--------~I------------------~~--------------------~
"\l~
30
• RITE S 0 F S P R I N G
.
.~~
PARIS·
~
31
mind at provocation. "It is success and only success, my friend," he .:~~
~tually
exclusive. A man obsessed with moralitL_,-'litlL.Sru;i!lJJy_a.c:- .
wrote to Benois in 1897, "that saves and redeems all " .. I do have al
·3P!~.QJe J)~h~iQr.,-cQ.uLd ne~~.r. be free, and like G.ide..2..-..Riv~~e!-_a~d
rather vulgar insolence and I am accustomed to telling people to goi¥~,
· Proust,
he ..believed
that.•.............•
the -artist,- to
""------_
__ -.. _------_
-_ achieve
_----_.-freedom
-_ _ of vision,
-.. _ must .
to hell." 18 He was a Nietzs~hean cr~ation, a supreme egotist out to
, have no +egar~Lfor.morality.
He must be<:7'-am.9.£a.~Morality, as the
c?nquer, and he suc~eed~d m becoming the?espot
of a cultural em- .~~ • avant-garde was w<?_~tto ..say:,_w.as-an .inventi.otLdgLlqids,··tnerevenge
plre that affected, pnmanly through the medium of ballet, all the arts"4~1
oftFie ugly. Liberation to beauty would come not th~ou-gficolkctive--'
of his time, including fashion, literature, theater, painting, interior ~
aforCout
through egotism, through a personal salvation and not
design, and even cinema. Jacques-Emile Blanche called him a "profes-';~
through social works.
sor of energy, the will that gives body to others' conceptions."
Although Diaghilev paid homage to history and the accomplishBenois was to say "Diaghilev had in him everything it takes to be a llf
ments of western culture, he did see himself essentially as a pathfinder
duce," 10 His public importance was in his achievement as.a manager,:;~
. and liberator. Vitality, spontaneity, and change were celebrated. Anyas a propagandist,
as a duce, and less as a creati~e person. As a ;1:
thing was preferable to stultifying conformism, even moral disorder
theorist he plundered other people's ideas; as an impresario, he plun-;~
. ;;;q.(;onf~~Xcin~bscar Wilde's sally that "there is no sin e~cept-s-tup;r
"
dered, in Napoleonic dragonnades, the world of art. His creation. was;~
express~(rDia~hiley~s:sentiments.
too-."$"QdaL~_o.d.....m:p_(aLabsoLutes_,
his management,
his shaping of shapes, and in this role he was a:~
~~~_~.t~r_().wn.Qverboard, and art, or the aesthetic sense, became the I..
brilliant artistic condottiere. As such he became central to twentieth.~; · jssue of supreme importance because it would lead to freedom.
.
."
~
century aesthetic sense, to the enshrinement of attitudes and styles:~
Diaghilev was of course merely a part, though an immensely signif- ~
rather than substance. He was a figurehead of the aesthetics of tech- i?6,
icant one, of a much broader cultural and intellectual trend, a revolt
nique. People wrote long letters to him; he replied by telegram.
against rationalism and a corresponding affirmation of life and expeThis does not mean, however, that Diaghilev did not have a posi- ;~
rience that gained strength from the 1890S on. The romantic rebelrive view ofart, He did, but his approach was intuitive, not analytical.
~.
lion, which, with its distrust of mechanistic systems, e~tended back
Many have noted how he would seize upon an idea or project imme- '.~.
..
over a century, coincided at the fin de siecle with the rapidly advanc7 diately,
before he had had an opportunity to examine it. While the :~
ing scientific demolition of the Newtonian
universe. Through the
.World of Art journal forced him constantly to formulate aestheticf~
discoverie~ of Planck, Einstein, and.Freud; (a.~iof1'!lma!l_l,ll1aermtn·ed·~ideas and to make decisions on the basis of these ideas, he never;~,
hi~ ..9.WILwQrld-:-Scle~~~ seemed thus to confirm important 't~ndendes
succeeded in assembling a clear and consistent philosophy of an. He '~
in philosophy and art. Henri Bergson developed his idea of "creative
did, nevertheless, build on certain premises.
,~:
evolution," which rejected the notion of "objective" kno~Tecfge: the
He conceived of art as a means of deliverance and regeneration.~.
reality is the elan vital; the life force. He became a veritable star
The deliverance would be from the social constraints of morality and .:~
in fashionable circles in Paris. And the Italian futurist Umberto Bocconvention, and from the priorities of. a western civilization - of .~
cioni, reflecting the widespread preoccupation
'with machines and
which Russia was. becoming increasingly a part - dominated by ai',
change, declared, "There is no such thing as a nonmoving object in
competitive and self-denying ethic. The regeneration would involve
}.~i
our modern perceptionof
life." Diaghilev was attuned to these develthe recovery of a spontaneous emotional life, not simply by the intel-~i
opments, which hailed 'a will t~ constant metamorphosis
~1ll~.d_~
[ecrual elite, although that was the first step, but ultimately by society
~
the beauty of transitoriness. He grasped the new wave with exhilara~.
.------- •.-,-~---.."".~..,
tiori:·"Q1}j-"!.'.E..vanc{!..p.a?.!f!.~yl~.i~~~~_9.eci9.~Q.-"
\.;-. as a whole. ~r~'.in t.~iS,outlook, is a li.f
..e .for~.:": .it has. the. inv.igorating
Ii, power of religion, It acts through the individual but m the end IS . II
In this context, where rationalist notions of cause and effect were
greater than thatindividual,
it is in fact a surrogatereligion.
,:',
rejected and the importance of the intuitive moment stressed, shock
f '..--..Social conscience did not "illOtlvate this th.inking. Like Nietzsche,
Diaghilev believed that autonomy of the artist and. morality w~re
• He who does nor advance retreats.
,I
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19:~1
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32 • RITE 5 0 F 5 P RI N G
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PA RI S • 33
and provocation became import~nt. instrum~nts of art. For ~iaghilev .~.
art was not meant to teach or Imitate reality; abovealJ, It was to;1
provoke genuine experience. Through the element of shock he hoped ~~,
to achieve in his audience what Gide tried to elicit from his protago:;
nist Lafcadio in Les Caves du Vatican, which was published in 1914:~1
an "" gratuit, behavi.or free of motivation, p~rpose, ~eaningj pure~1
action; sublime expenence free of the constrarnrs of time or place. ~~
"Etonne-moi, [ean!": Diaghilev said to Cocteau on one occasion,;}~
and the latter came to look on that moment and utterance as a road- .~
to-Damascus experience. Surprise is freedom. The audience, in Dia- .)~
ghilev's view, could be as important to the experience of art as the . :~I
performers. The art would not teach - that would make it subser- ;11
vient; it would excite, provoke, inspire. It would unlock experience.
.
In his belief that art had to draw more of its content from popular ~
folk traditions and that only in this way could the gap be bridged .1-'.'
between popular and high culture, Diaghilev followed in the footsteps
of Rousseau, Herder, and the romantics. It was in the Russian countryside, primitive and unaffected by mechanization,
that Diaghilev
and his circle found much of their inspiration, in the designs and
colors of peasant costumes, the paintings on carts and sleighs, the
carvings around windows and doors, and the myths and fables of an
unassuming rural culture. It was, according to Diaghilev, from this
Russian soul that salvation would come for western Europe. "Russian art," he wrote in March 1906 before his first exhibition there,
"will not only begin to playa role; it will also become, in actual fact
and in the broadest meaning of the word, one of the principal leaders
of Our imminent movement of enlightenment." 21
:t~
;t~
Diaghilev acknowledged
his intellectual debts: to a conservative
Russian culture rooted in an aristocratic tradition; to a wave of modern thought that stretched back a century and thar had a strong
German component, in E. T. A. Hoffmann, Nietzsche, and Wagner,
among others; and to a growing appreciation, particularly in Russia,
Germany, and eastern Europe, of what the Germans called Volk
culture.' But while he possessed a strong sense of history, his sights
were set on the future. He followed the manifestoes and exploits of
the futurists with interest, and showed a special fondness for the art
of the Russian futurists Larionov and Goncharova. He did not de• Surprise me, Jean!
spise technology as some aesthetes did but looked on the machine as
.a central component of the future. On New Year's Day 19I 2, Nijin...sky and Karsavina danced Le Spectre de la Rose at the Opera in Paris
. at a gala honoring French aviation. As an impresario, Diaghilev was
keenly aware of the importance of modern methods of publicity and
..advertisement, and he had no compunction in resorting to exaggera,·tion, ambiguity, and impertinence in his pursuit of success.
, The goal of his grand baIJet was to produce a synthesis - of all the
arts, ofa legacy of history and a vision of the future, of orientalisrn
andwesternism,
of the modern and the feudal, of aristocrats and
peasants, of decadence and barbarism, of man and woman, and so
on. He wished to fuse the double image of contemporary
life - an
age of transition - into a vision of wholeness, with emphasis, however, on the vision rather than the wholeness, on the quest, the striv.jng, on the pursuit of wholeness, continuing and changing though
..this had to be. He meant, in Faustian temper, to overcome and integrate -. The "either-or"
decision that ethics called for he rejected in
, favor of an aesthetic imperialism that, like Don Giovanni, craved
., everything. Here was a hunger for wholeness that nevertheless, be·:cause of its emphasis on experience, celebrated the hunger more than
, the wholeness ..
REBELLION
Diaghilev's ballet enterprise was both a quest for totality and an
;. instrument of liberation. Perhaps the most sensitive nerve it touched
l . _ and this was done deliberately - was that of sexual morality,
.which was so central a symbol of the established order, especially in
the heart of political, economic, and imperial power, western Europe.
Again, Diaghilev was simply an heir to a prominent, accumulating
tradition. For many intellectuals of the nineteenth century, from
Saint-Simon through Feuerbach to Freud, the real origin of "alienation," estrangement from self, society, and the material world, was
sexual,' "Pleasure, joy, expands man," wrote Feuerbach; "trouble
suffering, contracts and concentrates him; in suffering man denies the
reality of the world." 1
The middle classes', in particular, of the Victorian age interpreted
pleasure in primarily spiritual and moral rather than physical or sen-
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IS now once a am
uttm on a. newl~:\:;:i'h '. ;'j"~
.stren 1 an eaut.
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.cw rcadersl1ave·the leisure or the zeal to investigate (.~r:::::~!r
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from. the publications of the past two years, may if it;! .:)}It.,:' <.;;;,~
is fortunate help the lovers of poetry to realize that wer:';:~;';:~;: : .::'.;X
arc at the
'n'
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eriod "X:· . ,';"'(':;. .:' ;:i'-i
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take rank in due time with he s y~re
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•
DEDICATED
TO
ROBERT BRIDGES
BY THE WRITERS
AND THE EDITOR
••
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PREFATORY NOTE TO FIRST EDITION
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' It has no pretension to cover the field. Every reader;':; . ':):nt#"~i;:'~:
will notice the absence of poets whose work would be 1l:::."'·:9 ;:;".:}~
ncccssary ornament of any anthology not limited by a:,'; ".:;;\(J;l, .,)
definite aim. Two years ago some of.the writers repre-Y. .•
scnted had published nothing; and only a very.few of:., ·"Li\!.H' .d
the others were known except to the eagerest" watch~.·":'"!);f~~~
5!:::.;::;t
ers of the skies." Those few are here because within the .:. .':; 'l:~~
: . ..'t
chosen period their work seemed to have gained some::i:::;~'{~r!.:.
accessionof power.
.
.. ..': ';;1'f;:r.-:
:My gratef~ thanks are due to the wr~ters who have:;\::~:::i~~Ji:
lent me their poems, and to the publishers (Messrli";'j:.Lj
'.
Elkin Mathews, Sidgwick and Jackson, Methuen, Fi~r~ :~i;i;~."f·
field, Constable, Nutt, Dent, Duckworth, Longmanli;;:~' .':l;;:~!,
and Mau?sel, an~ the Editors of BasJleon! Rhythm, anq ,[;: ;.l~~tj:
the EnglISh Ref/Jew) under whose unpnnt they hav~ :.f! :
appeared.
" "~C • ~qtp'j; - ';.,
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Oct. 19
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HE~ the fourth volume of this Benes .,,:a8...:::,',:M~\.~~JN\9~
published three years ago, many of the crltics] .: ..:':: :',::.)!
who had up till then, as Ho~ace Walpole 'said of God,. );j\l('\(:;ij:~{
t been the dearest creatures In the world to me, took
.' ';:it ):?';H
another turn. Not only did they very properly
,:;;' '; /~:\
dirsapprove my choice
. 0f poems: t hey went on to ,.·:);Wo;,J:i!;
.... ,.."
ifu
write as if the Editor of Georgian Poetry were a kind of,'::~:
':\:~1
',: public functionary, like the President of the Royal
;ir:L;;ii~li
. Academy; and they asked-again, on this assumption;
.,' very properly-who was E. M. that he should bestow
..}i;;!' .
." and wit?hold crowns and sceptres, and decide that this;\ilr'J:
or that poet was or was not to count.
"
' ...
,', This, in the words of Pirate Smee, was 'a kind oj a .
(omplin/wl, but it was also, to quote the. same hero,
galling j and I have wished for an opportunity' of
, disowning thepretensionwhich I found attributed to
me of setting up as a pundit, or a pontiff, or a'
Petronius Arbiter; for I have neither the sure taste,
\11
nor the exhaustive reading, nor the ample leisure
" which would be necessary in a'ny such role.
The origin of these books, which is set forth in the'
memoir of Rupert Brooke, ~
I,
found, ten years ago; that there were a number of
,.; writers doing work which appeared to me extremely
'. good, but which was narrowly known; and I thought
.. t?at anyone, however unprofession~l. and meagr.ely" .::t :;,i~;Jl
gIfted,who presented a ~onspectus.of It m a challengmg:';:<1:r.til~:~~
and manageable form might ?e domg.a good turn ~oth.
'j!~f:'
" to the poets and to the reading public, So, I think I ..',; ,;\"', ,:~\\~
,:~ may claim, it proved to be. The first volume seemed
. :US>··:\t.i(j
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to
supply
a
want.
It
was
eagerly
bought;
the
',con-,"
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s.
"
\
N tinuation of the affair was at o~ce taken so much for
~:fgranted as to be almost unavoidable ; and there has" 'j ,::J~;
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TO
ALICE
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been no break in the demand for the successive books.
If they have won for themselves any position, there is \;:
no possible reason except the pleasure they have given. :
Having entered upon a course of disclamation, I!
should like to make a mild protest against a further t·
charge that Georgian Poetry has merely encouraged a f
small clique of mutually indistinguishable poetasters F'
to .abound in their own and each other's sense or;'
nonsense. It is natural that the poets of a generation h
should have points in common; but to my fond eye) .
those who have graced these collections look as diverse k
as sheep to their shepherd, or the members of a i:
Chinese family to their uncle; and if there is an i::
'. allegation which I would deny with botb bands, it is ~;
this: that an insipid sameness is the chiefcharacteristic f .
of an anthology which offers-to name almost at b
random seven only out of forty (oh ominous academic it
number I)-the work of Messrs. Abercrombie, Davies, t·
de la Mare, Graves, Lawrence, Nichols and Squire.
The ideal Georgian Poetry-:a book which would err L
neither, by omission nor by inclusion, and would I:
contain the best, and only the best poems of the best,
. and only the best poets of the day-could only be :,
achieved, if at all, by dint of a Royal Commission. 1
The present volume is nothing 0.£ the kind. ,.
.
I m~y add. one word bearing on my aim m
selection. Much admired modern work seems to I'
;f-!me, in its. lack of inspiration and Its disregard of
form, like gravy imitating lava.. !ts upholders may
retort that much of the work which I prefer seems .;
, to .them! in its~ack ~f ~nsRiration and its.compa~ative
,fimsh, like tapioca mutatmg pearls. Either vrew=possibly both-may be right. I will only say that
with an occasional exception for some piece of ,;.
rebelliousness or even levity which may have taken .1
}~~
my fancy, I have tried to choose no' verse but such'~
as in
,
~~:d~;~~::~~
~~~~~
accept
Wit.h cad
.
s, s 'le, deliberately
p~, %-';:p~
lease.d.
.
There are seven new-corners-Messrs. Armstr g,
Blundcn, Hughes, Kerr, Prewett and Quenn ,and~
Miss Sackville-West. Thanks and ackno edgments
arc due to Messrs. Jonathan Cape, Cha~and Windus,
R. Cobden-Sanderson, Constable,
. Collins, Heinemann, Hodder and Stoughton, Jo Lane, Macmillan,
Martin Seeker, Selwyn and
ount, Sidgwick and
Jackson, and the Golden
ckerel Press; and to the
Editors of The Cbapbo , Tb» London MerCflf'Y and
'I be TVeJt1izimter Ga te,
E. M.
r
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,
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r----
Georgian Poetry: originally the title of a series of live
poetry anthologies produced between 1912 and 19:u.
the term is more generally applied to predominantly
rural and stylistically conventional verse of the·kind
the books tended to contain. The series was conceived by Edward ·Marsh, who proposed to invigorate English poetry at a time when it remained
dominated by late Victorian reputations: the title
Georgian Poetry reflected the enthusiastic: sense of a
new era that accompanied the accession of George V
in 1910. Rupert oBrooke, strongly favoured by Marsh
and regarded as a leading Georgian, publicized the
venture and Harold "Monro acted as publisher. In .
commercial terms-the seriCS·'W2S·highly:succ6SfuL ,: ..-:.:.
The following were eminent among the total of
thirty·six poets who contributed to the anthologies:
Lascelles "Abercrombie, Gordon -nottomley, W. H.
·Davies, Walter =de la Marc, Wilfrid ·Gibson, Ralph
"Hodgson, james -Stephens, and Andrew "Young.
While these and others produced work of note, the
pedestrian rhythms, rural sentimentality, and imaginative banality of much of the verse has given 'Georgian' a distinct pejorative sense in the modem critical
vocabulary. The blank verse dramas contributed by
Abercrombie. Bottomley. and Gibson were among
the most interesting material published in the series.
Although
the anthologies
contained
'Work by
Edmund "Blunden. Robert "Graves, and Siegfried
·Sassoon. the most talented of the younger Georgian
poets. Marsh did not publish any of the more disturbing examples of their "war poetry: objections to the
constraints imposed. by his taste were voiced by
Graves and Sassoon, the latter choosing not to be represented in the final volume· of the series. D. H.
"Lawrence was another contributor who disagreed
with Marsh's fundamentally
conservative views on
questions ofform and content. After Marsh discontin·
ued the series in 1922, coincidentally but aptly the year
in w hich The ·V\'Q.J1r lAnd appeared, J. C. "Squirc·s
Londoll Mereu!)' provided a platform for Georgian
verse, and a target for its detractors, for whom it represented the antithesis to poetic "Modernism. F.
Swinncrton's
TIlt- Georgian L,iterary Scene, 1910-1935
(1950) surveys the social and cultural contexts of Georgian poetry,
..
..
humanist
tradition.
(1920), Eliot's
The
Pound's Hugh Selwyn Maubrrlry:
-WQ.J[eLattd (1922). Woolfs'acob's·
"
•••
C ••••••
R:ocn:,(I~~),a~d)?yce'~~ysscs
(1922) are among the
works w'ludi indicate the breach with the conventions of rational exposition and stylistic decorum in
the inunediate post-war period.
~~erimental.techniques
become a distinguishing
trait of Modernist texts between approximately 1912
and 1930. the period of what is sometimes referred to
as 'High Modernism', Among the strategies used to
reinterpret experience in the novel were the '"stream
of consciousness'
mode, ·narrative discontinUities,
shifting authorial perspectives, and effects of montage
and collage comparable to innovations in the cinema
and painting, Similar procedures were introduced into
poetry through the extended poetic engagements
with personal experience, history, and contemporary
conditions in The Wasre Land and Pound's early drafts.
of The "Clntos (1917-33), These works demonstrated
":-:,.,,,.:"~~::;,!~,t~~~~s;:;:::iLji~~~;'~~;~:~·:;:;:m~.~
••;~;;~~<'f.c;··:··
the possibilities for poetry's freedom from ~e conStraints of orthodox thematic development. metrical
determination,
and the distinctions between lyrical
and expository idioms. °lmagism'~ emphasis on .
clarity, concentration, and tile essential functions of
the image revised poetic theory and practice in Britain .
.and America from around 1912 onward, The use of
myth as a structural device is common to numerous
definitive texts, most notably Ulysses, The WQ.J[( Land,
and TIlt" Call1os;the energelic sty list ic mobility evident
in each of these exemplifies the high degree of aesthetic self-consciousness ofiiterary Modernism. Edith
·Sitwell, Pound, and Wyndham ·Lewis were among
the Modernist writers noted for polemical hostiliry
towards conservative authors, a quality often evident
in the oljttle magazines with which they were associated; the vigour with which the)' rejected conven- !...,.::'..
tionalliteraturc
arose from the urgency of the need
they felt to sever connections with a culture the war
had proved a failure. The Modernists' disregard of the
expectations of a common readership resulted in allegations of obscurity and elitism which remain central
to critical debate. Modernism has been, and remains,
widely pervasive in its influence; it has engendered a
multiplicity of approaches to matters of literary form
and content that have affected writing in English,
whether obviously or subtly, on almost every level.
A Survey of Modernist Poetry (19~7) by Robert
°Graves and Laura ·Riding, which established a finn
distinction between 'modern' and 'modernist', is one
of the earliest extended studies ofliterary modernism,
The Modan Tradition: BackgrOllndsofModan Literat1J.re
(1965, edited by. R. "EUmann and C. Fcidelson)
remains' valuable as an anthology of Modernist documents, Modernism (1976, edited by M. OBndbury and).
McFarlane) offers a comprehensive critical survey.
Among the many studies available arc H. Kenner's
Th~ Pound Era (1971), S, Schwanz's The Matrix ofMod.
ernism (1985), A, Gelpi's A Coherent Splendor: The Amer.
ican Poetic Renaissance, J91~1950 (1988), and B,
Bcrgonzi's
The M)1h of Modmlism alld Twcnricth
Cent1J.ryLileralllr( (1986), See also SURREALISM.
Modernism,
a term encompassing numerous movements characterizing international developments in
literature, music, arid the graphic and plastic arts from
the late nineteenth century onward. Most cornrncntators consider literary Modernism's typifying manifestations in English to have appeared between 1890
and 1930, Among the authors most frequently cited
arc joseph 'Conrad, T, S. ·Eliot, William "Faulkner,
Ford Madox "Ford, James "joyce, D, H. "Lawrence,
Ezra ·Pound. William Carlos "Williams, Virginia
"Woolf, and W. B, "Yeats; European writers associated with Modernism include Bertolt Brecht. Andre
Gide,
Franz Kafka, Thomas
Mann,
Vladimir
Mayakovslcy, Marcc:l Proust, and Rainer Maria Rilke,
while Charles Baudelaire,
Gustav Flaubert, and
Arthur Rimbaud are regarded as three of its principal
progenitors. The experimental qualities thought of as
essentially Modernist are found in the writings of
many of the above: others are more traditional in
their stylistic and narrative practices. All, however,
respond acutely to the radical shifts in the Structures
of thought and belief that were brought about in the
fields of religion, philosophy, and psychology by the
works of Sirjames °Frazer, Charles Darwin, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and others. The moral
cataclysm of the First World War accentuated the
senses of general cultural catastrophe and individual
=piritual crislsapparcnt
in the writings of novelists
end poets already sensitive to such disruptions in the
- - .--~.-----
Modem Utopia, A
~:;,.: ,,-,.::-,,:.,'
.,'
..•.
:-
":~".
~.
-,
Cyclic Drama
~
130
D
the Cyclic Poets. Other examples of cyclic NARRATIVE
are the Charlemagne
EPICSand Arthurian ROMANCES,
such as the "Cycle of Lancelot." The MEDl-.
EVAL religious DRAMApresents a cyclic treatment of Biblical THEMES.
Cyclic Drama:
PLAY;
The great CYCLESof MEDlEV
ALreligious DRAMA.See MYSTERY
Cynghanedd: Originally a medieval Welsh term covering a wide and sophisticated range of VERSEdevices, the term was revived in the late nineteenth
century by Gerard Manley Hopkins to refer to various harmonious patterns
of interlaced multiple ALLITERATION
(see CROSS-ALLITERATION).
Simpler sorts
of alliteration are linear and unilateral-as in the common American lunchcounter order "A cup of coffee and .a piece of pie" or Keats's deliberately
archaistic line" A shielded scutcheon bl ushed with bl ood of queens and kings."
Interlacing alliteration, however, in such patterns as xyyx and xyxy (much
the commonest), produces a quadratically ornate effect, such as sometimes
occurs in vernacular phrases ("tempest in a teapot," "partridge in a pear
tree) and the Biblical collocation of swords-ploughshares and spears-pruninghooks. There is conspicuous and complex cimghanedd in Macbeth'sdescription
of life as a "tale I Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, I Signifying
nothing" and in Wordsworth's noble tribute to Milton: "... and yet thy heart
I The lowliest duties on herself did lay." As noted, instances of cunghanedd
turn' up in the vernacular and in PROSE(as in the phrase "toothpaste and
toilet paper" in Thomas Heggen's Mister Rohertsand Faulkner's vivid evocation of a hog's gait as a "twinkling purposeful porcine trot"), but the most
distinguished, varied, and engaging employment remains that in almost all
of Hopkins's mature POEMS.The most salient such use is in the sonnet beginning "As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies araw flame" and the end of
"God's Grandeur":
.
Becausethe Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! b"rightwings.
Cynicism: Doubt of the generally accepted standards or of the innate goodness of human action. In literature the term characterizes writers or movements distinguished by dissatisfaction. Originally the expression came into
being with a group of ancient Greek philosophers, led by Antisthenes' and
including such others as Diogenes and Crates. The major tenets of the cynics
were belief in the moral responsibility of individuals for their own acts and
the dominance of the will in its right to control human action. Reason, mind,
will, and individualism were, then, of greater importance than the social or
political conduct so likely to be worshiped by the multitude. This exaltation
of the individual over society makes most unthinking people contemptuous
of the cynical attitude. Any highly individualistic writer, scornful of accepted
social standards and ideals, is, for-this reason, called cynical. Almost every
literature has had its schools of cynics. Cynicism is not necessarily a weakness
or a vice, and the. cynics have done much for civilization. Samuel Butler's
Way of All Flesh and W. Somerset Mangham's Of Human Bondage. are examples of the cynical NOVEL.The THEATEROF THE ABSURD,the THEATEROF
CRUELTY,and many ANTIREALISTIC
NOVELSof today reflect cynicism of one
sort or another.
Dactyl: A FOOT consisting of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented, as in the word mannikin.
See METERand VERSIFICATION.
Dadaism: A movement in Europe during and just after the First World War,
which attempted to suppress the logical relationship between idea' and statement, argued for absolute freedom, held meetings at bars and in theaters,
and delivered .itself of numerous nonsensical and seminonsensical manifestoes.
It was founded in Zurich in 1916 by Tristan Tzara (who then went to Paris)
with the ostensibly destructive intent of perverting and demolishing the tenets
of art, philosophy, and logic and replacing them with conscious madness 'as
a protest against the insanity' of the war. Similar movements sprang up in
· Germany, Holland, Italy, Russia, and Spain. About 1924 the movement devel· oped into SURREALISM.
In certain respects it seems to have been a foreiunner
of the ANTIREALISTIC
NOVELand the THEATEROF THE ABSURD.
[References: C. W. E. Bigsby, Dada and Surrealism (1972); Mary Ann
Caws, The Poetry of Dada and Surrealism (1970); Alan Young, Dada and
· After: Extremist Modernism and English Literature (1981).]
Dandyism: A literary STYLEuSedby the English and French DECADENTwriters of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The term is derived from
dandy, a word descriptive of one who gives exaggeratedly fastidious attention
to dress and appearance. Dandyism as a literary STYLEis marked by excessively
refined emotion and PRECIOSITY
of language. One or another species of dandyism has been associated with the life or work of Byron, Poe, Wilde, Wallace
Stevens, 'and James Merrill, as well as a long succession of French writers
from Baudelaire to the present. A somewhat more subtle and profound ideology than superficial emphasis on the sartorial may suggest, thoroughgoing
dandyism reflects a preference for culture over nature, city over country,
" manner over matter, surface over substance, and art over life.
Dark Ages: The medieval period. Use of the term is vigorously objected to
by most modern students of the Middle Ages, since it reflects the now-discredited view that the period was characterized by intellectual darkness-an idea
that arose from lack of information about medieval life. The period, as a matter
offact, was characterized by intellectual, artistic, and even scientific activity
that led to high cultural attainments. Most present-day writers, therefore, avoid
. using "Dark Ages." Some who do use it restrict it to the earlier part of the
Middle Ages (fifth to eleventh centuries).
[Reference: W. P.Ker, The Dark Ages (1904, reprinted 1979).]
Dead Metaphor: A FIGURE OF SPEECHused so long that it is now taken in
its denotative sense only, without the conscious comparison or ANALOGYto
a physical object it once conveyed. For example, in the sentence "The keystone
of his system is the belief in an omnipotent God," "keystone"-literally
an
actual stone in an arch-functions as a dead metaphor. Many of our ABSTRACT
- J. 11
ra g,U
Hi
uun
::>l
;::;)U
251
~
Imitation
world that is presented through the language of the work; on the rhetorical
patterns and devices by which the T.ROPESin the work are achieved; on the
psychological state producing the work and providing its special and often
hidden meaning; on the ways in which the pattern of its IMAGESreinforces
(or on occasion contradicts) the ostensible meaning of discursive statement,
PLOT, and ACTION in the work; or on how the IMAGESstrike responsively
on resonant points in the racial unconscious, producing the emotive power
of ARCHETYPESand MYTH. See IMAGE, METAPHOR,FIGURATIVELANGUAGE,
NEW CllITICISM, ALLEGORY.
the function of which is to give art its special authority, the assumption is
almost always present that the "new" creation shaped by the imagination is
a new form of reality, not a FANTASYor a fanciful project. When Shakespeare
writes
Imagination:
The theories of POETRY advanced by the romantic critics of
the early nineteenth century (Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others) led to many
efforts to distinguish between imagination and FANCY, which had formerly
been virtually synonymous. The word imagination had passed through three
stages of meaning in England. In RENAISSANCEtimes it was opposed to reason
and regarded as the means by which poetical and religious conceptions could
be attained and appreciated. Thus, Bacon cited it as one of the three faculties
of the rational soul: "history has reference to the memory, POETRY to the
imagination, and philosophy to the reason"; 'and Shakespeare says the POET
is "of imagination all compact." In the NEOCLASSICPERIOD it was the faculty
by which IMAGESwere called up, especially visual IMAGES(see Addison's The
Pleasures of the Imagination ),and was related to the process by which "IMiTATION of nature" takes place. Because of its tendency to transcend the testimony .
of the senses, the poet who might draw on imagination must subject it to
the check of reason, which should determine its form of presentation. Later
in the eighteenth century the imagination, opposed to reason, was conceived
as so vivid an imaging process that it affected the passions and formed "a
world of beauty of its own," a poetical illusion that served not to affect conduct
but to produce immediate pleasure.
The romantic critics conceived the imagination as a blending and unifying
of the powers of the mind that enabled the POET to see inner relationships,
such as the identity of truth and beauty. So Wordsworth says that poets:
his reference is properly made to imagination, not to that power of-inventing
the novel and unreal by recombining the elements found in reality, which
we commonly call FANCYand which expresses itself in FANTASY.See FANCY.
[References: J. W. Bray, A History of English Critical Terms (1898);
R. L. Brett, Fancy and Imagination (1969); Denis Donoghue, The Sovereign
Ghost: Studies in Imagination (1976); J. L. Lowes, The Road to Xanadu: A
Study in the Ways of the Imagination (1927, rev. ed. 1955); l. A. Richards,
Coleridge on Imagination (1960); Jean Paul Sartre, Imagination: A Psychological Critique (tr. 1962).]
Have each his own peculiar faculty,
Heaven's gift, ·a sense that fits him to perceive
Objects unseen before , ..
An insight that in some sort he possesses, ...
, Proceeding from a source of untaught things,
This conception of imagination
necessitated a distinction between it and
FANCY,Coleridge iBiographia Literaria) especially stressed, though he never
fully explained, the difference. He called imagination the "shaping and modifying" power, FANCY the "aggregative and associative" power. The former
"struggles to idealize and to unify," while the latter is merely "a mode of
memory emancipated from the order of time and space." To illustrate the
disti~ction Coleridge remarked that Milton. had a highly imaginative mind,
Cowley a very fanciful one. Leslie Stephen stated the distinction briefly,
"FANCY deals with the superficial resemblances, and imagination with the
deeper truths that underlie them."
'
While imagination is usually viewed as a "shaping" and ordering power,
As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns the;TI to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name,
Imagists: The mime applied to a group of POETS prominent in England and
America between 1909 and 1918. Their name came from the French title
, Des ltnagistes, given to the Brst ANTHOLOGYof their work (1914); this, in
turn, haying been borrowed from a critical term that had been applied to
some French precursors of the movement. The most conspicuous figures of
the imagist movement were Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle ("H. D."), and
F. S. Flint, who collectively formulated a set of principles as to treatment,
DICTIONS, and RHYME. The Imagist IMAGE, according to Pound, presented
"an intellectuall and emotional complex in an instant of time"-with
the intellectual component borne by visual IMAGES,the emotional by auditory. According to Amy Lowell's Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917), the major
objectives of the movement were: (1) to' use the language of common speech
but to employ always the exact word-not
the nearly-exact; (2) to avoid all
CLICHE expressions; (3) to create new RHYTHMSas the expressions of a new
mood; (4) to allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject; (5) to present
an IMAGE (that is, to be concrete, firm, definite in their pictures-harsh
in
outline); (6) to strive always for concentration, which, they Were convinced,
was the very essence of POETRY; (7) to suggest rather than to offer complete
statements. Pound soon dismissed Lowell's writing and crusading as "Amygism," but her labors did help somewhat in conditioning the public to accept
something new.As early as 1914, Pound moved from Imagism to VORTICISM,
the more kinetic movement, and eventually let the coinage PHANOPOEIAsupersede both IMAGEand Imagism.
.
[References: John T. Gage, In the Arresting Eye: The Rhetoric of Imagism
(1981); Glenn Hughes, Imagism and the Imagists (1931); W. C. Pratt, The
Imagist Poem (1963).]
-fmitation:
The concept of art as imitation has its origin with the CLASSICAL
critics, Aristotle said at 'the beginning of his Poetics that all arts are modes
of imitation, and he defines a TRAGEDYas an imitation of an ACTION of a
(challenges, defiances, boastings) of the ,HEROES; descriptions of warriors (especially their dress and equipment),
battles, and games; the use of the EPIC or
HOMERIC SIMILE; and the employment
of supernatural
machinery (gods directing or participating
in the ACTION). When the mock POEM is much shorter
than a true EPIC, some prefer to call it mock heroic, a term also applied to
poems that mock ROMANCES rather than EPICS. In ordinary usage, however,
the terms are interchangeable.
Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale is partly mock
heroic in character, as is Spenser's finely wrought Muiopotmos, "The Fate
of the Butterfly," which imitates the opening of the, Aeneid and employs elevated STYLE for trivial subject matter.Swift's
Battle of the Books is an example
of a cuttingly satirical mock epic in PROSE. Pope's The Rape of the Lock is
perhaps the finest l~ock heroic poem in English, satirizing in polished VERSE
the trivialities of polite society in the eighteenth
century. The cutting of a
lady's lock by a gallant is the central act of heroic behavior, a card game is
described
in military terms, and such airy spirits as the sylphs hover- over
the scene to aid their favorite heroine. A brilliantly executed mock epic has
a manifold effect: to ridicule trivial or silly conduct; to mock the pretensions
and absurdities of EPIC proper; to bestow an affectionate measure of elevation
on low or foolish CHARACTERS; and to bestow a humanizing,
deflating, or
debunking
measure of lowering on elevatedcha~acters,
[Reference:
Richmond
P. Bond, English Burlesque Poetry, 1700-1750,
(1932, reprinted
1964).]
Mode:
In literary CRITICISM a term applied to broad categories of treatment
of material, such as ROMANCE, COMEDY, TRAGEDY, or SATIRE. In this usage,
mode is broader than GENRE. Northrop Frye sees ROMANCE, COMEDY, TRAG, EDY,'and IRONY' as modes of increasing complexity.
in literature
(see FREUDIANISM and JUNGIAN CRITICISM), Its most interesting
, artistic strategies are its attempts to deal with the unconscious and the MYTHOPOEIC. In many respects it is a reaction against REALISM and NATURALISM
and the scientific postulates on which they rest. Although by no means can
all modem writers be termed philosophical
existentialists,
EXISTENTIALISM
has created a schema within which much of the modem temper can see .a
reflection of its attitudes and assumptions (see EXISTENTIALISM).-The modem
revels in a dense and often unordered
actuality as opposed to the practical
and systematic, and in exploring that actuality as it exists in the mind of the
writer it has been richly experimental
with ,language, FORM, SYMBOL, and
MYTH.
The modem has meant a decisive break with tradition in most of its manifestations, and what has been distinctively
worthwhile
in the literature
of
this century has come, in considerable
part, from this modem temper. Merely
to name some of the writers who belong in the modem tradition, although
none of them partake of all of it, is to indicate the vitality, variety, and artistic
success of modem writing: T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Ernest
Hemingway,
William Faulkner, W. B. Yeats, W. H, Auden, D. H. Lawrence,
James Joyce, Henry Adams, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust, Albert Camus, JeanPaul Sartre, Stephana Mallarme, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, Eugene _
O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Rimbaud. And such a list could be continued for many pages.
[References: Carlos Baker, The EchOing Creen, Romanticism, Modernism,
and the Phenomena of Transference in Poetrij (1984); Carol T. Christ, Vict07'ian
and Modern Poetics (1984); Peter Faulkner, Modernism (1977); Irving Howe,
ed., The Idea of the Modem, in Literature and the Aj·ts (1967); Monroe K.
"Spears, Dionysus and the Citsj- Modernism in Twentieth-Celltlll'Y
Poetrij
(1970).]
Modern:
A term applied to one of the main directions in writing in this
century. For most of its history, "modem;' has-denoted or connoted something
bad. In a general-sense
it means having to do with recent times and the
present day, but we shall deal with it herein
a narrow sense more or less
synonymous
with that of "modernist."
It is not a chronological
designation
but one suggestive of a .loosely defined congeries of characteristics.
Much
twentieth-century
literature
is not "modern" in the common sense of the
term, as much that is contemporary
is not. Modern refers to a group of characteristics, and not all of them appear inanyone
writer who merits the designation moddnl.
In abroad
sense modem is applied to writing marked by a strong and
conscious break with traditional forms and techniques, of expression. It employs
a distinctive kind of IMAGINATION, one that.insists on having its general frame
of reference
within itself. It thus practices the solipsism of which Allen Tate
accused the modern mind: it believes 'that we create the world in the act of
perceiving it. Modem implies a historical discontinuity,
a sense of.alienation,
loss, and despair. It not only rejects history but also rejects the society of
whose fabrication history is a record. It rejects traditional values and assumptions, and it rejects equally the RHETORIC by which they were 'sanctioned
and' communicated.
It elevates the individual and the inner 'being -over the
social human being and prefers the unconscious
to the self-conscious, The
psychologies of Freud and [ung have been seminal in the modern movement
Modernist Period in English Literature:
The Modernist Period in England
may be considered
to begin with the First World War in 1914, to be marked
by the strenuousness
of that experience
and by the Howering of talent and
experiment
that came during the boom of the twenties and that fell away
dunng rhe ordeal of the economic depression in the 1930s. The catastrophic
years of the .Second World War, which made England an embattled
fortress,
profoundly
and negatively
marked everything
British, and it was followed
by a period of desperate
uncertainty,
a sadly dim,inished age. By 1965, which
to all purposes marked an end to the Modemist Period, the uncertainty
was
giving way to anger and protest.
In the early years of the lviodemist Period, the novelists of the Enw Al'tDIAN
AGE continued
as 'major figures, with Galsworthy,
Wells, Bennett,
Forster,
and Conrad dominating
the scene, joined before the 'teens were over by Somerset Maugham. A new FICTION, centered
in the experimental
examination
ofthe inner self, was coming into being in the works of writers like Dorothy
Richardson and Virginia Woolf. It reached its peak in the publication in 1922
of,(James Joyce's Ulysses, a hook perhaps as influential as any PROSE work by
a British writer in this ceritury. In highly differing ways D. H. Lawrence,
Aldous Huxley, and Evelyn Waugh protested
against the nature of modern
society; and the maliCiously witty NOVEL, as Huxley and Waugh wrote it in
the twenties and thirties, was 'typical of the attitude of the age and is probably
f.
Modernist Period in English Literature
~
310
311
as truly representative of the English novel in [he contemporary period as
is the, NOVELexploring the private self through the STREAMOF CONSCIOUSNESS
..
In the thirties and forties. Joyce Cary and Graham Greene produced a more
traditional FICTIONof great effectiveness. and Henry Green made grim comedy
of everyday life. Throughout the period English writers have practiced the
SHORT STORYwith distinction; notable examples being Katherine Mansfield
and Somerset Mangham, working in the tradition of Chekhov.
The theater saw the social PLAYSof Calsworthy, Jones. and Pinero. the
PLAYof ideas of Shaw. and the COMEDYOF MANNERSof Maugham-all
wellestablished in the EDWARDIANAGE-continue and be joined by Noel Coward's
COMEDY.the proletarian DRAMAof Sean O'Casey, the serious VERSE plays
of T. S. Eliot and Christopher Fry. and the high craftsmanship of Terence
Rattigan.
Perhaps the greatest changes in literature. however. came in POETRY
and CRITICISM. In 1914 Bridges was POET LAUREATE;he was succeeded in
1930 by John Masefield, who died in 1967. Wilfred Owen was one of the
most powerful poetic voices of the. early years of the contemporary period.
but his career ended with an untimely death in the First World War. Through
the period Yeats continued poetic creation. steadily modifying his style and
subjects to his late form. At the time of his death in 1939 he probably shared
with T.S. Eliot the distinction of being the most influential POET in the British
Isles. Yet Eliot's The Waste Land. although its author was American. was the
most important single poetic publication in England inthe period. (One striking
feature of The Waste Land is its specificity as to "geography in the "City"
part of London. along with its global scope. which includes even Australia
and the South Pole while omitting-as if deliberately=-virtually
any reference
to the United States.) In the work ofYeats and Eliot. of W.H. Auden, Edith
Sitwell, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. whose POEMSwere posthumously published in 1918. anew POETRY came emphatically into being. The death at
thirty-nine of Dylan Thomas in 1953 silenced a powerful LYRICvoice, which
had already produced fine POETRYarid gave promise of doing even finer work.
T. S. Eliot and I. A. Richards. along with T. E. Hulme. Wyndham Lewis, Herbert
Read, F. R. Leavis, Cyril Connolly, William Empson, and others, created an
informed, .essentially anti-Romantic ANALYTICAL·CRITICISM,centering its attention on the work of art itself.
Between 1914 and 1965, modernism (see MODERN)as a literary mode
developed and gained a powerful ascendancy, and, disparate as many of the
writers and movements of the period were, they seem. in hindsight. to have
shared most of the fundamental assumptions about art, humanity, and life
embraced in the term MODERN.But, however much the literary movement
in the Modern Period seems to have a unified history. Great Britain was during
the time in the process of national and cultural diminution. for England in
the twentieth century has watched her political and military supremacy gradually dissipate, and since the Second World War she has found herself greatly
reduced in the international scene and torn by internal economic and political
troubles. Her writers during these turbulent and unhappy years turned inward
for their subject matter and expressed bitter and often despairing cynicism.
Her major literary figures in the Modernist Period, as they were in the EDWARDIAN AGE, were often non-English. Her chief POETS were Irish, American ..
~
Monostrophic
, and Welsh; her most influential novelists, Polish and Irish; her principal dramatists, Irish and American. See Outline oj Literary History.
Modulation:
In music a change in key in the Course of a passage or between
passages. In POETRY a variation in the metrical pattern by the SUBSTITUTION
of a FOOT that differs from the basic METER of the LINE or by the addition
Or deletion of unstressed syllables. Hardy's "The Voice" may be said to modulate from a largely DACTYLLICrhythm in its Erst three STANZASto a largely
TROCHAICrhythm in the fourth.
Monodrama:
The term monodrama is used in three senses, all related to
its basic meaning of a dramatic situation in which a single person speaks. At
its simplest levela monodrama isa DRAMATICMONOLOGUE.It is more often
applied to a series of extended DRAMATICMONOLOGUESin various METERS
and STANZAFORMSthat tell a connected story. The standard example is Tennyson's Maud, which the poet called a monodrama. The term is also applied
to theatrical.presentations
thatfeature
only one actor.
Monody: A DIR'GEor LAMENTin which a single mourner expresses individual
grief, for example, Arnold's Thsjrsis, A Monody. See DIRGE,ELEGY,THRENODY.
Monograph:
A rather indefinite term for a piece of scholary writing, usually
on a relatively limited topic. Monographs may be published as separate volumes,alone or as part of a series, but their size normally falls between that
of an ARTICLEand that of a full-length book.
Monologue:
A composition, oral or written, presenting the discourse of one
speaker only. By convention, a monologue is a speech that represents what
someone would speak aloud in a situation with listeners, although they do
not speak; the monologue therefore differs somewhat from the SOLILOQUY,
which is a speech that represents what someone is thinking inwardly, without
listeners. Any speech or: NARRATIVEpresented wholly by one person. Sometimes loosely used to signify merely any lengthy speech. See DRAMATICMONO- .
LOGUE,INTERIOR MONOLOGUE,MONODRAMA.
Monometer:
A LINE of VERSEconsisting of one FOOT. See SCANSION,METER.
Monorhyme:
A POEM that uses only one RHYME. Even short examples are
u~common: Browning's "Home-Thoughts, from the Sea "is seven LINES,Frost's
"The Hardship of Accounting" five. Longer examples are rarer yet: Browning's
"Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr" is a forty-line POEM on one RHYME
sound, but, because of a recurring REFRAIN,there are only twenty-six different
rhyme words; Hardy's "The Respectable Burgher," thirty-Bvelines. on one
rhyme sound with thirty-Bve different rhyme words, seems to have established
a record.
Monostich:
A POEM consisting of a single LINE. A recent instance is A. R.
Ammons's "Coward."
Monostrophic:
A term used by Milton to describe the FORMfor the CHORUSES
in Samson Agonistes. These choruses are continuous, each consisting of a single
r-
Virgin Play
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524
1 is repeated as lines 6, 12, and 18; line 3 as lines 9, 15, and 19. The first
and third lines. return as a rhymed COUPLE:rat the end. The scheme of RHYMES
(or REPETITIONS)is aha aha aha aha abaa. The villanelle first appeared in
English VERSE in the second half of the nineteenth century, originally for
Fairly lighthearted POEMS. (The earliest American oillanelle 'was written by
James Whitcomb Riley.) The obsessive repetition that can represent 'ecstatic
affection also works for static preoccupation,
as in serious villanelles by
E. A. Robinson and William Empson. The finest villanelle in any language-sand one of the' greatest modern POEMSin any FORM-is Dylan Thomas's "Do
. Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."
Virgin Play: A medieval nonscriptural PLAYbased on SAINTS'LIVES,in which
the Virgin Mary takes an active role in performing miracles. See MIRACLE
PLAY.
Virgule: A slanting or an upright line used in PROSODYto mark off metrical
FEET, as in the following example from Shelley:
Th;
S~ll1
--.;
I is
The waves
I
w~rm,
I
-.;
are dan
th; sk~
--"
I cing
I is
fast
cJ~ar,
I
--
,
and bright
Since the Second World War, the virgule, sponsored by Ezra Pound and
Charles Olson, has joined the fashionable punctuation of POEMS. With the
legalistic "and/or" (unnecessary, since "or" means "and lor"), the virgule has
come to supplant the hyphen.
Voice-Over: In FILM the use of a NARRATOR'Sor commentator's words when
the speaker is not seen by the viewer. The voice-over may be a NARRATIVE
bridge between SCENES,a statement of facts needed by the viewer, or a cornment on the CHARACTERSand ACTIONS in the scene, In special cases the
voice-over may be in the voice of the character represented in the scene
but not a part of the action in the. SCENE. In Olivier's Hamlet, for example,
we hear Olivier in a voice-over speaking the words of SOLILOQUIESwhile
we see his motionless, pensive face on the screen'. Compare with SOUND-OVER.
Volta: The turn in thought-from
question to answer, problem to solutionthat occurs at the beginning of the SESTETin the ITALIANSONNET.The volta
sometimes occurs in the SHAKESPEAREANSONNET between the twelfth and
the thirteenth lines. The volta is routinely marked at the beginning of LINE
9 (Italian) or 13 (Shakespearean) by "but," "yet," or "and yet." The design
of Hardy's "Hap" is perspicuous:
Line}:
Line 5;
Line 9:
"If ... "
"Then..
"
"But not so .
.The distinctive characteristic of the MILTONIC SONNETis the absence of the
volta in a fixed position, although the FORM is Italian in RHYMESCHEME.
Vorticism: Earlier, a term applied to the binomial epistemology of Descartes.
A movement in modern POETRYrelated to the manifestation of certain abstract
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Vulgate
developments and methods in painting and sculpture. Vorticism originated
in 1914 with Wyndham Lewis's effort to oppose Romantic and vitalist theories
with a kind of verbal and visual art based on SPATIALFORM, clarity, definite
outline, and mechanical dynamism. Ezra Pound used the vorticist idea in
POETRYas an extension of IMAGISM,which seemed constrained to work only
in short works or limited passages and to lack force. In vorticism abstraction
frees the artist or POET from'lt,he IMITATION of NATURE, and the vortex is
energy changed by the poet or artist into FORM, this form being paradoxically
both still and moving. Aside fr~m the work of Pound, vorticism had limited
influence. The practice of vorticism in the graphic arts can best be seen in
Lewis's paintings and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska's sculpture.
[References: Timothy Materer, Vortex: Pound, Eliot, and Lewis (1979);
William C. Wees, Vorticism and the English Avant-Garde (1972).]
Vulgate: The word comes from Latinvulgus, "crowd," and means "common"
or "commonly used." Note two chief uses; (1) the Vulgate BIBLE is the Latin
version made by Saint Jerome in the fourth century and is the authorized
Bible of the Catholic Church; (2) the "Vulgate ROMANCES"are the versions
of various CYCLESof ARTHURIAN romance written in Old French PROSE(common or colloquial speech) in the thirteenth century and were the most Widely
used FORMSof these STORIES,forming the basis of Malory's Le Morte Darthur
and other later treatments. See ARTHURIAN LEGEND.