great deal of thought, and if thought were art, it might be called an
artistic passage. But thought is not only not art, but the aim of art
is to conceal thought. In its perfection art is indistinguishable from
nature. The conspicuous thoughtfulness of the passage I have quoted is,
therefore, an objection to it; and the more so since it provokes an
inspection it is unable to sustain. Challenged to “think” about what the
writer is saying, the reader at once discovers that the passage will not
bear thinking about. He asks, for instance, _whence_ Buck Milligan came
from the staircase; _how_ he managed to balance a crossed mirror and
razor on a bowl’s edge—and, particularly, while bearing them aloft; and
what mild air it was that sustained the tails of a man’s dressing-gown.
To these questions deliberately provoked by the ostentatious care of
the writer there is either no answer or none forthcoming without more
thought than the detail is worth. The passage, in short, suffers from
being aimed at a diminishing coterie; and it succeeds in satisfying, I
imagine, only the writer of it who is alone in all its secrets. Mr. James
Joyce had once the makings of a great writer—not a popular writer, but
a classic writer. To become what he was he needed to be opened out, to
be simplified, to conceal his cleverness, to write more and more for the
world. But first in the _Egoist_ and now in the _Little Review_ he has
been directed to cultivate his faults, his limitations, his swaddling
clothes of genius, with the result that he is in imminent danger of
brilliant provincialism.
HOMAGE TO PROPERTIUS.—Mr. Ezra Pound’s _Homage to Propertius_ has drawn
an American Professor of Latin into the pages of the American magazine
_Poetry_. Professor Hales is indignant at the attempt of Mr. Pound to
make Propertius intelligible as well as merely accessible to the modern
English reader, and in the name of Scholarship, he begs Mr. Pound
to “lay aside the mask of erudition” and to confess himself nothing
better than a poet. With some of Professor Hales’s literal criticisms
it is impossible not to agree. Speaking in the name of the schools, he
is frequently correct. But in the name of the humanities of life, of
art, of literature, what in the world does it matter that Mr. Pound
has spelled Punic with a capital when he meant a small letter, or that
he has forgotten the existence of the Marcian aqueduct? Mr. Pound did
not set out with the intention of making a literal translation of
Propertius. He set out with the intention of creating in English verse a
verse reincarnation, as it were, of Propertius, a “homage” to Propertius
that should take the form of rendering him a contemporary of our own.
And, secondly, all criticism based on the text of Propertius is invalid
unless it is accompanied by a perception of the psychological quality
of Propertius as he lived. But Professor Hales, it is clear, has no
sense for this higher kind of criticism, for he complains that there
is “no hint” in Propertius’s text of “certain decadent meanings” which
Mr. Pound attributes to him. Is there not, indeed? Accepting decadence
in its modern American meaning, Propertius can only be said to be full
of it. No literary critic, accustomed to reading through and between
an author’s lines, whether they be Latin, Greek, or English, can doubt
the evidence of his trained senses that the mind behind the text of
Propertius was a mind which the Latin Professor of the Chicago University
would call decadent, if only it expressed itself in English. The facts
that Propertius was a poet contemporary with Ovid, that he wrote of the
life of the luxurious Roman Empire, as one who habitually lived it,
that he wrote of love and of his own adventures, are quite sufficient
to prove that he was a child of his age; and if his age was, as it
undoubtedly was, decadent, in a professorial sense, Propertius, we may
be sure, shared its decadence. I am not saying, it will be observed,
nor, I think, would Mr. Pound say, that to have shared in decadence and
to be sympathetic to it are the same thing as to be decadent in oneself.
What, in fact, distinguishes Propertius is his æsthetic reaction against
decadence, against the very decadence in which he had been brought up,
and with which he had sympathised. But this is not to admit that “no hint
of certain decadent meanings” is to be found in him. On the contrary, he
could not very well have become the æsthetic reaction against decadence
without importing into his verse more than a hint of certain decadent
meanings. In effect, Propertius is the compendium of the Roman Empire at
its turning point in the best minds. Long before history with its slow
sequence of events proved to the gross senses of mankind that Empire was
a moral and æsthetic blunder, Propertius discovered the fact for himself
and recorded his judgment in the æsthetic form of his exquisite verse.
But he must have passed through decadence in order to have arrived at
his final judgment; and, indeed, as I have said, his verse bears witness
of it. Professor Hales has been misled by Propertius’s reflections, by
his habit of sublimating his experiences, by his criticism of decadence.
But that reflection was only an accompaniment, or, rather, sequel of
Propertius’s mode of life; it did not, any more than such reflection does
to-day, make impossible or even improbable a mode of life in violent
contrast with the reflection made upon it.
MR. POUND AND MR. WYNDHAM LEWIS IN PUBLIC.—Mr. Ezra Pound has for some
months been the “foreign” or exile editor of the _Little Review_; and
I gather from the nature of the contributions that he has practically
commandeered most of the space. A series of letters and some stories
by Mr. Wyndham Lewis; letters, stories and verse, by Mr. Pound; ditto,
ditto, ditto, by other—shall I say London?—writers—are evidence that
Mr. Pound’s office is no sinecure. He delivers the goods. The aim of
the _Little Review_, as defined without the least attempt at camouflage
by the editress (that is to say, the real American director of the
venture), is to publish articles, stories, verses, and drawings of pure
art—whatever that may be. It is not demanded of them that they shall be
true—or false; that they shall have a meaning—single or double; that
they shall be concerned with life—or fancy. Nothing, in fact, is asked
of them but that they shall be art, just art. Less explicitly, but to
the same effect, both Mr. Pound and Mr. Wyndham Lewis subscribe to the
same formula. They, too, are after art, nothing but art. But in other
respects they define themselves more clearly. From Mr. Wyndham Lewis,
for instance, I gather that the aim of the _Little Review_ artists is
to differentiate themselves from the mob. Art would seem to consist,
indeed, in this differentiation or self-separation. Whatever puts a gulf
between yourself and the herd, and thus “distinguishes” you, is and
must be art, because of this very effect. And Mr. Pound carries on the
doctrine a stage by insisting that the only thing that matters about the
mob is to deliver individuals from it. Art, in short, is the discovery,
maintenance, and culture of individuals.
We have all heard of this doctrine; and there is no doubt that it is
very seductive. But to whom? It has been remarked before that the appeal
of Nietzsche has often been to the last persons in the world you would
have thought capable of responding to him; or, let us say, to the last
persons that ought to respond to him—weak-willed, moral imbeciles, with
not enough intelligence to be even efficient slaves. These, as Nietzsche
discovered, were only too often the sort of person that was attracted
by his muscular doctrine of the Will to Power. It is the case likewise
with the doctrine of individuality. Among its disciples there are, of
course, the few who understand it; but the majority of them are precisely
the persons who prove by their devotion their personal need of it.
Individuality is for these as much a cult as health is a cult among the
sick; and it is to be observed that they also have to take a good deal of
care of themselves. They must never associate with the mob, they must be
careful what they eat in the way of æsthetics; they must pick and choose
among people, places and things with all the delicacy of an eggshell
among potsherds. Above all, they must keep their art pure. Neither Mr.
Wyndham Lewis nor Mr. Ezra Pound belongs to this class of æsthetic
valetudinarians. Both are robust persons with excellent digestions, and
with a great deal of substantial common sense. Nevertheless, both of
them, to my mind, pose as invalids, and simulate all the whimperings and
fastidiousness of the _malades imaginaires_. Read Mr. Lewis’s letters,
for example, in the issues of the _Little Review_ here under notice.
The writer is obviously a very clever man, with a good experience and
judgment of life, and possessed of a powerful style. But he has chosen to
exhibit himself as a clever gymnast of words, with innumerable finnicking
fancies against this or that lest he should be confused with the “mob.”
And Mr. Pound is in much the same state. What is the need of it in their
case, I ask? Unlike most of the other writers, neither Mr. Lewis nor Mr.
Pound has any need to “cultivate” an individuality, or to surround it
with walls and moats of poses. Neither has any need whatever to appear
clever in order to be clever. On the contrary, both of them have need to
do exactly the reverse—namely, to cut their too exuberant individuality
down to the quick, and to reveal their cleverness by concealing it.
Simplicity, as Oscar Wilde said—he, of course, only said it, he never
really thought it—is the last refuge of complexity. And I put it to
Mr. Lewis and Mr. Pound that with just a little more individuality,
and with just a little more cleverness, their ambition will be to be
indistinguishable from the mob, either by their individuality or their
cleverness. They will not succeed in it. Individuality and cleverness,
like murder, will out. The aim, however, of the wise possessor of either,
is to conceal it in subtler and subtler forms of common sense and
simplicity.
Among the clever poses of this type of “stage player of the spirit,” as
Nietzsche called them, is the pose of the _enfant terrible_. They are
mightily concerned to shock the bourgeoisie, and are never so happy as
when they have said something naughty, and actually got it into print.
Now it is, of course, very stupid for the bourgeoisie to be shocked.
The bourgeoisie would be wiser to yawn. But it argues a similar kind
of stupidity—anti-stupidity—to wish to shock them. But we do not wish
to shock them, they say! We are indifferent to the existence of the
bourgeoisie! Our aim is simply to write freely as artists, and to be at
liberty to publish our work for such as can understand it. Publishing,
however, is a public act; and I agree with the bourgeoisie that the art
of an intimate circle or group is not of necessity a public art. Between
private and public morality, personal and public policy, individual
and communal art, there is all the difference of two differing scales
of value. Queen Victoria did not wish to be addressed by Mr. Gladstone
as if she were a public meeting. A public meeting does not like to be
addressed as if it were a party of personal friends. The introduction of
personal considerations into public policy is felt to be an intrusion;
and to treat your friends as if you were legislating on their behalf is
an impertinence. From all this it follows that to thrust all private art
into the public eye is to mix the two worlds. Only that part of private
art that is in good public taste ought to be exhibited in public; the
rest is for private, personal, individual consumption, and ought to be
left unpublished, or circulated only privately. Let the artist write
what pleases him; let him circulate it among his friends; the only
criterion here is personal taste. But immediately he proposes to publish
his work, he should ask himself, the question: Is this in good public
taste?
MR. EZRA POUND AS METRICIST.—Under the title of _Ezra Pound: His Metric
and Poetry_, a whole book—really, however, only an essay—has been devoted
to the work of this literary enigma. For this honour, if honour it be,
Mr. Pound is indebted more to what he has preached than to what he has
practised; for on his actual achievement, considerable though it is, not
even in America could anybody have been found to write a book. Mr. Pound
will not deny that he is an American in this respect, if in none other,
that he always likes to hitch his wagon to a star. He has always a ton of
precept for a pound of example. And in America, more than in any other
country save, perhaps, Germany, it appears to be required of a man that
there shall be “significant” intention, aim, theory—anything you like
expressive of direction—in everything he does. There does not appear to
me to be anything _very_ original in the creation of poetic images, or
even in the employment of irregular metric; neither of them can be said
to constitute a new departure in poetic technique. Yet Mr. Pound has
elevated each of them to be the star of a cult, with the consequence that
we now have professed “schools” of poetry, calling themselves Imagist or
Verslibrist. These are examples of what I mean in saying that Mr. Pound
loves to hitch his wagon to a star.
It must be admitted that this habit of Mr. Pound has its good as well
as its somewhat absurd side; there is only a step from the ridiculous
to the sublime. It must also be affirmed, however it may reflect upon
our English critics, that it is precisely the good side of Mr. Pound’s
technique which they usually condemn. For the good side consists of
this, that all the poets who can claim to belong to the school of
Mr. Pound must display in addition to the above-mentioned defects,
the certain and positive merits of study of their art and deliberate
craftsmanship. No poet dare claim to be a pupil of Mr. Pound who cannot
prove that he has been to school to poetry, and submitted himself to a
craft-apprenticeship; and no poet will long command Mr. Pound’s approval
who is not always learning and experimenting. Now this, which I call
the good side of Mr. Pound’s doctrine, is disliked in England, where
it has for years been the habit of critics to pretend that poetry grows
on bushes or in parsley-beds. That poetry should be the practice of “a
learned, self-conscious craft,” to be carried on by a “guild of adepts,”
appears to Mr. Archer, for example, to be a heresy of the first order.
How much of the best poetry, he exclaims, has been written with “little
technical study behind it”; and how little necessary, therefore, any
previous learning is. To the dogs with Mr. Pound’s doctrine! Let the
motto over the gates of the Temple of Poetry be: “No previous experience
required.” It will be seen, of course, how the confusion in Mr. Archer’s
mind has arisen. Because it is a fact that the “best” poetry looks
effortless, he has fallen into the spectator’s error of concluding that
it is effortless. And because, again, a considerable part of the work of
the “learned, self-conscious craftsmen” is pedantic and artificial, he
has been confirmed in his error. The truth of the matter, however, is
with Mr. Pound. Dangerous as it may be to require that a poet shall be
learned in his profession, it is much more dangerous to deprecate his
learning. By a happy fluke, it may be, a perfect poem may occasionally be
written “without previous study”; from too much previous study there may
also occasionally result only verse smelling of the lamp; but in the long
run, and for the cultivation of poetry as an art, there is no doubt that
the most fruitful way is the way of the craftsman and the adept.
MR. EZRA POUND ON RELIGION.—Mr. Pound has been called over the coals for
his impolite dismissal of Mr. G. K. Chesterton as a danger to English
literature. But, good gracious, Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s reputation is
not so frail that it cannot take care of itself against a spirited
idiosyncrasy. Mr. Pound has expressed his honest opinion; but what
is discussion for but to elicit honest opinions, and then to extract
the truth from them? There is undoubtedly a fragment of truth in Mr.
Pound’s view of Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s influence, and it is this: that
Mr. Chesterton is a most dangerous man to imitate. His imitators become
apes. But that is not to say that Mr. Chesterton is not himself a great
writer. Shakespeare is likewise a dangerous man to imitate; and we should
only be repeating good criticism if we affirmed that the influence of
Shakespeare upon English style has been on the whole bad. But this is
not to detract from the greatness of Shakespeare. Every writer of a
unique style is liable to ruin his imitators; and, from this point of
view, the wise thing to be done is to classify good writers as writers
to be imitated and writers never to be imitated. Among the former are
the writers whom personally I prefer; for I love best the men of the
eighteenth century, who aimed at writing as nearly as possible like the
world, and through whom the common genius of the English language spoke.
But there is pleasure and profit also in the highly individualised styles
of the latter sort of writers, beginning, let us say, with _Euphues_, and
represented to-day by Mr. G. K. Chesterton. Mr. Pound may have no fancy
for the unique and personally conducted style of Mr. Chesterton, but it
is a matter entirely of taste and not of judgment. Should he announce
that he cannot tolerate Swift or Burke or Sterne, writers of pure
English, then, indeed, I should join in deploring his judgment. As it is,
I listen to his remarks on Mr. Chesterton as I should hear his opinions
of crab-soup.
Coming to his views upon religion and upon Christianity, I find myself
not so much hostile to Mr. Pound as bewildered by him; and yet not
bewildered to the degree of much curiosity. Certain critical views of
religion are stimulating. Nietzsche’s, for example, or Huxley’s, or W.
K. Clifford’s, or even Frazer’s. You feel they come from minds serious
enough to take religion seriously, and that they are expressive rather
of impatience with the superficiality of current religion than of
hostility to religion itself. Nietzsche and the rest, in fact, were not
critical of religion and of Christianity because they were themselves
indifferent to religion, but because they were too intensely concerned
with the religious problem to accept the popular solutions. Mr. Pound,
on the other hand, does not appear to me to be a serious thinker on the
subject. He dismisses the current popular solutions not only as if they
were, as they mostly are, superficial and absurd, but as if the problems
of conscience, the soul, sin, and of salvation, to which these solutions
are trial replies, were non-existent or trivial. It is his indifference
to the reality of the problems, and not his criticism of the popular
solutions, that keeps my mind at a distance from Mr. Pound’s when he is
writing on religion. He does not so much as even irritate me, he simply
leaves me as indifferent to his opinions as he is himself.
MR. POUND, CARICATURIST.—Mr. Ezra Pound comes in for it again—as he
always does. His idiosyncrasies are the enemies of his personality, and
they will always, unless he can amend them, militate against both his
work and his success. Mr. Pound appears to love to give his readers the
impression that he is no end of a fire-eater, and that he is a charlatan
of the first-water, setting up to lecture better men on the virtues he
himself has never cultivated. It is an absolutely incorrect picture,
an exceedingly bad self-portrait, a malicious caricature of himself. A
psycho-analyst would attribute it all to “compensation,” to an attempt on
the part of Mr. Pound to disguise his qualities as defects. In brief, Mr.
Pound has not the courage of his virtues. “No one,” says Mr. Hartley in
the _Little Review_, “admires Ezra Pound more than I do ... but it is his
celestial sneer I admire.” A sneer, celestial or mundane, is, however,
the last gesture of which Mr. Pound is capable. If anything, he is too
benignant, too enthusiastic, too anxious to find excuse for admiration.
THE ADMIRABLE VICTORIANS.—I am prepared to apologise if I have ever used
“Victorian” in a derogatory sense. But I know I have not. I have too
deep a respect for the Victorian character ever to make light of it, and
especially for my own generation, that can afford to laugh at so little.
Mr. Strachey’s “brilliant” essays, therefore, leave me laughing at him
rather than with him. One is impelled to take him personally, and to turn
the tables upon Mr. Strachey with the _argumentum ad hominem_. How do you
compare with the people you write about? For it is the peculiarity of
the Victorians—our grandfathers and great-grandfathers—that whatever we
may feel about them in our current opinions, someone has only to sneer
at them to provoke us to their defence; and what better defence can they
ask than to be compared, man for man, with their critics? As a set-off
to the “brilliant” essays of Mr. Strachey—how easy it is to be brilliant
nowadays! I have recently read, on the loan of his great-grandson, the
privately printed personal memoir of Wm. Mattingly Soundy, who died in
1862, at the full age of 96. For 24 years he was a member of his local
Congregational church, and for 46 years he was deacon. During nearly the
whole of that time he never missed a meeting, Sunday or week-day, and
was never known to be late, though he lived two miles from the church.
It is the round of a machine, you may say, and there is no wonder that
the age was mechanical. But I think of the passionate mainspring that
kept a “machine” going for so long without a psychological breakdown.
What an intensity it must have had! What a character! If to love it is
impossible, it is impossible not to admire it; and since we truly live
by admiration, hope and love, it is something for the Victorians that
they can still fill us with admiration. My own generation (now past as a
force) has provided the soul of the world with nothing so fine.
FRENCH CLARTÉ.—M. Vannier’s _La Clarté Française_ does not throw much
light upon the mysteries of French lucidity. He accepts as self-evident
Rivarol’s axiom that “what is not clear is not French”—surely worthy to
be the national device of France; and he analyses with admirable humour
a considerable number of examples of “clarté,” and the want of it. But
the mystery of lucidity remains a mystery still. Flaubert’s practice of
reading his compositions aloud puts us on the most promising scent, for
it is certain that the French “clarté” is eminently readable aloud and in
company. A great deal of our own literature is meant for the eye and not
for the ear, for the study and not for the salon, with the consequence
that at its best it is the grand style simple, but at its worst shocking.
Written for the ear, and meant to be read in company, French literature
is never grand, but neither is it ever silly. Its range is society, while
ours is solitude.