Unit 2 Modern times. Ezra Pound.
Two periods, from 1910 to 1914 we have the Period of aggressive dismantling of
Victorianism. From 1920 to 1930 we have a Period of fullfillment, rightness, a period of
fruits of Modernist art. This period gave the greatest English critics of English criticism,
T.S.Eliot, I.A. Richards. F.R Leavis and William Empson were the greatest critics of the
period, they contributions were prepared before the war by other critics.
Ezra pound, T.E Hulme and Wyndham Lewis were the great critics of the first period.
Three movements contributed at that time to sweeping away the last remains of
Victorianism in England.
-Imagism. Founded in 1912, three people participated on the foundation of it: Ezra
Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and Richard Aldington. Was a rebellion against
Romanticism, a strong anti-romantic movement. The great break with Romanticism
takes place in Imagism, not in the Victorian times. It was based on the aesthetic
philosophy conducted by T.E. Hulme, which was anti-sentimental. An Imagist poem is
short, they focused on the composition of very short poems, not like the long Victorian
poems. The poems are composed by very short lines which are very musical and
completely aliened to metrical regularity. They had a complete rejection of abstraction
(Things that cannot be perceived with senses, love, happiness...) they thought it was
enough to speak about these abstract things and wanted complete visuality in their
poems, things that can be perceived by the senses. They thought poetry was the victim
of rethoric, pomposity, an excess of words that hid the meaning of the poem. The
devices used by imagism are images, metaphors, simils, any device that allows the poet
to introduce visuality in the poem.
-Vorticism. Founded in 1914 by Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis. The idea of
Vorticism is to supply movement, energy, dynamism, violence and aggression to the
idea of imagism that was basically static. They added new dimensions to the idea of
image. Vorticism was articulated around a term, Blast, like their magazine which was
called Blast: Te review of the great English Vortex. They only published 2 issues,
between the publication of the first Blast and the second started the outbreak of WWI.
This movement contributes dynamism to images, movement because they thought
images of Imagism were too static, anti-sentimental movement, aggressive in a very
hostile way and they wanted solidness, strength. Vorticism is not only poetic, but an
artistic movement. Vorticism celebrates the machine, you can only love violence before
real violence takes place. They established a curious dycothomy that makes art and
nature incompatible, they opposed to the idea of the Romanticism in which they thought
of art as a way of life.
Nature: Confined, Organic, Rounded, Imprecise.
Art: Accurate, Mechanic, Anglular, Precise.
Life must be eliminated from art, art and humanity should not be mixed up.
La deshumanización del arte (Ortega i Gasset)
