including great art critics like Ruskin and Morris, admired and collected the crafts and applied arts of Asia and hoped that Asians would continue to produce them in traditional ways, few believed that Asians were capable of creating sophisticated works of “fine” art such as painting, sculpture, poetry, or drama. For example, George Birdwood, the curator of Indian holdings at the South Kensington museum and a great exponent of Indian crafts and handiwork, claimed in  that “sculpture and painting are unknown, as fine arts, in India.” The American, James Jackson Jarvis, who wrote “the most extensive account of Japanese art available in the West in the s,” also believed that the “fine arts” “in their supreme significance . . . are not found in the aesthetic constitution of the Japanese.” A change in this condescending attitude toward Asian art and in the superficial use of Asian images first occurred at the end of the nineteenth century in the visual arts. Inspired by an exposure to Japanese prints and crafts, and by the work of French artists with similar interests (such as Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec), British painters such as J.M. Whistler, D.G. Rossetti, and Aubrey Beardsley, were led to alter their own work in important ways. Often, like previous artists, they merely included Japanese objects or copied Japanese signatures in European-style naturalistic paintings. But in some cases they went further to adopt Japanese aesthetic forms, such as simple linear compositions, flat patterning, and decorative and asymmetric arrangements. As a result, they were able to transform Western art in the direction of lightness, delicacy, and abstraction. It was at the same time as “Japonisme” in visual art, and perhaps because of it, that an understanding of Asian fine art also began to grow. The visual artists themselves were not aware of the aesthetic theories underlying the art they admired, or of the greatest works of the visual arts of Asia. However, this changed in the s and s when the American art critic, Ernst Fenollosa, organized the first comprehensive

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collection of the best art of Japan and China at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and for the first time made a truly intensive study of the history and techniques behind these works. Inspired by Fenollosa, in the years around  British art critics working both in Britain and Asia began a campaign to promote the understanding and appreciation of the fine arts of Asia. The most important of the new Asian art critics included the Englishman, E.B. Havell, who lived in India from the s and worked to revive traditional Indian art through his writings, and through the museum and art school he founded in Calcutta. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy was another significant figure because of his publications, and also because he straddled both worlds; he was of British and Indian descent, brought up and educated in Britain, and worked and lived both in England and India. The person called one of the two “chief English experts in Far-Eastern Art,” however, was Laurence Binyon who was crucial in extending the British Museum’s collection after  in his capacity as assistant keeper of prints and drawings. Finally, Roger Fry was a painter as well as an art critic who helped to popularize Asian culture in the British art world. The five Modernists were very much aware of the ideas of these art critics and of their innovative perspective on Asian art. While the new critics did hold some nineteenth-century attitudes toward Asian culture, such as the belief that Asians were more spiritual than Westerners, they also approached Asian art in a very new way. Their most important innovation was the abandonment of one key assumption that formerly had made it impossible to consider Asian culture seriously – the idea of historical progress in art. Before the early twentieth century, theories of the progressive development of human culture up an evolutionary ladder from “primitivism” to “civilization” were crucial in explaining the cultural differences between peoples. For example, this usually was the explanation for why traditional Asian fine art looked very different from that of Classical Greece or the Renaissance in Italy; because Asians had not advanced through enough of the stages of civilization, they had not developed the technical ability and scientific knowledge that enabled more sophisticated cultures to mirror nature realistically. The absence of naturalism in artistic productions, therefore, according to most nineteenth-century art critics, was an indication of the lack of material progress of a backward or primitive people, or of those in a civilization in decline, who did not have significant talent or great skill. In short, because of an underlying belief in a theory of historical progress,

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nineteenth-century Europeans assumed that, while Asians might be able to produce pretty objects for practical use, they were entirely incapable of creating fine art. An example of this type of nineteenth-century aesthetic thinking can be found in the works of the writers for the Action Fran¸caise that had so influenced Hulme. Because of their sense that progress in politics was achieved by order and willpower, the Action Fran¸caise assumed that there was a similar progress in art. According to Lasserre, the primitive nature of man is stupid, soft, inert, morose, feminine, and apathetic. This “imb´ecillit´e originelle” could only be overcome by the passage of time, and the development of the skill, order, and discipline that builds civilizations. Supreme art, like anything else that is great, therefore, can exist only in the most advanced civilizations, such as in classical Greece and Rome, and especially in the “most excellent” art of seventeenth-century France. It was, therefore, a competent, realistic mirroring of nature. It was this nineteenth-century assumption of the technical incompetence of the non-naturalistic art of chronologically earlier civilizations – an evolutionary view of art – that was precisely the sort of position the new Asian art critics abandoned. They explicitly denied the assumption that non-Westerners are incapable of producing fine art, and claimed, rather that there had been and still was great Asian fine art, as good as that of the West. They could hold this opinion, they claimed, because they had studied the great works of art, not the inferior crafts exported to the West and because they realized, as Roger Fry put it, that Asian art works “must be judged in themselves and by their own standards.” This deeper knowledge led them explicitly to reject the Western assumption of the alliance of naturalism and progress. The new art critics, like Havell, took pains to explain to their readers that, despite the lack of naturalism, Asian art is hardly “primitive” or unskilled. Rather, it is based on ancient and sophisticated aesthetic principles that require “perfect control of technical methods” and demand extensive training. It can be achieved, therefore, only by artists of “consummate skill.” If understood properly, as Fry concluded, Europeans should be able to appreciate “the restraint, the economy of means, the exquisite perfection of quality, of the masterpieces of Eastern art.” The reason that Asian artists do not use naturalistic forms, therefore, is not because they are unable to do so. Rather, they have made a conscious choice. They, in fact, believe that naturalism in art is simplistic and even childish. Their art is much more complex and sophisticated than a mere mirroring of the natural world. Asian artists attempt to represent

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far more than the surface of nature. As Binyon put it, it is “the inner and informing spirit, not the outward semblance” of things that concerns them. According to the German art critic, Wilhelm Worringer, who was to have a major impact on Hulme, “the stylistic peculiarities of past epochs are, therefore, not to be explained by lack of ability, but by a differently directed volition.” Or as Hulme explained it, paraphrasing Worringer, “the difference between archaic and later art is [not] due to a difference of capacity” or “because the artist had not the technical ability necessary for . . . the more natural representation” of nature. Rather, “the creators of art had in view an object entirely different from that of the creators of a more naturalistic art.” In fact, “in pure technical ability in mastery of raw material” non-representational, non-Western artists such as the Egyptians, “have never been surpassed.” Moreover, as Hulme put it, “it is quite obvious that what they did was intentional.” Because of its skill and higher goals, Asian art is, in fact, superior to the art of the modern West, according to the new art critics, and Europeans could learn much from it. Binyon, for example, claimed that the naturalistic “scientific aim . . . has warped and weakened certain phases of modern painting in Europe.” While Coomaraswamy commented: “I cannot think it possible for great art to flourish again in England, or in India either, till we have all once more civilised ourselves and learnt to believe in something more real and more eternal than the external face of nature.” This might not be that difficult to accomplish because, as all the Asian art critics pointed out, European art once had the same aims and style of Asian art. This was the case in the Middle Ages. It was only during the Renaissance that the “scientific aim” of naturalism became predominant. Therefore, as Fry put it, if Occidental artists adopt a non-naturalistic style similar to that of Asian art “Western artists will be merely returning to their own long forgotten tradition.” At the beginning of their careers the five literary Modernists did not quite share these views. Lawrence and Ford said nothing about the East. Hulme accepted the fundamentally nineteenth-century position of the Action Fran¸caise. And the Asia that Yeats and Pound knew was the mysterious East of mystics and exotic religions, not of fine art. It was only after  that an interest in Asia became very strong, especially for Yeats, Pound, and Hulme. This may have been due to their introduction to the ideas of the new art critics. Some of the new critics were known personally by the Modernists; Binyon and Fry were old friends of Yeats’s and were introduced to Pound soon after they met. Moreover, the ideas of Asian art critics were easily accessible both in the journals and books the

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Modernists read, and through public lectures they attended. For example, Binyon lectured at the Quest Society, he and Havell wrote for The Quest, and both, plus Coomaraswamy, appeared in the same issue of The New Age. Yeats, Pound, and Hulme all are known to have heard Binyon lecture about art, and to have had read his books, by . In  Pound even knew enough about the new Asian art critics to review a book by Coomaraswamy. Finally, at roughly the same time Hulme and Lawrence read and admired art critics who shared similar nonprogressive theories about Asian art as the ones influencing the other Modernists. As we have seen, in  Hulme openly admitted the profound impact on his ideas of the German art critic, Wilhelm Worringer. Lawrence was influenced by the classicist, Jane Ellen Harrison, and her work on archaic art. An introduction to actual works of the art in the Asian tradition also helped the Modernists in understanding the critics’ new positions. Hulme was tremendously impressed in the spring of  when he saw his first example of archaic and non-Western visual art in the Byzantine works of Ravenna. Yeats also visited Ravenna in  and so admired the mosaics he saw there and during a later trip to Sicily in  that he included them in his  poem “Sailing to Byzantium.” Around  Yeats and Pound also were interested enough in Asian art to go more than once to the British museum to study Japanese and Chinese paintings with the help of Binyon. Pound even began purchasing examples of visual art and in this way helped his other friends pursue a new interest in it. One friend, Edgar Jepson, later recalled going with Pound to buy a T’ang jade lion that was inexpensive because the seller thought it was so ugly: “I remember well the contempt on that expert’s face as he held it out and looked at it, and Ezra Pound’s astonished delight when he said that he had not known that there was anything like it in Europe.” Living Asian artists began to travel to London and exhibit and explain their art firsthand. The two most important Asian artists for the Modernists at this time were poets. Rabindranath Tagore, who was considered the premier poet of Bengal, and Yone Noguchi, who was called “Japan’s greatest living poet” in The Quest magazine of July , both visited London in . Yeats and Pound welcomed them enthusiastically. They introduced them to fellow artists, wrote articles about them, arranged for them to give lectures and readings, and helped them publish their works in English. The journals in which the Modernists published soon included an increasing numbers of articles about Asian art, as well as reviews of books and exhibitions. In places the Modernists

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frequented as well, such as the Poetry Bookshop, Asian poetry was read in translations and lectures were given with increasing frequency. The interest of the Modernists in Asian art continued throughout  and . Pound, for example, collaborated on an English translation of the fifteenth-century Hindi poet, Kabir, with a pupil of Tagore’s, and expanded his studies to the visual and literary art of China and Japan. Pound’s reputation for admiring Asian art was strong enough that in  he was chosen by the widow of Ernst Fenollosa to edit and publish his notes posthumously. This simply gave Pound more knowledge and examples, especially of Japanese and Chinese art, which he shared with Yeats and others. Pound began to work on Fenollosa’s notes in December , while staying with Yeats in a cottage in Sussex. Both Yeats and Pound especially were fascinated with Fenollosa’s discussion and examples of the Japanese Noh drama. By  Pound’s interest in Asian art was such that his wife began to address him as “Beloved Mao” and adorn her letters with Chinese ideograms. Ford even felt compelled to include an amiable parody of Pound as the writer, Cluny Macpherson, in his  novel, Mr. Fleight. Macpherson’s home is decorated with Asian art objects, he writes poems about “Kwang Su,” and he is the founder of a club, the chairman of which is the Chinese artist “Pal Ho Pi” who invented the art of enameling on copper in the fourteenth century . Once again, Pound shared his interest in Asian literature with his friends. One friend, John Gould Fletcher, remarked that “Pound had spoken to me enthusiastically about the beauty of these old poems of the Tang dynasty.” Fletcher’s reaction to them could have reflected Pound’s: “As I listened to them, it seemed to me that the poem I was now writing was the same poem so many of these old Chinese poets had already written. My modern loneliness, exile, despair fled across centuries of time and thousands of miles and was joined in theirs.” This close identification with ancient Chinese poetry felt by a twentieth-century artist illustrates the extent to which this was a time when new approaches to Asian culture spread beyond professional art critics to the British art world in general. Asia was no longer valued by laypeople only for its exotic images, alternative religions, or useful crafts. Its fine arts were finally taken seriously. In fact, Pound grew tired of Tagore, specifically because “his entourage has presented him as a religious teacher rather than as an artist.” Like Pound’s friend, J.G. Fletcher, all five Modernists had a great admiration for the quality and skill of non-Western art. For example,

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when Yeats was first introduced to Tagore’s prose translations in  he claimed that they “have stirred my blood as nothing has for years.” Both he and Pound thought that Tagore’s art was as great as the best of Western art. Pound claimed that his “poems are cast . . . in metres perhaps the most finished and most subtle of any known to us,” and went even further to suggest that Tagore was far superior to him; he declared in October , that Tagore “is very fine & makes me feel like a painted pict with a stone war club.” A few months later Pound even commented that “when I leave Mr. Tagore, I feel exactly as if I were a barbarian clothed in skins, and carrying a stone war club, the kind, that is, where the stone is bound into a crotched stick with thongs.” The other Modernists were a bit less hyperbolic, but equally enthusiastic. D.H. Lawrence suggested that “in the great periods, when man was great, he has faced the East.” Even Ford Madox Ford, who showed the least interest of all the Modernists in the non-Western world, praised Japanese poetry and suggested that “Japan is ever on the threshold” because its literature, unlike that of the contemporary West, shows the ability to “think clearly.” Not only did the early Modernists admire non-Western art, they viewed it not as mysterious or unusual, but as very much like their own work. Hulme expressed this feeling best when he commented on the art he saw in Ravenna. He claimed that he “was impressed by these mosaics, not as by something exotic, but as expressing quite directly an attitude I agreed with.” Hulme extrapolated from himself to others at the time. He claimed that the “extraordinary interest” in Asian art works around  and  was due to the fact that they were “liked directly, almost as they were liked by the people who made them, as being direct expressions of an attitude you want to find expressed.” Yeats agreed when he claimed that Japanese dramatists he admired “were more like ourselves than were the Greeks and Romans, and . . . even . . . Shakespeare.” Non-Western works not only were like those of the Modernists, they also reminded them of the art they admired in their own European past. Like the art critics, the Modernists made direct analogies between Asia and the European Middle Ages. Pound, for example, noted the “resemblance to medieval conditions” in the way Tagore “teaches his songs and music to his jongleurs, who sing them throughout Bengal.” As a result, Pound thought that Tagore came from “a culture not wholly unlike that of twelfth-century Provence.” The Modernists admired and identified with Asian art for many reasons. First, they liked the new art critics’ interpretation of its spiritual

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nature. According to Binyon, Eastern artists attempt to imitate, not the surface of material life, but “a more profound reality,” which is “the inner and informing spirit, not the outward semblance” of life. In other words, “a picture is conceived as a sort of apparition from a more real world of essential life,”that of the infinite, the universal, the divine. The reason given for why Asian artists do this also appealed to the Modernists; they consider the stability and permanence of the supernatural world much preferable to the flux of the natural world. Non-Western peoples, according to Hulme’s paraphrase of Worringer, have a “feeling of disharmony with the world” because they fear or dislike the “lack of order and seeming arbitrariness” of nature and humanity. Modern Western man, on the other hand, has a “feeling of confidence in the face of the world” and, as Worringer put it, “is at home in the world and [feels] himself its centre,” thus, he has less interest in the supernatural than do archaic and Asian people. Their relationship to the natural world, in turn, was used to explain the difference in the type of art produced by each people. Because of their optimism, modern Westerners like a “vital”, “empathetic”, or “Romantic” art that presents a realistic image of themselves and their world. NonWestern people, however, prefer a non-naturalistic, “geometric,” or “Abstract” art which, according to Hulme, “being durable and permanent shall be a refuge from the flux and impermanence of outside nature.” In this art, therefore, “the changing . . . [is] translated into something fixed and necessary,” eternal and timeless, and is “distinct from the messiness, the confusion, and the accidental details of existing things.” Thus, as Lawrence could have learned from Jane Ellen Harrison’s book, Ancient Art and Ritual, archaic and Asian art did not originate in an “imitative” desire to mirror external nature and the absence of ability to do so. Rather, the lack of naturalism reflected a distrust of the natural world and a deeper concern for the gods and spirits of a more permanent world who were responsible for the order of nature. It was only when people had more faith in their own ability to control nature, as in classical Greece, that man became “the measure of all things” and artists attempted a naturalistic depiction of the changing deeds of humans and humanized gods. As Harrison’s analysis suggests, the new art critics claimed that it was not just a distrust of nature, but also of humans, that lay behind archaic, non-representational art. Lawrence was impressed by these arguments. He admired an “art coming out of religious yearning” like that of Egypt

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or Assyria because it made clear that what matters “is not the emotions, nor the personal feelings and attachments,” but “the tremendous nonhuman quality of life,” “the tremendous unknown forces of life.” The lack of humanism in Asian art also appealed to Yeats and Pound. Yeats was introduced to this concept by Binyon and the theaterproducer, Edward Gordon Craig. Binyon explained in  that “the Western spirit is full of an overpowering sense of the sublime capacities of mankind,” and that “the Italian Renaissance, and all the art deriving from its inspiration, represents the glorification of man.” Asian art, however, is different because “the ideas of Buddhism saturate” it, and “to the Buddhist the world is transitory, vile and miserable; the flesh is a burden, desire an evil, personality a prison.” Therefore, “not . . . human form . . . [or] personality; but . . . the universal life . . . the infinite” is represented in their art. According to Craig, Asian drama was far more powerful than that of the modern West for a similar reason. By using masks or inanimate puppets, the “weak and disturbing,” “fleeting emotions” on actors’ faces were absent and thus the audience did not see individual, human “Personality”. Instead, they witnessed the “likeness of the spirit” or “likeness of God” represented on the stage. Thus, they were able to transcend themselves and their transient emotions, even life itself, and bend their “thoughts forward towards the unknown.” In , having read Binyon and having discussed the theater with Craig, Yeats developed a very similar theory. He admired ancient and Asian art because it depicted, not individual human personalities, but “all that makes one man like another.” Yeats now concluded that great tragic art must “deny character” and that in “the great periods of drama, character grows less and sometimes disappears.” In addition to character, this type of art also suppresses human vitality and activity. For example, Yeats commented that in “the old tragic paintings, whether it is in Titian or in some painter of mediaeval China” there is in the faces “sadness and gravity, a certain emptiness even,” instead of the “ ‘vitality’ . . . the energy . . . which . . . sings, laughs, chatters or looks its busy thoughts” in modern art. As a result, “the masks of tragedy contain neither character nor personal energy. They are allied to decoration and to the abstract figures of Egyptian temples.” Pound may have been introduced to a similar theory about the antihumanism of Asian art by Coomaraswamy. In his book Art and Swadeshi, which Pound reviewed in September , Coomaraswamy described how in Indian religious sculpture “variation of feature” and “individual

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characteristics” of facial expression are not found. This is done in order that “a perfect type” and a “likeness to God” can be achieved. A “lack of humanism in the Indian ideal of facial expression,” according to Coomaraswamy, thus creates a “strange un-humanness of expression,” “remoteness and repose,” a “wonderful stillness,” and “beautiful impersonality” that is not “merely the reflection of ourselves” but “the vision of something beyond us.” Before reading Coomaraswamy, Pound had regretted that with “the introduction of humanism at the time of the Renaissance, ‘Man is concerned with man and forgets the whole and the flowing.’ ” Indian art now showed him “the balance and corrective” to “this sort of humanism.” It was the spiritual and “ritualistic” qualities of the art of Asia, with its “mystical stillness,” Pound concluded, which “takes a man more quickly from the sense of himself and brings him into the emotion of ‘the flowing,’ of harmonic nature, of orderly calm and sequence.” Far from being “primitive”, therefore, archaic and Asian art exhibited the characteristics of an art for which the Modernists had been searching. It was spiritual and ideal without being evasive or vague. Moreover, it came from a social and political tradition they also preferred – one that was radically conservative and aristocratic. According to Hulme the “geometric” or “abstract” tradition of archaic and Asian art reflected the order and control of superior “organic” societies. Pound agreed when he was introduced in  to a description of politics and society in Confucian China from his friend Allen Upward. According to Upward, Confucius did not accept modern Western humanism, or what Upward called “anthropolatry,” and he “nowhere introduces the ideas of democracy or political freedom.” Rather, he taught “the Religion of the Overman” or of “the superior man” and advocated a political system in which the people were “ruled and civilised by paternal emperors and sages,” for whom they showed “filial reverence.” Thus, “the ideal which K’ung placed before his countrymen,” according to Upward, was of “an empire governed by the wise, under the shield of a sacred dynasty, in the interest, and for the happiness, of the humble.” When this ideal was put into practice, Upward concluded, “the Chinese Empire [became] . . . the greatest and most enduring of human societies, under whose shelter nearly a third of the human race have lived in comparative civilisation and happiness . . . known to those who inhabit it as the Heavenly Kingdom.” Pound learned an additional detail about Chinese politics, possibly from a study of Chinese literary history by Herbert Giles; artists were included in the ruling elite. According to

Example of Asian and non-Western cultures

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Giles, poets and thinkers often even held government posts in China. The artist Chu Y¨uan, who soon became a favorite of Pound’s, for example, had been “both a statesman and a poet.” This, of course, was exactly what Pound had been searching for – an aristocracy of the arts. The Modernists also learned that the elitism of Asian politics, and the greatness of its art, was related to the aristocratic character of its society. For example, they became aware that Asian art incorporated a sense of tradition very similar to that of aristocracies who inherit an ancient way of life and thought, as well as a title and position. Binyon had shown Yeats that Far Eastern art was “far more traditional than with us” because “an individual style, once perfected and matured by an artist or group of artists, has been considered as an instrument of expression available for any who will learn its use, not as a phase which has passed into history and become a thing of the past.” In , after reading Binyon, Yeats could conclude that “supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truths, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.” Like aristocrats, moreover, Eastern artists often even inherit their positions and form a hereditary caste. Yeats was particularly pleased in September of  when “the other day the curator of a Museum pointed out to me a little darkskinned man who was arranging their Chinese prints and said, ‘That is the hereditary connoisseur of the Mikado, he is the fourteenth of his family to hold the post’.” When Yeats read Tagore’s work, he noted similar aristocratic qualities; Tagore’s way of thinking was “hereditary, a mystery that was growing through the centuries like the courtesy of a Tristan or a Pelanore.” But not only was Asian art traditional and hereditary like aristocracies, at its best it was intended only for them. Both Yeats and Pound were particularly impressed when they were introduced to Japanese Noh plays through Ernst Fenollosa’s notes, because, as he described it, the Noh was a form of art both religious and aristocratic. It was performed by priests “at Shinto shrines in honour of spirits and gods or by young nobles at the court,” and at its core was, not only the “god-dance, or . . . local legends of spiritual apparition,” but also aristocratic “gestes of war and feats of history.” Moreover, Yeats and Pound were fascinated by the fact that the Noh could be performed and viewed only by nobles and priests. This was because, as a non-naturalistic form of drama, only an elite could appreciate it. According to Yeats, “realism is created for the common folk and was always their particular delight.” Pound agreed, adding that “the

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common theatre, the place of mimicry and direct imitation of life, has always been looked down upon in Japan.” Because of this, the “young nobles and princes, [were] forbidden to attend the popular theatre . . . of mimicry and naturalism.” Conversely, the masses were excluded from seeing the Noh because they could not possibly understand such a non-naturalistic form of art. This was because, in Pound’s opinion, only “the few . . . the nobles” are “trained to catch the allusion” of “the symbolic and ritual stage.” Yeats agreed. He claimed that in great art “a poetical passage cannot be understood without a rich memory, and . . . a tradition . . . for the ear must notice slight variations upon old cadences and customary words,” and he concluded that only the aristocracy and priests have “the memory of beauty and emotional subtlety” that enables them to do this. Thus, according to Yeats, “ ‘Accomplishment’ the word Noh means, and it is their accomplishment and that of a few cultured people who understand the literary and mythological allusions and the ancient lyrics quoted in speech or chorus, their discipline, a part of their breeding.” As this comment indicates, Yeats believed that the Noh was not merely a form of entertainment; it also served society as a whole. He learned from Fenollosa that the Noh was “a great moral force for the whole order of the Samurai.” This was because, according to Yeats, it taught the elite about history and morality, and it helped aristocratic warriors know their “rˆole in life” and accept death heroically. Moreover, it did this without being rhetorical or didactic, and by ensuring that even the warriors developed refined sensibilities. According to Yeats, Japanese nobles were trained to have “natures . . . as much of Walter Pater as of Achilles.” Finally, Asian art had an impact even beyond the aristocracy. It helped transmit noble values to all people. Yeats learned from Binyon that Asian art, unlike the art of the modern West, is not “detached from the common life . . . dissociated from things of use . . . an affair of museums and exhibitions.” Rather it is linked to “the lives of humble men and women.” When he met Tagore, Yeats thought he found an indication of how this was done. Yeats was impressed by the reverence shown for Tagore by other Indians, which reminded him of the esteem for great men during the Middle Ages. This respect gave artists the ability to influence common people with a non-rhetorical form of propaganda. As one Indian told Yeats, “ ‘in the villages they recite long mythological poems adapted from the Sanskrit in the Middle Ages, and they often insert passages telling the people that they must do their duties’.” The result was a fundamental unity between all levels of society, such as existed during the

Example of Asian and non-Western cultures

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age of Chaucer when, according to Yeats, “there was but one mind in England.” Yeats concluded about Tagore’s poetry: These lyrics . . . display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long. The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes. A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble. If the civilisation of Bengal remains unbroken, if that common mind which – as one divines – runs through all, is not, as with us, broken into a dozen minds that know nothing of each other, something even of what is most subtle in these verses will have come, in a few generations, to the beggar on the roads.

For Yeats, therefore, this poetry was not “celebrating the ‘fall into division’ ” like so much modern Western art, but instead promised “the ‘resurrection into unity’.” Asian art, thus, trained nobles, preserved great values of the past, transmitted them to the lower classes, and unified society as a whole. There was one final reason why the Modernists admired Asian art. It gave them practical suggestions about how to improve their own work and make it something that was beautiful and suggestive, without being escapist or vague. In doing this the five Modernists were the first literary figures to follow the visual artists of the Aesthetic movement and find in Asian art the methods to innovate in their own artistic practice. As Earl Miner describes what he considers a very significant innovation, rather than “using Japanese materials or posing in pseudo-Japanese manners,” as was done in the nineteenth century, the Modernists employed “forms, images, and techniques modelled upon Japanese” and other Asian art. The five Modernists first learned of the practical techniques of Asian art through the visual arts. As we have seen, they understood that a spiritual and aristocratic art must be non-naturalistic, carefully ordered, and lacking in humanism. Hulme was shown how to create such works by Worringer and the Byzantine art he saw in Ravenna; the key was “deorganicising the organic” in order to create an art that is “rigid and foreign to life.” This was done by avoiding the impression of three dimensional space, of soft, curved organic lines, and precise or complex detail. Instead the focus was on flatness, distortion, and simple, regular, uniform, straight, and stiff geometric lines, in order to achieve the compactness and solidity of inorganic cubes and crystalline forms. Yeats used similar techniques first in his theater productions, in which he hoped to create “a form of drama, distinguished, indirect and

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Modernism

symbolic.” He learned especially from Binyon how Asian visual artists, “the more to concentrate on this seizure of the inherent life in what they draw,” avoid light and shadow or perspective, and instead use “flat” and “linear designs.” In addition, they also “will obliterate or ignore at will half or all of the surrounding objects with which the Western painter feels bound to fill his background. By isolation and the mere use of empty space they will give . . . a sense of grandeur and a hint of the infinity of life.” Yeats was impressed by this, and in  and  planned to stage plays in which “if the real world is not altogether rejected, it is but touched here and there, and into the places we have left empty we summon rhythm, balance, pattern, images that remind us of ” another, more important world. Or, to put it another way, he “would like to keep to suggestion, to symbolism, to pattern like the Japanese.” He realized that this meant also replacing human form with stylized rhythm and design, and “neglecting relief and depth.” He summed up his new feelings about the theater when he claimed that “there is a need for surroundings where beauty, decoration, pattern – that is to say, the universal in form – takes the place of accidental circumstance.” Craig helped Yeats translate this idea into practice by explaining how to create sets and stage action that do not approximate reality. The product of their collaboration was first seen in the Abbey Theatre in January . Elaborate and realistic backdrops, which resembled easel paintings with painted perspective and “painted light and shade,” were abandoned. Rather, they adopted Japanese techniques that “simplified scenery” by copying only interiors realistically, and that suggested exteriors by symbolic patterns or perhaps one image or a natural object, such as a pine tree. The stage also was to be restricted to real light and real perspective so that the audience could see “the beauty of the moving figure.” Moreover, “at the climax [of the play] instead of the disordered passion of nature” there was a stylized dance in which “the interest is not in the human form but in the rhythm to which it moves.” In this dance as well, ghosts and gods appear and can be seen by, or even communicate with, the living. Thus, the timeless, permanent world becomes immanent in the flux of the natural world. Finally, Yeats also experimented with another idea suggested by Craig – the use of masks. While he did not adopt physical masks in his theater until after , the idea of a figurative mask became more important to Yeats before that date. Yeats understood that by obliterating individual personality and character, masks made art symbolic, suggestive, and non-naturalistic in a way similar to the absence of “relief and depth” in Asian painting. Moreover, by removing individual

Example of Asian and non-Western cultures

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differences, masks point to what is universal among all people. In the theater this makes the “persons upon the stage . . . greaten till they are humanity itself.” This universality, in turn, enables people to transcend their individual, petty desires and needs, and, by “drowning and breaking of the dykes that separate man from man,” helps unify society as a whole. Thus, Asian art supplied Yeats with practical suggestions for how to create a drama he had desired for years. But not only was Modernist theater influenced by Asian art, so too was poetry. This was especially the case for Hulme and Pound. As we have seen, before  both Hulme’s and Pound’s aesthetic theories had begun to change with the development of their theories of Imagism and Imagisme, respectively. While both were influenced by Christian mysticism, equally important was Asian poetry. The poet, F.S. Flint, later recalled that in the  Secession Club (of which “Hulme was ringleader” and where he “insisted on absolutely accurate presentation and no verbiage” and talked of “the Image”), the members “proposed at various times to replace [modern English poetry] by pure vers libre; by the Japanese tanka and haikai.” It may have been because of his early knowledge of Japanese poetry, therefore, that Hulme was one of the first Modernists to write in a more direct and concrete style. This also might explain his appreciation for Worringer’s ideas and his ability to move beyond the Action Fran¸caise to a real appreciation of archaic and non-Western art. It was Pound’s poetic practice, however, that was most influenced by the art of Asia. In , while he was developing his theory of “Imagisme”, Pound realized that certain forms of Asian poetry did exactly what he had always wanted. For example, one description of Indian poetry in the book by Coomaraswamy that Pound reviewed, closely resembled Pound’s Imagisme. According to Coomaraswamy, the “passionate simplicity of the words” of certain Indian poems, which are “rather impressions or suggestions than of a descriptive character,” have a “vein of mysticism” running through them. And he added they “make frank and simple use of physical subjects to adumbrate the deepest spiritual experiences.” It was these qualities of the poetry of Tagore that Pound also admired. According to Pound, Tagore’s poems were spiritual, simple, and precise; they had a “ritualistic strength,” “a specific word for everything” and were free from “lusciousness” and “over-profusion.” This made Tagore quite modern. Pound claimed that many of Tagore’s verses were “comparable to the latest development of vers libre” and that often he “gives us pure Imagisme.” Probably more important to Pound than Indian art was the influence of Japanese poetry, especially the example and poetic theory of

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Modernism

Yone Noguchi. In an article titled “What is a Hokku Poem?,” published in the journal Rhythm in January , Noguchi described the techniques behind traditional Japanese poetry. Japanese poets reject the excessive detail of naturalism and instead write short poems using common, everyday natural images as symbols. According to Noguchi, “the sixteen syllables are just enough at least to our Japanese mind. And if you cannot express all by one ‘hokku,’ then you can say it in many ‘hokkus’; yes, that is all.” He continued to describe how recently he had written a poem using traditional haiku form but based on his contemporary experiences in the middle of the crowds in London’s Charing Cross. Three months later Pound published his first experiment with Japanese form, his poem “In the Station of the Metro,” and he explained its genesis a bit later with a direct echo of Noguchi. Pound claimed that he had been unsuccessfully trying to write a poem based on an experience he had in the Paris Underground, when suddenly it struck me that in Japan, where a work of art is not estimated by its acreage and where sixteen syllables are counted enough for a poem if you arrange and punctuate them properly, one might make a very little poem which would be translated about as follows: ‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd: ‘Petals on a wet, black bough.’ And there, or in some other very old, very quiet civilisation, some one else might understand the significance.

In  Pound moved from an interest in Japanese to Chinese poetry because it also was simple and precise, and used natural objects as symbols for deeper realities. Moreover, as literary historian Herbert Giles showed Pound, Chinese poems were short: a long poem does not appeal to the Chinese mind. There is no such thing as an epic in the language . . . Brevity is indeed the soul of a Chinese poem, which is valued not so much for what it says as for what it suggests. As in painting, so in poetry suggestion is the end and aim of the artist, who in each case may be styled an impressionist. The ideal length is twelve lines . . . the Chinese holding that if a poet cannot say within such compass what he has to say it may very well be left unsaid.

In a letter of October , , Pound paraphrased Giles: “There is no long poem in chinese. They hold if a man can’t say what he wants to in  lines, he’d better leave it unsaid. THE period was th cent.

Example of Asian and non-Western cultures

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B.C. – Chu Y¨uan, Imagiste.” Thus, once again Pound expressed a feeling of close identity with a poet of a vastly different culture separated from him by an immense amount of time. Twenty-four centuries had changed nothing. But not only did Asian art show Pound how to write simple and concrete poetry, it also helped him move away from progressive structures in his work. It was at this time that Pound decided he preferred poems that superposed two images, often of disparate times and places, rather than employed moving time or discursive moralizing, as long as those images were drawn from the same intellectual tradition or conveyed the same universal meaning or emotion. According to Pound, this sort of thing could be seen in Tagore’s poetry: “If you refine the art of the troubadours, combine it with that of the Pleiade, and add to that the sound-unit principle of the most advanced artists in vers libre, you would get something like the system of Bengali verse.” By  Pound began to claim not only that his “ ‘Image’ ” was a concrete object symbolizing something higher or deeper, but also that it was “that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.” The result was that the Image gives the same “sense of freedom from time and space limits . . . which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art.” Asian art, therefore, encouraged Pound to make instantaneousness and juxtaposition, rather than progress and chronology, an integral part of his poetry. In  even Ford began to appreciate Asian art for similar reasons to those of the other Modernists. In particular, he admired Pound’s new Asian inspired work, and identified it with his own previous interests. Ford had always admired “the French school of the seventies and eighties – Maupassant, Flaubert, the Goncourts and the rest” and he believed that, in their rejection of “journalese” and rhetoric in favor of “suggestion”, they were forerunners of and models for his own theory of Impressionism. In late , for the first time he associated this sort of literature with “the Japanese poets who will get an epic into four lines” and warned his readers that “Japan is ever on the threshold” because their type of work shows the ability to “think clearly” which is missing in contemporary European literature. In May  Ford described Pound’s poem “Liu Ch’e” as “a very perfect poem of a school that I have always desired to see” and claimed that works such as it and “in vers libre as it is practised to-day . . . a new form has been found, if not for the novel, then for the narrative of emotion.” This is because this sort of poetic form “allows a freer play for self-expression . . . [and] at the same time it calls for an even greater precision in that self-expression.”

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Modernism

Many of the Modernists, therefore, were inspired by Asian art to innovate in their own artistic practice and theory. This, in turn, increased their sense of identity with non-Western culture. In early twentieth-century Britain they had the same attitudes towards the world and art, and similar aesthetic practices, as people thousands of miles away and often separated by hundreds or thousands of years. Here was proof that an alternative tradition to the modern West existed. This might also be evidence that history was circular. Certainly it meant that progress was not a fact of reality. Non-Western art, therefore, also encouraged those Modernists who had begun to develop theories of historical circularity to believe even more deeply in its reality. This was true of Hulme who was led to break further with the progressive ideas of the thinkers of the Action Fran¸caise. Hulme’s admiration for archaic and non-Western art supported his belief that chronologically earlier civilizations were not necessarily inferior or “barbaric”, and that artistic ability, like intelligence, was fixed and constant over time. Progress, therefore, was not a feature of history. Moreover, Worringer’s interpretation of the history of art helped Hulme refine his own cyclic view. Worringer proposed the existence throughout history of two opposed traditions of art, “philosophy and general world outlook.” He rejected one very similar to the “Romantic” tradition, which he called “Empathetic.” But rather than “Classicism”, which included only the naturalistic art of ancient Greece and post-Renaissance Europe, Worringer preferred a tradition of “Abstraction.” Hulme agreed with Worringer’s definitions of the two traditions of art, although he invented his own names for them. Hulme now supported “geometric” (rather than “Classic”) art in opposition to “vital” or Romantic art. Moreover, the ages Hulme assigned to the “geometric” tradition also differed from the “Classic” ages of the Action Fran¸caise. Rather than claim that the best art was found in classical Greece, Rome, and seventeenth-century France, Hulme followed Worringer and preferred the art of ancient Egypt, archaic Greece, Byzantium, the early Middle Ages, Asia, and other “primitive” peoples. Moreover, the turning point in the modern period away from the “geometric” tradition and toward “Romanticism” was now placed at the Renaissance, rather than the French Revolution. The other Modernists who discussed the existence of an alternative tradition of art and life also expanded upon it after their introduction to non-Western culture. Pound now explicitly denied that good art was determined by an approximation to “classical models” or by the attempt to “mirrour [sic] natural forms.” Rather, the best art was from an

Example of Asian and non-Western cultures

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abstract tradition that included certain primitive ages, “possibly . . . the South Seas,” Egypt, India, China, Japan, ancient Greece, the European Middle Ages, and the early Renaissance. Like Pound, Yeats admired and found similarities in the work of the peoples of ancient Babylon, ancient Ireland, and the Elizabethan period. He also liked Chinese paintings, the Japanese Noh, and the writings of pre-Renaissance saints, Tagore, Chaucer, and William Blake. If Lawrence was impressed by the art in the book by Jane Ellen Harrison he admired so much, then he would have preferred that of Greece, Egypt, Babylon, the indigenous peoples of Australia, Japan, Fiji, East Africa, Mexico, and North America, as well as contemporary agricultural workers in England, Eastern Russia, and central Europe. Finally, in  Ford also explicitly identified his own work and concerns with a past tradition that included Japanese art, the work of Horace, Dante, the Proven¸cal poets, the Meistersingers, and the Elizabethans in England, but excluded the work of all English artists after the sixteenth century “since whom nothing of any particular value has been produced in these islands.” It was the Asian art critic, A.K. Coomaraswamy, however, who most succinctly described the two traditions of life which the early Modernists were growing to accept when he commented: “I should like to classify Gothic, Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese art as Christian, and Greek, Roman, Renaissance, and modern European art as pagan, or to use more general terms, as religious and materialistic respectively.” Thus, not only did Asian art encourage the Modernists’ belief in the existence of an analogous tradition of art and life different from their own, it also helped them begin to identify when the preferable tradition disappeared from Europe. As it is clear from the changes Hulme made to the theories of the Action Fran¸caise under the influence of Worringer, this occurred during the Renaissance. Yeats also pointed to the Renaissance; it was then that realism and the use of realistic easel painting in backdrops were introduced in the theater. In this again, Hulme and Yeats were concurring with the Asian art critics, all of whom believed that modern Western art and life began with a “fall” that had occurred with the introduction of realism and humanism during the Renaissance. It is important to note one final theory of the Asian art critics. They all were confident that the introduction of Asian art in the West would have a beneficial impact and might herald the beginning of a fundamental change. Roger Fry was confident that by learning from Asia “our artists will develop a new conscience.” This might be true for the general public as well. According to Havell, Asian art is “the opposite pole to

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Modernism

the barbaric materialism of the present day” in the West. Its spiritual nature, as a result, might help the Western public transcend the petty, selfish concerns of everyday life and think of more important universal values and ideals. Or as Binyon argued, the example of non-Western art may help “man . . . get rid of his devouring egoism, his belittling selfaggrandisement, [and] realise his true place in the universe.” The art critics, therefore, were confident that an understanding of the values of non-Western art would herald the return of a superior tradition of life that had once existed in the European past and was only abandoned after the Renaissance. In other words, a better past might cyclically return in the future. Some of the Modernists agreed. Yeats believed that an art analogous to the Japanese Noh had existed in Europe in the past, but unfortunately had been abandoned in the West in favor of constantly changing styles which create the “illusion of change and progress” and more specifically of “unbroken progress.” In Japan on the other hand they have “understood that no styles that ever delighted noble imaginations have lost their importance.” Yeats hoped, therefore, that the “Asiatic habit,” in which art “renewed itself at its own youth, putting off perpetually what has been called progress in a series of violent revolutions,” can be revived in the West. Yeats claimed that “Europe is very old and has seen many arts run through the circle . . . it is now time to copy the East and live deliberately.” That this actually might be happening was indicated by the fact that his new scenic design, according to Yeats, had “restored the theatre to its normal state” of the pre-Renaissance period. Pound also thought the introduction of Indian art might be the beginning of another renaissance and possibly a new historical cycle. He claimed in December  that “we feel here in London . . . much as the people of Petrarch’s time must have felt about the mysterious lost language, the Greek that was just being restored to Europe after centuries of deprivation.” And he concluded, “I speak with all seriousness when I say that this beginning of our more intimate intercourse with Bengal is the opening of another period.” Finally, by early , Hulme could now confidently assert that the course of history was characterized by the cyclic alternation of two traditions. One included the humanism and aesthetic realism of classical Greece and Rome and the post-Renaissance period in Europe. The other was pessimistic, non-humanistic, and non-naturalistic and included “primitive,” archaic, medieval, and non-Western societies. This second tradition was about to return.

Example of Asian and non-Western cultures



Thus, for the five Modernists, archaic and Asian art contained everything they found lacking in modern art, but admired in the European past. It was beautiful, suggestive, and spiritual rather than rhetorical and materialistic. At the same time, however, it avoided escapism, softness, or “foam” by being precise and concrete. Moreover, Asian art was an aristocratic art that was not cut off from the everyday world; it was created for, and appreciated by an elite, it was ordered and controlled, and instilled a sense of a permanence and continuity, yet it also was understood by the common people, and was able to provide political and spiritual direction and values to society as a whole. Were the Modernists still living in a fantasy world of their own invention? It is a surprising coincidence that non-Western art could do so much that the Modernists had wanted, well before they were fully aware of its existence. The likelihood that they invented an “Asia” to suit their needs, as they had a Middle Ages, thus, is quite strong. But what about the Modernists’ new optimism for the cyclic return of a better tradition of art and thought in the future? Was there any objective truth to this claim, or was it just as much a product of their imaginations as the nature of non-Western cultures that suggested its possibility? Certainly the Modernists did not invent the fact that many people were beginning to appreciate a different type of art in the Edwardian age. And even more than the past existence of Asian art, this gave the Modernists hope that an older way of life might be recreated in the present. Perhaps they were right – a new frame of mind was, in fact, emerging that might herald the beginning of a new age. Developments in the contemporary visual arts of Europe immediately before  appeared to support this view.

 

In “the grip of the . . . vortex”: the proof of Post-Impressionist art

All experience rushes into this vortex. All the energized past, all the past that is living and worthy to live. . . . The  of the future is in the grip of the human vortex. All the past that is vital, all the past that is capable of living into the future, is pregnant in the vortex, . Ezra Pound, “Vortex. Pound.,” .

In March , after much preparation, the Rebel Art Centre was finally opened and ready, “by public discussion, lectures, and gatherings of people,” to fulfill an important mission – to “familiarize those who are interested with the ideas of the great modern revolution.” Revolutionaries soon did gather at this Centre. According to one account, they included “women with bare feet in black silver-latcheted shoes; women with hair cut like sixteenth-century pages; women with hats once worn apparently by their less sophisticated Quaker great-grandparents; men with lilaccoloured trousers . . . very baggy over the ankle; men in green collars, with ebony walking sticks.” They listened to lectures held in rooms in which “the doors and chairs are painted a bright vermilion red . . . the walls are lemon-coloured, and on the walls hang Cubist puzzles.” The revolution that the Rebel Art Centre was promoting, of course, was one of aesthetics. In particular it supported the new visual art movement known as Post-Impressionism. The Modernists were directly in the center of the revolution; both Pound and Ford gave lectures at the Centre, the funding for which was provided by Hulme’s fianc´ee, Kate Lechmere. In , but especially in , all five Modernists became deeply involved with, or grew very interested in, the latest developments in modern European visual art. As Ford later would write, “in the justbefore-the-war days, the Fine, the Plastic and the Literary Arts touched hands with an unusual intimacy and what is called oneness of purpose.” Contemporary visual art served, like Asian art, to develop the five Modernists’ aesthetic thinking and practice, and their cyclic views of 

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history. In fact, the new direction in which contemporary Western visual art was heading could be seen as certain proof that history moved in cycles. It was part of the same tradition as archaic, Asian, and medieval European art, and its appearance in the years around  suggested that a way of thought and life that had disappeared with the Renaissance in the West was in the process of cyclic return. Before  none of the Modernists was especially interested in PostImpressionism. This was partially due to the fact that the works of these new artists were not widely available for viewing at that time. PostImpressionism became well-known in England only beginning in late . From November ,  to January ,  the exhibition, “Manet and the Post-Impressionists,” at the Grafton Galleries in London, introduced many English people for the first time to the work of such European artists as Van Gogh, Gauguin, C´ezanne, and younger artists working in a similar style, such as Matisse and Picasso. A further exhibition in October , the “Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition of English, French and Russian Artists,” included the work, not just of mostly dead Continental artists, but also of living artists working in the Post-Impressionist style in England. After this date, these artists began to exhibit their work with increasing frequency. The fact that the Modernists became interested in this type of contemporary art, especially in  and , is not surprising. A step from Asian art to Post-Impressionism was not difficult to take. From their study of the former, the Modernists grew familiar with art forms that were abstract, distorted natural objects, and used bright and non-naturalistic colors. Moreover, they could sense the similarity between their other artistic interests and Post-Impressionism even before learning of how deeply influenced the visual artists were by the art of places such as China, Japan, Africa, Oceana, Egypt, and Assyria. The five Modernists eventually were quite enthusiastic that modern Western artists were attempting something similar to non-Western artists, and they identified their own literary work with visual Post-Impressionism. In supporting Post-Impressionism the Modernists placed themselves squarely in the avant-garde. The new art was greeted with what seemed to be a great controversy in the press. A number of art critics and much of the English public were appalled by artists who disregarded established critical standards. Post-Impressionists were accused of acting like incompetent children, madmen playing a joke at the public’s expense, or even anarchists attempting to overthrow reason and civilization. These criticisms, however, did not prevent quite a number of artists in Britain

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from adopting similar styles. Three main groups, with slightly different emphases, eventually emerged. The “Bloomsbury” group of Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Desmond MacCarthy, and Eric Gill admired Matisse, but not the abstraction of the Cubists and Picasso. A few English artists, in particular C.R.W. Nevinson, supported the work and ideas of the Italian Futurists lead by F.T. Marinetti (although all but Nevinson soon abandoned them). Finally, there was the group that included Wyndham Lewis and his friends Edward Wadsworth, Frederick Etchells, and Cuthbert Hamilton, and a number of other artists such as Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Jacob Epstein, who admired Picasso and were willing to make experiments in more extensive abstraction. Until  all of these artists and groups had been included under the term “Post-Impressionist”, but after that date they grew increasingly hostile to one another as they attempted to define their own positions more clearly. The Rebel Art Centre, for example, was founded by Lewis, Etchells, Hamilton, and Wadsworth, after they split with Roger Fry and his group, and decided to form an alternative to Fry’s Omega Workshop to which they all had belonged previously. It was this group of PostImpressionists that the literary Modernists eventually supported more than, and often in opposition to the others. The Modernists’ interest in contemporary visual art did not occur immediately after the introduction of Post-Impressionism in England, not only because they had seen little of it, but also because they were not well prepared for it before their study of archaic and Asian art. Pound’s first reaction to it, for example, was quite like that of the public in general. In  he wrote sarcastically of artists “who beseech their ladies to let down slate-blue hair on their raspberry-coloured flanks.” Hulme especially was confused about this revolution in visual art when first introduced to it. He became aware of Post-Impressionism in early , while still under the influence of the Action Fran¸caise and before he had read Worringer. Hulme was “very surprised, after seeing the Post Impressionists,” to learn that some of them, in particular the French painter, Maurice Denis, claimed that their new form of art was classic. His surprise undoubtedly resulted from the fact that the Action Fran¸caise disliked the abstraction of the Post-Impressionists, as much as they rejected the non-naturalistic art of “barbaric” peoples. According to their chief aesthetic theorist, Pierre Lasserre, “Classic” art is real and natural. It does not create absurd, impossible, or chimeric characters that are false to reality. When he learnt more about Post-Impressionism, however, Hulme found that its advocates did make some arguments that appealed to

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him. The new art was described as simple and precise, orderly and hierarchical, spiritual and idealistic. Above all, Post-Impressionism was said to abandon the scientific and mechanical view of the universe. It was not content with the mere imitation of “the complexity of the appearances” of nature, but represented a true and deeper “other” world, either of universal essences or of “the realities of our spiritual nature.” Hulme’s friend, Edward Storer, even made a direct connection between Post-Impressionism and the Classicism of the Action Fran¸caise as early as January . He claimed that Post-Impressionism, rather than being revolutionary, could be compared to “the art of ancient Greece and Egypt and Assyria.” European avant-garde artists are “enthusiastic traditionalists” who favor “a more classical and rigid type of art, a type intellectual and conscious, rather than emotional and self-abandoning” like that of the Romantics. Storer concluded that “the signal for a return to classicism in art” and “the first signs of the anti-romantic reaction will come . . . from the young men now occupying themselves with the violent and individual methods of Post-Impressionism.” Post-Impressionism, thus, must have appeared to be all that Hulme wanted in art, and yet it was rejected by his political mentors, the writers for Action Fran¸caise. However, after his introduction to Worringer and his explanation of non-naturalistic archaic and non-Western art, Hulme was better able to understand Post-Impressionism. Soon Hulme actively pursued a knowledge of the new art and openly praised it in print. The same was true of the other four Modernists. There were many ways in which the Modernists could learn of, and see examples of, contemporary avant-garde art. Because they lived in London, they were able to attend art exhibitions. They also could read articles about Post-Impressionism in the journals for which they wrote. In , for example, Lawrence contributed to the journal, Rhythm, and became friends with its editors, John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield. This was one of the first journals ardently to support and explain the meaning of Post-Impressionism, as well as reprint works by some key artists. In its pages Lawrence could learn that by being “interpretative” and by not relying on “the tricks of a representative realism” avantgarde artists were expressing “a new faith . . . a new vision.” Moreover, “youth is with the new movement . . . the vital work of the day is being done by young men who are under the Post-Impressionists’ influence.” In addition, avant-garde art soon infiltrated many of London’s places of entertainment. Hulme, Pound, and Ford all saw the Russian ballet of Sergei Diaghilev featuring Vaslav Nijinsky, which one contemporary art

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critic described as “a glowing corroboration of the ideas that had already found ripe expression in the so-called Post-Impressionist movement in painting.” The abstract, vivid colors of the sets and costumes, the stylized dancing, the atonal music, “the exotic decors,” and what some called “barbaric splendor” and “primitiveness” of the production were all extraordinarily innovative and impressed many contemporaries. Another forum for Post-Impressionism was the first nightclub in London called “The Cave of the Golden Calf,” which was open between June  and early  and featured dancing, drinking, food, and stage entertainment. The Golden Calf was intended to be more than just a place of entertainment; it was also “a center of experimental artistic activity.” The shows and decoration of the club were carried out by some of the most avant-garde artists of the time, such as Wyndham Lewis, Jacob Epstein, Spencer Gore, and Eric Gill, who were responsible for brightly colored, non-naturalistic paintings on the walls and stage curtain, sculpture around the pillars in the form of caryatids, and the abstract design of menus, announcements, stationery, and posters. Ford, Pound, and Hulme attended the club regularly, as did the artists who helped decorate it. Ford even contributed his own art; he wrote a shadow play for the club that he acted himself. Soon most of the five Modernists got to know, and developed friendships with, Post-Impressionist artists. Hulme was greatly impressed when he saw the works of Jacob Epstein in , and the two had become such “great friends” the next year that Wyndham Lewis was led to comment: “remember Hulme is Epstein and Epstein is Hulme.” In July  Pound attended an art exhibition where he was so taken by the work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska that he sought out Gaudier’s name and address and visited him in his studio. They also became close friends. Pound, in turn, introduced Gaudier to Ford, who was enthusiastic about his work. At the same time, Pound and Ford renewed an old acquaintance with Wyndham Lewis, who they then introduced to Hulme. Hulme reciprocated by helping Pound and Ford get to know Epstein. Both went to Epstein’s studio, perhaps with Gaudier, to see some work in progress. Even Yeats was drawn into this world of artists. Ford later recalled that he “organised a really swell meeting in the studio of Mr. Jacob Epstein at Chelsea” to help Yeats raise money for his Irish theater. Visual and literary artists began to socialize together regularly. Many attended Hulme’s Tuesdays. Visual artists also were invited to Ford’s gatherings at South Lodge, the home of Violet Hunt, where Ford entertained his friends. It is possible that Lawrence became aware of

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modern art through his connection with “the Hueffer-Pound faction” whom he claimed in late  was leading him “round a little as one of their show-dogs.” He certainly might have met visual artists at Ford’s South Lodge parties that he also attended. The involvement of visual and literary artists went beyond friendship to collaboration and mutual influence. For example, Epstein sculpted a head of Hulme, and Hulme compiled an album of photographs of Epstein’s works and began to write a book about him. Hulme wrote about Gaudier in a series of articles on contemporary art, and in  Gaudier made him a number of brass toys and a knuckle-duster which he carried around to use in his violent moods. Pound also helped publicize Gaudier’s talents and secured him commissions. Gaudier repaid Pound by giving him brass toys similar to those he gave Hulme and by doing a huge bust of him subsequently called “The Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound,” that found a resting place until well after the war at Ford’s South Lodge. In  Ford commissioned Lewis to decorate the drawing room at South Lodge. The literary artists also contributed to the ideas of the visual artists. By the Spring of  Gaudier was writing articles that echoed the theories of Hulme. It was Lewis, however, who was most indebted to Hulme, despite the fact that Lewis was jealous of the closer friendship between Hulme and Epstein than existed between Hulme and himself. Lewis later recalled: It was mainly as a theorist in the criticism of the fine arts that Hulme would have distinguished himself, had he lived. And I should undoubtedly have played Turner to his Ruskin. All the best things Hulme said about the theory of art were said about my art. . . . We happened, that is all, to be made for each other as critic and ‘creator’. What he said should be done, I did. Or it would be more exact to say that I did it, and he said it.

In addition, in  not only did Lewis “do” what Hulme said, he often also wrote what Hulme said; many of Lewis’s articles on art were almost paraphrases of Hulme’s ideas. The commonality of ideas of visual and literary artists was made clear when, on January , , Lewis, with Hulme and Pound, spoke on contemporary visual art at G.R.S. Mead’s Quest Society. The height of the collaboration between literary and visual artists came when Pound and Lewis founded a new movement in order to distinguish their work and ideas from those of other avant-garde artists at the time. They called it “the Great English Vortex” or Vorticism. The

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Rebel Art Centre was seen as one way to advertise this new movement, as was Lewis’s new journal Blast that appeared in . Pound took it upon himself to designate which visual and literary artists could be considered part of the Vorticist movement. In the visual arts only the work of artists such as those who appeared in the pages of Blast – Lewis, Gaudier, Epstein, Wadsworth, Etchells, Roberts, Hamilton, Bomberg, and Gore – were Vorticist. Hulme concurred that this group “included everyone in England who is doing interesting work” and who was “working in the direction which alone contains possibilities,” when he included reproductions of the work of all of them, excluding Gore, in the “Contemporary Drawings” series he edited for The New Age in April . Pound also defined literary Vorticism, which was his “own branch of vorticism.” He, of course, included his own work and claimed that “ ‘Imagisme’ in verse,” his previous literary theory, was the literary branch of Vorticism. But Pound also tried to include Yeats and Ford as well. In , although he would not specifically answer the question “ ‘is Yeats in the movement?’,” Pound declared that Yeats was “the best poet in England,” that there was “a manifestly new note in his later work,” and that “he has written des Images,” all of which would qualify him as a Vorticist. Ford, according to Pound, also was “significant and revolutionary” and “has given us, in On Heaven, the best poem yet written in the ‘twentieth-century fashion’.” Although Pound acknowledged that Ford had his own unique theory of art, called “Impressionism”, that was distinct from Imagisme or Vorticism, he did propose that Ford’s Impressionism was a forerunner of Imagisme, and therefore of Vorticism as well. Moreover, Ford’s short story, “The Saddest Story,” later to become The Good Soldier, was considered Vorticist enough to be included in the first issue of Blast. While Yeats and Ford were not entirely enthusiastic about the younger author’s attempts to co-opt their work for Vorticism, they were nevertheless supportive of the new art. Ford wrote that he did “take a very serious view of the movement” and he openly admired the work of Vorticist visual artists. Yeats claimed that Pound and the group of younger poets associated with him were attempting precisely what he and the Rhymers had advocated more than twenty years previously. There were many reasons why the literary Modernists admired and felt sympathy for the work of the new avant-garde visual artists. At first what struck some of the Modernists was the sheer energy and novelty of the new art and the controversies surrounding it. Initially Ford was attracted to Post-Impressionism because he believed that “we of  are

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a fairly washed-out lot and . . . we do desperately need a new formula.” As a result, Ford claimed that “what we want most of all in the literature to-day is religion, is intolerance, is persecution, and not the mawkish flapdoodle of culture, Fabianism, peace and good will. Real good religion, a violent thing full of hatreds and exclusions!” He found this violent religion in modern art and admitted that “personally I am entirely on the side of Les Jeunes,” because “one wants to be reckless nowadays.” What Lawrence particularly admired about contemporary avant-garde visual art was the fact that the artists were calling for “the purging of the old forms and sentimentalities,” “for . . . saying – enough of this sickly cant, let us be honest and stick by what is in us,” and for pointing out “the weary sickness of pedantry and tradition and inertness.” Above all, Lawrence admired the “revolt against beastly sentiment and slavish adherence to tradition and the dead mind.” Eventually the Modernists considered the new art more seriously and found that it fitted well with their other theories. They were soon made aware of the resemblance of this new art to the archaic, medieval, and non-Western art they admired. For example, according to his friend, D.L. Murray, Hulme was impressed by the Russian ballet especially because of its similarity to “the non-humanistic ideals that inspired Egyptian, archaic Greek and Polynesian art.” Another of Lawrence’s friends, J.M. Murry, also made it clear that the art to which PostImpressionism was most analogous was that of Assyria, Egypt, Asia, and pre-Renaissance Europe. This could be confirmed by the interest shown by Epstein, Lewis, and Gaudier-Brzeska in archaic Greek, Indian, Egyptian, Asian, Polynesian, and African art. As with archaic and non-Western art, the Modernists admired contemporary avant-garde art because it was not soft, vague, or romantic. According to Hulme, Post-Impressionism was not “feeble romanticism” but “the genuine expression of abhorrence of slop and romanticism” and “the exact opposite of romanticism,” because it was a “hard and durable,” “clear cut,” expression of “austerity and bareness.” This also is how Lawrence’s friend J.M. Murry described it; the best qualities of the new art were its strength, decision, vigorousness, and determination, and the fact that it understood that “before art can be human it must learn to be brutal.” The strength of the new art was related to the relationship of the contemporary artists to the world around them, which they shared with archaic and non-Western peoples; they felt hostility and fear in face of a world out of control, and had no faith in human ability to improve it.

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This art was, therefore, non-naturalistic and anti-humanist. According to Hulme, modern geometric art was an “inhuman, pessimistic” art of uncompromising bleakness based on a feeling of “disharmony or separation between man and nature.” Ford agreed that the “representation of nature” was abandoned because the new art had “a quite proper contempt of nature.” Or, as Pound put it even more strongly, the modern artist accepts “the fact that the war between him and the world is a war without truce.” But not only did modern artists dislike nature, they also distrusted humans. They had nothing to do, according to Hulme, with the “flat and insipid optimism” that posited the goodness of humans and the possibility of their improvement, which began with the Renaissance and “passing through the first stage of decay in Rousseau, has finally culminated in the state of slush in which we have the misfortune to live.” Again Pound agreed. The best avant-garde art was not part of a tradition that believes “that man was the perfect creature, or creator, or lord of the universe or what you will, and that there was no beauty to surpass the beauty of man.” Because of this, in the “New Living Abstraction,” as he and the Vorticists described it, “        . It now, literally,  much less.” In short, “Dehumanization is the chief diagnostic of the Modern World.” Even Lawrence agreed that “that which is physic – non-human, in humanity, is more interesting . . . than the old-fashioned human element.” And he found this in the art and ideas of one Post-Impressionist – the leader of the Italian Futurists, F.M. Marinetti. To express their distaste for the natural and human world, avant-garde artists, like archaic and Asian artists, avoided representing anything vital, organic, complex, or changeable. For example, in Lewis’s pictures of humans, according to Hulme, “all that detail that makes [the living flesh] vital . . . is entirely absent.” Instead, Lewis transforms “man into some geometrical shape which lifts him out of the transience of the organic” and translates “the changing and limited into something unlimited and necessary.” Epstein’s sculptures on the subject of birth were perhaps even more striking; according to Hulme, they take a subject, “generation, which is the very essence of the . . . organic” and turn it “into something as hard and durable as a geometrical figure itself.” As in all great art, the human body and natural objects are purified “of their characteristically living qualities” by being “distorted to fit into stiff lines and cubical shapes.” What results are “austere” and “bare,” “dead, crystalline,” “stiff and lifeless forms” that Hulme found particularly pleasing. But these modern artists did not just express their contempt for the world around them by removing the organic or living elements from

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their art. They did it also by reordering nature altogether. The main fault of the older naturalistic art for Hulme was that it merely mirrored the “messiness” and “confusion” of the “accidental details of existing things.” Or as Pound put it, it passively reflected received sensations. According to Hulme, the new art, by “the selection and production of abstract form,” was doing something quite different; it was “striving towards structure.” The artist, as a result, could be far more creative because “he is not bound by the accidental relations of the elements actually found in nature, but extracts, distorts, and utilises them as a means of expression, and not as a means of interpreting nature.” Pound agreed. By extracting and selecting forms and colors from nature, the new artist could actively rearrange them into a new pattern that conveys a more intense emotion. He, therefore, is an active person “ a certain fluid force against circumstance” and “ instead of merely observing and reflecting.” That this was not just a form of creativity, but also an expression of a contempt for nature was made clear by Lewis in his description of Vorticism. According to Lewis, the Vorticist is like a hairdresser who “attacks Mother Nature for a small fee,” “makes systematic mercenary war on this ,” and “trims aimless and retrograde growths into    and  ,” “correcting the grotesque anachronisms of our physique.” In other words, according to Lewis, “the Vorticist is not the Slave of Commotion, but it’s [sic] Master. The Vorticist does not suck up to Life. He lets Life know its place in a Vorticist Universe!” Thus, Vorticists, according to Lewis, attempt to control and organize nature that they perceive as “a chaos of imperfection, discord, etc.” rather than as pleasing, fresh, and rich. They have a “desire for stability” and a “love of order.” In fact, for the Modernists what was especially innovative about avant-garde art was not its abstraction, but the fact that it controlled and reordered chaos. None of the Modernists advocated a purely abstract art that denied nature entirely. Ford, for example, disliked artists who “rendered no material object” and who did not represent life at all; their extreme “anti-materialist” stance resulted in the presentation of pure emotions or visionary states that robbed their art of intensity. Rather, Ford preferred artists who “are really realists” because “they render . . . concrete objects” and utilize literary content as well as form. Hulme also did not believe that art based only on “abstract form, i.e. form without any representative content, can be an adequate means of expression.” He admitted “that the artist cannot work without contact with, and continual research into nature” and he claimed that in abstract

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painting “there is much greater research into nature . . . than in any realist painting.” However, it was the Vorticists, Lewis and Pound, who best summed up the Modernists’ position on the question of abstraction in art. According to Lewis, “the finest Art is not pure Abstraction, nor is it unorganised Life.” In Pound’s opinion, “the vorticist can represent or not as he like. He depends . . . upon the arrangement of spaces and line, on the primary media of his art. A resemblance to natural forms is of no consequence one way or the other.” Thus, the creative and active control was key, not whether or not natural objects were used. This reordering of nature was especially important, according to the Modernists, because it made modern art supremely spiritual, again like archaic and Asian art. It enabled modern art, in Hulme’s opinion, to reflect the “fixed and necessary,” eternal and unchanging realm outside the relativity and impermanence both of time and the flux of life. It was, therefore, an art with a “religious attitude” and a supreme “profundity and intensity.” Ford, echoed Hulme, when he claimed that the best contemporary avant-garde art was “becoming more and more geometric, mystic, non-material” and that it “seems to point the moral of the impermanence of matter, of human life.” It was, thus, a “reaction from materialism,” “Samuel Smiles . . . pseudo-Darwinians and other deniers of mystery,” and it represented “a frame of mind that, scientifically speaking, is religious – that is, at least, other-worldly” because the artist “sets down, in making a portrait, the image of his emotions in seeing his sitter, and not a representation of the sitter – this painter is, scientifically speaking, trying to paint his sitter’s soul. He is trying to paint the soul of the world.” Pound and Lewis made similar arguments about Vorticist art. According to Pound, it took no account of “transient conditions,” but rather represented “the immutable, the calm thoroughness of unchanging relations” like that of “Gods . . . apart, unconcerned, unrelenting.” Vorticism, thus, was part of a religious tradition that believes “in something beyond man, something important enough to be fed with the blood of hecatombs.” Because artists were able to feel “the immanence of some  more than any former beings can have felt it,” in Lewis’s opinion, the Vorticist age was an “age of religion.” In fact, Lewis argued that Vorticism was a form of “spiritual realism.” He claimed that Vorticists act like Chinese geomancers who notice “super-sensible” forces and meanings from the spiritual world at work in the shapes, forms, and colors of objects in the natural world. The Vorticists’ art, therefore, is not

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a realistic representation of the natural world, but a realistic representation of a spiritual reality that exists behind and is manifest in the shapes and colors of nature. Finally, Lawrence also liked a modern art that employed a similar type of “spiritual realism,” and that represented not only natural or human objects, but also “the inhuman will” that lies behind them. As he wrote to a friend in , “the vision we’re after . . . is something that contains awe and dread and submission, not pride or sensuous egotism and assertion.” He continued, “we want to realise the tremendous non-human quality of life,” which is “the tremendous unknown forces of life, coming unseen and unperceived as out of the desert to the Egyptians, and driving us, forcing us, destroying us if we do not submit to be swept away.” Great art for Lawrence, therefore represented a realm of angry gods or of universal essences, not a world of comfortable humanism. Once again, it could be asked whether it was a happy coincidence that the Modernists found all they wanted in a certain type of PostImpressionist art, or if they interpreted that art specifically in a way that made it fit with their previous ideas. In either case, the Modernists believed that this type of art solved many problems of modern aesthetics and the modern world in general. It was spiritual without being vague, constructive without resorting to rhetoric, and it provided a sense of order amidst an unfortunate chaos. A discussion of how contemporary avant-garde art influenced the Modernists’ own work and theories of history must wait for the next chapter. The general direction in which it took their ideas and practice, however, should be clear. The latest developments of modern European art confirmed for the Modernists their previous theory of the existence of two different traditions of art, one that was naturalistic and the other that was geometric or abstract. By  or  all five Modernists had added contemporary European art to the alternative tradition of aesthetics, politics, and society that they admired in the archaic, non-Western, and medieval worlds. They were not unique in pointing out similarities between the past they preferred and contemporary art. The Russian artist and art critic, Wassily Kandinsky, whom Pound read with interest, claimed that the spiritual nature of contemporary art made it fundamentally analogous with the art of the past created by archaic and non-Western peoples. According to Kandinsky, “the close relationship of art throughout the ages, is not a relationship in outward form but in inner meaning,” and because of

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Modernism

this “a rudely carved Indian column is an expression of the same spirit as actuates any real work of art today.” This assumption that all art forms in one tradition are fundamentally analogous, regardless of when or where they were produced, sounds very much like Hulme in  and was a concept that was increasingly important for the Modernists. Pound, for example, also claimed that there is “not a difference in degree but a difference in kind; a difference in intention” between the two traditions. In March  Gaudier agreed that art in the abstract tradition differs from that “of the late Greeks” “not in tendency but in kind.” Ford also believed that an artist of the present could feel fundamentally the same as one in the past. As he put it, “his attitude towards life will be theirs; his circumstances only will be different. An elephant is an elephant whether he pours, at an African water-hole, mud and water over his free and scorched flanks, or whether, in the Zoological Gardens, he carries children upon his back.” A belief that artists of the present and the past could have the same attitudes and ideas, in turn, led to the assertion that it was perfectly appropriate for a modern artist to be influenced by, and use images or forms from, any of the other ages or places within the same tradition. This was not an idea that was accepted universally. In fact, Epstein’s work was criticized for its “deliberate imitations” of ancient, non-Western, and “primitive” art, and it was dismissed as a form of escapist romanticism because it attempted to evoke “ ‘vague memories of dark ages as distant from modern feeling as the loves of the Martians’.” Hulme took pains to defend this practice of Epstein. He made it clear that contemporary avant-garde art was not “a mere imitation of an exotic or a romantic past” or a “romantic revival” because modern artists like Epstein did not consider non-Western and archaic works of art to be fundamentally different from their own. This was a result of the “real change of sensibility [that was] occurring now in the modern mind.” The emotions and feelings of artists had changed. Modern artists had returned to an older tradition and, therefore, they liked past works in that same tradition, not because they were different, but “directly, almost as they were liked by the people who made them, as being direct expressions of an attitude you want to find expressed.” In short, as Hulme put it, if “a belief in ‘Progress’ ” is abandoned, it is easy to accept the appreciation and use of archaic forms in modern art. Because the attitudes and feelings of people within the same tradition do not change over time, “there are certain broad ways in which certain emotions must, and will always naturally be expressed.” Therefore, “given the same emotion, the same broad

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formula comes naturally to the hands of any people in any century.” As a result, Epstein and artists like him had every right to use similar forms as those of artists of a distant past. This did not mean the new geometrical art should be identical to archaic art. Worringer had shown Hulme that the feelings of separation from, or fear or distrust of, the outside world that were constant in the abstract tradition, took different forms in different ages. The art of various periods within a tradition, therefore, was slightly different; Egyptian art was identical to neither Indian nor Byzantine art. Thus Hulme believed that the art and emotions of different ages within the same tradition were analogous – not identical. As he put it, “both the new Weltanschauung and the new geometrical art will have certain analogies with corresponding periods in the past, yet it is not for a moment to be supposed that there is anything more than analogy here,” in fact the new art will “not in the least resemble archaic art.” When a cyclic return to the past occurs in the future, therefore, it will not take the form of exact repetition. In fact, Hulme believed that the similarities with archaic art soon would lessen. Modern art would take on its own unique characteristics, which Hulme predicted would be more influenced by machinery than in the past; “the new ‘tendency towards abstraction’ will culminate, not so much in the simple geometric forms found in archaic art, but in the more complicated ones associated with the ideas of machinery.” Yeats may have considered something similar in  when he speculated about the imminent coming of a historical cycle that would resemble “Plato’s Republic with machines instead of slaves” or that would witness a civil war with soldiers “riding their machines as did the feudal knights their armoured horses.” For Hulme, however, despite any differences from the past, the art of the near future would still express emotions analogous to, and be more similar to, the art of the tradition to which it belonged, than to the art of vital, naturalistic, humanistic ages. It would not, therefore, involve any progress upon the past, even in the form of a spiral. Pound and the Vorticists also believed that the art they admired and were currently in the process of producing was analogous to, and a part of, the return of an abstract tradition. According to Gaudier, because he and his fellow artists have a concern with “abstraction of intense feeling” and “have sympathy and admiration” for “archaic works” which are often considered “barbaric,” they have been “continuing the tradition” of “the barbaric peoples of the earth.” Pound agreed and insisted that the

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Modernism

feeling of identification that the Vorticists had with ancient abstract art was not a Romantic attempt to escape from the present into a preferable past such as was the case in “Paterine sentimentalesque Hellenism.” It also was not the same as the use of archaic art by the Bloomsbury group, as described by Hulme, which was not serious, but “a sort of aesthetic playing about” – a “cultured and anaemic,” “aesthetic archaism.” Rather, the Vorticists believed they were motivated by the same fundamental needs and desires as were the artists of the past abstract tradition. Their relationship to the natural world united artists separated by vast stretches of time and space in a way that made their intentions nearly identical. According to Pound, the [modern] artist recognises his life in the terms of the Tahiytian [sic] savage. His chance for existence is equal to that of the bushman. His dangers are as subtle and sudden. He must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods.

Because of this identity of feeling, Pound believed that contemporary artists “turn back . . . to the powers of the air, to the djinns who were our allies aforetime, to the spirit of our ancestors.” According to Lewis in Blast, the Vorticists were “Primitive Mercenaries in the Modern World” because, like “primitive” peoples, they are extremely well-trained soldiers in the battle against their environment. In Lewis’s opinion “the artist of the modern movement is a savage (in no sense an ‘advanced,’ perfected, democratic, Futurist individual of Mr. Marinetti’s limited imagination)” because he is responding to similar external conditions; “this enormous, jangling, fairy desert of modern life serves him as Nature did more technically primitive man.” Although Lewis would not claim that the environment of the modern artist was identical to that of other peoples who produced abstract art in the past, he did believe that it was fundamentally analogous and that the reaction to it was essentially equivalent. Lewis claimed that previous abstract artists worked within “the complication of the Jungle, dramatic Tropic growth, the vastness of American trees.” But he also believed that “our industries . . . [have] reared up steel trees where the green ones were lacking; [have] exploded in useful growths, and found wilder intricacies than those of Nature.” The major difference between the two environments is that in the former the “civilized savage” worked “in a desert city, surrounded by very simple objects and restricted number of beings,” while the “modern town-dweller” lives in a more complex landscape and “also sees multitude, and infinite variety of means of life, a world and elements he controls.” Nevertheless, in the modern world “Life is really no more secure.” Rather, it is more

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“confused and . . . dispersed.” In fact, Lewis often argued that life was decidedly less secure. He believed that “human insanity has never flowered so colossally. Our material of discord is to an unparalleled extent forcible and virulent.” Regardless of the extent of insecurity, however, people in the present act in fundamentally the same ways as people did in the remote past: “we are proud, handsome and predatory. We hunt machines, they are our favorite game. We invent them and then hunt them down.” It was because of this attitude of belonging to, and having a great sense of identity with, a preferable past tradition that the five Modernists differed from other avant-garde artists at the time. It especially made them dislike the Futurists and take pains to distinguish themselves from them. Hulme, Pound, and Lewis felt especially threatened by Futurism. In fact, their hostility was such that in June of  they, with Epstein, Gaudier, Etchells, and Wadsworth, disrupted a lecture given by Marinetti. The next day in a public statement Lewis, Pound, Gaudier, Etchells, Wadsworth, Hamilton, Bomberg and a few others dissociated themselves from Futurism and any English Futurists. One reason Hulme, Pound, and the Vorticists were opposed to Futurism was because they did not think that it was an entirely new form of art. Although the Futurists said they rejected naturalism, Hulme and Pound argued that they did not; their work was still a passive reflection of sensations received from nature, rather than an active reorganization of forms. Pound claimed, as a result, “Futurism is the disgorging spray of a vortex with no drive behind it, .” It was thus the “state of flaccidity, of elaboration, and of secondary applications” that came before and after the intensity and concentration that Vorticism achieved by rigorous control and organization of the flux. Moreover, Futurism exhibited a fundamental admiration for change and progress. As Hulme put it, Futurism was “the exact opposite of the art” that he admired, because it was “the deification of the flux.” In this interpretation of Futurism Hulme was quite accurate. The Futurists were very much influenced by Henri Bergson and his idea “of a life force or vital impulse seeking freedom in the face of the resistance of matter.” They did not want to represent “ ‘a fixed moment in universal dynamism’ ” but simply “ ‘the dynamic sensation’ ” itself. Therefore they disliked anything stationary, fixed, or durable, and wanted to represent change, motion, and speed. Above all they admired a representation of the progress towards the future – “futurism” – as opposed to a concentration on the static past – “passism.”

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Modernism

The Futurists’ admiration for change and flux led them to accept a view of the past and of history that the five Modernists rejected. This did not mean that the Modernists disliked all Futurist comments on history. Pound and the Vorticists, as well as Ford and Lawrence, all admired the fact that the Futurists insisted that artists concentrate on the present, rather than on a romantic or sentimentally idealized past. It was about the Futurists that Lawrence was writing when he claimed to like “the purging of the old forms” and the revolt against “slavish adherence to tradition” in modern art. As Pound put it, “we are all futurists to the extent of believing with Guillaume Apollonaire ‘On ne peut pas porter partout avec soi le cadavre de son p`ere.’ ” Or, according to Lewis, “one of the functions of a man like Marinetti is to instil into people the importance of the Present, the immense importance of life.” Ford especially thought that “to have your poets perpetually chanting that your own day is vulgar or mean, and that beauty can be found only in other centuries or in other climates, is a thing very enervating.” Moreover, he continued to insist as he had done since at least , that “all great art has been produced by people interested in their own age and their own climes.” This is just what the Futurists did; they were concerned with “our own time and our own clime.” But the Modernists thought that the Futurists went too far. Lawrence, for example, criticized the Futurists because they “want to deny every scrap of tradition and experience, which is silly. They are very young, infantile, college-student and medical-student at his most blatant.” Pound and Lewis also agreed that “it would be a cowardly and foolish thing for the Futurists to destroy the Museums” because Futurism meaning “the Present with the Past rigidly excluded” was wrong. According to Pound, “the vorticist has not this curious tic for destroying past glories.” Unlike the Futurists, who “are evidently ignorant of tradition,” the Vorticists “do not desire to cut ourselves off from the past” or “from great art of any period, we only demand a recognition of contemporary great art.” Finally, despite Ford’s admiration for an art that focuses on the present, he also claimed that he was “not so violently Futurist as to object to a man having any truck at all with old legends.” Rather than abandon the past, the Modernists believed that the past actively should inform contemporary art. Ford claimed that artists should study or soak themselves in the great art of the past because “we are the heirs of all the ages” and this sort of study would widen their “perceptions.” As indicated in the quote heading this chapter, Pound felt that it was important for “all the energized past” to rush into the Vortex of art and life because it serves as the momentum that charges “the ,

The proof of Post-Impressionist art

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- .” Lewis agreed that Vorticists “must have the Past and the Future, Life simple, that is, to discharge ourselves in, and keep us pure for non-life, that is Art.” But as Pound made quite clear, although the Vorticists did not want “to evade comparison with the past,” they were not willing to accept all of the past in that comparison. Only “the past that is living and worthy to live” was to be a part of Vorticism. According to Pound, “we prefer that the comparison be made by some intelligent person whose idea of ‘the tradition’ is not limited by the conventional taste of four or five centuries and one continent.” In other words, the past to be used in contemporary avant-garde art was not just that of Europe since the Renaissance. It was the alternative tradition, which included archaic, medieval, and non-Western art, that was most appropriate to use in the present. And, of course, this was because of the close identity of feeling and thought that modern artists had with this other tradition. Once again, it was the absence of an assumption of progress within a tradition of life and art that was underlying the Modernists’ attitudes toward the past – in general or as used in art in particular. The English Futurist, C.R.W. Nevinson, made the different assumptions of the Futurists and the Modernists clear when he claimed that it was not “possible for an artist living to-day, travelling by tube, by bus, by taxi, surrounded by steel construction hoardings, petrol vapour and speed . . . to have the same emotions, thoughts or feelings as an Egyptian, early Italian, or Byzantine. It is obviously impossible.” He continued that the Futurists “don’t despise old work just because it is old; we simply say it is impossible to get inspiration from it or let it dominate us, just because evolution and change in vital art is essential, and it has no eternal truths.” It was the Futurist belief in historical progress, therefore, that inspired them to reject the use of the past in art and focus only on the present or future. Their resulting admiration for change and rejection of eternal truths certainly could not have appealed to the Modernists. Thus contemporary avant-garde visual art encouraged the literary Modernists to abandon traditional assumptions of progress and it supported their belief in the existence of two unchanging traditions of art and life. Moreover, it made some of them optimistic that the tradition they preferred, which had disappeared in the West after the Renaissance, was in the process of returning. In short, modern art encouraged cyclic views of history. If two traditions existed and alternated in appearance throughout time without progress within either, then the shape of history is one of cycles. Contemporary visual art seemed proof of this theory.

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Modernism

Hulme made this claim explicitly. He declared that seeing “certain pieces of sculpture” by Epstein made him believe that the type of character he admired in Byzantine art was “re-emerging in modern art.” Both the fact that there was a new interest in the non-naturalistic art of the past, and that an analogous art was being created in the present day, led Hulme to believe that a new geometrical age of art and thought was about to return. Hulme proposed that the best art of the past was “geometric” and that the new art of Epstein, Lewis, Gaudier-Brzeska, and a few others was a “new constructive geometric art.” It was because of his belief that the new art was the same as past geometric art, that Hulme was very upset when the critic, A.M. Ludovici, made “the stupidest criticism of all” of Jacob Epstein and called him “a ‘minor personality – of no interest to him’.” To Hulme, Epstein and other contemporary artists working in the same vein were of supreme importance. Their work, and the qualities it shared with ancient abstract art, was his proof of the circularity of history and his hope for a new and better future not only in art but also in all areas of thought and action. In fact, Hulme openly stated that the modern European “general state of mind” or “Weltanschauung” “which has lasted from the Renaissance till now” was in the process of “breaking up.” Avant-garde art was the beginning of a new “era” which would be “animated by the spirit of some great order or scheme of life.” Pound also believed that the “introduction of Djinns, tribal Gods, fetiches, etc. into the arts is . . . a happy presage” because it has led to the creation of a great new movement. Pound was confident that the tradition of humanism had recently ended. As he put it, “this time is fortunately over.” The alternate tradition was in the process of returning in the “modern renaissance or awakening.” Lewis, of course, agreed and echoed both Pound and Hulme when he claimed that he had a “very genuine optimism” because he believed that “the Siberia of the mind” of modern England had “touched bottom in the matter of national degradation” in the Victorian period. This is why “optimism is very permissible. England appears to be recovering.” Lawrence also was hopeful that the humanistic tradition of the recent past would be replaced by an abstract, spiritual, and disciplined tradition very similar to the one Hulme had described. Lawrence believed that “there is a dual way of looking at things.” One way is modern Western humanism, “which is to say ‘I am all. All other things are but radiation out from me.’ ” The other way, which he preferred, and which “puts aside the egotist,” tries “to conceive the Whole, to build up a Whole

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by means of symbolism.” This was a tradition of the past. For example, “that was how man built the Cathedral. He didn’t say ‘out of my breast springs this cathedral’. But ‘in this vast Whole I am a small part, I move and live and have my being’.” In the novel he was writing at this time, The Rainbow, Lawrence expanded upon the nature of this medieval cathedral. It was a place that was “timeless,” containing “no illusion of time . . . but only . . . renewing, and . . . recurrence of ecstasy.” It was “a world . . . within a chaos; a reality, an order, an absolute within a meaningless confusion.” This sounds much like what the Vorticists and Hulme thought was currently being returned in modern art. And in late  Lawrence even suggested to a friend that he write a book on “the death of Egotism” perhaps in order to do something similar. Finally, Yeats, who wrote the least about Post-Impressionism, also appears to have been encouraged by the new movement in art. In  he identified the problems he had in his own work, with what was being done by “those ferocious youths who make designs for a Phallic Temple, but consider Augustus John lost amid literature.” He undoubtedly was referring to Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, and Lewis, all of whom in some way or other had created either phallic art or art based on temples by that time. Like him they were attempting to find a form of art that did not have “the sentimentality, the rhetoric, the ‘moral uplift’ ” of naturalistic art, yet was not a vague, abstract subjectivism (“the impression of the world upon the delicate senses . . . [of] poets”) or disconnected from the past and “some real situation in life.” Moreover, these new artists were like Yeats in wishing to create an art based on “some symbolic language reaching far into the past.” Yeats also believed that this new art provided some hope for the future return of the abstract tradition. This optimism was encouraged by two facts. Yeats was impressed that the old art from the previous tradition was now admired. According to Yeats, “our appreciations of the older schools are changing . . . becoming more simple.” We now find pleasure in “Chinese painting” and in “Rajput paintings.” In addition, Yeats was encouraged by the fact that a new art in a similar style and with analogous goals to that of the past tradition was being created. This was evident, according to Yeats, in “the photograph of a picture by Guaguin [sic]” that hung over his breakfast table. This painting gave Yeats “religious ideas” in a way analogous to the religious art of the preferred tradition of the past. Because of this, for the first time, in June of  Yeats explicitly claimed that the tradition in which “the fall of man into his own circumference”

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Modernism

is the primary characteristic – in other words the humanist, democratic, and materialist tradition – “seems at an end.” In A Vision, in which he described his explicitly cyclic theory of history, Yeats would make a similar statement. He claimed that he had begun “to wonder whether the non-representative art of our own time may not be but a first symptom of our return to” a past attitude. In  Yeats speculated more openly that “perhaps now that the abstract intellect has split the mind into categories, the body into cubes, we may be about to turn back toward the unconscious, the whole, the miraculous; according to a Chinese sage darkness begins at midday.” Thus, modern visual art encouraged Yeats to believe that a new cycle of history was about to occur and that it would include an attitude with which he agreed completely. Modern visual art, therefore, was a combination of all of the previous interests of the five literary Modernists. It resembled the non-naturalistic features of non-Western art that they admired, it suggested a spiritualism pointing to a permanent, unchanging “other” world, and it provided the same sense of order and control as did conservative political views. The Modernists had finally found contemporary examples of a symbolic and suggestive art that was neither vague nor cloudy. In fact, far from being weak or soft, the work of modern visual artists like Epstein, Lewis, and Gaudier-Brzeska was decidedly strong, hard, and aggressive. This suggests yet another advantage this art had for the literary Modernists. It could help remedy the unfortunate public image of artists, which had been of concern to the Modernists since the beginning of their careers. It would be difficult to call the Vorticists remote, weak, fragile, or to quote Ford, “effeminate . . . eunuch[s]” who could be “hardly regarded as men,” and who, therefore, did not deserve the respect of politicians or business leaders. The vitality and strength of modern visual art was unquestionable. The five Modernists all were very much drawn to this new image of strong, “masculine” art and artists. For example, Pound was particularly pleased when it became clear that Gaudier-Brezska’s sculpted portrait of his head took on a phallic shape. Yeats had wanted his own art to be harsh and “masculine” as early as  and he certainly would have found those characteristics in the work of modern visual artists. This was especially the case in Epstein’s sculpture of a “Rock Drill” which Yeats, like a number of other literary Modernists, admired; in the remaining drawings of it, its phallic nature is difficult to ignore. Lawrence, by the end of , as we will see in the next chapter, had even reduced the principles of life in general to two, the male spirit and the female spirit, and he was very much concerned that the male

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complement and counterbalance the female. Finally, Hulme and Pound took their concern for masculinity one step further to active aggression. Both authors were much taken by the knuckle-dusters made for them by Gaudier-Brezska, and Hulme was famous for his threats to throw fellow artists down flights of stairs when disagreeing over aesthetics or politics. Moreover, because of their emphasis on masculine strength, the Modernists and their visual artist associates no longer suggested that their job was to provide a beautiful place to which a person could escape. Rather, modern artists now were going to change the world, and they would do so not merely by ennobling the audience or developing their faculties for sympathy. As Lewis and the Vorticists made clear, they were “primitive mercenaries in the modern world” willing to make “war” on whatever they disliked. In fact, the Vorticists announced that they were planning to “Kill John Bull with Art” and violently destroy the philistine public who refused to pay attention to them. Modern visual art, therefore, made the literary Modernists confident that artists had finally earned the right to have “the civic crown” returned to them from the “reasoners and merchants” who had held it for so long. Or maybe they would wrest it from their hands by force. In whatever way it would be done, the Modernists were optimistic that they soon would take their place in the aristocracy – of artists and intellectuals. This, in turn, simply served to make a cyclic view of history and the pattern of cycles in general seem even more appropriate as an expression of the reality of life.

 

The “cycle dance”: cyclic history arrives

For it is as if life were a double cycle of men and women, facing opposite ways, travelling opposite ways, revolving upon each other, man reaching forward with outstretched hand, woman reaching forward with outstretched hand, and neither able to move till their hands have grasped each other, when they draw towards each other from opposite directions, draw nearer and nearer, each travelling in his separate cycle, till the two are abreast, and side by side, until even they pass on again, away from each other, travelling their opposite ways to the same infinite goal. D.H. Lawrence, “Study of Thomas Hardy,”.

Adorning the pages of the first issue of Blast in  was the recurrent image of a cone with a straight line running through its center. As Pound had suggested that all great poets do, the Vorticists had chosen a concrete physical object to symbolize the set of complex ideas and emotions that characterized their new movement. This image was, therefore, the visual representation of the Vortex. In descriptions in the same journal viewers also were made well aware that the cone was not stationary, but was in constant motion. In other words, although the Vortex contained a still center, its perimeter moved violently. It was, in short, a sort of whirlpool. One contemporary described it in the following terms: The meaning of the Vortex and Vorticism as propounded by Lewis, was simplicity itself. “You think at once of a whirlpool”, he explained. “At the heart of the whirlpool is a great silent place where all the energy is concentrated. And there, at the point of concentration, is the Vorticist.”

According to Pound, “a ” is “a radiant node or cluster . . . from which, and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.” It is “the point of maximum energy” and of “the greatest efficiency.” This Vortex represented the goals and ideals of all the Modernists in  in art, politics, and life in general. It had great energy and movement, but energy that was controlled and directed rather than random. 

Cyclic history arrives

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It included the extremes of stability and change, and established an equilibrium between them. The Vortex when working properly, according to Pound, was a middle ground between the “stil [sic] spool or cone” and the “” or “the disgorging spray.” It had force enough to produce motion, but not so much undirected force that the motion was uncontrolled. As Lewis put it, “our Vortex desires the immobile rythm [sic] of its swiftness.” The Vortex did all of this through its circular motion. The movement of the cone was not random because it was harnessed to a still center. However, as a result it could only turn in circles, with no possibility of any linear progress. In short, by  circularity became the most appropriate “Image” or symbol to represent all of the ideas and values of Pound and the Vorticists. The same was true of the other four Modernists. When Yeats chose a “gyre” or Lawrence a “male” wheel revolving around a “female” axle, they were adopting remarkably similar images. If an image was not forthcoming, then explicitly cyclic views of history or cyclic structures employed in literary works did the same thing. All indicated the extent to which the Modernists had rejected progress and found circularity to be the most accurate, as well as the most comforting, representation of their view of reality. Cycles provided order, stability, and hope for the future in the face of a chaotic world grown out of the control of artists. Cycles were clearly evident in the official Vorticist theory of history. This appeared in the last article of the first issue of Blast and was written, not by Pound, but by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Pound, however, admired this “splendid formulation of his views” and later described it as the “ ‘whole history of sculpture’.” In fact, he considered it so important that he reprinted it in its entirety in his  memoir of Gaudier. In this article, titled simply “Vortex. Gaudier Brzeska.,” Gaudier argued that the best art was a proper combination of what he called the “sphere” and the “vertical”; the sphere represented the earth or natural world and the vertical represented religion or the supernatural world. If the religious impulse, which is usually the result of struggle with nature, was missing or if artists overemphasized the sphere of the natural and human world, the resulting works of art could only be weak. Gaudier continued to plot the cyclic alternation of great and weak art on four continents. In Asia, Gaudier noted a gradual decline in artistic spirit after the Shang and Chow dynasties because the Chinese “accumulated wealth, forsook their work,” and “ .” On the other hand, in Africa and Oceania, Gaudier perceived a continual rise of the artistic spirit

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due to a sustained hostility to the natural world. In the Occident, the pattern was of a cyclic rise and decline. The “acute fight” against nature led to the greatness of the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian cultures. A decline ensued when the Greek “saw himself only” and “petrified his own semblance.” Another rise, although not as great as the first, occurred with “Gothic sculpture,” but this soon “wilfully divagated again into the Greek derivation” and continual decline ensued in Western art from that period “until the   .” According to Gaudier, “  ! and it gave forth   in the quattro e´ cinquo cento,  until the seventeenth century,  whistle till now.” Despite this modern decline, Gaudier was optimistic that a new great art would emerge again in the near future, similar to the best traditions of the past, because contemporary artists have a relationship to nature similar to that of past artists in great periods. It should be obvious that this theory of history was nearly identical to the one Hulme had already formulated. The other four Modernists also began to develop similar views in . For example, while Pound did not expound as coherent a position as either Hulme or Gaudier, he clearly agreed with both views and accepted the basic premises of circularity. He claimed that in history there have been two traditions, and “always one wave of one of these traditions has caught and overflowed an earlier wave receding.” Furthermore, he did believe in the possibility of the “recurrence” of great figures, and that “at certain recurring periods” the humanist tradition was the ideal of the public, while at the present time the alternate tradition of the past was returning. Pound also believed that when this tradition did return, the democratic political and social system would be replaced by an aristocracy of the arts. He was confident that the artist “has dabbled in democracy and he is now done with that folly”; he is ready to “mount again into . . . [his] hierarchy.” In other words, “we who are the heirs of the witch-doctor and the voodoo, we artists who have been so long the despised are about to take over control.” Preparations for this takeover may have begun with the announcement in November  of the founding of “The College of Arts,” which included Vorticist instructors such as Gaudier, Lewis, Wadsworth, and Pound himself, and which aimed “at an intellectual status no lower than that attained by the courts of the Italian Renaissance” so admired by Yeats. However, rather than writing about the course of history itself, Pound was more interested in his own literary theory and practice. It was here that his preference for non-progressive and cyclic views of the past, as well as cyclic structures in general, became quite apparent. In order

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to make his poetry approximate the non-naturalism of archaic, Asian, and Post-Impressionist visual art, and to make his previous theory of Imagisme conform more closely to his theories of Vorticism – creating a kind of Vorticist Imagisme – Pound was led to a greater appreciation of non-progressive or cyclic structures. Pound had been searching for ways to write a work of literature that did not realistically represent external nature since at least . By  he had established explicit theories for how exactly this could be done and why it would make a great work of art. First, Pound realized that the absence of “romance and sentiment and description” and the removal of “extraneous matter,” such as ornament, rhetoric, and moralizing, could make a poem non-naturalistic. He made it quite clear that “the force that leads a poet to leave out a moral reflection may lead a painter to leave out representation.” Pound also understood that non-naturalistic literature, like visual art, could not passively mirror nature. Rather, by “rigorous selection,” it should “create form” and “cause form to come into being.” He claimed that this was done in his literary Vorticism because, like its visual counterpart, it actively arranged primary pigments. While the painter’s pigments are form and color, “the poet’s pigment[s]” are Images. Thus Vorticist Imagisme is a conscious arrangement of discrete Images. As such it is analogous to the “new school of . . . ‘nonrepresentative’ painting” that “speak[s] only by arrangements in colour.” Moreover, like visual Vorticism, literary Vorticism was not entirely abstract. The Images must be directly known or felt by the author in a way that “must make a picture.” Pound learned from the painter Wassily Kandinsky why this made a powerful art. According to Kandinsky, the constructive arrangement or “counter-point” of “pigments” in a non-representative painting “has a power of inner suggestion” and can evoke a corresponding “counterpoint” of emotion inside the viewer. Pound believed Vorticist poetry could do just this. Because “every emotion and every phase of emotion has some toneless phrase, some rhythm-phrase to express it,” by arranging these phrases properly a Vorticist poem can “record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.” Thus this new art can evoke emotions without the use of realism or rhetoric. Moreover, this made Vorticist poetry profoundly spiritual. Pound believed that the correspondence between Image and emotion implied a belief in the direction of “a permanent world” and “grip[s] hold of Heaven” because it represents the universal “free of space and time limits . . . existing in perfection, in freedom

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Modernism

from space and time.” Vorticist poetry, thus, was like Epstein’s sculpture, which “is in the best sense realist” because “it takes no account . . . of transient conditions” but, rather, presents “some austere permanence; some relation of life and yet outside it” in a manner resembling Platonic “ideas.” In  Pound elaborated on a technique to ensure that the arrangement or counterpoint of Images in a poem could evoke both internal emotions and a spiritual world. This was done by abandoning progressive structures. Pound reconfirmed his  claim that an ‘Image’ “presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time,” but explained further how this was accomplished. A work of literature must avoid presenting “separate facts . . . each one in turn” such as was done in a “cinematograph” or a linear narrative because this progressive structure emphasizes “transient conditions,” rather than the universal, and creates “a spreading, or surface art.” One example of a novelist who correctly did this, according to Pound, was Ford, whose work was “not bound by the tiresome convention that any part of life . . . must be shaped into the conventional form of a ‘story’.” In poetry Pound suggested that to avoid transient temporality the artist should create a “one image poem,” which “is a form of superposition, that is to say it is one idea set on top of another.” In this way the poem could become a vortex – a “radiant node” into which and through which Images and emotions simultaneously move without any sense of passing time. Moreover, this sense of simultaneity could be evoked best by superimposing images from all analogous ages and places no matter how disparate in space and time. The result, according to literary critic Reed Way Dasenbrock, is an art work that expresses the “congruence of past and present . . . as if no gap in time and space existed between them.” For example, Pound suggested that ideas could be adopted by Vorticists from Ibycus, Liu Ch’e, Dante, or a host of other writers in the abstract tradition. This in turn would create, as Pound commented in , “a poem, wrought out of ages of knowledge” which would carry the reader “out of the realm of annoyance into the calm realm of truth, into the world unchanging, the world of fine animal life, the world of pure form.” Super-position or simultaneity, therefore, could replace progressive chronological narrative to create a poem of great intensity, control, and order, which evoked emotions and mirrored the permanence of a more fundamental reality. In the next few years Pound continued to develop this non-progressive technique of superimposed images and ideas from vastly different times

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and places. But one problem remained. In early  Pound was disturbed by a feature of his theory of Vorticist Imagisme – how to write a long Imagiste poem. In order to be universal and free of space and time limits, Imagiste poems can include only a few ideas superimposed on top of one another and thus must remain short. A longer poem may have to rely on temporal sequence to connect various images and it may need a progression of ideas to unify the different elements of the poem. Pound believed that this problem could be solved, once again by turning to the Asian art that was also part of the alternative tradition that included Vorticism. In September  Pound claimed that the Japanese Noh plays led him to see “nothing against a long vorticist poem.” The Noh plays were also important for Yeats, perhaps even more so than for Pound. And as with Pound, they too helped define Yeats’s mature artistic style. In  Yeats’s aesthetic ideas grew closer to Pound’s concurrent theory of Vorticist Imagisme. Yeats also proposed that the greatest poems “mould vast material into a single image,” are “the impression of a single idea,” and contain “architectural unity and symbolic importance.” Moreover, these poems are as simple as prose, resemble pictures or “sensuous images,” and have an “instantaneous effect.” Yeats also made clear that the best poetry is a spiritual art that is not divorced from the past. It uses traditional religious symbols and themes because “the old images, the old emotions, awakened again to overwhelming life . . . by the belief and passion of some new soul, are the only masterpieces.” Moreover, if this sort of art was recreated in the present day, chronological time could be abolished; people who exist in an age of travel “by steamboat and railway” could once again “live amid” the same “thoughts” that existed in a time of “horseback or camel-back.” Thus, like Pound, Yeats wished to create a non-progressive, spiritual art that was unified around a single image with instantaneous effect. But, again like Pound, Yeats realized that this made the writing of long poems very difficult. He felt much sympathy for those contemporary poets who wrote “little poems,” and he believed that “it remains for some greater time . . . to create a ‘King Lear,’ a ‘Divine Comedy,’ vast worlds moulded by their own weight and energy like drops of water.” Yeats solved this problem, as did Pound, with the help of the Japanese Noh theater. Both Yeats and Pound proposed that the Noh was an Imagiste form of drama. According to Pound, “the better plays are all built into the intensification of a single Image,” such as “red maple leaves,” a “snow flurry,” waves and wave patterns or a “mantle of feathers,” and their “unity lies in the image – they are built up about it as the Greek plays

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Modernism

are built up about a single moral conviction.” Yeats agreed that there exists in the Noh “a playing upon a single metaphor as deliberate as the echoing rhythms of line in Chinese and Japanese painting” and that one can discover “the invention of images more powerful than sense; the continual presence of reality.” Moreover, the images around which the Noh plays were unified were universal and intended to point to permanence, rather than to the flux of change. Pound, for example, was pleased to discover that the painting of “a pine tree,” so often seen at the back of the stage, was “the symbol of the unchanging.” But most important, because the “manner of construction” was based on the “intensification of a single Image,” the Noh plays reinforced the idea that linear narrative form was not necessary even in a long work. The Noh, according to Yeats, was not the writing of “an industrial age” and thus did not use “a mechanical sequence of ideas.” He and Pound both learned from Fenollosa’s notes that the Noh did not “imitate facts” or copy “facts point by point.” As literary critic Richard Taylor describes it, “the ritual of No [sic] is not really dramatic. There is little conflict of any sort, and whatever logical progression does exist is determined by associations of feelings and emotional states, not the inevitability of cause and effect.” This is quite like the simultaneous emotional and intellectual complex of an Image. Yet there was a further feature of the construction of the Noh plays that helped Pound in particular solve the problem of how to produce a long Imagiste poem. This was the structure of a complete Noh performance in which six full plays on different subjects were included. Fenollosa had noted that this full performance generally included first a “god piece,” then a “battle-piece,” a “female piece,” a “Noh of spirits,” a piece on the “moral duties of man,” and finally another “god piece” similar to the first. According to Fenollosa, this last piece is intended “to show though the spring may pass, still there is a time of its return.” Pound was very impressed by this. He believed that it was evidence that “the Noh holds up a mirror to nature in a manner very different from the Western convention of plot.” This is because “we do not find, as we find in Hamlet, a certain situation or problem set out and analyzed. The Noh service presents or symbolizes, a complete diagram of life and recurrence.” Thus for Pound a cyclic structure attained a deeper realism than a progressive plot and was more true to the reality of life. And it suggested a new technique to construct a long Imagiste poem. Pound now had the confidence to write a long poem, which simultaneously superimposed themes and images from all ages in the abstract

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tradition without reference to chronology, and which made circularity its fundamental form and subject. The result was the Cantos. Pound began the earliest version of the Cantos in  and published them as Three Cantos in . The Three Cantos were dropped from the later version of the Cantos, but literary critics have claimed that Pound “never really repudiated many of the formal and thematic patterns” that the earlier work began. In Three Cantos Pound decisively abandoned linear narrative and progressive time for repeated recurrent patterns, and for themes drawn from all of the “living” past without regard to chronology – for example, the Italian Renaissance, Medieval Provence, Rome, Egypt, Confucian China, Japan, archaic Greece, the age of the cave paintings in the Dordogne, and twentieth-century Indiana. The Three Cantos is a poem that addresses the question of how to write poetry in the modern world. Pound’s answer lies with his non-progressive and cyclic view of history. He begins the poem with a consideration of the nineteenth-century poet he most admired, Robert Browning, and notes that Browning could be criticized for his use of history because he is not concerned with accurate chronology; “half your dates are out, you mix your eras,” “you turn off whenever it suits your fancy/ Now at Verona, now with the early Christians.” But Pound decides that this does not matter “in the least” because poets“can be where we will be.” There is no need for them to bother with the progressive time of the natural world; rather they should imitate the timelessness of the supernatural world. Poets should, like Odysseus in the underworld or the English mystic, John Heydon, in a trance, join the communication that exists in the anima mundi between the dead of all ages and places. And Pound’s declaration that “Ghosts move about me/ Patched with history” announces that he too will abandon chronology and present all that is valuable in the past simultaneously. The type of poetry that results, and that rejects the progressive nature of history, has particular value in the contemporary age, according to Pound. Not only does it ensure that the past is not lost (“ ‘It is not gone.’ Metastasio/ Is right – we have that world about us,”), but also it enables the modern poet and his audience actually to re-live that past (“Was I there truly?/ Did I knew Or San Michele?/ Let’s believe it.”). Thus, a vast storehouse of knowledge can be restored from the past for use in the present in poetry and life in general (“How many worlds we have!”). With this confidence, Pound then continues the poem that juxtaposes so many vastly different times and places. When he wrote the later Cantos Pound used many of the same devices. In that poem also Odysseus became one of the key characters. Not only

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Modernism

was the theme of his descent into the underworld and reconstruction of the past through the communication with ghosts as important as in the Three Cantos, so too was the cyclic nature of his voyage. Thus Pound added a new element in this much longer poem and it became the controlling structure of the entire work. As Pound made it clear in a letter to his father in , the “repeat in history” was key to the fugue-like organization of the Cantos. The poem not only juxtaposes vastly different times and places, as in the earlier work, but it also returns cyclically to various ages while emphasizing slightly different themes in each. In fact, literary critic Daniel Pearlman argues that cycles not only inform the structure of the Cantos, but also are fundamental to its overall theme. According to Pearlman, in the Cantos Pound was pointing out the fact that linear or mechanical time, “which is unidirectional and irreversible,” is “the fundamental enemy of life” and the cause of the modern decadence, moral disorder, and chaos. A cyclic concept of time is much preferable for Pound because it provides order for the chaos of life and it gives people “freedom from any sense of history as a series of unique and unrepeatable events and allows [them] to live in an unceasing present.” As a result, according to Pearlman, Pound believed that “history, whenever meaningful, is marked by recurrence rather than novelty,” and this is why he used recurring, timeless myths and coeval layers of civilization in the Cantos. Moreover, Pound might have intended to revive the past cyclically in the present day in order to exhibit permanence over time, to ensure order and a fundamental continuity with the past, and to provide hope for the future. Thus, in his mature style Pound not only implied that circularity was a preferable view of life and history because of the order it imposed, but by creating an art form that provided a fundamental connection with the tradition of the past that he preferred, Pound also was cyclically returning that tradition in the present day. It is likely that Yeats had the same goal in mind. He too might have been attempting to bring about a return of the past tradition he preferred by writing plays inspired by the Noh and by having them produced in a manner similar to the Noh. This was especially the case in his Four Plays for Dancers (–). According to Richard Taylor, these plays were designed to instill a sense of order, permanence, and universality in opposition to change and flux. As Taylor explains, “universal relationships or conditions” assume more importance than “objective plot development” in these Noh-inspired plays. One way this was accomplished was by a lack of humanism, in which “the depersonalization of

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the characters renders them representative types and focuses attention on the universal rather than the particular.” As a result, Yeats was able to abandon a narrative style. He was “more or less unencumbered by cause and effect relationships between the motives and actions of characters” and could begin to experiment “with suprapositioning of discontinuous scenes and visual images.” As he himself put it, he was imitating Japanese drama, which involves “a playing on a single metaphor” rather than “a mechanical sequence of ideas.” Yeats’s plays inspired by the Noh, therefore, were very similar to Pound’s Three Cantos. In these plays Yeats, like Pound, abandoned a sense of progress and presented various ages in the past contemporaneously with the present. The plays were a unique amalgam of contemporary European, classical Japanese, and ancient Irish themes and techniques. The settings and costumes combined Japanese stage design, masks, and music with the latest Post-Impressionist styles. The characters included ghosts, aristocrats, and peasants, and the subject was often based on Japanese tales, but transposed into the mythic Ireland of Cuchlain, Emer, and the Sidhe, or to the Ireland of . Thus progress was abandoned for a sense of circularity, or for a superpositioning of elements from numerous ages in the past and present with no sense of chronology. And all of Yeats’s previous interests past and present were included in an art form that provided a great sense of order and a fundamental connection with a past tradition. In late , at the same time that he was working on his Four Plays for Dancers, Yeats began to gather the basic concepts contained in A Vision, partially from contact he believed he had established with the “other” world of spirits. In fact, Yeats thought that the spirit world had provided him with knowledge of the entire scheme of life and history. It was in this way that he came up with the most complete and most complex cyclic theory of history of all the five Modernists under discussion. A Vision, like Yeats’s artistic endeavors, provided an ordered pattern within which he could include all of his previous concerns and goals. This pattern was very similar to the one developed by Hulme, Pound, and the Vorticists. In fact, the central image of A Vision is a type of vortex. Yeats explained that the “fundamental symbol” of A Vision is “a double cone or vortex” (also called a gyre) that describes the “Great Wheel” of history. More specifically, the symbol was of two interpenetrating vortices that are in constant motion, expanding and contracting inwards and outwards. In his  introduction to the book, Yeats even wrote that he regarded “the system” of A Vision “as stylistic arrangements of experience comparable

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Modernism

to the cubes in the drawing of Wyndham Lewis and to the ovoids in the sculpture of Brancusi.” According to Richard Ellmann, “Yeats thought that he had discovered in this figure of interpenetrating gyres the archetypal pattern which is mirrored and remirrored by all life, by all movements of civilization or mind or nature.” These gyres represent the various dichotomies or extremes composing all of life and thought which eternally move inwards to a point and meet and then separate outwards again. When transposed to the course of human history, this symbol becomes the Great Wheel. The dichotomies cyclically alternate with one another – one growing in strength while the other diminishes until they meet and the opposite movement begins. Thus ages in which different principles are predominant will alternate as they follow an endless cycle. Although in A Vision Yeats tried not to indicate whether he had a preference for any specific ages or dichotomy of principles, his description of the cycle of the present day and of the near future clearly indicated his optimism. As he made it most clear in his  edition of the work, Yeats believed that the current age was “dogmatic, levelling, unifying, feminine, human, peace its means and end.” On the other hand, the approaching age “for which the intellectual preparation had begun” will be one which “obeys imminent power, is expressive, hierarchical, multiple, masculine, harsh, surgical” and aristocratic. These are all features of civilizations for which Yeats had expressed his admiration for years. Later in his life Yeats did occasionally express some concern about the period of transition to the future cycle; he feared that the end of the current age would involve destruction and violence, even civil war. This was best expressed in his  poem “The Second Coming” in which “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned” as a “rough beast” approached with the new cycle. However, this fear did not alter Yeats’s fundamental optimism. At times he claimed that he “did not take literally” the destruction he predicted. Elsewhere he suggested that it was necessary, and that modern men must “love war” because “the danger is that there will be no war, that . . . European civilisation . . . will accept decay.” Finally, he also claimed that it was “laughing, ecstatic destruction” he anticipated, and that when civilizations “approach the phoenix’ nest” of renewal, despite any violence “we who have hated the age are joyous and happy.” As he wrote in , “All things fall and are built again/ And those that build them again are gay.” Thus, with his cyclic view of history, Yeats had formulated a view of the universe with the authority of a religion that provided the order

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and stability, connection with the past, and hope for the future that he had always desired. This theory also could serve as a basis for a nonprogressive aesthetic form founded on the art of past cycles, such as he had begun to experiment with in his Four Plays for Dancers. Yeats himself, therefore, could have been part of “the intellectual preparation” for the cyclic return of the tradition he preferred. With cyclic literary techniques and cyclic theories of history Pound and Yeats, like Hulme, had found a structure for art and the universe as a whole which provided a continuity with the past, and an optimism about a better future. Ford, on the other hand, did not elaborate such an explicitly cyclic theory of history at this date. Ford’s historical opinions were often implicit in his ideas, but more evident in his artistic practice. Because of his acceptance of political opinions very much like those of Hulme, Ford openly rejected the “Whig” views of history he had supported in the beginning of his career. He became particularly concerned with the fallacy of historical and political theories that proposed that freedom would result in automatic progress. Again like Hulme, he pinpointed both the ideas of Whig historians and of Rousseau as prime examples of this mistake. In a statement almost paraphrasing Hulme, in  Ford claimed that what he “really do[es] desperately want to see is a good Tory history in use in schools in this country, to take once and for all the place of stuff of the Whig type.” And Ford believed that in addition to “Whig cant of the greatest good of the greatest number,” “it is really time that the idea of precedent broadening down to precedent should be got out of the heads of this afflicted people.” Ford’s replacement of progress with a cyclic pattern was more clearly seen, however, in his creative writing. As with Yeats, in  Ford’s literary theory grew close enough to Pound’s to appear very much like Vorticist Imagisme. Ford considered Impressionism to be the literary aspect of Futurism in the same way that Pound considered Imagisme to be the literary side of Vorticism. Like Pound as well, Ford also redefined his theory of Impressionism when he identified it with the visual arts. In fact, Ford made the association of his “Imagiste friends” with his own goals when he claimed that they too were “realists” who “rendered . . . concrete objects” with precision, clearness, and hardness to arouse or convey definite emotions. In a statement echoing both Pound and Hulme, Ford thought that the best art used “a very clear and defined rendering of any material object . . . to convey to the beholder or reader a sort of quivering of very definite emotions.” In addition, Ford, like Pound and Yeats, believed that progressive narrative must be abandoned in favor of a simultaneous or instantaneous

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style. As we have seen, as early as  Ford had begun to experiment with non-linear plot structures for his novels. But it was only in  and  that he theorized about this type of structure and made it the key to his artistic technique. Ford had always claimed that he wished to “render those queer effects of real life” in his art. In  and , he came to a new understanding of how to do this. He concluded that “real life” could not be depicted in a linear fashion because it involved a complex movement between a surface reality and a more important deeper reality. More specifically, he argued that all people, all the time, experience a variety of thoughts, emotions, and feelings at the same time; on the surface they may be carrying on a conversation with someone, but simultaneously they are thinking about their physical feelings, about another discussion they are overhearing, or about past emotions and conversations. According to Ford “the mind passes . . . perpetually backwards and forwards between the apparent aspects of things and the essentials of life.” Impressionism, therefore, if it is a true representation of the “vibrating” reality of the mind, must “give a sense of two, of three, of as many as you will, places, persons, emotions, all going on simultaneously in the emotions of the writer” and a sense of “that balancing of the mind between the great outlines and the petty details.” It is, therefore, an “attempt to render those superimposed emotions.” According to Ford, if this is carried out in a novel the result will be analogous to a Futurist collage: you will have produced something that is very like a Futurist picture – not a Cubist picture, but one of those canvases that show you in one corner a pair of stays, in another a bit of the foyer of a music hall, in another a fragment of early morning landscape, and in the middle a pair of eyes, the whole bearing the title of “A Night Out.” And, indeed, those Futurists are only trying to render on canvas what Impressionists tel que moi have been trying to render for many years.

This last statement is not entirely true. Ford had not been trying to render superimposed impressions for years. The idea of simultaneity was new to him in  and . It was only when he developed his “Futurist” Impressionism, analogous to Pound’s Vorticist Imagisme, that Ford claimed in order to truly render “real life,” progressive narrative must be abandoned in a novel. In  and , however, Ford made quite clear that he believed “certain quite strong canons, certain quite rigid unities . . . must be observed” to create this new sort of art form. Whether in prose, verse,

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painting, or sculpture, Impressionism “is the record of the impression of a moment; it is not a sort of rounded, annotated record of a set of circumstances.” In other words, it does away with a linear chronicle of events. Ford explicitly rejected the dogma of the s “that it was necessary to have a story, ‘with a beginning, a middle, and an end’ all complete.” Futurist Impressionism could not be an “ordinary ‘plotted’ short story.” It could not have “the economically worded, carefully progressing set of apparently discursive episodes, all resolved, as it were, in the coup de cannon of the last sentence.” Thus, in Ford’s new novels movement, change, narrative, and progressive action would be abandoned in favor of simultaneity and superimposition. The flux of modern life would be frozen while a deeper, permanent reality beneath the surface would be exhibited by rigorous selection. As such this new style was very similar in its goals and methods to Vorticism. According to Robert Green, when Ford applied this method to his own writing he created “a patterned design that was neither chronological nor linear.” Like the Imagiste intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time, Ford’s technique produced “an impression on his reader analogous to that of a sculpture whose shape can be perceived in a fraction of a second.” To accomplish this sculptural lack of chronological linearity, according to Green, and again in a manner similar to Pound, “aspects of past and present are continually juxtaposed . . . so that they are fused in one comprehensive view that attempts to transcend historical limits and encompass all time.” Ford’s first application of this technique was in “The Saddest Story” which he began on December , . This work was not out of place in the first issue of Blast and easily could be described as a Vorticist story. The theme is best presented in Ford’s own words from his book Henry James, which was written in the same year. It was a work that intended to render “the world of to-day, with its confusing currents, its incomprehensible riddles, its ever present but entirely invisible wire pulling, and its overwhelming babble.” In other words, it was an attempt to exhibit and control the same “messiness and confusion” that the Vorticists and Hulme perceived in modern life, and it was intended to express Ford’s regret for the “Permanence . . . Stability” which is gone. In describing the life of two couples from the upper classes, Ford clearly depicted the chaotic reality hidden beneath the facade of civilization. On the surface both couples are proper, cultivated, responsible members of society at “the pitch of civilization,” and they lead “the most desirable type of life in the world” with “an almost unreasonably high standard.”

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But underneath is anarchy, cruelty, and immorality, or, as Ford put it, “a prison full of screaming hysterics.” To present this dichotomy, Ford used a technique closely resembling that of Pound and Yeats, and one that is reminiscent of Vorticism. The narrator of the story, one member of the quartet, acts as the still center at the heart of the flux of movement around him that he does not understand and cannot control. He attempts to organize and direct the flux by retelling his story. But in retelling it, he uses a more “real” non-linear and non-chronological method. Not only does the narrator superimpose emotions from different time periods rather than chronicle events in a linear manner, he also changes chronology completely and moves backwards and forwards in time randomly. Moreover, in the complete version of The Good Soldier, published in , the narrator returns cyclically to one date, albeit in different years – August . This date, the start of the First World War, is the key date of the novel – all the important events occur on it. Thus in “The Saddest Story” and The Good Soldier there is no sense of progress. A sense of the contemporaneity of past and present, and of circularity are the controlling structures. Furthermore, in this novel Ford associates the disintegration of the life of the two couples with the wider course of history. It is, in fact, the story of the breakdown of the ancient aristocratic tradition in modern life. The key event of the novel, and the cause of the ultimate decline of the couples, and analogously of the aristocratic tradition, is identified as the Protestant Reformation. This event had led to the dichotomy of sterile Catholicism and meddling Puritanism represented by Leonora and Florence who end up destroying the true English country gentleman, Edward Ashburnham. Moreover, Ford implies that this sort of thing has happened repeatedly in history. It is a story of “the falling to pieces of a people” such as happened with “the sack of Rome by the Goths” and in the French Revolution. Thus Ford suggests that the disintegration of an aristocratic tradition had occurred cyclically in the course of history, and is once more occurring in the present day – the age of the First World War. Finally, it is likely that in this novel Ford provided an answer to a question he posed in Henry James. In that essay Ford suggested that one of the most important questions an Impressionist writer could discuss when writing about the upper classes is: are the prizes of life, is the leisured life which our author has depicted for us, worth striving for? If, in short, this life is not worth having . . . if this life, which is the best that our civilisation has to show, is not worth the living; if it is not

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pleasant, cultivated, civilised, cleanly and instinct with reasonably high ideals, then, indeed, Western civilisation is not worth going on with, and we had better scrap the whole of it so as to begin again.

Ford’s answer in The Good Soldier is clearly in the negative. Not only is this civilization “not worth going on with,” but it has been in a state of disintegration for centuries and is on its last legs. It should be “scrapped” and a new cycle, and a new aristocratic tradition should be begun. Ford did not continue from these suggestions to outline explicitly a cyclic theory of history right away. He did, however, think that “Mr. Brzeska’s” article in Blast, in which the Vorticist cyclic theory was outlined, “is . . . the most pleasurable piece of writing of the lot.” Nevertheless, Ford had expressed all the ideas that went into Hulme’s, Pound’s, and Yeats’s cyclic theories. Like all of the five Modernists, Ford expressed a great hostility to the chaos of nature and humanity and a desire for a control and order of the dichotomies he perceived in both. This led him, as it did the others, to feel a commonality of purpose with a tradition of art, politics, and thought in existence in Asia and in pre-Renaissance Europe. He also had rejected theories of progress and found a means to control and order the chaos with a literary technique of superimposing ideas from the past and the present and an implicit circularity. Finally Ford was encouraged by a similar effort in the latest developments in the visual and literary arts – perhaps suggesting to him that the tradition of order which he preferred might in fact be cyclically returning in the present day. All of this provided a firm foundation for the explicitly cyclic view of history he developed after the First World War. Like Pound, Yeats, and Ford, in  Lawrence was inspired by contemporary and ancient visual art to alter his literary technique. In particular, like Ford, Lawrence identified his own new work with the theories and techniques of the Futurists. He even claimed that the book he was currently writing, published in  as The Rainbow, “is a bit futuristic – quite unconsciously so.” Lawrence particularly liked Marinetti’s idea that “ ‘the profound intuitions of life added one to the other, word by word, according to their illogical conception, will give us the general lines of an intuitive physiology of matter.’ ” And he realized that this suggested the need to abandon a logical progressive structure. Lawrence now decided that the novelist should not “conceive a character in a certain moral scheme and make him consistent” or present “the moral scheme into which all the characters fit.” Instead of representing “the old stable ego of the character” or “trace[ing] the history” of individual personalities

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in a linear manner, Lawrence wanted to use a technique in which “the characters fall into the form of some other rhythmic form, as when one draws a fiddle-bow across a fine tray delicately sanded, the sand takes lines unknown.” In other words, he wished to invent an abstract design, rather than rely on a naturalistic, progressive plot development. Lawrence may have found a way to construct this non-linear “other rhythmic form” through his interest in symbolism. The type of symbolism Lawrence especially liked did not use “only the symbol as a subjective expression: as an expression of ourselves,” but rather used symbols in order “to grasp . . . the Complete Whole” and to make an “attempt at formulating the whole history of the Soul of Man.” In other words, he admired a spiritual symbolism. Lawrence may have discovered examples of this type of symbolism when he came across Mrs. Henry Jenner’s Christian Symbolism, which he “liked very much, because it puts me more into order.” Christian symbolism as described by Jenner not only was “used for religious purposes” because “it is not possible to express spiritual things adequately in words,” but also it was reserved only for an elite. According to Jenner, “the earliest Christian symbolism was for the most part constructed so that it should be understood fully by the initiated only.” Moreover, it incorporated the myths and assimilated “the various good points of earlier religions,” for example, of Greek, Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Indian, Chinese, Jewish, and Celtic religions. Jenner had shown, therefore, that an older type of symbolism existed, which was spiritual and elitist, and which was part of the alternative tradition of life Lawrence and the other Modernists already admired. It is not surprising, therefore, that Lawrence took such an interest in the book. But Jenner did something more for Lawrence. Her analysis of Christian symbolism may have helped him develop a new literary style. In fact, symbolism as described by Jenner was very much like Pound’s Imagisme. According to Jenner, “the function of symbolism in art is to portray to the mind, by means of visible images, conceptions of the soul.” It used, therefore, concrete visible objects to portray internal or deeper emotional and intellectual complexes. In addition, this symbolism excluded linear progress and chronological narrative. In Christian art “the choice of subjects . . . was of a wholly symbolical interest; historical sequence was absolutely ignored.” In other words, “chronology and history are subservient to symbolism and spiritual meaning.” Finally, Jenner reiterated an idea that Lawrence first may have read in Jane Ellen Harrison’s work; many Christian symbols, like archaic and non-Western ones, represented the eternal with images of circularity or resurrection.

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According to Jenner, in both pagan religion and early Christianity, the cyclic “revival of Nature at the vernal equinox” was extremely important and could be expressed by symbols such as “the Resurrection of Christ,” the swastika (“a conventional representation of the ‘wheel of the sun,’ the sequence of developmental being”), the peacock and the phoenix (both signify resurrection and eternal life), or simply the circle (which “from very ancient times has been held to represent Eternity without beginning and without end”). After reading Jenner, Lawrence adopted a number of these ideas. He proposed that all religions that use symbolism “have the same inner conceptions, with different expressions.” And he increasingly stressed the concept of resurrection as one of the key features of older and better symbolic religions. According to Lawrence, contemporary people, because “we think we are very great” cannot get any further than enumerating “the smarts of the crucifixion.” While people of a different tradition of thought, who employed the “central symbols, from the oldest vision,” wisely “did not insist on the Cross: but on the Resurrection.” Lawrence hoped that this sort of spiritual belief could be revived in the present day. He proposed that “Christianity should teach us now, that after our Crucifixion, and the darkness of the tomb, we shall rise again in the flesh, you, I, as we are today, resurrected in the bodies, and acknowledging the Father, and glorying in his power, like Job.” If this were done, then modern people would be able to “grasp and know again as a new truth, true for ones own history, the great vision, the great, satisfying conceptions of the world’s greatest periods.” In other words, there would be a cyclic return of the past abstract, symbolic, and spiritual tradition that had existed in archaic Greece, Egypt, Assyria, the Middle Ages, and in Asia. In late  Lawrence finally found a perfect symbolism to represent “the great vision” and the “whole history of the Soul of Man,” and perhaps also contribute to the return of a past tradition. This symbolism was of cycles. It was contained in two very important works with which Lawrence was occupied in  and  – his “Study of Thomas Hardy” and his novel The Rainbow. Lawrence completed his “Study of Thomas Hardy” at the end of November  before finishing his final version of The Rainbow, and claimed that it was “supposed to be on Thomas Hardy, but in reality [was] a sort of Confessions of my Heart.” In fact, it is one of the most complete outlines of Lawrence’s philosophical and historical position of . The study is founded on the theory that a dichotomy of extremes exists, which must be brought into harmony and equilibrium for any

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sort of healthy society or human beings to emerge. These two extremes were the principles Lawrence summed up under the terms “male” and “female.” The male principle is “endless motion, endless diversity, endless change,” and Lawrence believed that it was best symbolized by a wheel that constantly moves but without direction. The female principle, on the other hand, is one of the will-to-inertia, fixity, eternality, “of infinite oneness, of infinite stability,” and it was symbolized by a motionless axle or hub. When these two principles are brought into equilibrium, or “married”, as they should be, the male wheel revolves around the female axle. The result is an energetic motion, but one which is controlled and directed. And it is “motion that is utter rest, a duality that is sheerly one.” As can be seen by this description, Lawrence’s key symbols for his philosophy of life closely resembled those of the Vorticists. Both Gaudier’s idea of the sphere and the vertical, and the symbol of a vortex as a whirling cone surrounding a stationary line are very similar to Lawrence’s wheel moving around a fixed axle. The intended implication of all these symbols is also the same. They indicate that a coordination of extremes of change and rest is crucial because it produces a controlled and orderly motion. Like the Vorticists, Lawrence distrusted the endless flux of nature and progress. As he wrote, the male principle is “like a wheel, if he turns without his axle, his motion is wandering neutrality.” But alternatively, he distrusted complete rest; the female principle needs the male to “convey her static being into motion.” If the two are combined, however, the stability of the female impulse, like a gravitational pull, forces the straight line of the male inwards and the result is an orbit, circle, or wheel which combines both motion and rest. The circle, therefore, is the best representation of a harmonious equilibrium of opposites. Lawrence expanded upon this philosophy to develop a cyclic theory of life by using two related metaphors. In one metaphor, quoted at the head of this chapter, Lawrence claimed that life was a “cycle dance.” Like Yeats’s scheme in A Vision, this “dance” consisted of two wheels, the male and the female, that move towards one another, meet at a certain point, move away again, only to begin the process all over. Lawrence also described this cyclic motion of life in a way resembling a vortex. The two cycles of male and female are combined but the male acts in a “centrifugal” way “fleeing . . . away from the centre,” while the female is “centripetal” “fleeing into the eternal centre of rest.” He continued that “a combination of the two movements produces a sum of motion and stability at once satisfying.” Thus, as in Yeats’s conception, the two

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principles could be like double vortices, constantly moving inwards and outwards, occasionally meeting, and then moving apart as far as possible, but destined to repeat the process eternally. But, according to Lawrence, there would be no “meeting and mingling” of the two principles as might occur in a spiral view of history. Rather there was “an equilibrium, a pure balance.” In his “Study of Thomas Hardy” Lawrence applied this philosophy of life to history. He explicitly rejected the idea of progress. For example, he claimed that the ideas of evolution of Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley, which posit “one spirit or principle starting at the far end of time, and lonelily traversing Time,” were wrong because “there is not one principle” evolving in a single direction, but “two, travelling always to meet.” History is characterized by alternating male and female principles as their intersecting cycles draw closer, “meet, combine, [and] always . . . withdraw again.” As one principle grows in dominance, the other declines, but when the height of dominance is achieved, the process is reversed. At certain periods, the declining and growing principles are equivalent in strength. There is an equilibrium that characterizes the best periods in history. But eventually the principle, which had been recessive in the previous period, grows in strength and the former dominant one weakens, and the cycle repeats itself again. Thus history is the cyclic alternation of female and male periods with brief interludes of perfect harmony. It is important to note, however, that although this scheme of history is clearly cyclic, Lawrence did not accept what he believed was Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence. Lawrence claimed that “each cycle is different. There is no real recurrence.” In this sentiment he agreed with Hulme and the Vorticists who also believed that although the underlying essential attitude of the two traditions that alternate remain the same, their attributes change in different ages. Repetition will be analogous, not exact. Lawrence was not entirely clear or consistent about which periods in history fit into this pattern, but he did give some indications. He believed that the female principle of stability and rest, which he also called the principle of “Law,” was the original impulse. The first historical ages, thus, were unadventurous and conservative; they emphasized strict laws, transcendental religion, absolute universal values, and a passive life centered on the bodily feelings and senses. This clearly was the case in the early Jewish period, the Middle Ages, and perhaps also Babylon, Egypt, and archaic Greece. In ages of “Love” the male principle of movement

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and change encouraged attempts at improving the world through freedom and individualism, and it engendered a humanistic religion and a morality that denied bodily concerns in favor of rationalism and intellectual knowledge. The era of Christ, the Victorian period, and perhaps also late Greece and Rome were these sorts of ages. Finally, according to Lawrence, there had been two periods in which an equilibrium between the principles had been reached; the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance and fifth-century Greece. This cyclic scheme of history enabled Lawrence to comment fully on the characteristics of the day in which he lived, and provide an implicit prophecy for the future. Like Hulme, Pound, and Yeats, for Lawrence the Renaissance was an age of transition between cycles. The present day was part of the post-Renaissance cycle. It was, therefore, a male age of Love. Lawrence indicated that for England specifically the development of this new cycle began when the aristocratic lifestyle of the Cavaliers, which stressed law and order, and life of the bodily senses, was replaced by the Puritan morality of the mortification of the flesh, admiration for the disembodied mind, and concern with the public good. This Puritanism had grown and had culminated in Victorian moralism, materialism, and rationalism with its concomitant emphasis on democracy, education, and evolution. All these characteristics indicate an age primarily concerned with movement and change and an improvement of public life. Although Lawrence, like Yeats, attempted to make no value judgments about the two types of principles and ages in history in this study, from his previous statements it is clear that he did prefer and felt more at home in female ages of Law. These are ages that reject the chaos of democracy, humanism, and intellectualism for the stability and order of aristocracy, transcendental religion, and the bodily senses – all of which Lawrence had been arguing was missing from and necessary in the present day. Lawrence believed that at the time he was writing, it was clear that the male spirit of love had reached its height. He saw an indication of this in contemporary visual art. Lawrence, like Hulme and the Vorticists, believed that both the Futurists and the Impressionists were “the male extreme of motion.” It was clear, therefore, to Lawrence that the male spirit must soon begin to decline and the female one to rise. Law and order, religion and aristocracy would assume more importance, resulting eventually in a brief period of equilibrium in which the best art, life, and thought possible would be produced, before the female spirit took complete control once more. As a result Lawrence must have been quite optimistic about the future.

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In his “Study of Thomas Hardy,” therefore, Lawrence had accomplished a task that was extremely important to him. As he wrote to Lady Ottoline Morrell in late January , “it is an Absolute we are all after, a statement of the whole scheme – the issue, the progress through Time – and the return – making unchangeable eternity.” He himself had effected an equilibrium between change and motion in his cyclic theory and the result was a satisfying sense of order, continuity, and permanence. Having outlined this theory of history, Lawrence then applied it to his creative writing. In his “Study of Thomas Hardy” Lawrence declared that “every novel must have some background or the structural skeleton of some theory of being, some metaphysic.” As literary critics have not failed to note, the “Study of Thomas Hardy” is the “metaphysic” or “structural skeleton” of the novel Lawrence rewrote in , and finished in , titled The Rainbow. That structure is cyclic. The Rainbow plots the recurrent struggles of the Brangwen family to achieve a balance between the male and the female principles, while at the same time it identifies their struggles with the overall course of human history. The novel opens by suggesting that in the past, generations of Brangwens had in fact achieved an equilibrium. However, it concentrates on the period after , and the attempts to effect the same balance of three modern generations. In The Rainbow Lawrence presents the female characters as embodying characteristics of what he had described in the “Study of Thomas Hardy” as the “male” spirit, and the male characters represent the “female” principle. This is perhaps because each is searching for the opposite of their real being in order to achieve the equilibrium that is a marriage of opposites. The female Brangwens in the novel always want change, progress, and improvement. They seek this change in the chaotic outer world of civilization, business, education, and activity. The male Brangwens prefer the stability and permanence of the home, of the bodily senses, and of transcendent religion. The first part of the novel examines the marriages of the first two generations – Tom and Lydia, and Will and Anna – and their efforts to reconcile their opposite spirits. The struggle between Will and Anna in particular is very difficult. Will desires to remain either at home (particularly in the bedroom) or in a church where there is “a world . . . within a chaos: a reality, an order, an absolute, within a meaningless confusion.” Anna, on the other hand, needs the activity of the outside world, a communication with humanity, and the rationalism brought by knowledge. Both couples eventually manage to reach an equilibrium and the

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marriage and the home become the axle or still center around which the chaotic flux of the outer world revolves. This equilibrium is represented by the symbol of the rainbow that appears at the end of the story of each generation. As Keith Sagar remarks “the rainbow is an image of the perfect balance of the great polar opposites which go to make up life – sunshine and rain, air and water, light and dark, heaven and earth.” It is also half of a circle of life and death, and it must be achieved before the entire cycle of existence can be complete. Moreover, it is the hope for the future – hope that a new generation will once again cyclically repeat and succeed at the same struggle. In describing these two generations, Lawrence also made an analogy with the broader course of human history. Tom and Lydia represent the primeval pagan world. They have a simple agricultural life on a farm, close to the natural cycle of existence. They live “through a mystery of life and death and creation.” Will and Anna, however, have moved to a cottage and Will is a craftsman with a passion for church architecture. They both live in harmony with the cycles of the Christian year. They represent, therefore, the medieval cycle of history. Thus in each generation the same struggle and equilibrium is cyclically repeated. When accomplished, both find peace by living in harmony with the fundamental cycles of life – of the natural world or the Christian year. The third generation of the novel moves on into the modern period and makes up the last half of the book. The novel, therefore, is primarily concerned with discussing the struggle for equilibrium in the modern age. Will’s and Anna’s daughter, Ursula, is the focus of this struggle, and by the time she is an adult she is living with her parents in a modern suburb of an industrial, coalmining town. Like all Brangwen women, Ursula desires to take part in the male world of civilization outside the home. But this world, in the modern age, has become one of materialism, democracy, equality, imperialism, moral relativism, mechanism, ugliness, cruelty, and above all chaos. Ursula feels an instinctive hatred for all of the male world. She, like all the Brangwens, despite any social classifications, is by nature an aristocrat, and finds herself out of place with the modern world. Nevertheless, Ursula feels that she must face the world and conquer it. She attempts to do this by getting an education, securing a job, and finding a mate. In Anton Skrebensky she discovers a soldier, imperialist, and democrat, who is an embodiment of the male principle, the spirit of the age, and the established order of things. In the end Ursula does conquer the male world around her and Skrebensky as well. But she remains unsatisfied. She has not effected an equilibrium because she has merely added further male principles

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to the male spirit she already embodied. She needs her opposite – the female principle of stability, transcendence, absolute, impersonal will to provide an axle and direction to the wheel of the world of chaos in which she lives. When Ursula realizes this the novel ends – once again with a rainbow. Ursula, although she has not yet found her opposite to marry, has realized the path she must take to effect once again an equilibrium and begin a new cycle. In the last scene of the novel, Lawrence provides a key for what the entire book has been about, and in explicitly relating it to the broader course of history, he clearly indicates his optimism about the future. The novel’s structure, in addition to plotting the cyclic struggle of three generations, is cyclic in its overall design. The novel begins where it ends, with a Brangwen looking out over the local church. Ursula is in bed ill, and in her delirium she perceives herself as the kernel of an acorn which had freed itself of its winter husk. She knows that “the kernel was free and naked and striving to take new root, to create a new knowledge of Eternity in the flux of Time.” In other words, she is prepared to effect the equilibrium between permanence and change, and as such she would cyclically repeat the process that had gone on in nature and in humanity for generations throughout the course of history. Ursula then looks out of her window at the coalmining town in which she lives and she sees “a dry, brittle, terrible corruption spreading over the face of the land.” But beyond that she also perceives “a rainbow forming itself.” Lawrence concludes the novel with the following hope: And the rainbow stood on the earth. She knew that the sordid people who crept hard-scaled and separate on the face of the world’s corruption were living still, that the rainbow was arched in their blood and would quiver to life in their spirit, that they would cast off their horny covering of disintegration, that new, clean, naked bodies would issue to a new germination, to a new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven. She saw in the rainbow the earth’s new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in the living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven.

Lawrence’s cyclic theory of history, therefore, enabled him to write his first Modernist work. This work, like that of other Modernists, had a cyclic structure. It posited both the reality of cycles and their importance in effecting a combination of extremes and a universal stability that is essential to control the chaos that is life. His cyclic theory of history also gave Lawrence, as it did all five Modernists, a reassuring sense of continuity with the past and a hope for the future. It was a means to provide order and meaning in an age of “messiness and confusion.”

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“The Nightmare” and beyond: the First World War and mature cyclic theories

Such a war-time that let loose the foulest feelings of a mob . . . to torture any single, independent man as a mob always tortures the isolated and independent.

D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, .

On August ,  what D.H. Lawrence later described as “The Nightmare” began. Being part of the “aristocracy of the arts” did not protect the five Modernists from the life-changing and often devastating events of the First World War. This does not mean that they all lived through it in the same ways. In fact, like the population of Britain in general, their experiences of, and reactions to, the war varied greatly. The most tragic case was that of T.E. Hulme. Immediately after the declaration of war Hulme enlisted. He fought at the front from late  to September , with an interval of a few months in  when he was recovering from wounds. Hulme was killed on September , . According to an obituary in The Cambridge Magazine, “the shell which is supposed to have blown him to pieces burst unobserved, and its explosion left no trace of his remains.” Ford’s war also was dominated by active military service, but with less devastating results. He enlisted in the army in July , fought at the Somme in the summer of  and was hospitalized for illnesses caused by shell-shock and gas. He returned to the battlefield in , and once again was hospitalized and remained as an enlisted soldier in Britain for the rest of the war. The other three Modernists did not participate actively in the war. Pound volunteered twice but was rejected both times – initially by the English because he was American and America had not yet joined the war, and later by the Americans for an unknown reason. Neither Yeats nor Lawrence had any desire to enlist. Yeats showed little interest in the war and his age ( in ) made him exempt. Lawrence, on the other hand, was actively opposed to the war; he claimed that he 

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would never put on a uniform and would die before he would follow orders or shoot a weapon. He had to do neither. When conscription was instated, he was rejected for medical reasons. As their experiences of the war were different, so too were the reactions of the five Modernists to it. Ford and Hulme, the two who fought, both grew very supportive of the Allied cause. Pound, the only other Modernist to volunteer, also supported the Allies but with slightly less enthusiasm. Yeats made little comment about the war and seemed almost entirely indifferent. Lawrence was completely pessimistic about the entire affair. Despite the fact that all five experienced and reacted to the war differently, this disturbing international conflict did little to change their thinking about art, politics, or history. In fact, while the Modernists did alter some of their ideas slightly, the war served to support all of their previous positions. Thus, what is more interesting than the changes that the war brought to the authors is the similarities of their post-war and pre-war ideas. Ford was the first of the five to make any comment about the war. Initially Ford approached the war with the political theories he had developed by , and which one might expect to be the attitude of all five Modernists. His opinion was quite cynical. He thought that “what is senseless, what is imbecile, are the ideas for which people are dying” because he believed that the war was a product and “an indictment of the Parliamentary system and of democracy.” As a result he did not despise the enemy and claimed that he “should feel intensely any mortification to Germany.” He did “not mind who cuts whose throat” because “the greater part of humanity is merely the stuff with which to fill graveyards.” Moreover, Ford thought that ultimately the war might be beneficial for Europe because it would help destroy the parliamentary system. But by the end of the month of August  and throughout  Ford’s attitude toward the war had changed dramatically. His final opinions were best expressed in two books commissioned by the Ministry of Propaganda and published in , When Blood is Their Argument and Between St. Denis and St. George. In these two works Ford enthusiastically supported the Allied cause. Germany had become, for Ford, the personification of everything he despised in the modern world. In fact, it became the inferior of two traditions that Ford believed had existed in the past and present day. Ford claimed that Germany, which had started the war for the purpose of territorial expansion in order to increase its wealth, was dominated

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by Prussian culture which was diametrically opposed to that of England, France, and southern Europe (including southern Germany). In fact, echoing Hulme, Ford claimed that the Prussian point of view is entirely different from the British one, and “it is a difference not of degree, but of species.” Prussia, according to Ford, was materialistic, egotistical, mechanical, scientific, anti-religious, ostentatious, morally corrupt, cruel, and lacking in any great art, thought, or culture. The Prussian political system also was truly evil. It valued the state above the individual, and the state it so valued was absolutist and despotic, militarist and aggressively nationalistic, coldly and strictly organized, and repressive of individual freedoms. In fact, Ford’s description of the Prussian state’s involvement in and repression of individual life made it almost resemble a totalitarian government. Citing the cases of Poland and Alsace under Prussian domination, Ford believed that if Prussia were allowed to expand any further into Europe dictatorial oppression would be the fate of all nations. In opposition to Prussianism, Ford entirely supported the existing British system. Ford once again showed an admiration for democracy. He thought that the British state is “an almost perfect organ for the regulation . . . of human intercourse.” Ford now entirely agreed with “the English ideal of ‘freedom slowly broadening down from precedent to precedent,’ or in other words, constitutionalism” that he had previously attacked so vehemently. And he thought that “probably constitutionalism is the best rule-of-thumb organisation for human beings who desire to live at peace with one another and to pursue the ordinary avocations of humanity.” Ford admired British culture once again for its humanist, chivalrous, and altruistic values, and for its concern with the freedom and happiness of individuals. Finally, according to Ford, Germany was actively seeking world dominance and thus “the German nation [was] the greatest menace to humanity that the world has ever seen, or that has, at least, been chronicled in recorded history.” Ford believed that the fundamental issue of the war was “whether the future of the race shall be that of organised, materialist egoism, or that of what I would call the all-round sportsmanship of altruistic culture.” Thus, it was essential that the Allies win because “the fate of humanity and of civilisation is to be decided forever.” Hulme’s reactions to the war and his opinion of Germany were very much the same as Ford’s. In a number of articles he wrote in  and  titled “War Notes” he echoed many of Ford’s ideas. Hulme took pains to make clear to his readers the malevolent nature of Germany and the serious threat it posed to England and Europe as a whole

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because of its lack of liberalism and freedom, its statism, and its militarism. Hulme believed that “England is really in danger” because Germany is “anti-democratic” and a menace to democracy. German illiberalism was exhibited for Hulme by her bureaucracy and belief in “ ‘the omnipotence of the State’ ” in which the life of the state is more important than the life of the individuals who comprise it. It was also indicated by the German glorification of “ ‘militarism . . . [as] the German spirit itself ’ ” and by the German sense of cultural superiority in science, technology, art, and literature. Germans unrealistically believe that they are “God’s people” superior to “ ‘all the other peoples whom [they see] at infinite depth below [them]’.” Like Ford, Hulme also claimed that Germans seriously thought that they needed to expand territorially in order “to find room for their increasing population” and that they were willing to dominate and take possession of all of Europe and establish “German hegemony” to accomplish this. They wanted to create “a Macedonian military empire, in which Germany would play the same part that Prussia plays to-day in Germany itself.” And finally, according to Hulme, if the Germans win, “Europe will be really altered in structure by this war.” There will be “a German Europe” under the tyranny of Germany and “all we mean by democracy will certainly take a second place in our daily lives.” In short, “the liberties of Europe” – “free thought, free speech, free culture” will disappear. Pound’s reaction to the war was a bit more complex than that of Ford and Hulme. Like Ford, Pound was not initially enthusiastic about either the Allied cause or the war itself. In fact, he condemned both sides. In November  Pound claimed that “this war is possibly a conflict between two forces almost equally detestable. Atavism and the loathsome spirit of mediocrity cloaked in graft.” Moreover, his main concern throughout the war was the effect it had, and would continue to have, on art and culture. He spent much of his energy during these years complaining about the difficulty of publishing works of literature and trying to help various writers get their work into print. For the first year of the war, Pound tried to ignore it as much as possible. He claimed that the war was “a species of insanity” and he continued to develop the ideas of the period immediately prior to the war in order to provide a counterbalancing “species of quiet and sober sanity.” Pound persisted in propagandizing for Vorticism and the artists associated with it, as well as developing his interest in Chinese poetry. But neither Pound nor the other Vorticists could entirely ignore the war.

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Modernism

Pound heard a great deal about the experience of it in letters he received from Gaudier who was fighting in the trenches. And Gaudier joined the Vorticists in contributing to the second number of Blast, which was published in July . In many respects the editorials for Blast, No.  echoed Ford’s and Hulme’s ideas. In agreement with Ford, the editorials assumed that German civilization was entirely different from that of England and France and that it was composed of all the elements that were disagreeable in the contemporary world. Germany was romantic and sentimental, culturally inferior, materialistic, nationalistic, and militaristic. It was an egotistic, bourgeois brigand seeking complete conquest, world power, commercial exploitation, and endless interference in individual life. France and England were correct in fighting for their liberty, were doing a good job, and their assured victory would prevent these characteristics from dominating the future of European society. Nevertheless, in opposition to Hulme and Ford, the contributors to Blast did not go on to support liberalism and parliamentarianism. In fact, Germany was also described as democratic and vulgar. And echoing Pound, Blast did not admire the “unsatisfactory democracy” that was fighting “teutonic atavism.” Rather, in a sentiment close to that of the Action Fran¸caise, Blast still claimed that aristocracy, order, and discipline were necessary and that superior individuals must master the weak crowd. The death of Gaudier on June ,  may have brought the war even more to Pound’s consciousness. Pound was deeply upset by this event and it remained one of the most disturbing experiences of his life. It also may have prompted him to express his views of the war more explicitly. Again his ideas echoed those of Ford, but even more so of Blast. In  Pound claimed that the German temperament was in complete opposition to that of England and France. He despised Germany because of its “desire to coerce others into uniformity” and because of its “personal tyranny . . . oppressions and coercions.” He disliked the German state-controlled educational system of specialists who must propagandize for the state. German statism was equally despicable because it was informed by “the idea that man is the slave of the state, the ‘unit’, the piece of the machine” and the state is the slave of the Emperor. Finally, Pound criticized German nationalism and racism, and the idea of Kultur, of “obedience, Deutschland u¨ ber Alles, infallibility.” In opposition to these German characteristics, Pound believed in the necessity of “human liberty, personal liberty.” He claimed that “England and France are civilisation” because they have “kept some real respect

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for personality, for the outline of the individual.” Moreover, Pound believed that it was essential for individuals to be free from any interference in order to preserve and develop their own personalities. The rights and protection of individual personality, especially of “men of unusual intelligence,” were paramount. Only in this way would civilization be preserved. Nevertheless, Pound was not as enthusiastic about democracy as Ford or Hulme. Although he did agree that the German political system was far worse than democracy, he thought that there could be slavery to democracy as much as slavery to an all-powerful state. Yeats was the Modernist who was least affected by the war and who made the fewest statements about it. In September  Yeats was asked by his friend Gilbert Murray to sign a “Declaration by British Authors” who supported “the cause of the Allies with all their strength.” They condemned the German aggression and believed that Allied victory was essential to guarantee Belgian neutrality, to prevent the ruin of France, and “to maintain the free and law-abiding ideals of Western Europe against the rule of ‘Blood and Iron’ and the domination of the whole continent by a military caste.” Hulme, Ford, and Pound would have rushed to sign such a declaration, but Yeats refused. He explained to Murray that while he longed “for the defeat of the Germans,” he was unsure “whether England or Germany brought on this war.” Moreover, the declaration seemed too much like propaganda. Yeats claimed that he would much rather sign a declaration against secret diplomacy or demanding a responsible investigation of claims of German atrocities – hoping to find them false and to find “that great numbers of German commanders and soldiers have behaved with humanity.” Yeats, therefore, was unwilling to condemn either side and had no great hatred for the Germans. In a letter to his father in the same month, Yeats was a bit more clear about his feelings – he was disgusted by the entire affair, and blamed the English as much as the Germans. He claimed that “the war will end I suppose in a draw and everybody too poor to fight for another hundred years, though not too poor to spend what is left of their substance preparing for it.” He disliked the “mob” enthusiasm of the London crowds during a Zeppelin raid cheering every bomb and every shot from an anti-aircraft gun. And he claimed that “England is paying the price for having despised intellect.” Yeats made few comments about the war after this except to complain about its effect on his Abbey Theatre productions and on the poverty of authors such as James Joyce. Yeats was, at this time, most preoccupied with writing and producing his plays based on the aristocratic Japanese

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Modernism

Noh. Although Yeats still claimed in August  that he wished the Allies victory, his attitude towards that war was best summed up in a poem he sent to Henry James in the same month, which he stated “is the only thing I have written of the war or will write.” The title of the poem is “A reason for keeping silent” and it begins, “I think it better that at times like these/ We poets keep our mouths shut; for in truth/ We have no gift to set a statesman right.” In May of  Yeats did sign a letter of Irish writers protesting against conscription, and he was greatly disturbed by the death of Lady Gregory’s son, Major Robert Gregory, but this did little to break his silence. Rather Yeats was more concerned with strictly Irish problems. He was particularly upset by the Easter Rebellion of . And again, as with the European war, Yeats condemned the English. He thought the British government handling of it was incompetent and unjust and he wrote to Lady Gregory: “I had no idea that any public event could so deeply move me – and I am very despondent about the future. At the moment I feel that all the work of years has been overturned, all the bringing together of classes, all ‘the freeing of Irish literature and criticism from politics’.” In a letter to John Quinn he commented: “We have lost the ablest and most fine-natured of our young men. A world seems to have been swept away.” In contrast to Yeats, Lawrence was the Modernist who was perhaps most personally disturbed by the war. Lawrence’s initial reaction was very much like Ford’s. He had no great hostility for Germany, which he viewed as “a young, only adolescent nation” that did not “know what to do with themselves.” But he did think that war was a “colossal idiocy,” and he had “never come so near to hating mankind.” He thought that “they are fools, and vulgar fools, and cowards” and he did not “even mind if they’re killed.” Nevertheless, Lawrence, like Ford, did have some hope for the future. He believed that “we shall all come through, rise again and walk healed and whole and new, in a big inheritance, here on earth.” As the war progressed, however, Lawrence became more and more pessimistic. He despised the war for the horror of the killing and thus would not participate in any way to help it. But he also believed that war was an essential part of the human race, so he would not become a conscientious objector. Above all Lawrence simply wanted to be left alone and to remain aloof. But this was not an attitude that was very well accepted at the time, and he was forced to become involved. Lawrence’s hostility to the war became especially extreme between  and  when it began to affect his life intimately and personally. He

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and his wife Frieda were under suspicion by the military authorities for a number of reasons. Lawrence appeared healthy but was doing nothing for the war effort. Even worse, Frieda was the daughter of a German army officer, Baron Friedrich von Richthofen, and the cousin of Manfred von Richthofen, the “Red Baron,” who was gaining increasing attention. Lawrence and Frieda were put under surveillance – they were spied upon by local authorities with the help of neighbors, their house was searched, they were forced to leave the Cornish coastal village in which they were living, they were followed constantly by the police, and they were not permitted to leave England. On top of this Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow had been suppressed by the police for obscenity, and he had an extremely difficult time making any money because few journals or publishers would take his work. Lawrence’s experience of the war, therefore, was one of poverty, suspicion, surveillance, and the interference of authorities with the help of the population in his freedom of movement and thought. This experience simply served to embitter him toward humanity and all forms of control. By , in his novel Women in Love, Lawrence even went so far as to have the main characters fantasize about a “clean, lovely, humanless world” in which people “were just wiped out.” Lawrence described his feelings about the war most clearly in his  novel, Kangaroo. Like Pound’s initial reaction, Lawrence had come to condemn both sides. He “detested the German military creatures: mechanical bullies they were . . . But then the industrialism and commercialism of England, with which patriotism and democracy became identified: did not these insult a man?” “They wanted to bring him to heel even more than the German militarist did.” Lawrence viewed the situation in England during the war as “a reign of terror, under a set of indecent bullies” who were supported by “the criminal public and the criminal government.” This made Lawrence grow increasingly hostile to humanity in general and in particular to “the will of the obscene herd.” The worst part of the war for Lawrence, as the quote beginning this chapter indicates, was that it enabled the “mob . . . to torture any single, independent man.” As a result “everybody in London was frightened . . . who was not a rabid and disgusting so-called patriot” and “no man dared open his mouth” because “the lowest orders of mankind [were] spying on the upper classes, to drag them down.” In short, Lawrence’s reaction to the war was a very intense fear of governmental and societal restrictions on his own liberty and independence. He very much resented the threats to “the freedom of the individual” and especially to the freedom of speech, thought, and movement of

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Modernism

the superior members of society. Ford, Hulme, and Pound also supported this sort of liberty. But while they believed Germany to be the main danger to freedom, Lawrence saw this danger both at home and abroad. Thus, although the Modernists had different experiences of and reactions to the war, a certain underlying similarity in their opinions is evident. All five Modernists were still disturbed by the same features of the modern world as before. They still disliked materialism, mechanism, egotism, bourgeois philistinism, romanticism, and a lack of respect for religion and for the best thought, art, and individuals. While Yeats and Lawrence continued to perceive these features as characteristic of English society and politics as they had before the war, Ford, Hulme, and Pound remained silent about England and transferred their criticisms to Germany. But all agreed on the fundamental problems of the contemporary world that they believed must be fought and overcome. The only significant development that the war had on the thinking of the Modernists was a lessening of the anti-humanism and illiberalism of Ford’s, Hulme’s, Pound’s, and Lawrence’s political opinions. All four clearly felt that the primary threat to the world was tyranny and coercion, and they realized that liberty and individual freedom were necessary. They were not, however, in complete agreement about where this liberty could be found. When the war was over the four Modernists who survived continued to share the same general reactions to the contemporary world. Despite any support of Britain during the war, none of the four Modernists was entirely happy with the country. In fact, all were so dissatisfied with postwar life in England that they chose to live elsewhere. Yeats settled in Ireland, Pound moved to Paris and then to Italy, Ford also moved to Paris and then to America, and Lawrence moved to Italy, Australia, and finally to America. After the war, the most important development in the Modernists’ ideas was an increased interest in politics. Again, despite any differences their ideas remained quite similar to one another and to their pre-war opinions. Their post-war thinking about politics also had an impact on their ideas of history. Once again, it served to encourage their cyclic views. None of the Modernists was entirely satisfied with any of the political structures of Europe in the immediate post-war period. All were unhappy with the existing democracies and all disliked Russian communism. Aside from this agreement, there was a degree of difference in the Modernists’ political opinions in the s and s. These dissimilarities can be related to the varying experiences and effect the war had on the different Modernists.

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Ford and Lawrence were the Modernists most affected personally by the war. They were also the two who were particularly hostile to German and Italian fascism in the s and s. In opposition to fascism and communism, both authors showed a certain amount of sympathy for democracy, much more so than they had in the immediate pre-war period. Expanding on the position he had formulated during the war, in the s and s, Ford commented upon the importance and value of constitutionalism. He was particularly concerned with individual freedom. Nevertheless, he did not enthusiastically support any of the governments of the existing European democracies, and he still believed that a new type of political system was necessary. Unlike Ford, Lawrence continued to inveigh against the idea of democracy after the war, but he too had become a bit more sympathetic to many of its features. This was also true of Hulme, the Modernist most deeply involved in the war. Before his death, his ideas had been heading in a similar direction. In fact, even before the war ended both Lawrence and Hulme suggested the possibility of creating a new form of democracy. In  and , rather than rejecting democracy entirely as he had before the war, Hulme began to develop what he called a “different conception of democracy.” According to Hulme, this new democracy would be virile and anti-humanitarian, and it would demand strict discipline and military values; people would be required to fight to acquire, and to use discipline to retain, the democratic ideals of liberty, justice, and equality. Lawrence had a similar conception of a new elitist democracy. He believed that “the purest aristocrats . . . have taught democracy” and thus his new democracy would be an aristocratic one. It would recognize the importance of a hierarchy of intelligence and a natural aristocracy of the superior members of society. It also would choose and unite around a great hero. But because of its superiority, this elite and hero would have the strength to be fair, to preserve liberties, and to interfere little in the lives of the people. Lawrence even seriously considered establishing his own community like this (perhaps in Florida), which he called the “Order of the Knights of Ranamin,” and in which an intellectual elite would work together in harmony, equality, and cooperation. Thus, those Modernists who had been deeply affected by the war, not only desired strong, disciplined, and elitist governments after the war, but they also saw the need of preserving freedom and justice. Pound and Yeats, the two Modernists least involved in the war, did not have the same reaction to the politics of the s and s. Neither had any interest in democracy and both, to varying degrees, were attracted to Italian fascism. Yeats was briefly interested in “the politics of the so-called

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Modernism

‘Irish Mussolini’, Kevin O’Higgins” and the fascist Irish Blue Shirt Movement led by General O’Duffy in . However, he had rejected all types of fascism by . Pound’s support of Mussolini was far more longlasting and notorious, including radio broadcasts from Italy during the Second World War, an arrest, and a trial for treason after the war. Although the greater commitment of Pound to fascism might indicate that he had less respect for the democratic ideals of liberty and justice than did Yeats, this is not necessarily the case. Rather, the degree of interest in these aspects of liberalism, again, reflected their relative experiences of the First World War. Although personally Pound had been affected by the war very little, he had been disturbed by it and by the death of his friends, and he had participated in thinking and writing about it more than did Yeats. Moreover, while he supported Mussolini to the bitter end, his interpretation of Mussolini’s goals and type of government, at least until , had a great deal of similarity to the political systems desired by the other Modernists who had been more intimately involved in the First World War. As Pound wrote in , “any thorough judgment of Mussolini will be in a measure an act of faith, it will depend on what you believe the man means, what you believe that he wants to accomplish.” And Pound himself had quite a unique interpretation of what Mussolini meant. Pound did not admire Mussolini because he was a dictator, and he disagreed vehemently with those people who claimed that Mussolini’s government was coercive or restricted individual liberties. Rather, Pound admired Mussolini as a strong ruler who appreciated and used the most intelligent and superior members of society in his government. Moreover, Mussolini was very benevolent; he cared for his people deeply and provided them with a fair and equitable economic system. And he did this with a minimum amount of state interference in individual liberty. He was a strong, kindly, intelligent, equitable, and paternal ruler who had established “the fascist policy of intellectual freedom and free expression of opinion for those who are qualified to hold it.” Thus Mussolini’s government resembled the new “virile” and aristocratic democracies of Hulme and Lawrence – with one major exception; Pound’s increasingly virulent anti-Semitism ensured that Jews would not be considered “qualified to hold” any opinion or share in the freedom or equality he believed Mussolini guaranteed all others. Yeats was the Modernist who had shown the least interest in the First World War. After the war, although his flirtation with fascism was brief, he was also the Modernist who had the least admiration for liberty

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or democracy. Yeats had no concern for “ ‘the decomposing body of liberty’ ” or freedom of the individual. He preferred an “authoritative government” that was “the antithesis of democracy.” This was because “the modern State is so complex . . . it must find some kind of expert government – a government firm enough, tyrannical enough, if you will, to spend years in carrying out its plans.” Being a bit more specific, Yeats advocated “the despotic rule of the educated classes as the only end to our troubles” and believed that “force” or violence by the government might be necessary to ensure that its plans were enacted. In  Yeats even went so far as to insist on the necessity of a program of eugenics to prevent the inferior members of society from breeding. Pound agreed on this point; he advocated “: as opposed to race suicide” and suggested that “the breeding of human beings deserves  care and attention than the breedin’ of horses.” Thus, the five Modernists had varying responses to, and suggestions for, post-war politics. Nevertheless, there is a common thread running through all of their ideas. First, all of the Modernists feared a repetition of the violent disorder of the First World War in the form of revolution or internal anarchy. As is not surprising considering the problems of post-war Europe, the sense of the chaos, “messiness and confusion” of modern life that the five Modernists had felt before the war was equal, if not stronger, after the war. As a result, in the same way as before the war, they all believed in the necessity of the imposition of some kind of order and authority on European society. The Modernists also still were concerned that the control of politics and society had been placed in the hands of persons or groups who did not have the intelligence to provide the necessary order or to promote the development of the greatest possible art, thought, and culture. Thus, they believed that it was essential for power to be held by the most intelligent members of society, who necessarily were only a few and an elite. In addition, because of the experience of the war, all but Yeats had developed an aversion to an over-powerful and interfering state, whether controlled by the mob or by a single individual, that would deny any member of society the freedom to express differences or that might force all people to become identical units conforming to identical opinions. Finally, the war and the post-war period also encouraged the five Modernists to become much more concerned with the economic hardships of the population of Europe and the inequality of wealth. As a result, they all saw the need for a new economic structure that would be more fair and egalitarian.

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Modernism

The five Modernists, therefore, after the war as before desired a political order that combined elements of the right and the left. It would consist of a strong government capable of providing stability and order, and it would be run by an elite of the most intelligent members of society. This, in turn, would institute a more controlled economic system to provide for the needs of all the people, and promote the greatest possible culture. At the same time, however, this state would also interfere as little as possible in the lives of its members and ensure individual liberty and diversity (except, in Pound’s system, for Jews). In short it would be a decentralized government of a paternal and intelligent elite accepting social hierarchy and economic justice. Thus, the political ideas of the five Modernists during and after the First World War remained quite similar to one another and were not far removed from their pre-war positions. More important for our concerns, however, is the fact that even if they did find a contemporary political system to admire, the Modernists still looked primarily to the past for their ideal civilization. They found it again in the alternative tradition they had preferred before the war. All the Modernists continued to theorize about the existence of two different traditions of the past. Hulme, for example, claimed there were “two ideas of democracy.” One was practiced in the present day, but the other that he admired far more had existed from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. The new democracy that he wished to see returned in the contemporary world would resemble the practice of seventeenth-century England. This type of democracy “had a certain virility and had not fallen into the sentimental decadence of humanitarianism.” In fact, rather than accept any contemporary political designation, Hulme claimed that “I should prefer to call myself a Leveller.” After the War Lawrence also continued to express a preference for the tradition of the past that included the Middle Ages, as well as the preChristian, pagan civilizations of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Etruscans. In all of these ages, according to Lawrence, much more so than in the contemporary world, society was unified and a proper balance between individual freedom and collective action was achieved. Natural power, ability, and intelligence were recognized, the weak were protected, and there was the “true possibility of fulfillment” for all. Ford agreed. In the inter-war period he, like Hulme and Lawrence, wrote of preferable periods of the past, such as the Middle Ages, especially in Provence and Iceland, and Confucian China. He particularly liked a feudal system of little towns protected by innumerable counts, governed by viscounts, and

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only nominally under a king, because it established a decentralized, wellfed, well-housed, highly decorated society with a maximum amount of freedom from outside interference. Ford still held out some hope that this sort of system might return in the future. In  he fantasized in his novel Vive le Roy about the re-creation of a monarchy in a country “of small hamlets, each self-contained, each potentially self-supported, selfgoverning . . . almost without central government.” Ford even claimed that his politics was of a person “who had no party leanings save toward those of a Tory kind so fantastically old fashioned as to see no salvation save in the feudal system as practiced in the fourteenth century – or in such Communism as may prevail a thousand years hence.” Despite the fact that Pound had found a political system he admired in contemporary Europe, his ideal civilizations, like Ford’s, were also of a feudal order, small city-states, and Confucian China. These societies were organic wholes, opposed to mercantilism and the profit motive, and working for the good of the people by providing them with the necessities of life and at the same time a sense of proportion and a hierarchy of values. Pound hoped that a similar system could return in the present day. It is highly likely that one of the primary reasons Pound admired Mussolini was that he believed Mussolini was effecting a return to a preferable political system, especially of Confucius. Pound claimed that evidence that “the Chinese . . . method of countin’ cycles of  years . . . seems to work somehow,” could be found in “the Italian rise . . . the change of phase: from material to volitional.” This belief that Mussolini was the herald of a cyclic return to the past was certainly held by Yeats as well. In  Yeats admired Mussolini’s ideas of an authoritative government controlled by an elite primarily because he thought that they were analogous to ideas of the period prior to the French Revolution. In fact, these ideas suggested that a reversal of the process begun by the Revolution was taking place. Yeats’s admiration for Mussolini, therefore, was, as with the other four Modernists, an indication of his continued preference for the civilizations of the past. He too still admired past ages in which a military aristocracy presided over a hierarchy in “the small ancient town serrated by its green gardens.” And, aside from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, he claimed that “if I could be given a month in antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato.” Thus, the political opinions of the five Modernists in the post-war period were, as they had been before the war, a response to a perceived

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Modernism

situation of injustice and chaos. They still looked primarily to the past for preferable ideals, and they still were inspired by the alternative tradition they had admired for so long. It is not surprising, consequently, that their cyclic views of history were reinforced and expanded after the war. In the s and s those Modernists who had developed cyclic theories before the war continued to add details to them, and those who had only established a foundation for similar views were now prepared to elaborate. It is impossible to know how the war and its aftermath would have affected Hulme’s concept of history. Nevertheless, there is some indication that the experience of the war did not change it fundamentally. In  and , while fighting in the trenches, Hulme still fully supported a cyclic view of history. His position was almost identical to that of the years immediately before the war. He believed that two uniform traditions of thought alternated throughout history. A humanist tradition, which accepted the goodness of humans and the possibility of their perfection and progress, had existed in classical Greece and the period after the Renaissance. A religious tradition, which believed in original sin, discipline, permanence, stability, and the subordination to a hierarchy of values, was evident in early Greece, Egypt, Byzantium, Polynesia, Africa, and the Middle Ages. Hulme still believed that this religious tradition was in the process of cyclically returning in the present day. But in  and , Hulme added a further thought to this theory. Because it was so important to him that the war be pursued actively to preserve democracy in England, Hulme claimed that he did not believe in a “mechanical view of history” and in “an inevitable alternation . . . of periods.” In other words, if people did not fight actively for a new cycle it might not come about. Nevertheless, Hulme still vehemently rejected the idea of progress because he believed that perfection could not be attained in the natural world. Moreover, he still thought that the idea of a spiral was a “devastating stupidity” because with it “you disguise the wheel by making it run up an inclined plane; it then becomes ‘Progress,’ which is the modern substitute for religion.” Thus, although considerations brought on by the war may have modified Hulme’s views slightly, the cyclic pattern of history that he had elaborated in Edwardian Britain remained essentially the same until the end of his life. Yeats’s post-war historical views were also a continuation of his prewar position. In  he published “a little philosophical book,” Per Amica Silentia Lunae. In this book he reiterated his theory of  about the contrast between the way of the poet and the way of the saint. Yeats

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claimed that there was a “difference between the winding movement of nature and the straight line.” The poet and the hero must follow the former – “the Winding Path called the Path of the Serpent.” The natural world and history are characterized by “heaving circles” and “winding arcs” that “are mathematical” and that enable some people “in the world, or beyond the world” to foretell the future. The poet and hero must be concerned with nature in this world and thus with cycles. According to Yeats, “only when we are saint or sage, and renounce Experience itself, can we . . . leave the sudden lightening and the path of the serpent and become the bowman who aims his arrow at the centre of the sun.” Between  and  this sort of thinking resulted in Yeats’s theory of history in A Vision, which was first published privately in  and then revised and republished in . In that work Yeats proposed that there was a “mathematical law of history,” which was the alternation of two contrary principles that he described as Discord and Concord, war and love, the tearing apart and conflict of Subjectivity and the bringing together and unity of Objectivity. Furthermore, Yeats claimed that this alternation was also cyclic. According to Yeats in , “a system symbolising the phenomenal world as irrational because a series of unresolved antinomies, must find its representation in a perpetual return to the starting point. The resolved antinomy appears . . . in the whirlpool’s motionless centre, or beyond its edge.” In other words, because the resolution of the contrary principles of life cannot occur in the natural world, they must ceaselessly alternate in a cyclic manner. Accordingly, Yeats proposed that history moved in a number of cycles. There was a “Great Wheel” of twenty-eight phases, a smaller wheel that composed two sets of three phases, and finally each phase itself was a wheel. The Great Wheel took approximately two thousand years to finish in its entirety. Phase One of this Wheel involves a movement from complete subjectivity towards the complete objectivity, which is reached in Phase Fifteen. This had occurred twice in the past two thousand years, from the year  to  and from  to . The years  and , according to Yeats, were the height of Phase Fifteen; they embodied “Unity of Being” and were the periods in which “the greatest beauty of literary style becomes possible.” They were best represented by “Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato” and by the Italian Renaissance. Phases Sixteen to Twenty-Eight mark a decline from objectivity to subjectivity. This occurred from the years  to  and after  until sometime in the

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Modernism

future. According to Yeats, the years in which he wrote A Vision are at the end of Phase Twenty-Two and are a time of increasing subjectivity that will reach its height in Phase Twenty-Eight. Then the process will reverse and objectivity will grow again, until Phase Fifteen and “Unity of Being” return once more. Thus, although it would be centuries before the perfection of Phase Fifteen in the Great Wheel was reached again, and conflict and disunity had not yet achieved their height, Yeats did not believe this should be cause for pessimism. Rather, the beginning of any smaller cycle was a positive time. According to Yeats, “a civilisation is a struggle to keep control” but “the loss of control over thought comes towards the end” of each phase. This is indicated by the fact that all phases end with weak democracies while they begin with strong aristocracies and heroes. Thus, the new phase about to be entered will be one of control and order. Or as Yeats later put it, “a hieratical society returns, power descending from the few to the many.” Perhaps because of this Yeats was led to declare, “the new gyre begins to stir, I am filled with excitement.” In  Yeats still was firmly convinced of the reality of a cyclic view of history over the idea of “progress as we understand it . . . the straight line.” And he made it clear that his view of history, although not one of exact repetition, was strictly cyclic. Like Hulme, Yeats did not think that the similarity between cycles would involve more than analogy. As he put it, “we cannot do the same thing twice, and the new thing must employ a new set of nerves or muscles.” However, he did not believe this meant that any element of cumulative improvement, either in a progressive or spiral fashion, or in an apocalyptic purging of evil at the end of history, would occur. Yeats openly objected to any theory that suggested that the opposites, which cyclically alternate in history, could be overcome or transcended as in spiral views. As he wrote in , “could these two impulses, one as much a part of the truth as the other, be reconciled, or if one or the other could prevail, all life would cease.” Instead of attempting to overcome the struggle of opposites, Yeats believed the struggle should be accepted as part of reality; “he who attains Unity of Being is some man, who, while struggling with his fate and his destiny . . . is content that he should so struggle with no final conquest.” Yeats also made it clear that he was “no believer in Millenniums” because of their progressive nature. He specifically disagreed with “the Japanese labour leader and Christian Saint Kagawa” because his “millennium-haunted mind breaks Vico’s circles” which are also Yeats’s circles.

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Yeats, therefore, never abandoned his strictly cyclic view of history and he remained confident throughout the s that “a new beginning, a new turn of the wheel” was about to occur. He agreed with “a Chinese sage” that “darkness begins at midday” and believed that perhaps now “we may be about to turn back towards the unconscious, the whole, the miraculous.” And he hoped that “the slow preparation for the greatest, perhaps the most dangerous, revolution in thought Europe has seen since the Renaissance” was occurring and that it was “a revolution that may, perhaps, establish the scientific complement of certain philosophies that in all ancient countries sustained heroic art.” As late as  Yeats still expected “a counter-Renaissance” to occur imminently. And in , the year of his death, he had not lost this faith. Thus, as with Hulme, the cyclic view of history that had been in preparation well before the First World War and more fully elaborated during and after it provided Yeats with a fundamental optimism until the end of his life. Pound was one of the five Modernists who had not explicitly elaborated a cyclic view of history before the war, although with the Vorticists he had established a firm foundation for one. During the war Pound continued to accept and to develop the historical views of the Vorticists. In  and , in particular, Pound fully supported Gaudier’s theory of history as expressed in Blast, No. . He greatly admired Gaudier for his ability “to ‘arrange in order’ not only the planes and volumes” of his visual art, but also of history. And Pound thought that Gaudier’s history of the “Vortex” was “a remarkable arrangement of thought.” In  and  as well, Pound continued to develop his belief in the existence of two unchanging traditions of art in the past. He still claimed that the post-Renaissance tradition was inferior to the alternative one that included China, Egypt, Assyria, and the Middle Ages. Moreover, Pound still believed that a Renaissance was about to occur in the near future, of which the best new artists were precursors, and which would consist of a return to the values and ideals of the tradition he preferred. In addition, in  Pound expanded upon his pre-war assumption that analogy across space and time was acceptable. Like Hulme, he rejected the idea that the world could get progressively better or worse. Rather, he believed that “the general order of nature would seem to be . . . constant.” There is fundamentally the same amount of general stupidity and the same small number of superior individuals at all times. Thus, it is possible for those superior people to communicate with and to understand one another, regardless of the amount of time that has passed since they lived. It was this belief that enabled Pound to continue to

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Modernism

develop and apply his method of analogy across space and time, and to use cyclic structures as he continued writing his Cantos. In the late s and throughout the s Pound’s thinking about politics clarified his historical views. He now believed that “typecycles” had existed in history and that it “is possible to study certain recurrences.” And he admired those people who recognize “an historic process, including the alternating periods of order and confusion.” More specifically, Pound was led to the conclusion that two political systems had functioned in history. One system embodied chaos and anarchy. In it the life of the people was split into bits, literature had little to do with life or government, and usury in economics was accepted. It existed in the Jewish and early Christian ages, and in the modern period beginning after the Renaissance and especially with the Reformation. The other system was one of order and harmony. It was characterized by unity, a hierarchy of values, proportion and fairness in economics, and a respect for and utilization of intelligence. It has been in place in Confucian China, in Sparta, and in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, it had returned with Mussolini’s regime in contemporary Italy. Thus, by the end of the s Pound had complemented his pre-war Vorticist sense of the existence of two alternating traditions of art, with an identical belief in two traditions of politics. Moreover, he was convinced that the tradition he preferred had in fact returned in the present day. Pound had, therefore, elaborated a cyclic theory of history equivalent to that of Hulme and Yeats, with one difference. Pound did not think that the preferable tradition of the past would soon return or was even in the process of returning. It actually had arrived. Ford, like Pound, had not explicitly formulated a cyclic view of history before the war, although he too had established the foundation for one and had experimented with non-progressive time in his novels. But once again, like the other Modernists, by the end of his life Ford had provided himself with an optimistic view of the cycles of history. In , one year before his death, he published his history of the world – The March of Literature from Confucius’ Day to Our Own. In this work Ford proposed that two constant and permanent traditions had alternated cyclically in the past. One tradition embodied form and the other formlessness in all areas. The tradition of formlessness existed when Nordic races were strongest. It was characterized by materialism, imperialism, industrialism, atheism, coercion, and a disregard for artists and intellectuals. The literature of the period was artificial, profuse, and sentimental, and it was loved mainly by the plebeian elements of society. The tradition of form,

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on the other hand, took over when Mediterranean races grew in power. It established decentralized feudal systems, concentrated on agriculture, valued religion and individual freedom, and respected and provided for artists. Its literature was simple, realistic, and highly controlled. It was admired by the aristocratic and superior members of society. Ford also carefully plotted the ages in which each tradition predominated. His preferred tradition of form had existed in early Egypt (before  ), in Confucian China (sixth and fifth centuries ), in Classical Greece, in the seventh and eighth centuries  in China, in Europe of the Middle Ages, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in the period between  and . The formless tradition had alternated with the tradition of form and was dominant during the Empire of Shi Hwan Ti in the third century  in China, in Europe during the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages, during the Renaissance and Reformation, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From this summary of Ford’s cyclic theory, it should be evident that, unlike the other four Modernists, he had included the Edwardian age as a cycle that had finished, and he speculated that a new age of formlessness was in the process of returning. He saw the period in which he was living as a time of chaos “infinitely more ferocious” than had existed at any time in the past. But this does not mean that his theory was any less optimistic than that of the other Modernists. Ford suggested that a study of history can provide hope because “we have no reason to imagine that our Western savagery will be any more permanent . . . than were the savageries and superstitions that have preceded our day.” In other words, by the end of his life Ford, like the other Modernists, could still look forward to a better age in the future when the wheel of history turned once more. Finally, in the years after the war, Lawrence, like the four other Modernists, had reinforced and continued to develop the view of history he had begun to formulate in the Edwardian period. During the war Lawrence’s optimistic historical sense had provided him comfort amidst the horrors of the experience. He was confident that “we must wait for the wheel of events to turn on a little” and the situation would improve. Between  and  Lawrence elaborated on his fundamentally optimistic theory. He proposed the existence of the “great systole diastole of the universe” which is eternal and to which people are always subject. According to Lawrence the universe is composed of two contrary principles – creation and decay, a “coming together” and a “going apart.” In agreement with Yeats, Lawrence believed that these

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Modernism

two principles cannot be combined and neither can they be overcome. Rather they must be brought into a stable equilibrium. This, in fact, is the principle informing the cyclic pattern of nature, in which “the undoing of autumn can only follow the putting forth of spring” because “if there is no autumn and winter of corruption there is no spring and summer.” Lawrence believed that history followed the same pattern as nature in general. It is the story of the alternation of opposites, or of “the fight of opposites which is holy” and which cannot be stopped. He proposed that the war years were a historical period in which humanity was at an “autumn in the world, in the autumn of a human epoch, [when] the desire for death becomes single and dominant.” But he also was confident that a new epoch of creation and strength would emerge from this decay, and that man and all things will be “utterly different.” In fact, Lawrence proposed that “Now all the hosts are marching to the grave,” what would soon occur was “A frail white gleam of resurrection” and a “sweet returning from the sleep of death” to “Another epoch in another year.” After the war, in a textbook on the history of Europe published in , Lawrence reiterated this belief that “mankind lives by a twofold motive: the motive of peace and increase, and the motive of conquest and martial triumph.” And he claimed that “as soon as the appetite for martial adventure and triumph in conflict is satisfied, the appetite for peace and increase manifests itself, and vice versa. It seems a law of life.” In his novel published about the same time, Women in Love, one of Lawrence’s central characters expresses this cyclic view of the universe in general; he believed the universe was “a system, an activity of pure order, pure mechanical repetition, repetition ad infinitum.” It was “one pure, complex, infinitely repeated motion like the spinning of a wheel, but a productive spinning . . . a productive repetition through eternity, to infinity.” Lawrence’s cyclic thinking culminated in his book Apocalypse which was published in , the year after his death. In this work Lawrence proposed that history was the cyclic alternation of pagan and Christian impulses, which again embodied the antinomies of creation and decay. According to Lawrence, the Christian impulse glorified the humble and poor who are always jealous of those better than they. The poor, in turn, destroyed the rich, strong, and powerful in order to force all people to be like them and to sink down into the mass, the mob, the herd. The Christian was, therefore, a destructive impulse. It was predominant in

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classical Greece and Rome, and in the modern period beginning after the Renaissance and especially with the Reformation. The pagan impulse, on the other hand, upheld the aristocratic ideal of free individuality and diversity, self-renunciation, heroism, and service of the higher to lesser beings. As a result it was constructive and unifying. Moreover, this aristocratic tradition was in tune with, and appreciated, the cyclic reality of the cosmos – the alternation of day and night, and of the seasons. It had existed in the civilizations of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Minoans, Persians, Hindus, Assyrians, Etruscans, and in the Middle Ages in Europe. Lawrence believed that a new pagan age would soon return to Europe. There would be “a return to the cosmos” and an appreciation of cyclic reality. Lawrence was convinced a cyclic view of reality, like Anaximander’s cosmic wheels, “is a piece of very old wisdom, and it will always be true.” He also was assured that “time still moves in cycles, not in a straight line. And we are at the end of the Christian cycle.” This new age would be helped along if people learn to think cyclically again, as did the pagans, rather than with linear progressive reason. According to Lawrence to appreciate the pagan manner of thought we have to drop our own manner of on-and-on-and-on, from a start to a finish, and allow the mind to move in cycles, or to flit here and there over a cluster of images. Our idea of time as a continuity in an eternal straight line has crippled our consciousness cruelly. The pagan conception of time as moving in cycles is much freer, it allows movement upwards and downwards, and allows for a complete change of the state of mind, at any moment. One cycle finished, we can drop or rise to another level, and be in a new world at once. But by our time-continuum method, we have to trail wearily on over another ridge.

Thus, as with all five Modernists, Lawrence had provided himself until the end of his life with a consistent form of optimism through a cyclic theory of history. In an age that he found extremely disturbing it provided him, not simply with the hope, but with the absolute conviction that “a new world” was on the horizon.

Conclusion

Four days after her marriage to the -year-old poet W.B. Yeats, George Hyde-Lees began to have some strange experiences. Spirits from another world spoke through her when she was unconscious. They even made her write down their messages and give them to the middle-aged man she had just married. She, like everyone who knew him, was well aware of why Yeats had married so late in life. For over twenty years he had been desperately in love with another woman, Maude Gonne. But by  Yeats finally decided to give up and marry someone else before he was too old to transmit his heritage to a new generation. His wife’s automatic writing thrilled Yeats and turned what promised to be a tedious honeymoon into an exiting adventure that the couple shared for many years to come. The resulting messages were organized and published by Yeats as his seminal work of philosophy, A Vision. What is striking to an outside observer is how similar the messages sent from the spirit world were to Yeats’s previous ideas and theories. For Yeats, this similarity simply confirmed that he had, independently, stumbled onto the truth about the cyclic nature of history and of life in general. One might ask, however, whether the spirits were speaking the truth, or whether Yeats had already invented that truth and brought it back to himself by means of an intelligent new bride determined to dispel the memory of an old love and ensure her own future happiness. A similar question might be asked of all five Modernists’ theories of history. Were these theories the objective truth that the Modernists’ were intelligent, or lucky, enough to discover, or were they the products of the imagination of creative thinkers with ulterior motives – of supporting their other ideas and suggesting a brighter future? In either case, whether it was Yeats’s truth about the spirit world or that of the five Modernists about history in general, it is likely that most people would be inclined to accept the latter explanation – although, of course, there is no way to tell for sure. But even if their origins were in imagination, this does not mean that 

Conclusion



either A Vision or the cyclic theories of the Modernists can tell us nothing and should be ignored. Yeats’s marriage to Hyde-Lees was, in fact, a long and happy one. The Modernists’ discovery, or imaginative invention, of a theory that history moves in cycles undoubtedly helped them provide meaning, order, and a fundamental connection with the past that alleviated their fears about the direction of historical change and their uncertainty about the future. They were not the only ones to do this. The same was also true of two later Modernists, T.S. Eliot and James Joyce. According to Eliot, in Joyce’s Ulysses: in using myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him . . . It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history. It is a method already adumbrated by Mr. Yeats, and of the need for which I believe Mr. Yeats to have been the first contemporary to be conscious.

This method, moreover, is also common to traditional societies. According to Mircea Eliade, by suspending “the flow of profane time, of duration” and of sequential progressive chronology, through the juxtaposition of archetypes and symbols from various ages of the past, and through a belief in periodic cyclic regeneration, “archaic humanity . . . defended itself to the utmost of its powers, against all the novelty and irreversibility which history entails.” “Archaic man,” Eliade continues, “is powerless against cosmic catastrophes, military disasters, social injustices bound up with the very structure of society, personal misfortunes, and so forth.” Because of this he fears change and he “tends to set himself in opposition, by every means in his power, to history, regarded as a succession of events that are irreversible, unforeseeable, possessed of autonomous value.” As an alternative, these societies form “an optimistic view of life in general” by proposing that “everything takes place cyclically, death is inevitably followed by resurrection, cataclysm by a new Creation.” Thus, as they themselves had suggested, the five Modernists’ beliefs were analogous to those of an alternative society and culture of the past. They too sensed that the contemporary world was characterized by catastrophe, disaster, and injustice. In response, they defended themselves and were able to overcome their fear by abandoning the progressive time that cut them off from the past and put them at the mercy of an unknowable future. By adopting cyclic views of history they were ultimately provided with an optimism about the future to counter their



Conclusion

pessimism about the present. Yet it was an optimism different from what they viewed as a naive and unrealistic belief in linear progress. A cyclic view of history, thus, allowed the Modernists to accept change confidently because it ensured a permanence and stability underlying the flux, and because it inspired the conviction that the past was always present and would soon return. The period in which the Modernists first began to write was particularly bewildering because it was a time in which a great number of challenges to established ideas in all areas of thought came to a climax. It was in Edwardian Britain that the Victorian ideal, which gradually had been eroded throughout the nineteenth century, was finally laid to rest. In the period between  and  it had become almost entirely impossible for an intelligent observer to believe that Britain was a unified nation of god-fearing, morally upright gentlemen, who had created the greatest culture and civilization with the highest degree of material prosperity and comfort in the world, and who could protect the weak, civilize savages, and rule the waves. This simplistic vision of Britain undoubtedly was believed in its entirety by very few Victorians and it had been questioned frequently in the nineteenth century. But it was an ideal in the back of many minds that could provide a sense of purpose and a direction for change. By the Edwardian age, however, the implausibility of this ideal and its distance from actuality could not be denied; it had to be abandoned altogether. In the vacuum that remained, a wide variety of alternative ideals were proposed. The five Modernists, in particular, were well aware of most of these challenges and alternatives. The horrors of Imperialism, the difficulties of the Boer war, and the growing violence in Ireland made them realize that the ideal of British civility, and cultural and military superiority, had little foundation in reality. The  Parliament Bill, which removed the last vestiges of aristocratic government, also destroyed for good the fantasy of paternal rule by British gentleman. And the varieties of socialism, the new conservatisms, as well as the Suffragette movement added further concerns – perhaps democracy should be granted to an entirely new species of humans or done away with altogether. The deleterious effects of a nearly complete industrialism and urbanization on the material and physical well-being of the population had been discussed and examined for so many years that it was extremely difficult to continue believing that the highest degree of comfort and health possible could characterize Britain in the present or even in the near future. And one could hardly assume that the British were the most god-fearing nation on earth when

Conclusion



the revealed religion of Christianity had been definitively challenged and the more intimate beliefs of non-Western and even primitive nations were being applauded by the numerous new spiritualist groups. Finally, the aesthetic realism that would mirror and memorialize this Victorian ideal for all times, initially challenged by the Symbolists and Impressionists, finally had been destroyed by the Post-Impressionists. The vast influx of information about the quality and nature of the art of non-Western cultures simply served to support the inadequacy and anomaly of the Victorian cultural and even political vision. The Edwardian age was, therefore, a period in which the Victorian ideal was abandoned for many reasons, and in which a vast array of alternatives was proposed and examined. It is not surprising, therefore, that one group of observers such as the Modernists might sense a great deal of confusion, even chaos, amid this welter of challenges to old ideas and emergence of new options. The Edwardian age may not have witnessed the very real and physical horrors of the inter-war years – depression and unemployment, socialist and fascist violence, the persecutions of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. But this does not mean that the period was not one of great intellectual uncertainty and fear. Perhaps most frightening of all to a creative artist was the thought that the only power providing direction to control all this confusion was the mob of the uneducated, philistine people who were the majority of the population, and who had been put into power by the triumph of a democratic system that had never before been tried in Europe on such a scale. Moreover, it is hardly surprising that in response to this perceived confusion the Modernists could think of nothing better than to turn to the past. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many thinkers looked to the past and developed universal theories of history to find solutions for the problems of the present, and to search for some hope for the future. The belief in progress formulated in these centuries, however, could no longer be sustained by the Modernists amidst the challenges of the Edwardian age. Progress had been awaited for too long and simply had not arrived. Cyclic views of history served far better at this time than progressive ones to provide a sense of optimism. Despite the devastation of the First World War, the five Modernists’ ideas of history were not changed significantly. Rather, they came to fruition. If any change in the Modernists’ views of history from the pre-war to the post-war period can be discerned, it is that they grew more unified and simplified. During the Edwardian period each of the five Modernists had elaborated upon a wide range of dichotomies that



Conclusion

he perceived between two historical traditions. Yet in the inter-war years these dichotomies had been narrowed down to a single essential one – history was the story of the alternation of Chaos and Harmony. Yeats’s Discord and Concord, Pound’s confusion and order, Ford’s formlessness and form, and Lawrence’s destruction and creation all were different expressions of the same simple idea; sometimes the world was chaotic and at other times it was harmonious. All the other characteristics of an age emanated from these fundamental principles. This simplification of the Modernists’ views of history could have been a result of years of thought on the same problem. Alternatively, it could reflect a difference between the Edwardian age and the inter-war period. The First World War and the decades that followed it certainly were a period of discord and disharmony. But at the same time the issues involved could appear quite simple. Supporters of democracy, communism, and fascism alike often saw their cause simply as a battle of good against evil. It would not be surprising if the Modernists’ views of history reflected this intellectual simplification. But their historical thinking originated in an age that, if less physically chaotic, was more intellectually confusing. And although their cyclic views may have reflected the relative simplicity of the inter-war period, they were in fact developed as a response to the complex Edwardian age. The Modernists’ cyclic views of history have been criticized by certain literary critics as the cause of the unfortunate support some of them gave to the fascist dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini. This, however, is a bit simplistic. As we have seen, their political views were developed before, or simultaneously with, their historical ones. It is difficult to argue, therefore, that one caused the other. Instead, both were responses to other features of a difficult age. Moreover, neither Hitler and Mussolini, nor a totalitarian dictator such as Stalin, shared the Modernists’ cyclic views of history. In fact, Hannah Arendt has argued convincingly for the fundamentally progressive assumptions of totalitarian leaders. They might look to history for some of their images, but ultimately they were attempting to make radical changes to the past, create an entirely new type of human being, and force the world to move to a completely different and better future. Theirs was a deeply progressive utopia. This is exactly the sort of position that the Modernists rejected in the ideas of Futurist artists such as F.M. Marinetti. It is also what Hulme was referring to when he criticized people who accepted the “complacent spiral” pattern of history. Hitler’s and Mussolini’s views were disguised as cyclic when in reality both assumed “that man is a god” and wished to create a “heaven on earth” as any good progressive thinker would.

Conclusion



The Modernists, therefore, certainly did not support fascism because of a close identity of their historical thinking with that of the fascist leaders. Rather, it could be argued that it was precisely their strictly cyclic views of history that prevented the Modernists from becoming full-fledged supporters of fascism, such as was the progressive Marinetti. The five Modernists’ theories of history were developed from, and allied to, other assumptions that were fundamentally different from those of fascists. For example, the fact that non-Western cultures were integral in their cyclic views and own literary practice indicated that, aside from Pound’s anti-Semitism, the five Modernists had very little interest in nationalism or racism – especially not the “mystic” nationalism of fascists that was allied to racial purity in order to achieve future greatness. Nor did the Modernists like the idea of mass politics, or “mob” hysteria about anything, including nationalism. The Modernists appreciated cultural diversity and individualism, not ethnic or mass uniformity. In addition the Modernists all were very suspicious of the irrationality that is an important element in any mystical sense of nationalism or racial belonging. The Modernists saw themselves as reviving a tradition of order, control, and reason, and they disliked the “romantic” emphasis on intuition, emotion, and irrationality because it was weak and sentimental. Finally, in the end, it was freedom, especially for artists that mattered most to the Modernists. The realization that fascism often led to the creation of an exceedingly powerful government that denied creative individuals the ability to express their ideas did not dawn on Pound, but it was enough to make the other Modernists question who best expressed their political ideas. Although cyclic views of history may have lead some Modernists to mistake the new fascist political regimes for a happy turn of the wheel back to the past, they made them more cautious than many people at the time about accepting the fascist leaders’ offers of an easy road to eternal bliss. While they were attracted to strong rulers or heroes, because they lacked a sense of progress, nationalism, and irrationalism, or a desire for uniformity, it would have been difficult for any of the Modernists to fully support a messiah-like leader’s attempt to create an intellectually and racially pure utopia. In fact, far from being dangerous, cyclic views of history have some advantages over progressive ones. They can prevent people from too rapidly accepting simplistic versions of progress – such as the promise of a quick utopia, the coming apocalyptic end of history, or the culmination of progress in an imminent paradise – that are attractive to desperate people living through difficult times.



Conclusion

Cyclic views of history may appear simultaneously naive and pessimistic to observers who are deeply influenced by modern thought. It should not be forgotten, however, that they were considered eminently sensible by many more thinkers in the pre- and post-Enlightenment periods and the non-Western world. As Yeats argued, the idea of progress “is only two hundred years old” and if one finds any value in the past, an older and more-widely accepted theory should be considered more reasonable. Moreover, cyclic views of history are realistic and optimistic. By positing an eternal equilibrium between opposites, they accept the fact of evil and avoid a fruitless and wasteful struggle to overcome an inevitable truth of life. And yet evil and strife are never permanent – a better future is always on the horizon. History can be used in many ways to justify or support a wide variety of positions. The cyclic views of history invented by the literary Modernists to provide a sense of order and control in the “curious drama” of Edwardian Britain may seem farfetched to many people today. But they did provide some of the most creative writers of the twentieth century with confidence and optimism. They allowed them to expand the horizons of Western art beyond contemporary Europe and accept the influence of widely different cultures. And they helped them effect some fundamental innovations in aesthetic theory and practice. These are not the worst of all possible uses of the past.

Notes

  George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (New York: Putnam’s, ), p. vii.  Ibid., p. viii.  Ibid.  For definitions of Modernism, see Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, eds., Modernism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, ); Alistair Davies, An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Modernism (New Jersey: Barnes and Noble, ); Sanford Schwartz, The Matrix of Modernism: Pound, Eliot, and Early Twentieth-Century Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ); Michael H. Levenson, A Genealogy of Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).  Georg Luk`acs, quoted in Irving Howe, “Introduction,” The Idea of the Modern in Literature and the Arts (New York: Horizon, ), p. .  T.S. Eliot, “Ulysses, Order, and Myth,” Dial˙  (November ): ; John B. Vickery, The Literary Impact of the Golden Bough (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), p. ; Harvey Gross, The Contrived Corridor: History and Fatality in Modern Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ), p. .  See, for example, Gross, Contrived Corridor; James Longenbach, Modernist Poetics of History: Pound, Eliot, and the Sense of the Past (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ); Jeffrey M. Perl, The Tradition of Return; The Implicit History of Modern Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ); Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (London: Oxford University Press, ); Thomas Whitaker, Swan and Shadow: Yeats’s Dialogue with History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Daniel Perlman, The Barb of Time: On the Unity of Ezra Pound’s Cantos (New York: Oxford University Press, ).  Ford Madox Ford was born Ford Madox Hueffer. He changed his name after the First World War.  See John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon, A Bibliography of James Joyce –  (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, ); B.J. Kirkpatrick, A Bibliography of Virginia Woolf (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ); Donald Gallup, T.S. Eliot, A Bibliography (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, ). 



Notes to pages –

 For definitions of a generation see Robert Wohl, The Generation of  (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), pp. –.  Schwartz, Matrix of Modernism, pp. –.  Frank E. Manuel, The Shapes of Philosophical History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ), p. .  Michael Stanford, A Companion to the Study of History (Oxford: Blackwell, ), p. ; W.H. Dray, “Philosophy of History,” in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, ), vol. , p. .  Dray, “Philosophy of History,” p. .  Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History, p. .  See Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield, The Discovery of Time (New York: Harper & Row, ), pp. –; Nathan Rotenstreich, “The Idea of Historical Progress and its Assumptions,” History and Theory ,  (): –; Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History, pp. –; J.W. Burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp.  & , –.  Burrow, Liberal Descent, pp.  & .  The Poetic and Dramatic Work of Alfred Lord Tennyson, ed. W. J. Rolfe (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, ), pp.  & .  Quoted in Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ), p. .  Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration, A European Disorder, c. – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp.  & . Tennyson, for example, wrote of “the troughs of Zolaism” and “Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud” in “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After,” Poetic and Dramatic Work, p. .  See, for example, Pick, Faces of Degeneration; J.E. Chamberlain, “An Anatomy of Cultural Melancholy,” Journal of the History of Ideas ,  (Oct.–Dec. ):  –; A.E. Carter, The Idea of Decadence in French Literature – (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ); Ian Fletcher, ed., Decadence in the s (New York: Holmes & Meier, ).  M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism (New York: Norton, ), pp. –.  John D. Rosenberg, The Darkening Glass: A Portrait of Ruskin’s Genius (New York: Columbia University Press, ), p. .  See for example, Matthew Arnold, “Function of Criticism,” and “Culture and Anarchy,” in A. Dwight Culler, ed., Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, ), pp. – & –; Thomas Carlyle, “Signs of the Times,” in Thomas Carlyle: Selected Writings, ed. Alan Shelston (Harmondsworth: Penguin, ), pp.  –; Thomas Carlyle, “Book , Ch.  Pedagogy,” in Sartor Resartus (New York: Scribners, ), p. ; Walter Pater, “Winckelmann,” “Postscript to ‘Appreciations’,” “The Marbles of Aegina,” “Aesthetic Poetry,” in Essays on Literature and Art, ed. Jennifer Uglow (London: J.M. Dent, ), pp. , , ,  & , ; Denis Donoghue, Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls (New York: Knopf, ), pp. , –, , ; Michael Tanner, Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University

Notes to pages –

       

   

    



Press, ), pp. –. For views of history of Browning, Hallam, Arnold, Tennyson, and Ruskin see Isobel Armstrong, Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics, and Politics (London & New York: Routledge, ), pp.  & , , , , ,  & ,  –; John Ruskin, “The Nature of Gothic,” in John D. Rosenberg, ed., The Genius of John Ruskin (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ), pp. –. This definition of “aufheben” is from Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, p. . Arnold, “The Function of Criticism,” p. . Arnold, “Culture and Anarchy,” p. . Carlyle, “Signs of the Times,” pp.  & . Toulmin and Goodfield, Discovery of Time, p. ; see also pp. –, . Cecilia Miller, Giambattista Vico: Imagination and Historical Knowledge (New York: St. Martin’s Press, ), p. . Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ). Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History, pp.  & . See also Burrow, Liberal ˇ Descent, pp.  & ; Stanford, Companion, pp. –; Miliˇc Capek, “Change,” in Edwards, ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. , pp. –; W.K.C. Guthrie, “ Pre-Socratic Philosophy,” ibid., vol. , pp.  –; Charles H. Kahn, “Empedocles,” ibid., vol. , pp. –; Michael C. Stokes, “Heracitus of Ephesus,” ibid., vol. , pp. –; Philip Merlan, “Plotinus,” ibid., vol. , pp.  –. Yeats, A Vision (; rpt. New York: Macmillan, ), pp. –. This terminology is adopted from Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History, p. . Charles Trinkhaus, Review of G.W. Trompf, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought, History and Theory ,  (): . ˇ See Tanner, Nietzsche, pp. –; Capek, “Eternal Return,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. , p. . For Nietzsche’s evolutionary assumptions, see “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Penguin, ), pp. –,  & ; Nietzsche, “Eternal Recurrence,” in The Twilight of the Idols, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici (Edinburgh & London: T.N. Foulis, ), pp. –;  –. W.H. Dray, “Oswald Spengler,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. , pp.  & . Patrick Gardiner, “Toynbee, Arnold Joseph,” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. , pp.  & . See also Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History, pp. –; Dray, “Philosophy of History,” pp.  & . G.W. Trompf, The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought: From Antiquity to the Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), p. . Tennyson, “O´ı ξεoντ ´ ες ” in Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, quoted in Armstrong, Victorian Poetry, p. . Rotenstreich, “Idea of Historical Progress,” p. ; see also pp. – & Toulmin and Goodfield, Discovery of Time, p. .



Notes to pages –

 Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History, p. .  For further discussions of cyclic views of history see Eliade, Myth of Eternal Return; Toulmin and Goodfield, Discovery of Time; Trinkhaus, “Review of Trompf ”; Siegfried Kracauer, “Time and History” in History and the Concept of Time (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, ), pp. –; Donald J. Wilcox, The Measures of Time Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ).  Toulmin and Goodfield, Discovery of Time, p. . ˇ  Capek, “Change,” pp, –.  See for example, John Fletcher and Malcolm Bradbury, “The Introverted Novel,” in Modernism, pp. –.  Brigit Patmore, My Friends When Young: the Memoirs of Brigit Patmore (London: William Heinemann, ), p. .  Noel Stock, The Life of Ezra Pound (San Francisco: North Point, ), pp.  – .  Ford Madox Ford, Return to Yesterday (; rpt. New York: H. Liveright, ), pp.  & , .  Stock, Pound, pp. –.  Alun R. Jones, The Life and Opinions of Thomas Ernst Hulme (London: Gollancz, ), pp. –; Levenson, Genealogy of Modernism, p. .  Jacob Epstein, An Autobiography (London: Hulton, ), pp.  & . For more on Hulme see Ashley Dukes, The Scene is Changed (London: Macmillan, ), pp.  & .  “Introduction,” to T.E. Hulme, Further Speculations, ed. Sam Hynes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, ), p. xvi; Jones, Hulme, pp. –; Stock, Pound, p. .  Richard Ellmann, Eminent Domain (New York: Oxford University Press, ), p. ; Stock, Pound, p. .  Patricia Hutchins, Ezra Pound’s Kensington: An Exploration – (London: Faber & Faber, ), p. . See also Stock, Pound, pp.  & .  Richard Ellmann, Yeats, The Man and the Masks (New York: Norton, ), p. .  Arthur Mizener, The Saddest Story, A Biography of Ford Madox Ford (New York: World, ), p. ; Stock, Pound, p. .  See Jeffrey Meyers, D.H. Lawrence (New York: Knopf, ), pp. –; Harry T. Moore, The Priest of Love, A Life of D.H. Lawrence (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, ), pp. –.  For reminiscences of the London literary scene and the five Modernists before the war see: Dukes, Scene is Changed; Epstein, Autobiography; Patmore, My Friends; Jones, Hulme; J.B. Harmer, Victory in Limbo, Imagism –  (New York: St. Martin’s Press, ); Ford Madox Ford, Return to Yesterday (New York: H. Liveright, ); Richard Curle, Caravansary and Conversation (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, ); Douglas Goldring, The Last PreRaphaelite (London: Macdonald, ); Douglas Goldring, South Lodge: Reminiscences of Violet Hunt, Ford Madox Ford and the English Review Circle (London: Constable, ); Nina Hamnett, Laughing Torso (London: Virago, );

Notes to pages –



Violet Hunt, I Have This to Say: The Story of My Flurried Years (New York: Boni and Liveright, ); Edgar Jepson, Memories of An Edwardian and Neo-Georgian (London: Richards, ); C.R.W. Nevinson, Paint and Prejudice (New York: Harcourt, Brace, ); Ernest Rhys, Wales England Wed, An Autobiography (London: J.M. Dent, ); Ernest Rhys, Everyman Remembers (London: J.M. Dent, ).  See Wallace Martin, The New Age Under Orage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, ).  See F.S. Flint, “Biographical Sketch,” The Collected Poems of Harold Monro, ed. Alida Monro (London: Cobden-Sanderson, ); Harold Monro Papers, British Library, Add. Mss.  D-G; , , A.  Harriet Shaw Weaver Papers, British Library, Add. Mss.  & .  “  ”:      Ford Madox Ford, Ancient Lights (London: Chapman and Hall, ), pp.  & .  Ford Madox Ford, Memories and Impressions (New York: Ecco Press, ), p. .  Ford, Ancient Lights, p. xi.  Ibid., p. . See Yeats, “Mr. Arthur Symons’ New Book” (April, ), UPII, pp. –; D.H. Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  October ,  December , Letters I, pp.  & , ; Pound, The Spirit of Romance (; rpt. New York: New Directions, ), p. .  See Yeats, “Autumn of the Body” () and “Symbolism in Painting” (), E&I, pp. – & –.  Ford Madox Ford, The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (London: Duckworth, ), p. .  See, for example, Robert Browning, “Essay on Shelley” (), in Simon Nowell-Smith, ed., Browning Poetry and Prose (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), pp. –; P.B. Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry,” in David Lee Clark, ed., Shelley’s Prose, or the Trumpet of a Prophecy (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, ), pp. , , ; Arthur Hallam, “On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry, and on the Lyrical Poems of Alfred Tennyson,” in The Writings of Arthur Hallam, ed. T.H. Motter (London: Oxford University Press, ), pp.  & , . See also Armstrong, Victorian Poetry, pp.  –, –, –, –, –.  T.E. Hulme, “Searchers After Reality. Jules De Gaultier.-.,” New Age (December , ):  & ; “The Philosophy of Intensive Manifolds” (), in Speculations, ed. Herbert Read (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ), p. .  Ford Madox Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Mr. Richard Whiteing,” Tribune (October , ): ; “Modern Poetry,” Living Age  ( January , ):







    

  

  

Notes to pages –

 & ; Rossetti: A Critical Essay on His Art (London: Duckworth, ), p. ; Ezra Pound, “Victorian Eclogues,” Exaultations (), CEP, p. . Ezra Pound, “The Science of Poetry,” Book News Monthly  (December ), p. ; Spirit of Romance, pp.  & ; Yeats, “The Celtic Element in Literature,” Cosmopolis ( June ): pp.  & ; Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  December ,  October ,  December , Letters I, pp. , , ; Lawrence, “Rachel Annand Taylor” (), in Ada Lawrence and G. Stuart Gelder, Young Lorenzo, Early Life of D.H. Lawrence (New York: Russell & Russell, ), p. . Yeats, “The Treasure of the Humble” (), UPII, p. . On the Rhymers’ Club see R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life. I: The Apprentice Mage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –; Richard Ellmann, Yeats, The Man and the Masks (New York: Norton, ), p. ; Armstrong, Victorian Poetry, pp. – . Yeats, “William Blake,” Academy ( June , ): ; “John Eglinton and Spiritual Art” (), UPII, p. ; “The Poetry of A.E.” (), UPII, p. . See also, “Mr. Rhys’ Welsh Ballads” (), UPII, p. . Hulme, “Bergson’s Theory of Art,” in Speculations, pp. , , , . This article was probably written in November and December . See Stock, Pound, p. . Yeats, “Mr. Lionel Johnson’s Poems” (), UPII, p. ; Yeats, “John Eglinton,” p. ; Ford, “Modern Poetry,” p. ; Pound, The Spirit of Romance, p. . Ford, The Spirit of the People (), in England and the English (New York: McClure, Phillips, ), p. . For more on the idea of Sympathy, see Shelley, “Defence of Poetry,” pp. – ; M.H. Abrams, Mirror and Lamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –,  –; Walter Jackson Bate, “The Sympathetic Imagination in Eighteenth-Century English Criticism,” ELH,  ( June ): – ; Bate, From Classic to Romantic (New York: Harper & Row, ); James Engell, The Creative Imagination, Enlightenment to Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ); Ernst Tuveson, The Imagination as a Means of Grace (New York: Gordian Press, ). Hulme, “Bergson’s Theory,” p. ; Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. . Yeats, “William Blake and the Imagination” (), E&I, p. ; Yeats, “The Dominion of Dreams” ( July ), UPII, p. ; Lawrence, “Art and the Individual” () in Young Lorenzo, pp.  & . Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Mr. Dion Clayton Calthrop,” Tribune (October , ): ; Yeats, “The Irish Literary Theatre” (), UPII, p. ; Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Mr. Joseph Conrad,” Tribune (September , ): ; Lawrence, “Art and the Individual,” p. . Ford, Ancient Lights, pp. , , . Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” p. ; Yeats, “The Autumn of the Body” (), E&I, p. ; Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. . Lawrence, “Rachel Annand Taylor,” pp.  & .

Notes to pages –



 Ezra Pound, “Purveyors General,” A Quinzaine For This Yule (), in CEP, pp.  & .  Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. ; Lawrence, “Rachel Annand Taylor,” p. .  Pound, Spirit of Romance, pp.  & ; Hulme, “Notes on Language and Style” (–), in Further Speculations, pp. , , .  Yeats, “Irish National Literature ” (August ), UPI, p. ; Yeats, “Aglavaine and Selysette” (), UPII, p. ; “A Symbolic Artist and the Coming of Symbolic Art” (), UPII, p. ; Hulme, “Notes,” p. .  See Yeats, “Coole Park and Ballylee” () in Richard J. Finneran, ed., The Poems of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan, ), p. ; Graham Hough, The Last Romantics (London: Duckworth, ); Frank Kermode, The Romantic Image (New York: Macmillan, ); Edmund Wilson, Axel’s Castle (New York: Scribners, ).  Yeats to Katherine Tynan, , quoted in Ellmann, Yeats, p. ; Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. ; Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  January , Letters I, p. ; Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  July , ibid., p. ; “Rachel Annand Taylor,” pp.  & ; Hulme, “Notes,” pp.  & .  Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  October ,  November , and  January , Letters I, pp. , , , & ; Hulme, “A Lecture on Modern Poetry” () in Further Speculations, p.  (for the dating of this lecture see Levenson, p. ; Sam Hynes, “Introduction” to Further Speculations, p. xii); Pound, “The Science of Poetry,” Book News Monthly (December ): ; Yeats, “Edmund Spenser” (), E&I, p. ; Yeats to Katherine Tynan,  March , quoted in John P. Frayne, “Introduction,” UPI, p. .  W.B. Yeats, “The Wheel and the Phases of the Moon,” in George Mills Harper and Walter Kelly Hood, A Critical Edition of Yeats’s A Vision () (London: Macmillan, ), p. ; Yeats to Fiona Macleod, , quoted in Ellmann, Yeats, p. ; Lawrence, “Art and the Individual,” p. ; Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  November , in Letters I, p. ; Hulme, quoted in Jones, p. ; Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. .  Lawrence, “Art and the Individual” (), p. ; Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  November , in Letters I, p. ; Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. ; Hulme, “Lecture,” p. ; Ford, Ford Madox Brown: A Record of His Life and Work (London: Longmans, Green, ), pp. , , ; Ford, “Modern Poetry,” p. ; Ford, “The Making of Modern Verse,” Academy and Literature (April , ): , (April , ): ; Ford, Review of The Collected Poems of Christina Georgina Rossetti, Fortnightly Review (March ):  & ; Ford, Rossetti, pp. , .  See Thomas F. Grieve, Ezra Pound’s Early Poetry and Poetics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, ), pp. –, –, ,  & ,  & .  Ibid., p. .  Ford, Ancient Lights, p. ; Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats (New York: Macmillan, ), p. ; Pound, “M. Antonius Flaminius and



    

 



   

  

Notes to pages –

John Keats; A Kinship in Genius,” Book News Monthly  (February ), p. . See also Foster, Yeats, pp.  & ;  & . Ford, Memories, pp.  & ; “Modern Poetry,” p. . Ford, Memories, pp. ,  & , ; Yeats, “Ireland and the Arts” (), E&I, p. . Yeats, “The Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry” (), E&I, pp.  & . According to Shelley the “civic crown” was resigned to “reasoners and mechanists,” not “merchants.” Shelley, “Defence of Poetry,” p. . W.B. Yeats, “The King’s Threshold” () in The Collected Plays of W.B. Yeats (New York: Macmillan, ), pp. –. See Yeats, “If I Were Four-and-Twenty,” in Explorations (New York: Macmillan, ), pp.  & ; Foster, Yeats, pp.  & ; Ellmann, Yeats, p. ; Mizener, Saddest Story, pp. –; Max Saunders, Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life, Vol. I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), pp.  & , –; Robert Green, Ford Madox Ford: Prose and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –; Lawrence, “Art and the Individual,” pp. –; Hulme, “The Art of Political Conversion,” Commentator (April , ): . The entire Yeats family was involved with Morris. His sisters, for example, worked on textile projects with Morris’s daughters. Ford, Ford Madox Brown, p. ; Yeats, quoted in Ellmann, Yeats, p. . Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  October , in Letters I, p. ; Ford, Ford Madox Brown, p. ; Ford Madox Hueffer, The Cinque Ports: A Historical and Descriptive Record (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, ), p. vii; Ford, Ford Madox Brown, p. ; Yeats, “A Postscript to a Forthcoming Book of Essays by Various Writers” (), UPII, p. ; Yeats, The Countess Cathleen (), in Collected Plays, pp.  –. Yeats, “Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry,” p. ; Ford Madox Hueffer, The Soul of London (), in England and the English, p. . See Shelley, “A Defence of Poetry,” p. . For Ruskin see Rosenberg, Darkening Glass, pp. –; for Morris see Alice Chandler, A Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth Century English Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, ). Yeats, “Discoveries” (), E&I, p. . See also Grieve, Pound’s Early Poetry, p. ; Rosenberg, Darkening Glass, pp. ,  & , , . Yeats, “Discoveries,” p. ; Pound, “I Gather the Limbs of Osiris,” New Age ( January , ), pp.  & ; Ford, Ancient Lights, p. ; Ford, “Modern Poetry,” p. . Ellmann, Yeats, p. . Yeats, Poems, p. . Even “The Two Titans” (), subtitled “A Political Poem,” does not approximate the simplicity Yeats desired; the language is so indirect that even the action of the poem is unclear. See Yeats, “The Two Titans; A Political Poem,” ibid., pp. –. Thomas H. Jackson, The Early Poetry of Ezra Pound (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), p. . Pound, CEP, pp.  & . Grieve, Pound’s Early Poetry, p. .

Notes to pages –



 Pound, “In Morte De” and “To the Dawn: Defiance,” from A Lume Spento (), CEP, pp.  & .  D.H. Lawrence, “Night Songs,” English Review (April ), p. .  T.E. Hulme, “Autumn,” For Christmas MDCCCVIII (London: The Poet’s Club, Women’s Printing Society, January ).  Lawrence, “Guelder Rose,” The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren Roberts (New York: Viking, ), p. .  Hulme, “Notes,” p. .  For Yeats’s and Ford’s early interest in Morris, see Yeats, Autobiography, pp. , –; Yeats, “If I Were Four-and-Twenty,” Explorations, pp.  & ; Ford, Memories, pp. , –, ; Ford, Ancient Lights, pp.  & ; Foster, Yeats, pp. –.  Peter Stansky, “Morris,” in Victorian Thinkers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. . Later in life Morris became much more practical. See ibid., pp. –. For more on the “ethical socialism” that was popular at the time, see Stanley Pierson, British Socialists: The Journey from Fantasy to Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), pp. –, – ; Ian Britain, Fabianism and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). Oscar Wilde had a similar belief that under socialism people would be able to freely develop their unique personalities and express them through art. See Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism (; rpt. London: Journeyman Press, ).  Ford, Ancient Lights, pp.  & ; Yeats, “The Happiest of Poets” (), E&I, p. ; Yeats, “John Eglinton,” p. .  Ford, Ancient Lights, pp. , , . See also Saunders, Ford, pp. –.  Ibid., pp. , , , . Ford Madox Ford, The Queen Who Flew: A Fairy Tale (London: Bliss, Sands & Foster, ). Ford called himself an anarchist in October . Letters of Ford Madox Ford, ed. Richard M. Ludwig (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), p. .  See Elizabeth Cullingford, Yeats, Ireland and Fascism (New York: New York University Press, ), pp. –; Foster, Yeats, pp. ,  –, ,  & , –; Ellmann, Yeats, pp. ,  –. For more on Irish nationalism, see F.S.L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland – (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ); John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (London: Allen & Unwin, ); Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ); Robert Kee, The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ).  Yeats, “Ireland and the Arts,” pp. ; Yeats, “Emmet the Apostle of Irish Liberty” (), UPII, p. ; Yeats, “Irish Language and Irish Literature” (), UPII, p. .  See, for example, D. George Boyce, “, Interpreting the Rising,” in The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy, ed. D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (London: Routledge, ), pp. –.



Notes to pages –

 Dorothy M. Hoare, The Works of Morris and Yeats in Relation to Early Saga Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp.  & ; see also pp.  –.  Ellmann, Yeats, p. .  Yeats, “Emmet,” p. .  “  -  ”:            

    

        

Yeats, Poems, pp.  & . Yeats, “Edmund Spenser,” p. . Ford, Cinque Ports, pp. . Yeats to Bertrand Russell, , quoted in Ellmann, Yeats, p. . See Yeats, “William Blake,” The Academy ( June , ):  & ; E&I, pp. –, –. Pound, A Lume Spento () and Personae (), in CEP, pp.  & . Yeats, “Mr. Rhys’ Welsh Ballads,” p. . Ford M. Hueffer, “St Æthelburga,” in Poems for Pictures and for Notes of Music (London: John Macqueen, ), p. . Similarly, Pound thought that the poet should leave to the world “new-old runes/ and magic of past time/ Caught from the sea deep of/ the wholeman-soul.” Pound, “Beddoesque,” Quinzaine for this Yule (), in CEP, p. . Pound, “Epilogue” (), in CEP, p. . Pound, “To The Raphaelite Latinists” (), in CEP, p. . Yeats, Autobiography, p. ; Pound, “[Shalott]” from San Trovaso Notebook (), in CEP, p. . Chandler, Dream of Order, pp. , . Ford, Ford Madox Brown, p. . See also Ford H. Madox Hueffer, The Brown Owl: A Fairy Story (London: T. Fisher Unwin, ); Ford H. Madox Hueffer, The Feather (London: T. Fisher Unwin, ); Ford Madox Hueffer, The Queen Who Flew: A Fairy Tale (London: Bliss, Sands & Foster, ). Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  March , in Letters I, p. . See Yeats, UPI, pp. –; UPII, pp. –, –, –, –; E&I, pp. –. Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. ; Yeats, draft of letter to United Irishman (), quoted in Foster, Yeats, p. ; Ford, Cinque Ports (), p. . See Chandler, Dream of Order. Ford, Ancient Lights, pp.  & ; Foster, Yeats, pp. –. Ford, Cinque Ports, pp.  & , . Pound, Spirit of Romance, pp.  & ; Ford, Cinque Ports, p. ; Yeats, “Edmund Spenser,” p. . Ford, Cinque Ports, p. viii; Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. . Lawrence, “Art and the Individual,” p. ; Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  October , in Letters I, p. ; Pound, Spirit of Romance, pp.  & .

Notes to pages –



 Pound, Spirit of Romance, pp.  & ; Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  March , in Letters I, p. ; Ezra Pound, “Burgos. A Dream City of Old Castile,” Book News Monthly (October ), pp. , , .  Ford, Ancient Lights, p. .  Lawrence to Rachel Annand Taylor, ? November , in Letters I, p. .  Lawrence, “Rachel Annand Taylor,” pp.  & .  Rachel Annand Taylor, Poems (London: John Lane, Bodley Head, ), p. . Lawrence was also excited by the novels of Maurice Hewlett (a friend of Ford’s, Yeats’s, and Pound’s), which also idealized and romanticized the Middle Ages. Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  March , in Letters I, p. .  Pound, “The ‘Brunhild’ of Frederic Manning,” Book News Monthly (April ): ; Yeats, “Lionel Johnson’s Poems,” p. .  Pound, “Canzon: Of Incense,” English Review (April ): .  Stuart Y. McDougal, Ezra Pound and the Troubadour Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), p. .  For Browning’s influence on Pound, see Grieve, Pound’s Early Poetry.  Pound, “Marvoil,” CEP, p. . For other poems emphasizing medieval strength and violence see “Sestina: Altaforte,” “Piere Vidal Old,” and “Ballad of the Goodly Fere,” CEP, pp. –.  Ford Madox Hueffer, “The Cuckoo and the Gipsy,” Speaker  (August , ): .  Ford, Poems for Pictures, p. .  It is difficult to discern any pattern of universal history in the work of Pound during this early period.  See Janet Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).  Yeats, Autobiography, p. .  Yeats to John O’Leary, July , quoted in Ellmann, Yeats, p. . See also Yeats, Autobiography, pp. , –, –, –; Ellmann, Yeats, pp. ,  & , –, –, –; Foster, Yeats, pp. –; George Mills Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn (New York: Barnes & Noble, ), pp.  –; Morton Irving Seiden, William Butler Yeats, The Poet as Mythmaker (New York: Cooper Square, ), pp. –; William H. O’Donnell, “Yeats as Adept and Artist,” in George Mills Harper, ed., Yeats and the Occult (Canada: Macmillan, Maclean-Hunter, ), p. .  Oppenheim, Other World, pp.  & ; see also pp. –; Ellmann, Yeats, pp. –; Foster, Yeats, p. ; Graham Hough, The Mystery Religion of W.B. Yeats (Sussex: Harvester, ), pp. –; Frank Kinahan, Yeats, Folklore, and Occultism (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, ), p. .  See Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, pp. –. It has been argued that Yeats already had a cyclic view during this period because of his two works The Wanderings of Oisin and The Secret Rose, his study of Theosophy, and the influence of Vico. However, both works deal with the supernatural world rather than history in the natural world, and Vico and the Theosophists had





 

        

  

Notes to pages –

spiral not cyclic views. See Ellmann, Yeats, pp. –, ; Whitaker, Swan and Shadow, pp.  & . Yeats, “The Irish Literary Theatre, ,” UPII, p. ; “Autumn of the Body,” pp.  & ; “Literary Movement in Ireland,” pp. , ; “The Theatre” (), E&I, p. . See also Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, pp.  –. Yeats, “William Blake and his Illustrations,” p. ; “Autumn of the Body,” pp.  & ; “Literary Movement in Ireland,” p. . Whitaker, Swan and Shadow, pp.  & . In his apocalyptic views Yeats was very much influenced by Blake. See Rachel V. Billingheimer, Wheels of Eternity: A Comparative Study of William Blake and William Butler Yeats (New York: St. Martin’s Press, ). Yeats, The Land of Heart’s Desire (), in Collected Plays, p. ; The Countess Cathleen (), ibid., p. . Ford, Cinque Ports, p. . Ibid., pp. vii & viii, , , Ibid., pp. , , . Ibid., pp. , –, , , . Hulme, “Haldane,” pp.  & ; “De Gaultier. - .,” p. . Hulme, “Lecture,” pp.  & . Hulme, “The Philosophy of Intensive Manifolds,” in Herbert Read, ed., Speculations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ), pp.  & . T.E. Hulme, “The New Philosophy,” New Age ( July , ), pp.  & ; “De Gaultier. - .,” p. ; “Lecture,” pp.  & . Although Hulme mentioned Nietzsche, there is no indication that he was aware of his idea of Eternal Recurrence. Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  December  and  June , in Letters I, pp. , ; Lawrence, “Art and the Individual,” p. . Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, pp.  & . Lawrence to Blanche Jennings,  June , in Letters I, p. ; Lawrence, “Art and the Individual,” p. .  “    ”:   

 W.B. Yeats, “Journal” (), in Memoirs, ed. Denis Donoghue (London: Macmillan, ), p. .  Cullingford, Yeats, Ireland and Fascism, pp. –; Lyons, Culture and Anarchy pp. –; Foster, Yeats, pp. –.  David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ), p. . See also Walter L. Arnstein, Britain Yesterday and Today,  to the Present (Lexington, MA: Heath, ), pp. – .  See Peter Cain, “Political Economy,” in Alan O’Day, ed., The Edwardian Age (Hamden, CT: Archon, ); Maurice Kirby, “Britain in the

Notes to pages –





   



  

 



World Economy,” in Paul Johnson, ed., Twentieth-Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change (London: Longman, ), pp.  –; Clive Lee, “Regions and Industry in Britain,” ibid., pp. –; Peter Wardley, “Edwardian Britain: Empire, Income and Political Discontent,” ibid., pp. –; H.C.G. Matthew, “The Liberal Age ( –),” in Kenneth O. Morgan, ed., The Oxford History of Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), pp.  & . See Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), pp. –, –; Arnstein, Britain, pp. –; Matthew, “Liberal Age,” pp. –; Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, – (London: Longman, ), pp. –; T.O. Lloyd, The British Empire – (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –; Martin Kitchen, The British Empire and Commonwealth: A Short History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, ), pp. –; P. J. Marshall, “–: The Empire Under Threat,” in P. J. Marshall, ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp –. Reba N. Soffer, “The Revolution in English Social Thought, –,” American Historical Review  (December ): ; Hynes, Edwardian Turn of Mind, pp. –; E.P. Hennock, “Poverty and Social Reforms,” in Johnson, ed., Twentieth-Century Britain, p. ; Arnstein, Britain, p. . See Wardley, “Edwardian Britain,” p. ; Arnstein, Britain, pp.  & , –; Matthew, “Liberal Age,” pp.  –,  & , –. See Matthew, “Liberal Age,” pp. –. See Robert Kee, The Green Flag, Vol. II: The Bold Fenian Men (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ), pp. –. See Lloyd, British Empire, pp. –; Porter, Lion’s Share, pp. –; Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians (New York: Doubleday, ); John Gallagher, The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). See Lloyd, British Empire, pp. –; Richard Jay, Joseph Chamberlain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ); Bernard Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ); G.R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). Ford, Cinque Ports, pp.  & , . Ford, Ancient Lights, pp. ,  & . Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad, A Personal Remembrance (; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, ), pp.  & ; –;  & . Ford also claimed to have read some letters that Conrad wrote while he was in the Congo that contained “a great deal of the body and substance of ‘Heart of Darkness’,” ibid., p. . See also Saunders, Ford, pp.  –. Ford, Conrad, p. . See A.N. Porter, The Origins of the South African War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, ); Robinson & Gallagher, Africa, pp. –; Jay, Chamberlain, pp. –; Searle, Quest for National Efficiency, pp. –.



Notes to pages –

 Ford, Ancient Lights, p. . Yeats also was a pro-Boer because he believed the British were suppressing the liberty of the Boers in the same way they had that of the Irish. He and Maude Gonne joined the Irish Nationalist Transvaal Committee in  which had been organized to support the Boer cause. See Cullingford, Yeats, Ireland and Fascism, p. ; Foster, Yeats, pp.  –,  & .  Ford, Spirit of the People, pp. , .  Ibid., p. .  Joseph Conrad and Ford M. Hueffer, The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story. (London: William Heinemann, ). Although Conrad’s name appears on the title page, Mizener argues convincingly that Conrad’s contributions were minimal. Mizener, Saddest Story, p. .  Ford, Conrad, p. .  Ford, Inheritors, pp. , , , , .  See Searle, Quest for National Efficiency.  Ford Madox Hueffer, The Soul of London (; rpt. in England and the English, ), pp. –.  See Foster, Yeats, pp. –.  Kee, The Green Flag, Vol. II, p. .  Ibid., pp.  –; Lyons, Culture and Anarchy, p. .  Yeats, Autobiography, p. .  Ibid., pp. –; ; –; –; Foster, Yeats, pp. –,  –, –; Ellmann, Yeats, pp.  –; –; Lyons, p. .  Foster, Yeats, pp. –, –. ,  & ; Cullingford, Yeats, Ireland and Fascism, pp. –; Paul Scott Stanfield, Yeats and Politics in the s (Basingstoke: Macmillan, ), pp –.  Foster, Yeats, pp. –, –.  Yeats, “Poetry and Tradition” (), E&I, p. .  See John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (London: Allen & Unwin, ), pp. – ; Foster, Yeats, –; Lyons, pp. –;  –.  Yeats, “Emmet,” p. ; “Poetry and Tradition,” p. ; “Journal” (), p. .  Yeats, The Green Helmet (), in Collected Plays, pp. –.  See Bruce K. Murray, The People’s Budget / (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ); Walter L. Arnstein, “Edwardian Politics: Turbulent Spring or Indian Summer?” in O’Day, ed., Edwardian Age, pp. –; Gregory D. Phillips, The Diehards (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ).  For various interpretations of these events see Arnstein, “Edwardian Politics”; Alan Sykes, “The Radical Right and the Crisis of Conservatism Before the First World War,” Historical Journal ():  –; Alan O’Day, “Introduction,” in O’Day, ed., Edwardian Age, pp.  –; G.R. Searle, “Critics of Edwardian Society: The Case of the Radical Right,” in O’Day, ed., Edwardian Age, pp. –; Dennis Dean, “The Character of the Early Labour Party, –,” in O’Day, ed., Edwardian Age, pp. – .

Notes to pages –



 Hulme [Thomas Grattan], “On Progress and Democracy,” Commentator (August , ):  & .  Ibid.; Hulme, [ Thomas Grattan] “A Tory Philosophy,” Commentator (April , ): .  Ford, “A Declaration of Faith,” English Review (February ): .  Saunders, Ford, p. ; Green, Ford, p. .  Ford, “The Critical Attitude,” English Review ( January ):  & ; (August ): ; ( June ): –; (April ):  & ; (May ): –.  Ford, “The Critical Attitude” (February ): ; ( January ):  & , . See also (April ): –; (May ): .  Lawrence to Edward Garnett,  July , Letters I, p. ; Lawrence to A.W. McLeod,  October , ibid., pp.  & ; Lawrence to Edward Garnett,  July , ibid., p. .  Pound, “The Serious Artist,” New Freewoman (October , ): ; “Patria Mia. ,” New Age (October , ): ; “Patria Mia. ,” New Age (September , ): ; “America: Chances and Remedies. ,” New Age (May , ): ; “Through Alien Eyes. ,” New Age ( January , ): .  “   ”:     Hulme, “Tory Philosophy” (April , ), p. .  Didymus [ Ford], “A Declaration of Faith,” English Review (February ):  & .  Lawrence to Edward Garnett,  July  Letters I, p. .  See Sykes, “Radical Right,” pp.  –; Gregory D. Phillips, “Lord Willoughby de Broke and the Politics of Radical Toryism, –,” Journal of British Studies ,  (): –; Martin Blinkhorn, ed., Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in Twentieth-Century Europe (London: Unwin Hyman, ); Eugen Weber, “The Right: An Introduction,” in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, eds., The European Right: A Historical Profile (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp.  –.  See David S. Thatcher, Nietzsche in England – (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ), p. –; John Carswell, Lives and Letters: A.R. Orage, Beatrice Hastings, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, S.S. Koteliansky, –  (London: Faber & Faber, ), pp. –.  See Sykes, “Radical Right,” pp.  –; Phillips, “Willoughby de Broke,” pp. –; Searle, “Critics,” pp. –.  Edward Storer, “The Evil of Democracy,” Commentator (March , ): .  See Storer in the Commentator “The Conservative Ideal” ( January , ): ; “On Revolution and Revolutionaries” (February , ): ; “Some Reflections on Rembrandt’s ‘Mill’ ” (March , ): ; “The Evil of Democracy” (March , ):  & ; “The ‘All-British Shopping





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



  



Notes to pages –

Week’ and Other Matters” (April , ): ; “Democracy and Letters” (April , ):  & ; “A Basis for Nationalism” (May , ): ; “From Democratic Liberalism to Positive Conservatism” ( June , ):  & ; “Our Saviours” ( July , ): . See Anthony M. Ludovici, Nietzsche: His Life and Works (London: Constable, ), pp. , –; Oscar Levy, “Preface,” ibid., p. x; Anthony M. Ludovici, Nietzsche and Art (London: Constable, ), pp.  & , ; J.M. Kennedy, The Religions and Philosophies of the East (London: T.W. Laurie, n.d. []), pp. –; “ ‘Peoples and Countries,’ by Friedrich Nietzsche,” trans. J.M. Kennedy, New Age (December , ): –. Hulme may have learned of these authors while researching Bergson. See Hulme, “Gaultier. - .,” pp.  & ; Hulme’s bibliography of French works on Bergson in Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will, trans. F.L. Pogson (London: George Allen, ). Reino Virtanen, “Nietzsche and the Action Fran¸caise,” Journal of the History of Ideas ,  (April ):  –; Eugen Weber, Action Fran¸caise: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ), p. ; Paul Mazgaj, The Action Fran¸caise and Revolutionary Syndicalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), p. ; Jules de Gaultier, De Kant a` Nietzsche (Paris: Soci´et´e du Mercure de France, ); de Gaultier, Nietzsche et la reforme philosophique (Paris: Soci´et´e du Mercure de France, ); Wilmot E. Ellis, Bovarysm, The Art-Philosophy of Jules de Gaultier. (Seattle: University of Washington Chapbooks, no. , ), p. . See J.R. Jennings, Georges Sorel: The Character and Development of His Thought (London: Macmillan, ); Jack J. Roth, The Cult of Violence: Sorel and the Sorelians (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); Michael Curtis, Three Against The Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), pp. –; Mazgaj, Action Fran¸caise, p. ; Weber, Action Fran¸caise; Michael Sutton, Nationalism, Positivism, and Catholicism: The Politics of Charles Maurras and French Catholics, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). The movement started in  as a reaction to the Dreyfus affair, but it did not become well organized until . See Mazgaj, Action Fran¸caise; Weber, Action Fran¸caise, pp.  –, –. Hulme, “A Note on the Art of Political Conversion,” Commentator (March , ): . Hulme, “Romanticism and Classicism” ( /), in Speculations, p. ; Hulme [ Thomas Gratton], “A Tory Philosophy,” Commentator (April , ): ; “Tory Philosophy” (April , ), p. . In “Tory Philosophy” (April , ) many of Hulme’s sentences are almost direct translations of Lasserre. See Pierre Lasserre, La morale de Nietzsche (Paris: Soci´et´e du Mercure de France, ), pp.  & . Hulme “Tory Philosophy” (April , ), p. . See also Hulme, “Romanticism,” pp.  & ; Hulme [ Thomas Gratton], “A Note on the Art of Political Conversion,” Commentator (March , ):  & ; Pierre Lasserre, “La Philosophie de M. Bergson,” L’Action fran¸caise Mensuelle, no. 

Notes to pages –

 



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    

 



( Mars ), p. ; Pierre Lasserre, Le Romantisme fran¸cais (Paris: Soci´et´e de Mercure de France, ), p. –, , passim.; Jules de Gaultier, Le Bovarysme (Paris: Soci´et´e du Mercure de France, ), pp. , –,  & ,  –; J.M. Kennedy, Tory Democracy (London: Stephen Swift, ), pp.  –, –, , –; Georges Sorel, The Illusions of Progress, trans. John and Charlotte Stanley (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp.  –, –. Ford, “Declaration of Faith” (February ), p. ; “Critical Attitude” (February ), p. ; Ancient Lights, p. ; “Literary Portraits . – Les Jeunes and ‘Des Imagistes’,” Outlook (May , ): . Pound, “The Approach to Paris. ,” New Age (September , ): ; Allen Upward, “Anthropolatry,” New Age ( January , ): ; Allen Upward, The New Word (London: A.C. Fifield, ), pp. –. Pound especially liked Allen Upward, The Divine Mystery: A Reading of the History of Christianity Down to the Time of Christ (Letchworth: Garden City Press, ). See Pound, “The Divine Mystery,” New Freewoman (November , ): . Pound, “The New Sculpture,” Egoist (February , ): ; “Wyndham Lewis,” Egoist (June , ): ; “Allen Upward Serious,” New Age (April , ): , quoting Upward, New Word, p. ; “John Synge and the Habits of Criticism,” Egoist (February , ):  & ; [Herman Carl George Jesus Maria], “On Certain Reforms and Pass-Times,” Egoist (April , ): . Ford, “Critical Attitude” (February ): ; Ancient Lights, p. ; Ford Madox Ford, Henry James (; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, ), pp. , , , ; “Historical Vignettes - . July , . The Product of it All,” Outlook ( July , ): . Pound, “Patria Mia. .,” New Age (October , ): . Yeats, “Poetry and Tradition” (), E&I, p. ; “Journal” (), p. . Yeats, “Edmund Spenser,” pp.  & ; Ford Madox Hueffer, Hans Holbein, The Younger: A Critical Monograph (London: Duckworth, ), p. ; Ford, Spirit of the People, p. . Ford, “Introduction,” England and the English, p. xx. Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Mr. Dion Clayton Calthrop,” Tribune (October , ), p. ; Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. ; Grieve, Pound’s Early Poetry, p. . Ford also wrote: “The passions of mediaevalism were direct and simple . . . it was only the Court costumes, the castles, and the vocabulary that were quaint. It was life or death; satisfaction or death; guilt and joyous escape; or discovery and death, or worse.” Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Maurice Hewlett,” Tribune (October , ), p. . Grieve, Pound’s Early Poetry, p. . Ford met Arthur Marwood around . Ford later commented: “I wrote several novels with a projection of him as a central character.” Ford, Return to Yesterday, p. . See also Mizener, Saddest Story, p. ; Saunders, Ford, pp. –. Ford also believed that Conrad’s family were “aristocrats to the backbone.” Ford, Conrad, p. . See also Levenson, Genealogy of Modernism, pp.  –.



Notes to pages –

 Ford, “Declaration of Faith,” pp.  & .  On Yeats and Lady Gregory at this time, see Yeats, Autobiography, pp. – ; Foster, Yeats, pp. –, –; Ellmann, Yeats, p. ; Cullingford, Yeats, Ireland and Fascism, p. .  Yeats, “Journal” (), pp. , , , , ; “Poetry and Tradition,” pp.  & , . See also Yeats, “The Controversy over the Playboy” (), UPII, pp. –.  Pound, “Suffragettes,” Egoist ( July , ):  & ; Ford Madox Hueffer, An English Girl: A Romance (London: Methuen, ), pp. , –, , , , ; Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – M. Anatole France,” Tribune (August , ), p. .  Ford, “Joseph Conrad,” English Review (December ): ; “Critical Attitude” (February ), pp. , .  Ford, “Critical Attitude” (February ), pp.  & ; Pound, “Picadilly,” Personae (), in CEP, p. ; Lawrence to Ernest Collings,  November  and  January , Letters I, pp. ,  & .  Ford, “Declaration of Faith” (February ), pp.  & ; “Critical Attitude” (February ), pp.  & .  Ford, “Declaration of Faith” (February ), pp. , ; “Critical Attitude” (February ), pp.  & .  Ford, The Heart of the Country (; rpt. in England and the English), p. ; Soul of London, pp.  & ; The Fifth Queen (; rpt. in The Fifth Queen. New York: Ecco Press, ), p. . See also Ford Madox Hueffer, The Benefactor, A Tale of a Small Circle (London: Brown, Langham, ); English Girl; “Literary Portraits. . – Mr. H.G. Wells,” Daily Mail (April , ), p. , for a criticism of Fabianism.  Pound, “Redondillas, Or Something of That Sort,” CEP, p. . For Pound’s political ideas in  and , see Pound to Harriet Monroe,  August , in The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, – , ed. D.D. Paige (New York: New Directions, ), p. ; “Patria Mia. –,” New Age (September , , , , October , , , , , ); “The Black Crusade,” New Age (December , ): ; “Through Alien Eyes. –,” New Age ( January , , , February , ); “America: Chances and Remedies. –,” New Age (May , , , , , June , ); “The Order of the Brothers Minor,” New Freewoman (October , ): . In the s and s Pound still liked the idea of rulers who were warriors and patrons of the arts, for example, Sigismondo Malatesta in Cantos – . See Pound, A Draft of XXX Cantos (New York: New Directions, ), pp. –.  Yeats, “A Canonical Book” (), UPII, p. ; “Edmund Spenser,” pp.  & .  Yeats, “What is Popular Poetry?,” p. ; “September ” and “Paudeen” from Responsibilities (), in Poems, pp.  & .  Ford, Fifth Queen, pp.  & ; Yeats, “Journal” ( January ), Memoirs, p. . See also Ford, Privy Seal (; rpt. in The Fifth Queen, ) and The Fifth Queen Crowned (; rpt. in The Fifth Queen, ).

Notes to pages –



 Yeats, “Journal”(), p. ; “Edmund Spenser,” p. ; “A Postscript” (), UPII, pp.  & .  Ford, Spirit of the People, p. , ; Fifth Queen Crowned, p. ; “Declaration of Faith,” pp. –; Pound, “Redondillas,” CEP, p. .  Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” Outlook (May , ): ; “Declaration of Faith,” p. ; Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” p. ; Pound, “Allen Upward Serious,” p. ; Hulme “The Translator’s Preface to Sorel’s, ‘Reflections on Violence’,” New Age (October , ):  & .  Ford, Spirit of the People, p. ; Yeats, “Journal” (), pp.  & .  Yeats, “Art and Ideas,” New Weekly ( June , ): ; Autobiography, p. ; Ford, Spirit of the People, p. .  Yeats, “Edmund Spenser,” p. ; Ford, Spirit of the People, p. ; Ford, English Girl, pp.  & ; Yeats, “To a Wealthy Man who Promised a Second Subscription to the Dublin Municipal Gallery if it were Proved the People wanted Pictures” and note, Responsibilities (), in Poems, pp.  & , .  Yeats, “Poetry and Tradition,” p. .  Yeats, “Emmet,” p. ; “Journal” (), p. .  Pound, “Allen Upward Serious,” p. ; “Suffragettes,” pp. –; “Wyndham Lewis,” p. ; [ Bastien von Helmholtz], “On the Imbecility of the Rich,” Egoist (October , ):  & ; “New Sculpture,” p. .  Yeats, “Edmund Spenser,” pp.  & .  Hulme “Political Conversion” (March , ), p.  & (March , ), p. .  Ford [ Daniel Chaucer], The New Humpty-Dumpty (London: John Lane The Bodley Head, ), pp. , , , , ,  & . According to Ford, Daniel Chaucer was “a quiet country gentleman of ancient but impoverished lineage” who had come from an “ancient and respectable” family that “from time immemorial, had its seat in the County of Kent.” Ford to Violet Hunt,  April , in Richard M. Ludwig, ed., Letters of Ford Madox Ford (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), pp.  & .  “    ”:     “Original Sin – And Mr. T.E. Hulme,” Cambridge Magazine (March , ): .  Ford Madox Ford, Mr. Apollo, A Just Possible Story (London: Methuen, ), pp.  –.  Walter Pater, “Apollo in Picardy,” in Miscellaneous Studies (; rpt. London: Macmillan, ), pp.  –; “Denys L’Auxerrois” and “Duke Carl of Rosenmold,” in Imaginary Portraits (; rpt. New York: Macmillan, ), pp. –, –.  See Lasserre, Romantisme, pp. –; Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, trans. T.E. Hulme (; rpt. New York: AMS Press, ), pp. , –,



 

  



       



Notes to pages –

 –, –, –; Gaultier, Bovarysme, pp. –, –; Kennedy, Tory Democracy, pp. –; A.R. Orage, Friedrich Nietzsche: The Dionysian Spirit of the Age (London: T.N. Foulis, ), p. ; Storer, “Romantic Concept of History,” pp.  & . Hulme, “Tory Philosophy” (April , ), p. ; “Political Conversion” (March , ), pp.  & ; “Notes on the Bologna Congress,” New Age (April , ), p. . A.M. Ludovici, Nietzsche: His Life and Works (London: Constable, ), p. . See also Lasserre, Romantisme, pp. ,  –; Lasserre, La morale de Nietzsche, pp. –; Sorel, Illusions; Sorel, Reflections, pp. –, –, –,  –, ; Gaultier, Le Bovarysme, pp. –, –; Orage, Nietzsche, pp. –; A.M. Orage, Consciousness: Animal, Human, and Superhuman (London & Benares: Theosophical Publishing Society, ), pp. –; Mazgaj, Action Fran¸caise, pp.  & ,  & , . Ellis, Bovarysm, p. . In November  Hulme claimed that Lasserre believed in the idea of recurrence, but there is no reference to this in those works of Lasserre that Hulme is known to have read. Hulme, “Tory Philosophy” (May , ), p. ; “Notes on Bergson. ,” New Age (November , ): . Hulme, “Tory Philosophy” (April , ), p. ; Hulme, “Romanticism,” pp.  & ; “Original Sin – And Mr. T.E. Hulme,” p. . For comments on original sin, see Sorel, Reflections, pp.  –; Sorel, Illusions, pp.  & ; Lasserre, Romantisme, pp.  & . Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp.  & . See also pp. ,  &  for a discussion of De Vries’s theory. It is possible that Hulme learned of this theory from Storer in . See Storer, “Romantic Conception of History,” p. . Hulme, “Romanticism,” p. . Hulme, “Tory Philosophy” (May , ), p. . Hulme, “Tory Philosophy” (May , ), p. ; Hulme [ Thomas Gratton], “Theory and Practice,” Commentator (November , ): . Hulme, “Tory Philosophy” (May , ), p.  & ; (May , ), p. . Hulme [Thomas Grattan], “On Progress and Democracy,” Commentator (August , ):  & . W.M. Flinders Petrie, The Revolutions of Civilisation (London and New York: Harper & Brothers, ), pp. ,  & , , . Ibid., p. . “Original Sin – And Mr. T.E. Hulme,” p. . It is possible that Hulme was introduced to the distinction between cyclic and spiral views of history by Sorel, although Sorel supported neither view. See Sorel, Illusions, pp.  & . Yeats, “Preface to the First Edition of The Well of Saints” (), E&I, p. ; Yeats, “Journal” (), p. .

Notes to pages –



 On the reasons for the change in Yeats’s spiritual interests, see Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn, pp. – & –; Foster, Yeats, pp. –,  –, .  Seiden, Yeats, pp. –.  Yeats, Autobiography, p. ; “Magic,” Monthly Review (September ): .  Yeats, “Philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry,” pp.  & ,  & .  This was especially the case in  when Yeats worked with the spiritualist, Elizabeth Radcliffe, who used automatic writing to communicate with spirits of many different countries and ages. See Arnold Goldman, “Yeats, Spiritualism, and Psychical Research,” in Harper, ed., Yeats and the Occult, p. ; George Mills Harper and John S. Kelly, “Preliminary Examination of the Script of E[lizabeth] R[adcliffe], ibid., pp. –; Alan Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research (New York: Schocken, ), p. ; Hough, Mystery Religion, p. –; Ellmann, Yeats, pp. –.  Herbert J. Levine, Yeats’s Daimonic Renewal (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, ), p. .  Hulme, “Bergsonism in Paris,” New Age ( June , ): . See also L’Action fran¸caise ( janvier ):  and ( f´evrier ): . Hulme visited Lasserre and Gaultier at this time to discuss Bergson’s philosophy and conservative politics. See Hulme “Bologna Congress,” p. .  Hulme [ T.E.H.], “Mr. Balfour, Bergson, and Politics,” New Age (November , ):  & .  Hulme, “Notes on Bergson. ,” New Age (November , ): ; Hulme, “Notes on Bergson. ,” New Age (February , ): ; “Bergson. ,” pp. .  Hulme, “Bergson. ,” p. ; Letter of Ramiero de Maeztu,  April , Hulme Papers, University of Hull; Hulme, “Bergson. ,” p. .  Lawrence to Ada Lawrence Clarke,  April , Letters I, p. ; Lawrence to Ernest Collings,  January , ibid., p. ; Lawrence, “The Georgian Renaissance,” Rhythm: Literary Supplement (March ), pp. xvii–xxi.  Lawrence to Henry Savage,  January , Letters II, pp.  & .  Pound, Exultations (), “Paracelsus in Excelsis,” from Canzoni (), “Laudantes Decem Pulchritudinis Johannae Templi” and “Guido Invites You Thus” from Exultations (), and “Histron” from A Quinzaine for this Yule (), CEP, pp. , , , , .  Ford, The Young Lovell: A Romance (London: Chatto & Windus, ), p. .  Oppenheim, Other World, p. . See also ibid, p. ; Kathleen Raine, “Hades Wrapped in Cloud,” in Harper, ed., Yeats and the Occult, pp. –.  See Harmer, Victory in Limbo, p. ; Stock, Pound, p. ; P/SL, pp. n, ,  & ; Pound, “Psychology and Troubadours,” Quest (October ), p. n ; William French and Timothy Materer, “Far Flung Vortices & Ezra’s ‘Hindoo’ Yogi,” Paideuma  (Spring ):  & .  G.R.S. Mead, Simon Magus (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, ), p. . See also “The ‘Book of the Hidden Mysteries’ by Hierotheos,” in Quests Old and New (London: G. Bell & Sons, ) or “The Book of The Hidden Mysteries of the House of God,” Quest (October ): –.



Notes to pages –

 Mead and other contributors to Quest held a progressive view of the possibility of an ascent to unity with the divine, but did not apply it to the history of religion. For more on comparative studies of religion and folklore with evolutionary biases, see George W. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, ); Robert Ackerman, J.G. Frazer, His Life and Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).  G.R.S. Mead, “On the Nature of the Quest,” Quest (October ): .  Pound, “Psychology and Troubadours,” pp.  & , p. n., pp.  & , , .  Pound, “On the ‘Decline of Faith’,” p. .  Lawrence, “Georgian Renaissance,” p. xx.  Lawrence to Ada Lawrence Clarke,  April , Letters I, p. .  Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. .  Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics, authorised trans. T.E. Hulme (; rpt. New York: Macmillan, ), p. .  Pound, Spirit of Romance, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Stan Smith, The Origins of Modernism: Eliot, Pound, Yeats and the Rhetorics of Renewal (Hemel Hempsted: Harvester Wheatsheaf, ), pp.  & .  Yeats, “Journal” (), pp.  & ; “Poetry and Tradition,” p. .  Pound, “Patria Mia,” New Age (September , ): ; (September , ):  & ; (September , ): ; (October , ): ; (October , ): .  Ford, Spirit of the People, pp. , , , . In Ford’s English Girl, p. , the socialist reformers whom Ford satirizes have progressive views of history. In “Literary Portraits.  – Mr. Frederic Harrison,” Daily Mail (May , ): , Ford criticized Harrison for his belief that “the destinies and perfectibility of Humanity is an ideal higher than that of any religion based upon miracle.”  Ford, Spirit of the People, p. ; Soul of London, p. . See also Ford, Spirit of the People, pp. ,  & .  Ford M. Hueffer, The Face of the Night, A Second Series of Poems for Pictures (London: John MacQueen, ), pp.  & .  Ford, Mr. Apollo, p. . The fact that Egathistothepompus held that men are perfectible, although history moves in cycles, could indicate that Ford had a spiral view. Nevertheless, there is no other sense of progress in the novel. Rather, Apollo consistently points out that little had changed since Ancient Greece, and Ford’s comparisons of contemporary England and the Roman Empire illustrate the lack of significant advancement. See especially, pp. –.  Ibid., p. .  Lawrence, “Georgian Renaissance,” p. xix.  Pound, “Canzon: The Yearly Slain,” “The Golden Sestina,” “A Prologue,” and “Und Drang,” from Canzoni (), “The Return” and “The Needle,” from Ripostes (), “Redondillas” (), CEP, pp. ,  & ,  & , , , .

Notes to pages –



 Yeats, “Discoveries” (), E&I, pp. –; “Journal” (), p. .  Pound, “I Gather the Limbs of Osiris,” New Age (February , ), p. ; (February , ), p. .  Hulme, “Haldane,” pp.  & ; “Lecture,” pp. , , ; “New Philosophy,” p. ; “Notes,” p. .  Hulme, “Notes,” p. .  Hume, “Bergson’s Theory of Art,” Speculations, pp.  & .  Hume, “Lecture,” p. .  Pound, “Psychology and Troubadours,” pp. , –.  Pound, “Prologomena,” p. .  Pound, “Osiris” ( January , ), p. .  Pound, “Prologomena,” p. .  Most literary critics acknowledge Pound’s August  book of poems, Ripostes, as marking a fundamental change in his work. See Harmer, Victory in Limbo, pp. , –; Stock, Pound, pp.  & , ; Levenson, Genealogy of Modernism, p. ; Martin, New Age, p. ; H. Christoph De Nagy, The Poetry of Ezra Pound: The Pre-Imagist Stage (Francke Verlag Bern, ), p. .  Pound, “Lustra III Further Instructions,” Poetry (November ):  & .  See Green, Ford, pp.  & , – for the use of these structures in Ford’s mature work, The Good Soldier.  Ford, Ladies Whose Bright Eyes: A Romance (London: Constable, ).  Ford, Mr. Fleight (London: Howard Latimer, ), p. .  Green, Ford, p. . Green is inaccurate in saying that a year passed from the beginning to the end of the novel. The novel begins on Derby day and ends on Christmas day. Thus only six months had passed.  “    ”:      -   Yeats, “Preface to Gitanjali” (September ), E&I, p. .  Pound to D.S.,  October , P/SL, p. .  Quoted in Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, ), p. .  Quoted in ibid., p. . See also Nigel Leask, British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –; John MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory, and the Arts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, ), p. .  See Leask, British Romantic Writers; MacKenzie, Orientalism, p. ; Said, Orientalism, p. ; Schwab, Oriental Renaissance, p. ; Maryanne Stevens, “Western Art and its Encounter with the Islamic World –,” in Maryanne Stevens, ed., The Orientalists: Delacroix to Matisse, the Allure of North Africa and the Near East (New York: Thames & Hudson, ), pp. –.  Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East, –, trans. Gene Patterson-Black and Victor Reinking (New York: Columbia University Press, ), p. .  MacKenzie, Orientalism, p. .



Notes to pages –

 See Lawrence W. Chisolm, Fenollosa: The Far East and American Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ), pp. –,  & ; Earl Miner, The Japanese Tradition in British and American Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), pp. ,  –, –.  Quoted in Leask, British Romantic Writers, p. .  Tennyson, “Recollections of the Arabian Nights,” Poetic and Dramatic Work, p. .  See Schwab, Oriental Renaissance ; Said, Orientalism ; Toshio Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind (London: Macmillan, ); Tomoko Sato and Toshio Watanabe, eds., Japan and Britain, An Aesthetic Dialogue, – (London: Lund Humphries, ); Chisolm, Fenollosa, pp. –,  & ; Miner, Japanese Tradition, pp. ,  –, –; John Hatcher, Laurence Binyon: Poet, Scholar of East and West (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. –; Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. –; Tapati Guha-Thakurta, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art: Arts, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal c. – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –; Anna Somers Cocks, The Victoria and Albert Museum: The Making of the Collection (Leicester: Windward, ), pp. –, –.  George C.M. Birdwood, The Industrial Arts of India (London: Chapman and Hall, ), p. . See also Cocks, p. .  Cited in Chisolm, Fenollosa, p. .  See Sato and Watanabe, Japan and Britain, pp. –; Linda Gertner Zatlin, Beardsley, Japonisme and the Perversion of the Victorian Ideal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp.  –; Toshio Watanabe, High Victorian Japonisme (Bern: Peter Lang, ); Miner, Japanese Tradition; Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind; Watanabe, Japan and Britain.  See Chisolm, Fenollosa, pp. –. The British Museum also had little interest in Asian fine art before the early twentieth century. According to the Keeper of the prints and drawings collection, the “pictorial arts [of China and Japan] properly so-called . . . were almost unknown until . . . ” and little was acquired from then until . Sidney Colvin, “Preface,” British Museum, Guide to an Exhibition of Chinese and Japanese Paintings (Fourth to Nineteenth Century A.D. in the Print and Drawing Gallery) (London: ). See also Edward Miller, That Noble Cabinet, A History of the British Museum (London: Andre Deutsch, ), pp.  & ; ; British Museum, Reports to Trustees [ Dept. P&D] vol. ,  to ,  April .  Havell, “The New Indian School of Painting,” The Studio  ( July ), p. ; Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters, pp. –; Guha-Thakurta, New ‘Indian’ Art, pp. –, –, –.  See Roger Lipsey, Coomaraswamy, Vol. : His Life and Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ); Mary M. Lago, ed., Imperfect Encounter: Letters of William Rothenstein and Rabindranath Tagore  – (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ).

Notes to pages –



 This was according to Sidney Colvin, Keeper of the British Museum’s Prints and Drawing collection. He did not identify the other “expert”. British Museum Archives, Letter of Sidney Colvin to Trustees,  Feb. .  Roger Fry, “Oriental Art,” Quarterly Review ( January ): –; Denys Sutton, ed., “Introduction,” Letters of Roger Fry (New York: Random House, ), pp. –.  See Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters, pp. –.  Lasserre, Romantisme, p. , ,  & , .  This evolutionary view of art also accounts for the lack of understanding and appreciation of “primitive” art outside modern art circles before the First World War. See Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ).  Fry, “Oriental Art,” p. ; E.B. Havell, Ideals of Indian Art (London: John Murray, ) pp.  & ; Fry, “Oriental Art,” p. . See also Laurence Binyon, Painting in the Far East: An Introduction to the History of Pictorial Art in Asia Especially China and Japan (London: Edward Arnold, ), p. ; Laurence Binyon, Flight of the Dragon: An Essay on the Theory and Practice of Art in China and Japan (London: John Murray, ); Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon (; rpt. New Delhi: Today & Tomorrow’s Printers & Publishers, ); Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Essays in National Idealism (Madras: G.A. Natesan, [n.d. = ]); Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, trans. Michael Bullock (; rpt. New York: International Universities Press, ).  See, for example, Coomaraswamy, Essays, pp.  & ; Havell, Ideals, pp. xv,  & , , ; Binyon, Painting, pp.  & ; Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “The Aim of Indian Art,” Modern Review ( January, ), p. .  See Binyon, Painting, p. .  Worringer, Abstraction, p. . Hulme was so impressed by his work in  that he went to Germany to meet Worringer. In early  Hulme admitted that his position was “practically an abstract of Worringer’s views.” Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp.  & . See also Levenson, Genealogy of Modernism, pp.  & ; Hulme to Edward Marsh, Hulme Papers, Hull University.  Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp.  & .  Binyon, Painting, p. ; Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “Art of the East and of the West,” New Age (March , ), p. ; Fry, “Oriental Art,” p. .  Yeats may have been introduced to Indian religion by the Theosophists. For Yeats’s earliest references to Asia, see Yeats, “The Poetry of A.E.” (), UPI, p. ; Yeats, “Magic,” p. ; Yeats, Poems, pp. –; Foster, Yeats, pp. ,  & . For Pound, see Stock, Pound, p. ; Pound, footnote to “Plotinus,” A Lume Spento (), CEP, p. .  Foster, Yeats, pp.  & , ; Stock, Pound, pp.  & .  See, for example, Binyon, “Some Phases of Religious Art in Eastern Asia,” Quest ( July ): –; insert to Quest ( January ); E.B. Havell, “The Ideals and Philosophy of Indian Art,” Quest ( July ): –; Havell,





      



 

Notes to pages – Coomaraswamy, and Binyon in “An International Symposium for the Art of the Theatre,” New Age (October , ): . Hulme had read “Binyon’s little book on Chinese art” by . See Hulme, “Bergson’s Theory of Art,” p. . In  Pound attended a lecture by Binyon on “Oriental and European Art” that he thought was “intensely interesting.” Quoted in Stock, Pound, pp.  & . Yeats also had read Binyon. See Yeats, “Estrangement” (), Autobiography, p. . Pound, review of Art and Swadeshi, by Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Poetry (September ):  & . D.L. Murray notes written for A.R. Jones, T.E. Hulme Papers, University of Hull. Ellmann, Yeats, p. ; Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” from The Tower (), Poems, pp.  & . See Yeats, “Tragic Theatre” (), E&I, p. ; “Preface to Gitanjali,” p. ; Pound to D.S.,  January ,  September ,  September , P/SL, pp. , , . Pound to D.S.,  December , P/SL, p. . Jepson, Memories, pp. –. Epstein recalled a similar scene with a fellow artist about a statue of Buddha on Hulme’s mantelpiece. Epstein, Autobiography, p. . F. Hadland David, “The Poetry of Yone Noguchi,” Quest ( July ): . Yeats met Tagore on June ,  through the painter William Rothenstein who had invited Tagore to London. Yeats then introduced Pound to Tagore. See Yeats to Florence Farr Emery,  June , in Letters, p. ; Stock, Pound, p. ; Pound to D.S.,  October , P/SL, pp.  & . For more on the relationship between Noguchi, Tagore, Yeats, and Pound see, Yoshinobu Hakutani, Selected English Writings of Yone Noguchi: An EastWest Literary Assimilation (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, ); Yone Noguchi, The Story of Yone Noguchi Told By Himself (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs, [n.d. = ]); Lago, ed., Imperfect Encounter, pp. –; Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man (London: Bloomsbury, ), pp. –. For example, in  and  the Poetry Bookshop held four readings of Tagore’s poems, two lectures by Noguchi, and two readings of translations of Japanese, Chinese, and Persian poetry. See Harold Monro Papers, British Library, Add. Mss. –. See New Age, New Freewoman, Egoist, New Weekly, Quest, Rhythm, Blue Review, and Mask, –, for reviews of Asian poetry, drama, music, and paintings. Stock, Pound, p. ; P/SL, pp.  & , , , , , , , , . It was probably Binyon who suggested Pound to Fenollosa’s widow. The two met in early October  at the home of the Indian poet, Sarojini Naidu. See Pound to D.S.,  October , P/SL, p. ; Hatcher, Binyon, p. ; Chisolm, Fenollosa, p.  & , ; Stock, Pound, pp.  & .

Notes to pages –



 Yeats had some knowledge of Japanese theater before Pound acquired Fenollosa’s notes, from his friend Edward Craig’s journal, The Mask, to which he subscribed. He may have read Sheko Tsubouchi, “The Drama in Japan,” Mask (April ): –.  Pound to D.S.,  September , P/SL, p. ; Dorothy Shakespear to E.P.,  December  and  November , ibid., pp.  & , .  Ford, Mr. Fleight, pp. –.  Fletcher, Life is My Song, p. .  Pound, “Rabindranath Tagore. His Second Book into English,” New Freewoman (November , ):  & .  Yeats, “Preface to Gitanjali,” p. ; Pound, “Tagore’s Poems,” Poetry (December ), p. ; Pound to D.S.,  October , P/SL, p. ; Pound, “Rabindranath Tagore,” Fortnightly Review n.s. (March ), p. ; Lawrence to Gordon Campbell,  December , Letters II, p. ; Ford Madox Ford, Henry James (; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, ), pp.  & , .  Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp.  & , ; Yeats, “Introduction” to Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound, Certain Noble Plays of Japan, in The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan (; rpt. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, ), p. .  Pound, “ Tagore,” p. ; “Tagore’s Poems,” p. ; “Tagore. His Second Book,” p. .  Binyon, Painting, p. ; Worringer, Abstraction, p. ; Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp.  & .  Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp. ,  & ; Jane Ellen Harrison, Ancient Art and Ritual (New York & London: Henry Holt & Williams and Norgate, ), pp.  –, –, –, –. Lawrence wrote to a friend, “you have no idea how much I got out of that Ritual and Art book.” Lawrence to A.W. McLeod,  December , Letters II, p. . However, Harrison did not particularly admire archaic art, and assumed a positive progress towards the art of Classical Greece.  Lawrence to A.W. McLeod,  October , Letters II, p. ; Lawrence to Henry Savage,  December , ibid. p. ; Lawrence to Gordon Campbell,  September , ibid, pp.  & .  Yeats first met Craig in  and was so impressed by his set designs that he considered having him do work for the Abbey Theatre in , but nothing came of the idea of a collaboration at this time. See Foster, Yeats, pp.  & , , , ; Denis Bablet, Edward Gordon Craig (New York: Theatre Arts Books, ), pp.  –; James W. Flannery, “W. B. Yeats, Gordon Craig and the Visual Arts of the Theatre,” in Robert O’Driscoll and Lorna Reynolds, eds., Yeats and the Theatre (New York and Canada: Maclean-Hunter Press and Macmillan of Canada, ), pp.  & .  Binyon, Painting, p. .  See Edward Craig [ John Balance], “A Note on Masks,” Mask (March ), ¨ pp. –; Edward Gordon Craig, “The Actor and the Uber-Marionette,”



  



      

     

Notes to pages – Mask (April ), pp. –. John Balance and most of the contributors to The Mask were pseudonyms for Craig. See Bablet, Craig, pp.  & . Yeats, “The Death of Synge: Extracts from A Diary Kept in ,” Autobiography, pp.  & ; “Tragic Theatre,” pp. , ; “Estrangement,” p. . Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Art and Swadeshi (Madras: Ganesh, ), pp. –; Pound, “Psychology and Troubadours,” p. ; Pound, “Tagore,” pp. , . Hulme may have been influenced by the British Nietzscheans, A.M. Ludovici and J.M. Kennedy, who made similar arguments. See Ludovici, Nietzsche and Art, pp.  & , , , ,  & , –; Kennedy, Religions and Philosophies of the East, p. . Upward may have inspired Pound to read Confucius; immediately after visiting Upward in , Pound claimed that he was “stocked up with K’ung fu Tsze, and Men Tsze” (Upward’s spellings of Confucius and Mencius). Pound to D.S.,  October , P/SL, p. . Upward, “Anthropolatry,” p. ; “The End of Democracy,” New Age (February , ): ; “The Sayings of K’ung the Master,” New Freewoman, (November , ):  & . Herbert A. Giles, History of Chinese Literature (London: William Heinemann, ), p. . Upward may have directed Pound to “[ Herbert] Giles’s ‘Hist. of Chinese Lit.’ ” See Pound to D.S.,  October , P/SL, p. . Binyon, “Introduction,” British Museum Guide, p. . See also Painting, pp.  & . Yeats, “Estrangement,” p. . Yeats stated in this  diary that his reading of “Binyon’s book on Eastern Painting” led him to this conclusion. Yeats, “Preface to Gitanjali,” p. . This curator probably was Binyon and “the hereditary connoisseur of the Mikado” one of Binyon’s Japanese helpers in the Department of Prints and Drawings. Ibid., p. . Yeats, “Introduction,” p. ; Pound, “The Classical Stage of Japan,” Drama (May ): . For the extent to which Yeats and Pound shared their work on the Noh, see Longenbach, Stone Cottage; Yeats, “Swedenborg,” (), p. ; Pound to Harriet Monroe,  January , Selected Letters, p. ; Yoko Chiba, “Ezra Pound’s Versions of Fenollosa’s Noh Manuscripts and Yeats’s Unpublished Suggestions and Corrections,” Yeats Annual,  (), p. –. Yeats, “Introduction,” p. . Pound, “Classical Stage,” p. . Yeats, “Introduction,” p. ; see also Pound, Classic Noh Theatre, pp.  & . Pound, “Classical Stage,” pp.  & . Yeats, “Introduction,” pp.  & . Yeats, “Introduction,” pp. ; Ernst Fenollosa, “The Classical Drama of Japan,” Quarterly Review (October ), p. ; Yeats, “Introduction,” pp. , .

Notes to pages –



 Binyon, Painting, p. . For a statement by Yeats similar to Binyon’s, which Yeats admitted was inspired by reading this book, see “Estrangement,” p. .  Yeats, “Preface to Gitanjali,” pp. , , , , ; “Death of Synge,” pp.  & .  Miner, Japanese Tradition, p. .  Worringer, Abstraction, pp. , , , , –, –; Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp. –.  Yeats, “Introduction,” p. ; Binyon, Painting, pp. ,  & ; Yeats, “Tragic Theatre,” p. .  Yeats, “The Theatre of Beauty” (November , ), UPII, pp. , . Yeats also may have learned of these goals from Walter Pater. See Pater, Essay, p. ; Donoghue, Pater, pp.  & .  Binyon also may have worked on this project with Yeats and Craig. See Yeats to Lady Gregory,  January  and  January , in Letters, pp.  & ; Binyon, “The Gordon Craig School for the Art of the Theatre: A Recognition of the Need for it,” Mask ( January ): –.  See Flannery, “W. B. Yeats, Gordon Craig,” pp. ,  & ,  & ; Bablet, Craig, pp.  –; Yeats, “Abbey Theatre. New System of Scenery” ( January , ), UPII, p. ; Yeats, “The Return of Gordon Craig to England,” Mask (October ): .  “W.B. Yeats’s Speech at the Matinee of the British Association Friday, September th, ,” UPII, p. ; Yeats, “The Art of the Theatre” ( June , ), UPII, p. ; “Introduction,” p. . This is precisely what occurs in the dances at the climax of Yeats’s own Noh inspired plays such as At the Hawk’s Well (), The Only Jealousy of Emer (), and The Dreaming of the Bones (), in Collected Plays, pp. –, –, –.  Yeats, “Introduction,” pp. , ; “Tragic Theatre,” pp. , .  F.S. Flint, “The History of Imagism,” Egoist (May , ): . For Flint’s early interest in Japanese poetry, which was very similar to Hulme’s, see Flint, “Recent Verse,” New Age ( July , ): – and “Verse,” New Age (December , ):  & . See also Harmer, Victory in Limbo, pp. –.  Coomaraswamy, Art and Swadeshi, pp. –; Pound, “Tagore,” pp. , , ; Pound, “Tagore. His Second Book,” p. .  In August  Yone Noguchi sent Pound “two volumes of poems.” Pound acknowledged Noguchi’s “genius” and thought the poems were “rather beautiful,” but claimed, “I dont [sic] quite know what to think about them.” Pound to D.S.,  or  August , P/SL, p. .  Yone Noguchi, “What is a Hokku Poem?,” Rhythm ( January ):  & .  Pound, “How I Began,” T.P.’s Weekly ( June , ): .  Pound was probably introduced to Chinese poetry by Allen Upward. He particularly liked the paraphrases of Chinese poems in Allen Upward, “Scented Leaves – From a Chinese Jar,” Poetry (September ):  –;



     

  

        

Notes to pages – Pound to D.S.,  September , P/SL, p. ; Stock, Pound, p. ; Harmer, Victory in Limbo, p. . Giles, History of Chinese Literature, p. . Pound to D.S.,  October , P/SL, p. . See Yoshinobu Hakutani, “Ezra Pound, Yone Noguchi, and Imagism,” Modern Philology ,  (August ), pp. –. Pound, “Tagore’s Poems,” p. . Pound, “A Few Don’ts [sic] by an Imagiste,” Poetry (March ):  & . Ford, Henry James, pp.  & , ; “Literary Portraits – .,” p. . Ford included a Japanese haiku, which he later claimed was written by the Japanese Emperor Yoshihito for the Japanese poetry festival of , in Henry James, p. . Ford, The March of Literature From Confucius’ Day to Our Own (New York: Dial Press, ), p. . Hulme, “Tory Philosophy” (May , ), p. ; “Modern Art,” p. , . For the ages included in each tradition, see Worringer, Abstraction, pp.  – ; Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp.  –. Pound, “The Caressability of the Greeks,” Egoist (March , ): ; “Exhibition at the Goupil Gallery,” ibid., p. . Pound, “The New Sculpture,” Egoist (February , ): ; “Caressability,” p. ; “Goupil,” p. ; “Note” to F.T.S. “The Causes and Remedy of Poverty in China,” Egoist (March , ): ; “The Serious Artist,” New Freewoman (November , ): . Yeats, “Tragic Theatre,” pp.  & . Harrison, Ancient Art, pp. , , , ,  & , , , , , –. Ford, “Literary Portraits. ,” p. . Coomaraswamy, “Art of the East,” p. . Yeats, “Theatre of Beauty,” p. . See, for example, Fry, “Oriental Art,” p. ; Havell, “Ideals and Philosophy,” pp.  & . Fry, “Oriental Art,” p. ; Havell, Ideals, p. ; Binyon, Flight, p. . Yeats, “Introduction,” pp. –; “Theatre of Beauty,” p. . Pound, “Tagore’s Poems,” p. ; Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp.  –.   “    . . .  ” :    - 

 Ezra Pound, “Vortex. Pound.,” Blast  ( June , ): .  Quoted in Timothy Materer, Vortex: Pound, Eliot, and Lewis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ), p. .  “Rebel Art Centre,” Evening Standard (May , ).  See Charles Harrison, English Art and Modernism, – (London: Allen Lane, ), pp.  & ; Materer, Vortex, p. ; Goldring, South Lodge, p. .  Quoted in Richard Cork, Art Beyond the Gallery in Early th Century England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ), p. .

Notes to pages –



 See Harrison, English Art, pp.  & , –; S.K. Tillyard, The Impact of Modernism, – (London: Routledge, ), pp.  & , –; catalog for Manet and the Post-Impressionists (London: Ballantyne, ).  See J.B. Bullen, ed., Post-Impressionists in England (London: Routledge, ), pp. , –, –, , ,  & ; “Introduction” to Manet and the Post-Impressionists.  On the contemporary reaction to the exhibition, see Bullen, “Introduction,” to Bullen, ed., Post-Impressionists, p. ; Harrison, English Art, pp.  & ; Tillyard, Impact of Modernism, pp. –,  –, –,  & .  For more on the differences among these groups, see Tillyard, Impact of Modernism, pp. –; Bullen, “Introduction,” pp.  –; Harrison, English Art, pp. , –.  See Harrison, English Art, p.  for a description of this split.  Pound, “Prefatory Note” to Hulme’s “Complete Poetical Works,” Ripostes (London: Stephen Swift, ), p. .  Hulme, “Romanticism and Classicism,” p. . It is likely that Hulme saw the First Post-Impressionist Exhibition in late  or early . He may have read Maurice Denis, “C´ezanne,” trans. Roger Fry, Burlington Magazine ( January ): – & –, rpt. in Bullen, ed., Post-Impressionists, pp. –.  Lasserre, “La philosophie de M. Bergson,”  & .  See Denis, “C´ezanne,” pp. –,  & ; Tillyard, Impact of Modernism, pp. –, ,  & ; Fry, “ ‘The French Group,’ catalogue of the second Post-Impressionist exhibition,” in Bullen, ed., Post-Impressionists, pp. – ; Fry, “Post-Impressionism,” Fortnightly Review (May ), in ibid., p. ; Manet and the Post-Impressionists, pp.  & ; Hulme, “Romanticism and Classicism,” p. .  Fry, “Post Impressionism,” pp. –; Tillyard, Impact of Modernism, pp. –.  Edward Storer, “ Romantic Conception of History,” p. .  Edward Storer, “Art,” Commentator (November , ): ; “Art,” Commentator (October , ): .  Edward Storer, “Art Notes,” Commentator (April , ): .  In  Hulme stated openly that the Action Fran¸caise were mistaken in their opinion about Post-Impressionism, because it, not their own Classicism, was “the exact opposite of romanticism.” Hulme, “Modern Art. – . The Grafton Group,” New Age ( January , ): .  Lawrence became close friends with Murry and Mansfield, and a regular contributor to their journals, Rhythm and Blue Review. Murry and Mansfield were friends with Henri Gaudier and Sophie Brzeska at the same time. See Carswell, Lives and Letters, pp.  & –; Jeffrey Meyers, D.H. Lawrence (New York: Knopf, ), pp. –; Blue Review, I (May ), insert; Michael T.H. Sadler, “Fauvism and A Fauve,” Rhythm (Summer ): ; Lawrence to Katherine Mansfield,  January , Letters I, p. ; Lawrence letter to Ernest Collings,  February , ibid., p. .



Notes to pages –

 O. Raymond Drey, “Post-Impressionism; The Character of the Movement,” Rhythm ( January ): –.  O. Raymond Drey, “Russian Ballet,” New Weekly (May , ): . Pound saw the Russian Ballet in the Spring and Winter of  and wrote that year: “I too have taken delight/ in the maze of the Russian dancers.” Pound, “Redondillas,” CEP, p. ; Stock, Pound, pp.  & . Hulme saw the Ballet in the Autumn of . See D.L. Murray notes written for A.R. Jones in , Hulme Papers, Hull University.  Patmore, My Friends, pp.  & ; Fletcher, Life is My Song, p. . See also Dukes, Scene is Changed, p. ; Frank Rutter, Some Contemporary Artists (London, ), p. ; Drey, “Russian Ballet,” pp.  & ; Cork, Art Beyond the Gallery, p. .  For more on the Cave of the Golden Calf, see Cork, Art Beyond the Gallery, pp.  –. For the Modernists and their friends at the Cave, see Ford, Return to Yesterday, pp.  & ; Pound to D.S.,  October , P/SL, p. ; Jepson, Memories, p. ; Hunt, I Have This to Say, p. ; Goldring, South Lodge, p. ; Cork, Art Beyond the Gallery, p. ; Stock, Pound, pp.  & .  Recalled by Kate Lechmere in a letter to, and interview with, Michael Roberts in . Hulme Papers, University of Keele.  Both Pound and Ford met Lewis in  but were not close to him until . See Wyndham Lewis, Blasting and Bombardiering (; revised edn London: John Calder, ), p. ; Wyndham Lewis, The Letters of Wyndham Lewis, ed. W.K. Rose (London: Methuen, ), pp.  & ; Goldring, South Lodge, p. ; Stock, Pound, p. .  Epstein, Autobiography, p. ; Ford, Return to Yesterday, pp.  & .  Lawrence to Edward Garnett,  December , Letters II, pp.  & . See also D.L. Murray, notes for A.R. Jones, Hulme Papers, Hull University; Nevinson, Paint and Prejudice, p. ; Epstein, Autobiography, p. ; Goldring, South Lodge, p. ; Hunt, I Have This to Say, p. ; Stock, Pound, p. .  This album is in Hulme Papers, Hull University. Hulme’s book was in manuscript form at the time of Hulme’s death but disappeared afterwards. Epstein, Autobiography, p. . A photograph of Epstein’s head of Hulme is reproduced in Speculations and Further Speculations.  Epstein, Autobiography, p. ; Roger Cole, Burning to Speak: The Life and Art of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (Oxford: Phaidon Press, ), pp. , , . Apparently some of Hulme’s violent moods, and Gaudier’s knuckle-duster, were directed against his fianc´ee. See Kate Lechmere, letters to Michael Roberts, Hulme Papers, University of Keele.  Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, A Memoir (; rpt. New York: New Directions, ), pp. –. See also Richard Humphreys, “Demon Pantechnicon Driver. Pound in the London Vortex, –,” in Richard Humphreys, ed., Pound’s Artists (London: Tate Gallery, ), pp. –; Stock, Pound, p. ; Cole, Burning to Speak, pp. –, ; Fletcher, Life is My Song, p. ; Hunt, I Have This to Say, p. .

Notes to pages –



 Cork, Art Beyond the Gallery, pp. –.  Lewis occasionally was so jealous of Hulme’s friendship with Epstein that he and Hulme quarreled to the point of violence. Michael Roberts interview with Kate Lechmere, Hulme Papers, University of Keele.  Lewis, Blasting, pp. –.  Read, Speculations, p.  ; Pound, “The New Sculpture,” Egoist (February , ):  & .  Reed Way Dasenbrock, The Literary Vorticism of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ), pp.  & ; Lewis, Blasting, pp. –. The origin of Pound’s term “Vortex” is the subject of much speculation. For suggestions, see Giovanni Cianci, “Futurism and the English Avant-Garde: The Early Pound Between Imagism and Vorticism,” Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik ,  (), pp.  & .  Hulme, “Contemporary Drawings,” New Age (April , ): .  Pound, “Vorticism,” Fortnightly Review (September ): , , ; “The Later Yeats,” Poetry (May ): & ,  & ; “Mr. Hueffer and the Prose Tradition in Verse,” Poetry ( June ):  & .  Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Mr. Wyndham Lewis and ‘Blast’,” Outlook ( July , ):  & . For more of Ford on visual art, see Ford, “Impressionism – Some Speculations ,” Poetry (September ): ; “Literary Portraits. .,” pp.  & ; “Literary Portraits. .,” pp.  & ; “Literary Portraits. . – Signor Marinetti, Mr. Lloyd George, St. Katherine, and Others,” Outlook ( July , ):  & .  Yeats, “Poetry’s Banquet,”Poetry (April ): .  Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Nineteen-Thirteen and the Futurists,” Outlook ( January , ): ; Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” p. ; Lawrence to Arthur McLeod,  June , in Letters II, pp.  & . Lawrence was probably referring to the Futurists here. He had already read some of their work and seen their pictures. See footnotes  &  to ibid., p. .  D.L. Murray notes written for A.R. Jones in , Hulme Papers, Hull University.  John Middleton Murry, “Aims and Ideals,” Rhythm (Summer ): .  See Epstein, Autobiography, pp. , ,  & ,  & , , –; Nevinson, Paint and Prejudice, p. ; Cork, Art Beyond the Gallery, p. ; Cole, Burning to Speak, pp. –, .  Hulme, “Modern Art. – .,” p. ; “Modern Art,” pp. , , ; Murry, “Aims and Ideals,” p. .  Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp. , , , ; Ford, “On Impressionism (Second Article),” Poetry and Drama (December ): ; Pound, “New Sculpture,” pp.  & ; “Our Vortex,” Blast  ( June , ): ; “The New Egos,” ibid., p. ; Lawrence to Edward Garnett,  June , Letters II, pp.  & .  Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp. , –,  & ,  & .  Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp. , ; Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), p. ; Hulme, “Modern Art. - . Mr. David Bomberg’s Show,” New Age





  

 

            

Notes to pages –

( July , ): ; Hulme, “Modern Art. - . A Preface Note and NeoRealism,” New Age (February , ): ; Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), p. ; Pound, “Vortex. Pound.,” p. . “Manifesto. ,” Blast  ( June , ): . According to Lewis in , this passage “exalts formality, and order, at the expense of the disorderly and unkempt. It is merely a humorous way of stating the classic standpoint, as against the romantic.” Lewis, Blasting, p. . As is evident elsewhere in this memoir, Lewis was directly indebted to Hulme for many ideas. “Our Vortex,” Blast  ( June , ), p. . Lewis, “Manifesto. ,” Blast  ( June , ), p. ; “Life is the Important Thing,” ibid., p. ; “The Cubist Room,” Egoist ( January , ): ; “Rebel Art in Modern Life,” Daily News and Leader (April , ): . Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” pp.  & ; Hulme, “Modern Art. - . The London Group,” New Age (March , ):  & ; “Modern Art. - .,” p. . See also Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” p. ; “On Impressionism (Second Article),” pp.  & ; Ford, “On Impressionism,” Poetry and Drama ( June ): . Lewis, “Vortices and Notes,” Blast  ( June , ), p. ; Pound, “Wadsworth,” p. . Hulme, “Modern Art,” p. ; “Mr. Epstein and the Critics,” New Age (December , ), p. ; “Modern Art,” p. ; Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” pp.  & ; “Literary Portraits. .,” p. . Samuel Smiles’s book Self Help () included a classic Victorian argument for laissez-faire and individual responsibility for success or failure. Pound, “Goupil,” p. ; “New Sculpture,” p. ; Lewis, “Rebel Art,” p. . See also Pound, “Futurism, Magic and Life” Blast  ( June , ), p. ; “New Egos,” p. . Lawrence to Edward Garnett,  June , Letters II, pp.  & . Lawrence to Gordon Campbell,  September , ibid., pp.  & . Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, trans. M.T.H. Sadler ( as The Art of Spiritual Harmony; rpt. New York: Dover, ), pp.  & . Pound, “New Sculpture,” p. ; H. Gaudier-Brzeska, “Mr. Gaudier-Brzeska on ‘The New Sculpture’,” Egoist (March , ):  & ; Ford, “Impressionism – Some Speculations ,” p. . Hulme, “Epstein,” p. ; “Modern Art.-,” p. ; “Modern Art,” p. ; “Epstein,” p. . Hulme, “Modern Art,” pp.  & . Ibid., p. . Yeats, “From ‘On the Boiler’,” in Explorations (New York: Macmillan, ), pp.  & . Gaudier-Brzeska, “Mr. Gaudier-Brzeska,” pp.  & ; Pound, “Caressability,” p. ; Hulme, “Modern Art.-.,” pp.  & . Pound, “New Sculpture,” p. . Lewis, “Manifesto. ,” p. ; “Manifesto. ,” p. . Lewis, “Manifesto. ,” Blast  ( June , ), p. ; “New Egos,” p. ;

Notes to pages –



   



   

    



The Exploitation of Vulgarity,” Blast  ( June , ), p. ; “Our Vortex,” p. . “Futurism,” New Weekly ( June , ): . See also Lewis, Blasting, p. ; Harrison, English Art, p. , Levenson, Genealogy of Modernism, pp.  & . For suggestions that Vorticism owed a debt to Futurism, see Cianci, “Futurism and the English Avant-Garde,” pp. –; Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Moment: Avant-garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. , , –. Pound, “Vortex. Pound.,” pp.  & . Hulme, “Modern Art,” p. . Harrison, English Art, p. . Lawrence to Arthur McLeod,  June , in Letters II, pp.  & ; Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), p. ; Lewis, “Man of the Week. Marinetti,” New Weekly (May , ): ; Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Mr. W.B. Yeats and his New Poems,” Outlook ( June , ):  & ; “Literary Portraits. .,” p. . Lawrence to Edward Garnett,  June , Letters II, p. ; Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), p.  & ; Lewis, “Cubist Room” p. ; Pound, “Wyndham Lewis,” Egoist ( June , ): ; Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” p. . Ford, “Impressionism – Some Speculations ,” Poetry (August ): ; Pound, “Vortex. Pound.,” p. ; Lewis, “Our Vortex,” p. . Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), p. . C.R.W. Nevinson, “Vital English Art,” New Age ( June , ):  & . Lewis claimed that the Futurists’ “extraordinary childishness . . . over mechanical inventions, aeroplanes, machinery, etc.” was also a result of a wrongheaded assumption of progress and that “Marinetti is a Romantic” who “appeals essentially to just the romantic and pass´eiste sensibility he chiefly abuses.” Lewis, “Automobilism,” New Weekly ( June , ): . Hulme, “Modern Art,” p. , ; “Modern Art. – .,” p. . Hulme, “Epstein,” pp.  & . Pound, “New Sculpture,” p. ; Pound, “Caressability,” p. ; Lewis, “Man of the Week,” p. ; “The Improvement of Life,” Blast  ( June , ), p. . Lawrence to Gordon Campbell,  December , Letters II, p. ; Lawrence, The Rainbow (; rpt. New York: Penguin, ), pp. ,  & ; Lawrence to Gordon Campbell,  December , Letters II, p. . Yeats, “Art and Ideas,” New Weekly ( June , ):  & ; “Poetry’s Banquet,” p. . On Gaudier’s phallic “Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound” see Humphreys, “Demon Pantechnicon Driver,” pp.  & ; Pound to D.S.,  March , and note to letter of --- March , in P/SL, pp.  & . For Epstein’s phallic work see his drawing “Rock Drill,” New Age (December , ): . Epstein also planned a sculptural temple in Sussex around  which was influenced by Indian, Egyptian, Polynesian, and African art. See Cork, Art Beyond the Gallery, p. .



Notes to pages –

 Yeats, “Art and Ideas,” New Weekly ( June , ):  & .  Ibid., p. ; Yeats, A Vision (; rpt. New York: Macmillan, ), p. ; “Introduction to ‘The Cat and the Moon’,” from “Wheels and Butterflies” (), in Explorations, p. . In the  edition of A Vision Yeats claimed that the work of Lewis, Brancusi, Pound, Eliot, and Joyce all indicated the beginning of Phase  and a new historical cycle. George Mills Harper and Walter Kelley Hood, eds., A Critical Edition of Yeats’s A Vision () ( London: Macmillan, ), pp. –.  See Humphreys, “Demon Pantechnicon Driver,” pp.  & ; Jones, Hulme, p. ; Cole, Burning to Speak, pp. –; Cork, Art Beyond the Gallery, pp.  & ; New Age (December , ), p. . According to one contemporary, “about this time the word ‘phallic’ was very popular and commonly used as a part of the art jargon of the day.” This is evidenced by Pound’s  poem, “Our Respectful Homages to M. Laurent Tailhade,” which declares, “Come let us erect a/ Phallic column to/ Laurent Tailhade” and by the fact that Hulme, according to his fianc´ee, “was very interested in the History of phallic worship.” Horace Brodzky, quoted in Cole, Burning to Speak, p. ; Pound, CEP, p. ; Kate Lechmere, letter to Michael Roberts, Hulme papers, University of Keele.  “Manifesto. ,” p. ; Lewis, “Kill John Bull with Art,” Outlook ( July , ): .   “  ” :     D.H. Lawrence, “Study of Thomas Hardy,” in Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence (London: Heinemann, ), p. .  Goldring, South Lodge, p. . According to Reed Way Dasenbrock, this is one of the best descriptions of the Vortex. Dasenbrock, Literary Vorticism, p. .  Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), pp.  & ; “Vortex. Pound.,” p. .  Pound, “Vortex. Pound.,” p. ; Lewis, “Our Vortex,” p. .  Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, pp, , –.  Gaudier-Brzeska, “Vortex. Gaudier Brzeska.,” Blast  ( June , ), pp. –.  Pound, “The Tradition,” Poetry ( January ): ; [ Bastien von Helmholtz], “John Synge and the Habits of Criticism,” Egoist (February , ): ; “New Sculpture,” p.  & ; “Preliminary Announcement of the College of Arts,” Egoist (November , ): .  Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), pp. , –,  & .  Kandinsky, Spiritual in Art, pp. –, , ,  & . As Pound told his readers, for a more detailed explanation of his new Imagisme, “go ahead and apply Kandinsky, [and] . . . transpose his chapter on the language of form and colour and apply it to the writing of verse.” Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), p. .

Notes to pages –



 Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), pp. , ,  & ; “Goupil,” p. .  Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), pp. , –, –.  Ibid., pp. , .  Dasenbrock, Literary Vorticism, pp.  & .  Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), p. .  Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, p. .  Pound, “Vorticism” (September ), p. .  Yeats, “Art and Ideas” ( June , ), p.  & ; Yeats, “Poetry’s Banquet,” Poetry (April ):  & .  Pound, “The Classical Stage of Japan: Ernest Fenollosa’s Work on the Japanese ‘Noh’,” Drama (May ), pp. , ; Yeats, “Introduction,” pp. –; Pound, “Classical Stage,” p. .  Pound, “Classical Stage,” p. n.  Yeats, “Introduction,” p. .  Fenollosa notes in Pound, “Classical Stage,” p. . Yeats tells the story of an old woman and a Noh actor that Fenollosa gives to illustrate this point in “Introduction,” p. .  Richard Taylor, The Drama of W.B. Yeats: Irish Myth and the Japanese No (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ), p. .  Fenollosa notes in Pound, “Classical Stage,” p. .  See Ronald Bush, The Genesis of Ezra Pound’s Cantos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), pp.  & , – for a more complete discussion of the impact of the cyclic scheme of the Noh plays on Pound’s Cantos. Kandinsky also may have suggested to Pound that cycles best represent reality when he claimed that the emotions evoked by colors were related “in a great circle, a serpent biting its own tail (the symbol of eternity, of something without end).” Kandinsky, Spiritual in Art, p. ; see also figure  and pp. –.  Pound, “Three Cantos,” Poetry ,  ( June ): –; ,  ( July ): –; ,  (August ): –. For the dating of these poems, see Grieve, Pound’s Early Poetry, p. .  Bush, Genesis, p. .  See ibid., pp.  –. James Longenbach argues that the contemporaneousness and “antichronological” nature of the Three Cantos “are Pound’s fullest expression of the ‘historical sense’.” Longenbach, Modernist Poetics, p. ; see also pp.  & . In Stone Cottage, pp. –, Longenbach connects this technique to Yeats’s idea of the Great Memory.  Pound, “Three Cantos” ( June ), pp. , , .  Pound, “Three Cantos” (August ), pp. –.  Pound, “Three Cantos” ( June ), p. .  Ibid., pp.  & .  Ibid., p. .  Quoted in George Kearns, Guide to Ezra Pound’s Selected Cantos (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, ), p. . The cyclic nature of the



  

    

    

           

Notes to pages –

Cantos also is widely accepted by literary critics. See, for example, Pearlman, Barb of Time, pp. ,  & ; Smith, Origins of Modernism, p. ; Kearns, Guide, pp. –, –. Pearlman, Barb of Time, pp. , , ; see also pp.  & , –, . Taylor, Drama of W.B. Yeats, pp. , , ; Yeats, “Introduction,” pp.  & . See Taylor, Drama of W.B. Yeats, pp. –; Longenbach, Stone Cottage, pp. –. For example, At The Hawk’s Well () and The Only Jealousy of Emer () are set in ancient Ireland, The Dreaming of the Bones () is set in , and Calvary () is set at the time of Christ. See Ellmann, Yeats, pp. –. Yeats, A Vision (), pp. , , , . Ibid., p. . Ellmann, Yeats, p. . Yeats, A Vision (), pp. , . In the  version of A Vision Yeats has the character of Owen Aherne accuse him of preferring antithetical ages. As Yeats described it, in “an antithetical civilization . . . every detail of life [is] hierarchical,” “all is rigid and stationary,” and “inequality” is accepted. All of these are characteristics Yeats already admired. See Yeats’s A Vision (), pp. xxi–xxii & . For Yeats’s prediction of civil war between the elites and masses see, “From ‘On the Boiler’,” p. . See also Yeats’s A Vision (), pp. –. Yeats, Poems, p. . Yeats, “From ‘On the Boiler’,” p. ; “Introduction to ‘The Resurrection’,” in Explorations, p. ; “Private Thoughts,” ibid., p. . Yeats, “Lapis Lazuli,” Poems, p. . Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Mr. W.H. Mallock and ‘Social Reform’,” Outlook (May , ): . Ford claimed that W.H. Mallock was “the only actively reactionary propagandist that we have” and that he had found the “Tory history” for which he was looking in his book Social Reform. Ibid. Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” pp.  & . Ford, “On Impressionism,” pp.  & ; Henry James, pp.  & . Ford, “On Impressionism,” p. . This idea could have come from the Futurists who “regularly advocated simultaneity.” Perloff, Futurist Moment, pp.  & . Ford, “On Impressionism,” p. ; Henry James, pp.  & . See Ford, Henry James, pp. , , , . Green, Ford, pp.  & , . Ford, The Good Soldier (; rpt. New York: Vintage Books, ), p. xviii – see “Dedicatory Letter” dated . Ford, “The Saddest Story” Blast  ( June , ) formed the first part of The Good Soldier which was published in book form in . Ford, Henry James, p. . Ford, “Saddest Story,” p. . Ibid., pp. , , .

Notes to pages –     

      

        

  



Ford, Good Soldier, pp. –. Ford, “Saddest Story,” pp.  & . Ford, Henry James, pp.  & . Ford, “Literary Portraits. .,” p. . See Giovanni Cianci, “D.H. Lawrence and Futurism/Vorticism,” Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik ,  ():  – for a further discussion of the impact of Futurism on Lawrence’s thought. However, Cianci’s conclusion that the Futurists encouraged Lawrence to dislike Vorticism is inaccurate; Lawrence’s ideas in  were closer to Vorticism than to Futurism. Lawrence to Edward Garnett,  June , in Letters II, pp.  & . Ibid., p. . Lawrence to Gordon Campbell,  December , in Letters II, p. . Mrs. Henry Jenner, Christian Symbolism (London: Methuen, ), pp. xiii, xiv, . Ibid., pp. , ,  & . Ibid., pp. , , ,  & , . Jane Ellen Harrison also claimed that most early ritual and art was based on ideas of resurrection derived from the cyclic patterns of nature. See Harrison, pp. , –, –. Lawrence to Gordon Campbell,  December , in Letters II, pp.  & . Lawrence’s interest in resurrection continued throughout his life, from his poem of that title in  to his  novel about a post-resurrection Christ. See Lawrence, “Resurrection,” Poetry ( June ): –; The Man Who Died (New York: Knopf, ). See Lawrence to S.S. Koteliansky,  October , Lawrence to Amy Lowell,  November , Letters II, pp. , . Lawrence, “Thomas Hardy,” pp. , . Ibid., pp.  & . Ibid., pp. , ; Lawrence, Women in Love, p. . Lawrence may have adopted the terms “centrifugal” and “centripetal” from Pater. See Pater, “Marbles of Aegina,” pp.  & . Lawrence, “Thomas Hardy,” pp. , . Ibid., p. . Ibid., pp. –, , , , , , –, . Again, Pater may have influenced Lawrence to use the terms “Law” and “Love” for his different ages. See Donoghue, Pater, p. . Ibid., pp. –, ,  & . The ages Lawrence preferred also are indicated in his later novel, Women in Love. The central characters admire the art of the West Pacific, China, Africa, and Egypt, as well as the paintings of Picasso. One character explains why: “humans are boring, painting the universe with their own image. The universe is non-human, thank God.” Lawrence, Women in Love (; rpt. New York: Penguin Books, ), p. . Lawrence, “Thomas Hardy,” pp. , . Lawrence to Lady Ottoline Morell,  January , Letters II, p. . Lawrence, “Thomas Hardy,” p. .



Notes to pages –

 See Mark Kinkead-Weekes, “Introduction” and “The Marble and the Statue,” in Mark Kinkead-Weekes, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of the Rainbow (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, ), pp.  and –. For when this work was written, see Charles L. Ross, The Composition of The Rainbow and Women in Love: A History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ).  Lawrence, Rainbow, p. ; see also pp. ,  –.  Keith Sagar, “The Third Generation,” in Kinkead-Weekes, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of the Rainbow, p. .  Lawrence, Rainbow, p. .  See Evelyn J. Hinz, “The Paradoxical Fall: Eternal Recurrence in The Rainbow,” in Harold Bloom, ed., Modern Critical Interpretations: D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow (New York: Chelsea House, ), pp.  –. Although Hinz reads a bit too much into The Rainbow she does discuss more fully the cyclic structure of the novel.  Lawrence, Rainbow, p. .  Ibid., pp.  & .  “ ”  :          D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo (; rpt. New York: Penguin, ). Lawrence used “The Nightmare” as the heading for Chapter  of this novel.  Read, “Introduction,” Speculations, p. x; “Academia,” Cambridge Magazine (February , ): .  See Ford, Letters, pp. , –; –; Mizener, Saddest Story, pp. –.  See Stock, Pound, p. .  See Paul Delany, D.H. Lawrence’s Nightmare: The Writer and His Circle in the Years of the Great War (New York: Basic Books, ), pp. ,  & , –, .  Ford, “Literary Portraits. . – Mr. Charles-Louis Philippe and ‘Le P`ere Perdrix’,” Outlook (August , ):  & .  Ford, When Blood is Their Argument: An Analysis of Prussian Culture (New York & London: Hodder and Stoughton, ), p. . See also ibid., pp. –; Ford, Between St. Denis and St. George: A Sketch of Three Civilisations (; rpt. New York: Haskell House Publishers, ), pp.  & .  Ford, When Blood, pp. , , , , ; Ford, Between St. Denis, pp. , .  Hulme [ North Staffs], “War Notes,” New Age (November , ):  & ; (December , ):  & .  Hulme, “War Notes,”New Age (November , ):  & ; (December , ):  & ; ( January , ): ; (February , ): ; ( January , ): ; (November , ): ; (December , ): .  Pound to Harriet Monroe,  November , Selected Letters, p. ; see also pp. , , , , .  Pound, “Affirmations. . Vorticism,” New Age ( January , ): .

Notes to pages –



 For Pound’s interest in China at this time, see Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, p. ; “Webster Ford,” Egoist ( January , ):  & ; “Affirmations. . As for Imagisme,” New Age ( January , ): ; “The Renaissance. ,” Poetry (February ): ; Selected Letters, pp. ,  & .  See Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, pp. –; Gaudier-Brzeska, “Vortex GaudierBrzeska ( Written from the Trenches),” Blast  ( July ): .  The editorials even supported Ford’s “ ‘Blast’ of his own” in When Blood is Their Argument. Blast  ( July ): .  Blast , p. .  Ibid., pp. , , , , , .  Ibid., pp. , ,  & , , , –.  These views may have been encouraged by the letters Pound received from Wyndham Lewis in  and  who was fighting at the front. See The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, ed. Timothy Materer (New York: New Directions, ), pp. –.  Pound, “Provincialism the Enemy,” New Age ( July , ):  & .  Ibid., pp.  & ; Pound, “Provincialism the Enemy,” New Age (August , ), p. ; ( July , ), p. .  Gilbert Murray Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Box , General Correspondence Sept. – Nov. , no. .  Yeats to Gilbert Murray,  September , ibid., no. .  Yeats to J.B. Yeats,  September , Letters, p. . Zeppelins later featured in Yeats’s vision of the coming war in his  poem, “Lapis Lazuli.” Yeats, Poems, p. .  See Yeats to John Quinn,  June , Letters, p. ; to Edmund Gosse,  July  and  August , ibid., pp.  & ; to Ernst Boyd,  September , ibid., p. .  Yeats to Edmund Gosse,  August , ibid., pp.  & ; to Henry James,  August , ibid., pp.  & .  Yeats to Henry James,  August , ibid., pp.  & .  “Irish Writers Protest,” Evening Telegraph (Dublin) (May , ); “Major Robert Gregory: A Note of Appreciation,” Observer (February , ), in UPII, pp. –.  Yeats to Lady Gregory,  May , Letters, p.  & ; to John Quinn,  May , ibid., p. .  Lawrence to Amy Lowell,  August , Letters II, p. ; to Edward Marsh,  September , ibid., p.  & ; to J.B. Pinker,  September , ibid., p. ; to Gordon Campbell,  September , ibid., p. ; to Lady Cynthia Asquith,  January , ibid., p. .  See Lawrence, Kangaroo, pp.  & .  Lawrence, Women in Love, pp.  & . For Lawrence’s war experiences, see Delany, Lawrence’s Nightmare, pp. , –, , , –.  Lawrence, Kangaroo, p. , ,  & ,  & ; Lawrence, “The Reality of Peace,” English Review ( July ): .  Lawrence, Kangaroo, p. .



Notes to pages –

 See Yeats to George Russell [?April ], Letters, pp.  & ; Stanfield, Yeats and Politics, pp.  & , –; Pound to John Quinn,  November , in Selected Letters, pp. –; Pound, Jefferson and/or Mussolini (New York: Liveright, ), pp. –, , , , , ; “Ezra Pound Speaking” Radio Speeches of World War II, ed. Leonard W. Doob (Westport, CT: Greenwood, Press, ), pp. , , , , –; Lawrence, Movements in European History (; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), pp.  & ; Lawrence, letter to S.S. Koteliansky,  May [], in George J. Zytaruk, ed., The Quest for Rananim; D.H. Lawrence’s Letter to S.S. Koteliansky  to  (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, ), pp.  & .  See Lawrence, Movements in European History, pp.  & ; Women in Love, pp.  & ; Ford, March of Literature, pp.  & , , , ,  & , .  See, for example, Ford, March of Literature, pp.  & , , ; Green, Ford, pp. –.  See Lawrence, Kangaroo, pp. , .  See Hulme, “Translator’s Preface,” pp.  & ; Hulme, “War Notes,” (December , ):  & (February , ): .  D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse (; rpt. New York: Penguin, ), p. .  See Lawrence, “Democracy” () in Phoenix, pp. –; Apocalypse, pp.  & , , .  See Quest for Rananim, pp. ,  & ; Lawrence to Lady Ottoline Morrell,  February , Collected Letters I, pp.  & . Lawrence also fantasized about an elite who recognize and serve a returning hero in novels such as Kangaroo (), The Plumed Serpent (), and The Man Who Died ().  See Stanfield, Yeats and Politics, pp.  –, –; Cullingford, Yeats, Ireland and Fascism; Grattan Freyer, W.B. Yeats and the Anti-Democratic Tradition (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, ); Editor’s note, UPII, p. ; Ellmann, Yeats, pp. –. According to Ellmann, Yeats grew unhappy with the cruelty of fascist governments. However, in  Yeats claimed he disliked them because they “put quantity before quality” and did not have an adequate respect for intelligence. Yeats, “From ‘On the Boiler’,” p. ; Ellmann, Yeats, p. .  See “Ezra Pound Speaking”.  Pound, Jefferson, p. .  See Pound, Jefferson, pp.  –, , , , .  See, for example, Pound “ABC of Economics” (), “The Individual and his Milieu” (), “Murder by Capital” (), in Selected Prose –, ed. William Cookson (New York: New Directions, ), pp. , , ; Jefferson, pp. , , .  See, for example, Pound, “What is Money For?” (), in Selected Prose, p. ; Pound, Jefferson, pp.  & .  See Pound, Jefferson, pp. ,  & , .  “Ezra Pound Speaking”, p. xiii.

Notes to pages –



 For examples of Pound’s anti-Semitism see “Ezra Pound Speaking”, passim.  Yeats, “From Democracy to Authority: Paul Claudel and Mussolini – A New School of Thought,” Irish Times (February , ), in UPII, pp. – .  Quoted in Stanfield, Yeats and Politics, p. ; see also pp. –.  Yeats, “From ‘On the Boiler’,” pp. –. See also Stanfield, Yeats and Politics, pp. – for Yeats’s interest in the Eugenics movement.  “Ezra Pound Speaking”, pp. –.  See, for example, Hulme, “Humanism and the Religious Attitude,” in Speculations, p. ; Lawrence, Movements in European History, pp. , , – ; Pound, Selected Prose, pp. –, –; Yeats, “From Democracy to Authority,” pp.  & ; Yeats, Wheels and Butterflies (New York: Macmillan, ), pp.  & ; Ford, March of Literature, pp. , , , . The majority of Hulme’s article appeared in the New Age between December  and February  as “A Notebook by T.E.H.”  See, for example, Ford, March of Literature, pp.  & ; Lawrence, Movements in European History, pp. , –; Lawrence, “Love” (), in Phoenix, p. ; Lawrence, “Democracy” (), ibid., pp.  & ; Pound, Selected Prose, pp. –, –, .  See, for example, Pound, Jefferson, pp.  & , , ; Stock, Pound, pp. ; Selected Prose, pp. –, –, ; Ford, March of Literature, pp.  & , ; Green, Ford, pp.  & ; Lawrence, Movements in European History, p. ; Yeats, “If I Were Four and Twenty” () in Explorations, p. ; Hulme, “Translator’s Preface,” pp.  & ; Hulme, “Humanism,” pp.  –.  Hulme, “War Notes” (December , ), p. .  Lawrence, Apocalypse, pp. , ,  & , ,  & .  See Ford, March of Literature, pp.  & ,  & ,  & .  Ford Madox Ford, Vive le Roy (Philadelphia: Lippincott, ), p. .  Quoted in Poli, Ford Madox Ford and the Transatlantic Review (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, ), p. .  See Pound, Selected Prose, pp. , , –, –; “Ezra Pound Speaking”, p. .  “Ezra Pound Speaking”, pp.  & . Pound also claimed that “the Confucian is Totalitarian” and medieval. See Pound, Selected Prose, p. . See also pp. –, ,  & .  Yeats, “From Democracy to Authority,” pp.  & .  Ibid., pp. –.  Yeats, “From ‘On the Boiler’,” pp. , , , .  Yeats’s A Vision (), p. .  See Hulme, “Humanism,” pp.  –.  Ibid., pp.  & .  Yeats to J.B. Yeats,  May , Letters, p.  and Editor’s note no. .  Yeats, Per Amica Silentia Lunae (London: Macmillan, ), pp.  & ,  & .



Notes to pages –

 For a summary of the differences between the two editions of this work see Barbara L. Croft “Stylistic Arrangements”: A Study of William Butler Yeats’s A Vision (London & Toronto: Associated University Presses, ).  Yeats’s A Vision (), p. xx; Vision (), pp. –.  Yeats, Vision (), pp.  & .  Yeats’s A Vision (), pp. , , ; Vision (), pp. –, , , , .  Yeats’s A Vision (), pp. , ; Vision (), pp. ,  & , ; “Pages From a Diary,” Explorations, p. .  Yeats, Wheels and Butterflies, p. .  Yeats, “Private Thoughts,” Explorations, p. .  Yeats, “Pages From a Diary,” p. . Yeats claimed “human life is impossible without the strife between the Tinctures.” Yeats’s A Vision (), p. .  Yeats’s A Vision (), p. .  Yeats, “Pages From a Diary,” p. .  Yeats, “Introduction to ‘The Cat and the Moon’,” Explorations, pp. ,  & . According to Barbara L. Croft, “ ‘Apocalypse’ sounds as right for A Vision as ‘romantic’ does for Yeats himself; but this term, too, can be misleading, especially if it calls up visions of the end of the world, which Yeats certainly was not predicting despite the grim images with which he sometimes surrounds the coming of the antithetical age.” Croft, “Stylistic Arrangements”, p. .  Yeats, “Pages From a Diary,” p. .  Yeats, Wheels and Butterflies, p. .  Yeats, “ ‘Fighting the Waves’ Introduction,” Explorations, p. .  Yeats, “A General Introduction for My Work” (), in E&I, p. ; “From ‘On the Boiler’,” pp. ,  & , .  Pound, “Affirmations. V. Gaudier-Brzeska,” New Age (February , ): .  Pound, “Webster Ford,” Egoist ( January , ):  & ; “Affirmations. .– ” New Age ( January , ):  & , ( January , ):  & , ( January , ):  & , ( January , ):  & ; (February , ): –; “The Renaissance –,” Poetry (February ): –; (March ): –; (May ): –.  Pound, Pavannes and Divisions (New York: Knopf, ), p. . See also pp.  – , –, –.  Pound, Selected Prose, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., pp.  & , ,  & , , –, –.  See Ford, March of Literature, pp.  & , , , , –, , , ,  & , ,  & , , –,  & , , ,  & , , .  Ibid. passim.  Ibid., pp.  & .  Ibid., p. .

Notes to pages –



 Lawrence to S.S. Koteliansky,  November , Collected Letters, vol. , p. .  Lawrence, “The Reality of Peace,” English Review (May ): .  Ibid. and “Love,” p. .  Lawrence, “The Reality of Peace,” English Review ( June ), p. .  Lawrence, “The Crown” () in Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and Other Prose Works by D.H. Lawrence, ed. Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore (New York: Viking, ), pp. ,  & .  Lawrence, “Reality of Peace” ( June ), p. .  Lawrence, “Crown,” p. ; Lawrence, “Reality of Peace” ( June ), pp. –.  Lawrence, “Resurrection,” Poetry ( June ): –.  Lawrence, Movements in European History, p. .  Lawrence, Women in Love, p. .  Lawrence, Apocalypse, pp.  & ,  & , , –.  Ibid., pp.  & , , –, , –.  Ibid., pp. ,  & .  Ibid., pp. , .  Ibid., p. .   This is the standard story of the origins of A Vision. See George Mills Harper, The Making of Yeats’s A Vision: A Study of the Automatic Script, vol. . (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Press, ), pp. x & .  T.S. Eliot, “Ulysses, Order, and Myth,” Dial  (November ): .  Eliade, Myth of Eternal Return, pp. , , , .  Perl, Tradition of Return, pp. –.  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ), pp.  –.  Hulme, “Romanticism,” pp.  & .  For further discussions of fascist thinking see Zev Sternhell, “Fascist Ideology,” in Walter Laqueur, Fascism A Reader’s Guide: Analyses, Interpretations, Bibliography (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).  Yeats, “From ‘Wheels and Butterflies’,” Explorations, p. .

Index

Abbey Theatre, , , , ,  Action Fran¸caise, –, , –, , , –,  Aesthetic and Symbolist movements, , , –, , ,  Africa, , , ,  Aldington, Richard,  Anima Mundi, see Great Memory aristocracy, –, –, –, , , –, , , , –,  Arnold, Matthew, , ,  Assyria, , , , , , , , , 

poetry of, , –, –,  politics of, –, – Classicism vs. Romanticism (see also Hulme), –, , –, , , – Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ,  Commentator,  communism, Russian, ,  Confucius, , – Conrad, Joseph, , –, , n., n. Conservative Party, –, , , , – Conservatives, radical definition of,  New Age Nietzscheans, – Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., , –, –, ,  Cournos, John,  Craig, Edward Gordon, , –, n., n. Cromwell, Oliver,  Cromwell, Thomas,  Cubism and Cubists, , 

Balfour, Arthur, ,  Beardsley, Aubrey, ,  Bergson, Henri, –, ,  –, , , , –,  Binyon, Laurence, , , , , , , , , , , n., n., n., n.,  n.,  n. Blake, William, , n. Blast, , , , , ,  Bloomsbury group, ,  Boer War, , –, , n. Bomberg, Edward, ,  British Museum, , , , n. Brown, Ford Madox, ,  Browning, Robert, , , , ,  Budget of , ,  Byzantium and Byzantine art, , , , , , , , , 

Dante, ,  Darwin and Darwinians, , , , , , ,  democracy,  –, –, –, –, , –, , , –, –,  Denis, Maurice,  De Quincey, Thomas, ,  De Vries, Hugo, – Dickens, Charles, , 

Carlyle, Thomas, , , , ,  “Cave of the Golden Calf,”  C´ezanne, Paul,  Chamberlain, Joseph, , ,  China, , , , , , , , , , –,  – art of, , , , , , , , , 

Easter Rising of ,  economy, late nineteenth-century British,  Eglington, John,  Egoist,  Egypt, , , , , , , –, , , , , , ,  art of, , , , , , , , , , , , , 



Index elections of , , , – of ,  Eliot, George, ,  Eliot, Thomas Stearns, ,  English Review, , , , ,  Epstein, Jacob, , , –, , –, , , , n. Etchells, Frederick, , ,  Fabians and Fabian Society, , , ,  fascism, , – Modernists’ ideas different from, – Modernists’ opinions of, –,  Fenollosa, Ernst, –, , –, , n., n. First World War, , –, – and Modernists, – Fletcher, John Gould, ,  Flint, F.S., , ,  n. Ford, Ford Madox (Ford Madox Hueffer) earliest aesthetic theory and practice,  –,  admires aristocracy, , , –, , –,  –, , – and Boer War, – admires Catholicism, – and China, , , – on communism, ,  and Joseph Conrad, , –, n., n., n. cyclic and non-progressive aesthetics,  –,  – cyclic history, –, , – accepts democracy, , –,  criticizes democracy, –, –,  on Fabians and Fabianism, ,  on fascism,  experiences of First World War,  reactions to First World War, – and Futurism, , – and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska,  rejects humanism and humanitarianism, , – and Imagisme,  and imperialism, – Impressionism, ,  – and Japanese poetry, , n. and Wyndham Lewis,  and Arthur Marwood, , n. on Middle Ages, , –, , –, –,  –, –, , n. dislikes middle classes, –, 



on naturalism in art, , ,  on non-Western art and culture, , , , , –, – personality and background, , – radical conservative political views, –, , –,  early political views,  –, –, – disillusionment with politics, , –,  and Post-Impressionism, ,  –, , –,  accepts progress in history, –,  dislikes Protestantism, – at Rebel Art Centre,  religious views,  – admires Romantic writers, , – criticizes Romantic writers, – admires Georges Sorel, – and South Lodge, , ,  admires Victorian writers,  –, – criticizes Victorian writers,  – admires Vorticism,  included in Vorticism, ,  work similar to Vorticism, – accepts Whig history, , –,  rejects Whig history, ,  works Ancient Lights,  Between St. Denis and St. George, – The Cinque Ports, , –,  “The Critical Attitude,” – “The Cuckoo and the Gipsy,”  “Enough,”  The Fifth Queen,  “Grey Matter,”  The Inheritors, – Ladies Whose Bright Eyes,  Mr. Apollo,  –, –, n. Mr. Fleight,  –,  The Good Soldier, , – Henry James, , – The March of Literature, – The New Humpty-Dumpty, , ,  n. “On Heaven,”  The Queen Who Flew, – “The Saddest Story,” , – The Young Lovell: A Romance,  – Vive le Roy,  When Blood is Their Argument, – Frazer, J.G.,  French Revolution, , , , ,  Futurism and Futurists, , , , –, –,  Fry, Roger, , , , 



Index

Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri, , , , , , , , , , , , ,  –, ,  “Vortex. Gaudier Brzeska,”  –,  “Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound,” ,  Gaultier, Jules de, , n. geometric vs. vital art (see also Hulme), , , , –, –, ,  Giles, Herbert A., –,  Gill, Eric, ,  Gladstone, W.E., , ,  Gonne, Maude, ,  Gore, Spencer, ,  Great Memory, – Greece, –, –, ,  –, , , –, , , , ,  archaic, , , , , , , , , , , ,  classical, –, , , , , –, , , ,  Gregory, Augusta, Lady, , ,  Hallam, Arthur, ,  Hamilton, Cuthbert, , ,  Harrison, Jane Ellen, , ,  n. Havell, E.B., , , – Hegel, G.W.F., , ,  Hewlett, Maurice, n. history Action Fran¸caise’s theories of, –,  Apocalyptic pattern of,  –, – in Asian art criticism, – in comparative religious studies, –, n. cyclic patterns of, –, passim cycloidal patterns of, – decline in, , , – Futurists’ theories of,  Greco-Romans’ theories of, –, – Modernists’ theories of (see also Ford, Hulme, Lawrence, Pound, Yeats), –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, – Friedrich Nietzsche’s theories of, ,  non-Western theories of, ,  W.M. Flinders Petrie’s theories of, – progressive patterns of, –,  –,  –, –,  –, –, –,  Romantic theories of, –,  sinusoidal patterns of, – speculative philosophies of, – spiral patterns of, –, –, – Spiritualists’ and Theosophists’ theories of, –

twentieth-century cyclic theories of,  Giambattista Vico’s theories of, ,  Victorian theories of, – Vorticist theories of,  Whig theories of (see also Ford, Hulme), , –, , , ,  “House of Lords Crisis,” –,  Hulme, Thomas Ernst and Action Fran¸caise, –, , –, , , –, n. earliest aesthetic theory and practice, –, – admires aristocracy, , –, ,  and Henri Bergson, , –, ,  –, –, –, n. and Byzantine art, , , ,  admires Catholicism, –,  and Christian mystics,  on Classicism vs. Romanticism, –, , –, , , –, –,  cyclic history, –, , ,  accepts democracy, –, ,  criticizes democracy, –, – and Hugo De Vries, – and Jacob Epstein, , –, , –,  First World War, experiences of,  reaction to, – and Futurism,  on Geometric vs. Vital art, , , , , –, ,  rejects humanism and humanitarianism, , , –, , ,  Imagism, –,  and Japanese poetry,  and Pierre Lasserre, , n., n., n. and Wyndham Lewis, –, , n. on naturalism in art, – on non-Western and archaic art, , , , , , , , , , –, –,  on original sin, –, n., n. personality and background, , –, –, n. and W.M. Flinders Petrie, – radical conservative political views, – political views during First World War, –,  disillusionment with politics, ,  and Post-Impressionism, –, –, –, , , n. accepts progress in history, ,  –

Index rejects progress in history, –, , – religious views, – admires Romantic writers, , –, –, criticizes Romantic writers, – admires Georges Sorel, –, , n. rejects spiral views of history, , , , Tuesdays,  criticizes Victorian writers, – rejects Whig views of history,  and Worringer, –, , , , –,  works “Autumn,”  “Lecture on Modern Poetry,”  “A Tory Philosophy,”  “War Notes,” – humanism and humanitarianism, , , –, –, –, , –, , , –, , , ,  Huxley, Thomas Henry, , , ,  Hyde, Douglas,  Imagism (see also Hulme), –,  Imagisme (see also Pound), –,  –, , –, ,  imperialism, , –,  India, –, ,  art of, –, , , –, –, , ,  poetry of, , , , –, , ,  Ireland Cultural Revival in, –, , – Home Rule for, , , , –,  nationalism in, , –, –, –,   Easter Rising in, ,  Irish Literary Society,  Irish National Theatre, see Abbey Theatre Japan, , , , ,  art of, –, , , , , –, –, ,  poetry of, ,  –, ,  –,  Noh drama in, , , –, , , –, –, – Japanism or Japonisme, – Jenner, Mrs. Henry, – Jepson, Edgar,  Johnson, Lionel, ,  Joyce, James, , , ,  Kandinsky, Wassily, –, , n., n.



Kennedy, J.M., n. Lasserre, Pierre, , , , n., n., n. Lawrence, David Herbert earliest aesthetic theory and practice, –, – admires aristocracy, , , , – rejects Russian communism,  cyclic and non-progressive aesthetics, –,  – cyclic history, , , –, – cyclic images, , – on democracy, , , , – rejects fascism,  experiences of First World War, , – reactions to First World War, , – and Futurism, , , –,  and Jane Ellen Harrison, , ,  rejects humanism and humanitarianism, , –, , , –, , ,  n. and Mrs. Henry Jenner, – and Katherine Mansfield, , n. on Middle Ages, , –, , , ,  and John Middleton Murry, , , n. on non-Western and archaic art, , , –, , –, –, ,  “Order of the Knights of Ranamin,”  personality and background, , – earliest political views,  political views First World War and after,  –, ,  disillusionment with politics,  – and Post-Impressionism, , –, , , ,  accepts progress in history, , – rejects progress in history, , ,  admires Romantic writers, –,  criticizes Romantic writers, – and comparative religious studies, – religious views, –, , –, – on resurrection, – and Rachel Anand Taylor, , – admires Victorian writers,  criticizes Victorian writers,  work resembles Vorticism, – works Apocalypse, – “Guelder Rose,”  Kangaroo, , 



Index

Lawrence, David Herbert (cont.) Movements in European History,  The Rainbow, , , ,  –,  “A Study of Thomas Hardy,” , – “Wakened,” – Women in Love, ,  Lawrence, Frieda,  Lechmere, Kate, , n. Lewis, Wyndham, , –, –, –, , , n., n., n. Liberal Party, , , , , –, – Lloyd George, David,  Ludovici, Anthony M., –, , n. Mallock, W.H., n. Mansfield, Katherine, , n. Marinetti, F.T., , , , , , , ,  Marwood, Arthur, , n. Mathews, Elkin,  Maurras, Charles,  Mead, G.R.S., –, n. Middle Ages, Modernists on (see also Ford, Hulme, Lawrence, Pound, Yeats), ,  –, –, –, , –, –, , , , –, –, –, , , , –, , –,  –,  nineteenth-century uses of,  –,  Mill, John Stuart, , ,  Modernism definitions of,  –, – and history,  Morris, William, , , , –, , , , , ,  Munro, Harold,  Murray, D.L.,  Murray, Gilbert,  Murry, John Middleton, , , n. Mussolini, Benito, , , , ,  naturalism in art, –, –, –, – Nevinson, C.R.W., ,  Nietzsche, Friedrich, , , , , , , –, ,  Nietzscheans, New Age, – New Age, , , ,  New Freewoman,  Noguchi, Yone, , ,  n. Noh drama, see Japan non-Western and archaic art and cultures (see also Africa, Assyria, Byzantium, China, Egypt, India, Japan, Oceana; Ford,

Hulme, Lawrence, Pound, Yeats), –, , , –,  –, –, –, –, , –, –, –,  influence on Post-Impressionist artists, ,  knowledge of in nineteenth century, – knowledge of in early twentieth-century Britain,  Middle Ages, compared with, , , –, –, , ,  nineteenth-century art critics’ theories of, – twentieth-century art critics’ theories of, –, – Oceana, , , , , ,  Orage, A.R.,  Order of the Golden Dawn, ,  original sin, – Parliament Bill of , –,  Parnell, Charles Stewart,  Pater, Walter, , ,  –, , ,  “People’s” Budget, see Budget of  Petrie, W.M. Flinders, – Picasso, Pablo, ,  Plato, , , , ,  Poetry,  Poetry Bookshop, ,  Poetry & Drama,  Poetry Review,  Poet’s Club, ,  Post-Impressionism (see also Ford, Hulme, Lawrence, Pound, Yeats), –,  Pound, Ezra aesthetic theory and practice, earliest, –, –, – aesthetic theory and practice in ,  anti-Semitism, , ,  admires aristocracy, , –, –,  on aristocracy of arts, , –, ,  and Henri Bergson,  and Laurence Binyon, , ,  and Robert Browning, , , ,  and China, , , , –, –, , , , ,  n. and Christian mystics,  and Confucius, , , , n. and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, –,  cyclic and non-progressive aesthetics, –, –,  – cyclic history, , –,  –

Index criticizes democracy, , –, –, –, , – and Jacob Epstein,  on eugenics,  and Ernst Fenollosa, , , , n. experience of First World War,  reactions to First World War, , – and Futurism, – and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, –, ,  and Herbert Giles, –, – views of history in ,  rejects humanism and humanitarianism, , ,  and Imagisme, –,  –, , –,  and India,  –, –, , ,  and Japan,  –, –,  –, – and Wassily Kandinsky, –, , n., n. and Wyndham Lewis, –, n. on Middle Ages, , , –, –, –, , , –, , , , ,  dislikes middle classes,  supports Benito Mussolini, –, , ,  on naturalism in art, –,  and Yone Noguchi, ,  –,  n. and Noh drama, , –, –, n. admires non-Western and archaic cultures (see also China, Japan, India), , , , , –, –,  –, , –, , ,  – personality and background, , – political views First World War and after, –, –, ,  and Post-Impressionism, , ,  –, –,  –,  rejects progress in history,  and comparative religious studies, – at Rebel Art Centre,  religious views,  admires Romantic writers, , ,  criticizes Romantic writers, – Second World War radio broadcasts,  admires Georges Sorel, –, – and Rabindranath Tagore, , , , ,  on Troubadours, , ,  and Allen Upward, –, , n., n.,  n. admires Victorian writers, –, 



criticizes Victorian writers,  Vorticism, –, , ,  Vorticist Imagisme, –, – works “Beddoesque,” n. Cantos, –,  –, n. “Canzon: Of Incense,”  “Cino,”  “Credo,”  “I Gather the Limbs of Osiris,”  “Lustra III Further Instructions,” ,  “Marvoil,”  “The Needle,”  “Occidit,”  “Piere Vidal Old,”  “Sestina: Altaforte,”  The Spirit of Romance,  “In the Station of the Metro,”  “Three Cantos,” ,  “A Villonaud. Ballad of the Gibbet,”  “Vortex. Pound.,”  Pre-Raphaelites, , , , , , , ,  pre-Socratic philosophers, –,  Quest, ,  Quest Society, , ,  Ravenna, ,  Rebel Art Centre, , , – religion, comparative studies of, – Renaissance, , , , , , , –, –, , –, , , , , –, ,  –,  Asian art critics on, ,  Modernists’ admiration for, , , ,  Modernists’ hope for imminent, , ,  as turning point in modern history, , , , –, –, –, –, , , –,  –,  Rhymers’ Club, ,  Rhythm, ,  Romantic writers views of Asia, – theory of history, – and Modernists, – Romanticism criticized (see also Classicism vs. Romanticism), –, , –, , , –, –, , ,  Rome, , , , , , , ,  Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, , ,  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, , , , 



Index

Ruskin, John, , , , , , , ,  Russian ballet,  –, n.

Worringer, Wilhelm, –, , , , –, 

Secession Club of , ,  Shelley, P.B., , , , , ,  socialism, Modernists’ early interest in,  –, –, , – Sorel, Georges, –, , n. Southey, Robert, ,  South Lodge, , ,  Spencer, Herbert, , , ,  Spengler, Oswald,  Spenser, Edmund, – spiritual revival, –,  Storer, Edward, ,  Suffragettes, ,  Symbolist movement, see Aesthetic and Symbolist movements Symons, Arthur,  sympathy, idea of, , , ,  Synge, J.M., , , 

Yeats, George, ,  Yeats, William Butler and Abbey Theatre, , , ,  aesthetic theory and practice, earliest, –,  aesthetic theory and practice in ,  admires aristocracy, –, –, –, , , –, , ,  on aristocracy of artists,  and automatic writing, ,  and Laurence Binyon, , , , , , n., n.,  n.,  n. and Boer War, n. and Byzantium and Byzantine art, ,  admires Catholicism, – and China, , , ,  and Edward Gordon Craig, , –, n. theory of cultural nationalism, – cyclic and non-progressive aesthetics, , – cyclic history, , –, –, –, –n. cyclic images, , –, – rejects democracy, , –,  on Easter Rising of ,  on eugenics,  on fascism, –, , n. and Ernst Fenollosa, , ,  First World War conscription in Ireland,  experiences of First World War,  reactions to First World War, – and Great Memory, – and Lady Augusta Gregory, , ,  rejects humanism and humanitarianism, , , –, – and Irish Blue Shirt movement,  and Irish Cultural Revival, –, – and Irish Literary Society, ,  Irish nationalism, , –, –, – and Irish Republican Brotherhood,  and Japan, , , –, –, , –, – on Wyndham Lewis,  idea of Mask, – on Middle Ages, –, –, –,  dislikes middle classes, , –, ,  Mondays, ,  and Noh drama, , –, –, –

Tagore, Rabindranath, , , , –, , ,  Taylor, Rachel Annand, , – Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, , , , , , n. Theosophy and Theosophical Society, ,  troubadours, , ,  Toynbee, Arnold,  Tyler, E.B.,  Upward, Allen, –, , n., n.,  n. Vico, Giambattista, ,  Victorian writers views of Asia, – and Modernists, –, – Vorticism, –, –,  –, –, –, –, , –,  – College of Arts,  image of Vortex, –, –,  “Kill John Bull with Art,”  in literature, , , – spiritual realism, – Wadsworth, Edward, , , ,  Whistler, James Abbott McNeill,  Wilde, Oscar, , ,  n. Willoughby de Broke, Lord,  Wolff, Virginia,  Wordsworth, William,  working-class politics, –

Index admires non-Western and archaic cultures (see also Byzantium, China, Japan, India), , –, , –, –, , –, –, –, , – and Order of the Golden Dawn, ,  personality and background, , – political views, earliest,  – political views, First World War and after, , –,  disillusionment with politics, – and Post-Impressionism, , –, ,  rejects progress in history, – dislikes Protestantism, – religious views, – admires Romantic writers, –,  dislikes Romantic writers, – accepts spiral progress in history, – and Rabindranath Tagore, , , , –,  and Theosophy, –, 

 and Giambattista Vico, ,  admires Victorian writers,  –, – dislikes Victorian writers,  admires Vorticism,  included in Vorticism,  works The Countess Cathleen, , ,  Four Plays for Dancers, , , – The Green Helmet,  “He Remembers Forgotten Beauty,” ,  “Journal” (),  The King’s Threshold, ,  Per Amica Silentia Lunae, – “The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers,” – “Preface to Gitanjali,”  “Sailing to Byzantium,”  “The Second Coming,”  A Vision, , , , –, –, – “Wanderings of Oisin,” 