(21) Modernist Poetry
(Thomas Stearns Eliot, Thomas Ernest Hulme and Edith Sitwell)
The Twentieth Century
[See Topic 13]
T h e 2 0 th C e n t u r y P o e t r y
Characteristics:
- poetry rev.: 1911 (the 1st y. of the Georgian poets) – 1922 (the y. of the publ. of The Waste Land)
- < the Fr. impressionist, post-impressionist, and cubist painters > a radical re-examination of the nature of
reality
- < the publ. of the poetry of G. M. Hopkins by Robert Bridges (1918) > experimentation in language and
rhythms: the poets of the 1930s, incl. W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Cecil Day-Lewis, & oth. infl. by
G. M. Hopkins as well as by T. S. Eliot
- => W. B. Yeats’s early spare ironic language of the aesthetes > the mature symbolic and metaphysical
poetry => his work itself a history of E poetry btw 1890 – 1939
Imagism:
- < infl. by the philos./poet Thomas Ernest Hulme’s insistence on hard, clear, and precise images
- > encouraged by the Am. poet Ezra Pound, then living in London
- against romantic fuzziness and emotionalism in poetry, against the using of all words not contrib. ‘to the
presentation’ x for a freer metrical movement
- successful with short descriptive lyrics x but: no technique for longer and more complex poems
Metaphysical Poetry:
- < infl. by the new ed. of the 17th c. metaphysical poetry by J. Donne (1912)
- < the Fr. symbolist poetry appreciated now for its imagistic precision and complexity x rather than for its
dreamy suggestiveness as in the 1890s
- poetry of a higher degree of intellectual complexity
- use of the highly formal + the colloquial, even the slangy
- use of irony, wit, and puns to achieve the union of thought and passion characteristic of the metaphysical
poetry (for T. S. Eliot)
- + T. S. Eliot’s new king of irony achieved by shifting suddenly from the formal to the colloquial
Poetry Since the WW I:
- 1930s, ‘a neutral tone’ (Donald Davie): W. H. Auden & oth.
- 1940s, the New Apocalypse < infl. by the violence of expression of the Fr. surrealist poets and painters
seeking to express the operation of the subconscious mind: incl. Dylan Thomas, David Gascoyne, and
the painters/poets Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso
- 1950s, The Movement = for a neutral tone, purity of diction, and fidelity to experience x against the
verbal excesses of the modernism: incl. D. Davie, Thom Gunn, and Philip Larkin (the noisiest rejecter of
the imported modernism of E. Pound and T. S. Eliot in favour of the native tradition repres. by Hardy)
- The Martian School (< Craig Raine’s poem “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home”) < inspired by the
painters seeking to see the world with the freshness of a child or a visitor from Mars
- 1990s, the New Generation Poets = lack any unifying programme
- ‘performance poetry’ = an informal and loosely structured poetry written for the stage
T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot (1888 – 1965)
Life:
- b. Thomas Stearns Eliot in Missouri (USA)
- studied Harvard
- settled in En. after the outbreak of WW I, became a Br. subject and member of the Church of En. (1927)
- founded & ed. of the influential quarterly Criterion (1922 – 1939)
- became director of the publishing firm ‘Faber & Faber’
Work:
 influence:
- = much of his work self-consciously Br. x but: of cosmopolitan literary roots
- < Harvard infl.: Elizabethan and Jacobean lit., Ita. Renaissance, and Ind. mystical philos. > Harvard
doctoral thesis: on F(rancis) H(erbert) Bradley (1846 – 1924, an E idealist philos.)
- < an arly infl.: Jules Laforgue (1860 – 87, a Fr. poet) > a reticent, ironic, clever, and referential poetry in
the form of free-verse dramatic monologues with a wry persona expressing himself rather than acting out
the private emotions of the author
- < a more lasting infl.: Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 67, a Fr. symbolist poet) > E.: B. = the great inventor
of a modern poetry = ‘the nearest thing to a complete renovation that we have experienced’
- < a more lasting infl: Dante > E.: D. = a medieval spiritual and a poetic authority addressing directly the
modern condition, and a constant reminder for the later poet ‘of the obligation to explore, to find words
for the inarticulate”’
- < the 19th c. Fr. symbolist poets: Paul Verlaine (1844 – 96), Arthur Rimbaud (1854 – 91), and Stéphane
Mallarmé (1842 – 98)
- < the Jacobean dramatists: Thomas Middleton (1580 – 1627), Cyril Tourneur (1575 – 1626), and John
Webster (ca 1580 – ca 1625) > flexible blank verse with overtones of the colloquial:
 style:
- against the contemp. tradition of Georgian poetry in favour of a more subtle and at the same time more
precise poetry:
(a) < his early supporter / adviser Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972) and T(homas) E(rnest) Hulme (1883 –
1917, a philos. and an imagist poet) > ‘hard, dry’ images
(b) < the Metaphysical poets > wit, allusiveness, and irony
(a) < the Fr. symbolists > an image = both absolutely precise in its physical reference and endlessly
suggestive in the meanings based on its relationship to oth. images
- against the Romantic concept of poetry:
(a) uses the suggestive, the symbolist imagery, and the recurring images of the hyacinth girl, the rose
garden, etc. = a Romantic element in his poetry
(b) x but: adds a dry ironic allusiveness, wit, and colloquial element = not normally found in Romantic
poetry
- builds up the total pattern of meaning through the immediate juxtaposition of images: deliberately omits
transitional passages
- builds up his own body of references because a common cultural heritage no longer exists:
(a) the nature of his imagery manages to set the required tone and the area of meaning
(b)  even a reader ignorant of the allusions can achieve some understanding
- received the Nobel Prize for Lit. (1948)
- = the great renovator of the E poetic dialect with an enormous infl. on a whole generation of poets,
critics, and intellectuals generally
-  the poet of the modern symbolist-Metaphysical tradition
 Poetry:
 early poetry: (until the middle 1920s)
- conc.: in one way or another the Waste Land = aspects of the decay of culture in the modern Western
world
Poems Written in Early Youth (1950):
- = a coll. of his earliest poems
- incl. hearty student graduation songs and tributes to J. Laforgue
“The Death of Saint Narcissus” (ca 1911):
- an unpubl. experimental poems
- > its opening lines later incorporated into The Waste Land
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (ca 1911, 1915):
- = his 1st publ. poem, publ. in the Chicago-based magazine Poetry (1912 – present)
- a disconcerting and subtly evasive monologue, set in a symbolic landscape
- plays with politeness, failures of comprehension, and despair
- reinforces the theme by the often ironic echoes of Hesiod (ca 700 BC, a Gr. poet and rhapsode) Dante
(1265 – 1321), Michelangelo (1476 – 1564), W. Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), F. Dostoevsky (1821 – 81),
and the Bible
- P.:
(a) presents himself as fashionable and sociable x but: suffers an acute self-consciousness about the
opinions of oth.
(b) indulges social niceties x but: remains aware of the impossibility of saying what he means
-  builds up meaning from the mutual interaction of the images
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917):
- = his 1st publ. coll.
- incl. 12 specifically Am., often precisely Bostonian, poems
- < nods to the example and the titles of H. James
- > “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, sets the tone of the whole vol.
- > “Portrait of a Lady”, a poem of uneasy social intercourse
- > “Preludes”, a poem of bleakly restless urban landscapes
- > “Aunt Helen”, a character sketch
Poems (1919):
- publ. by the Woolfs’ ‘Hogarth Press’
- incl. also 4 poems in Fr.:
- > “Dans le Restaurant”, later incorporated into The Waste Land, & oth.
- incl. 7 short quatrain poems, the temporary shift from free verse allows for a new sharpness and new
variety of tone:
- > “The Hippopotamus”, a satire on the pretensions of ‘the True Church’
- > “Sweeney Among the Nightingales” (the nightingales = [a] song-birds, [b] prostitutes), exploits the
effects of incongruity and historical anomaly in a densely amalgamated reference: the shabby
commonplaces and compromises of the modern world dishonour both (a) the murdered Agamemnon, (b)
the whole inheritance of history, tradition, and historical lit.
- < derives the epigraphs to the coll. from W. Shakespeare, C. Marlowe, F. Beaumont, J. Fletcher,
François Villon (1431 – 74; a Fr. poet, thief, and general vagabond; author of the line: ‘Where are the
snows of yesteryear?’), Aeschylus (525 BC – 456 BC), and St Paul
-  fascinated with order x fragmentation, and the survival of tradition x the collapse of tradition [see
also: his The Waste Land]
The Waste Land (1922):
- publ. 1st in his Criterion, then in the Am. Dial (1840 – 44, the Transcendentalist magazine; 1880s, a
political magazine; 1920 – 29, a Modernist magazine), and then in a book form
- Ezra Pound severely ed. the manuscript into 5 interrelated sections (a long introductory one, a terse 4 th
one, and a long meditative concl. one), each with a separate title
- = a series of scenes and images with no author’s voice intervening
- builds up the meaning by the implications developed through multiple contrasts and analogies with older
lit. works
- explores a desert:
(a) physical
(b) figuratively urban: the ‘falling towers’ of Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, and London
- connects the different settings by the sense of corruption: the wasteland = a landscape in which a quest
for healing, fertility, power, and meaning is pursued
-
achieves the most striking effects by playing with juxtaposition, inconsistency of perception, multiplicity
of narration, and fluidity of time and place, as much visual as lexical: the disconcertingly surreal image
of a woman drawing out her ‘long black hair’, & oth.
- < echoes Dante, Shakespeare, pre-Socratic philos. (the ‘Milesian School’, ‘Pythagorean Schools’, the
‘Eleatic School’, the ‘Atomist School’, Heraclitus, Diogenes, & oth.; rejected the traditional
mythological explanation in favour of more rational explanations), major and minor 17th c. poets and
dramatists, works of anthropology, history, and philos., and his private reading
- concl.:
(a) a series of quotations from Dante, the Pervigilium Veneris (Lat. for the Vigil of Venus, 2nd or 3rd c.
AD, an anonym. poem), A. Tennyson, Gérard de Nerval (1808 – 55, a Fr. Romantic poet), Thomas
Kyd (1558 – 94, an E dramatist), and the Upanishads (Hindu scriptures on the relig. and philos. of
Hinduism)
(b) his own line in the midst of these quotations: ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins’
- denies the poem expressed the disillusionment of a generation as ‘some of the more approving critics’
believed
(a) should the poem be seen retrospectively but as a series of fragments?
(b) should the quotations shore up the ruin of the Western civilisation?
(c) should they present the poet need of the shield of tradition as a defence against the hostile world?
(d)  the poem remains fragmentary and ambiguous
Poems 1909 – 25 (1925):
- = a coll. of all his earlier poems
 late poetry: (1927 +, after his formal acceptance of Anglican Christianity)
- conc.: searches for spiritual peace ‘beyond the frontiers of ordinary consciousness’
- echoes biblical, liturgical, and mystical relig. lit., and Dante
Ash Wednesday (1930):
- = a poem in 6 sections = the ‘Ariel Poems’
- conc.: examines the aspects of relig. doubt, discovery, or revelation in a series of surreal images
- presents the quality and pain of revelation in the painful awakening of the spirit in a mysterious
landscape haunted by F figures (types of the Virgin Mary)
- < echoes the prayers and metaphors of Anglo-Cath. > gives the poems an almost liturgical character
- > “Journey of the Magi” (1927) and “A Song for Simeon” (1928), draw on biblical incident, conc. with
literal epiphanies = experiences of the infant Christ disturbing or disorienting aged eyewitnesses
- > “Marina” (1930), more obviously secular in imagery and subject, conc. with the awed rediscovery of
his lost daughter by Shakespeare’s Pericles
-  celebrates the wonder at the epiphanies of a Christian God
Four Quartets (1943):
- incl.: “Burnt Norton” (1935), “East Coker” (1940), “The Dry Salvages” (1941), and “Little Gidding”
(1942)
- the title: from the poems’ effect akin to that of the chamber music
- conc.: further examines relig. moods
- relates each of the poems to a specific place:
(a) East Coker: a village of ancestral significance
(b) Little Gidding: a chapel of the relig.-historical associations
(c)  their urgency reinforced by the threat of wartime destruction: “Little Gidding”, reinforces the idea
of change and decay by veiled references to the Blitzkrieg, & oth.
- ponders the significance of words and the difficulty of building words into poetry in each of the poems in
the opening of their 5th section
- concl.: the inherited pain of human sinfulness can be assuaged only by a redemption from time and by a
renewal of history ‘in another pattern’
- employs mocking irony, savage humour, and juxtaposition of the sordid and the romantic
- x but: gets quieter and no more deliberately shocking  moves away from the abrupt shifts of tone of his
earlier poetry twd a more consistent classicality
 Criticism:
- wrote lit. and philos. reviews
- rejected the late 17th c. ‘dissociation of sensibility’ = separation of wit and passion x in favour of the
early 17th c. Metaphysical poets and dramatists combining wit and passion
- replaced J. Milton by J. Donne in the 17th c., and A. Tennyson by G. M. Hopkins in the 19th c. poetry
“Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1917):
- = one of his earliest and most celebrated essays
- conc.: defines and prescribes historical, relig., moral, and above all lit. traditions
- E.: ‘no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone’ x but: only in relation to a larger
tradition
- shapes his lit. tradition around writers feeding his particular concept of ‘Modernism’: W. Shakespeare,
B. Jonson, T. Middleton, J. Webster, Lancelot Andrewes (1555 – 1626, an E clergyman; oversaw the
transl. of the King James Bible), A. Marvell, J. Dryden, Virgil, Dante, C. Baudelaire, and W. B. Yeats
“The Metaphysical Poets” (1921):
- our complex civilisation must produce complex results  the poet must be more allusive and more
indirect in order to force language into his meaning
- justifies the contortions of J. Donne’s poetry:
(a) man’s experience = ‘chaotic, irregular, fragmentary’
(b) experiences are ‘always forming new wholes’
(c)  perceives a divine order beyond the physical evidence of disorder
The Sacred Wood (1920), Homage to John Dryden (1924), and For Lancelot Andrewes (1928):
- = coll. of his critical essays
- For Lancelot Andrewes: claims to be a ‘classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in
religion’ and in favour of order against chaos, tradition against eccentricity, and authority against
individualism
- x but: his own poetry = untraditional and highly individual
Selected Essays (1932):
- = a coll. of most of his earlier essays and some new ones
Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley (1964):
- = his Harvard doctoral thesis
- left unexamined due to his prolonged absence in wartime En. x but: later publ. in a book form
- conc.: the relationship of the subjective consciousness x the objective world
- B.: of the individual mind correlates with a larger single comprehensive consciousness
- E.: the comprehensive consciousness:
(a) = a responsive God in one sense
(b) = related to a larger human tradition in another
 Verse Drama:
- aspired to renew poetic drama
- examined relig. themes
The Rock (1934):
- = an unsuccessful church pageant
Murder in the Cathedral (1935):
- = the most successful x the least experimental
- conc.: the murder of the Archbishop Becket
- a ritual use of chorus
- the central speech in the form of a sermon by B. in his cathedral shortly before his murder
The Family Reunion (1939):
- conc.: guilt and redemption in a modern upper-class E family
- combines choric devices from Gr. tragedy and accents of drawing-room conversation
The Cocktail Party (1950), The Confidential Clerk (1954), and The Elder Statesman (1959):
- = verse ‘comedies’
- combines a serious relig. theme with the form of a sophisticated modern social comedy
- his lifetime: politely received x but: received little success on the stage since due to his somewhat
laboured attempts to interfuse Gr. myths with modern conditions
Sweeney Agonistes (1932):
- unfinished and unperformed
- inventive, individual, and energetic
-  W. B. Yeats’s contemp. experiments with ritual, masks, dance, and music
-  an ambiguous, restless, and death-haunted attempt to create a new drama appropriate to a broken and
iconoclastic age
T(homas) E(rnest) Hulme (1883-1917)
Life:
- a critic and later a war correspondent for The New Age
- enlisted in WW I, killed in action
Work:
- = promoter of Modernist poetry: founded Imagism, assisted by the birth of Vorticism
- a poet: x but: wrote few poems, mostly in the Imagist style
- a lit. theorist: distinguished btw Romanticism, a belief in the infinite in man and nature ("spilt religion")
x Classicism, a belief in human finitude and restraint ("dry hardness")
- < infl. by the philos. of Henri Bergson
- > his ideas directly infl. E. Pound and T. S. Eliot
A Lecture on Modern Poetry (1908)
- delivered to the Poet's Club whose member and secretary he was
- advocates free verse
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)
Life:
- an eccentric artist flamboyant both in her dress and manner
- provoked tight bourgeois conventions by both her work and life
Work:
Wheels (1916 - 21)
- = a poetry anthology
the 1st to publ. W. Owen's war poems
- a reaction against the romantic ruralism of the Georgian Poetry anthologies
Poems for the Façade (1922)
- = eighteen provocative and flippant lyrics for the musical entertainment Façade
- written as exact complements to the music by William Walton: neither the poems nor the music achieve
their full effect when separated
- varied in style and mood, but: all exercise rhythm, rhyme, assonance or dissonance
- recited by the poet herself though a megaphone placed against a hole in the curtain => eliminated the
personality of the reciter
Street Songs (1942), Green Song (1944), The Song of the Cold (1945)
- = coll. of her own poetry
- < her interest in history, her religious devotion, the WW II
- < indebted to T. S. Eliot's later verse
-
her favourite images: juvenescence and senescence, dark and light, the passion of Christ
"Still Falls the Rain": sees Christ recrucified "each day, each night"
"Anne Boleyn's Song": gives the condemned queen's a vision of the embraces of the new king Death
"Harvest" and "An Old Woman": sees herself as an old woman and compares herself to the sun