Ezra Pounds Aesthetics and the Origins of Modernism

By Jo Brantley Berryman

Ezra Pound - one of the most innovative and influential, if controversial, poets of the 20th century - continues to dominate the current literary landscape. He was a key figure in helping to create what became ‘modernism’. Pound wrote poetry and criticism based on revolutionary aesthetic principles still relevant to our understanding of the arts today. / This new work asks what are these principles and how did Pound develop them?  Who and what influenced him?  What beliefs enabled him not only to write poetry that remains challenging, intriguing and original, but also to recognize other writers and visual artists of distinction?  / The author places Pound in the cultural context, examining how his early and wide-ranging interests from antiquity to the contemporary shaped his aesthetic views. From his study and analysis of literature and art across cultures and centuries, Pound developed guiding principles for his own work and an enduring way of conceptualizing imaginative and lived experience.  / Emerging from the cultural background of his immediate predecessors, the English Romantics and American Transcendentalists, Pound relied on his own understanding of particular writers from ancient Greece, Rome, and medieval Italy as well as China, in order to discover techniques and themes he could adapt. He synthesized sources from East and West. The catchphrase “Make it New” associated with Pound’s modernism takes on a different light in the full context of his translation: “AS THE SUN MAKES IT NEW -- DAY BY DAY MAKE IT NEW.” His aesthetics thus present not a rejection of the past, but an ongoing vision for today. This is an original study which will be widely welcomed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward Everett Root
• Release date: Jan 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913087173

Jo Brantley Berryman

Jo Brantley Berryman taught modern and contemporary literature in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts for 30 years.  Her posts included Associate Dean and Director of the Poetry Today Series and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy 1988-89.  She was the National Chief Reader for the Advanced Placement Literature Exams, Educational Testing Service, 1989-92.  She is the author of Circe’s Craft:  Ezra Pound’s ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberley’ (UMI Research Press, 1974), and of numerous articles on Ezra Pound and modernist poetry including essays in Ezra Pound and Modernism, The Irish Factor and Ezra Pound’s Green World. Nature, Landscape and Language, both available from EER.

Book preview

Chapter 1

A self-made Poet: Ezra Pound’s eclectic education

Ezra Pound’s interest in aesthetics began surprisingly early. As a child, his mother Isabel and grandmother Mary Weston read to him from the classics and nineteenth century authors like Rudyard Kipling, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens; and when he enrolled at Cheltenham Military Academy in 1897, Pound began learning, if in a desultory fashion, Greek and Latin (Carpenter 21).

However, he declared that he began his literary studies independently and in earnest when he ‘entered U.P. Penn at 15 with intention of studying comparative values in literature (poetry) and began doing so unbeknown to the faculty’ (Moody 14). In his biography of Pound, The Young Genius, David Moody observes that what Pound wanted to study, Comparative European Literature it might have been called had it existed—was simply not in the curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania at that time (15). That first year then, Pound took the classes available to him: English composition, English language, public speaking, algebra, solid geometry, trigonometry, German grammar and texts, Livy and Horace, American colonial history, and the principles of United States government (36). For his second year, Pound developed his own course of study by registering as a non-degree special student status (15). He signed up for

five courses in Latin (among them Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid), three in History, two in Philosophy (Logic and Ethics), and one in Political Science (Comparative Governments) apart from the compulsory English Composition … and a compulsory English literature course (Nineteenth Century Novelists … ). (16)

If the age of fifteen seems young for Pound to have developed a desire to study European comparative values in literature, it is well to recall his interest in European cultures was sparked long before he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. He was twelve years old when his great Aunt Frank took him and his mother Isabel on a three-month tour of Europe during the summer of 1898. Born Frances Amelia Freer and married to Isabel’s maternal uncle, Ezra Weston, she was known in the family affectionately as Aunt Frank. Isabel lived with her aunt and uncle for a time before her marriage and visited them often with Pound when he was growing up. Widowed in 1894, Aunt Frank had no children of her own and remained close to Pound’s family. Visits to the boarding house she ran in Manhattan gave the young Pound an opportunity to explore New York City life. Then in the summer after his first year at the Cheltenham Military Academy, Pound and his mother set off with Aunt Frank for a grand tour abroad. Pound recorded their extensive travels, listing their itinerary from the Isle of Wight and London, Stratford-on-Avon, to Brussels

to Antwerp, down the Rhine from Cologne to Mainz, thence to Nuremburg, down via Constance to Zurich, Lucerne, through the Alps into Italy, and Milan, Genoa, Pisa—Pisa on July 16—on to Rome and Naples, back up to Florence, Venice, Como, via Lucerne on August 1 to Paris (two weeks in Paris), and finally back to London on August 22, and an excursion via Eton and Windsor to Oxford and Blenheim. Departed Southampton Sept. 6. (9)

Four years later, in the summer after his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, Aunt Frank took him and both his parents back to England and Europe for another three-month tour, this time including Spain, Gibraltar, and Tangier.

Thus, by the time Pound began his second year at the University of Pennsylvania, he had already achieved an impressive education through travel, having been introduced to various cultures and multiple languages while viewing examples of art and architecture through the ages. After these travels he may not yet have become an accomplished poet, but neither was he a provincial. He was on his way to believing that the world could be viewed through history and the arts, that countries and centuries could be spanned by understanding differing artistic visions and cultural values.

Years later in London, Pound would write a series of articles for The New Age: Provincialism the Enemy I–IV (12 July–2 August 1917). Provincialism, Pound declared, is (a) An ignorance of the manners, customs and nature of people living outside one’s own village, parish, or nation (b) A desire to coerce others into uniformity (Selected Prose 153). He argued that good writers are a bulwark against provincialism; they can give us information about societies and human nature while presenting ways of thinking that do not conform to official or conventional views: It is a struggle against provincialism, a struggle for the rights of personality, and the weapon of these authors has largely been a presentation of human variety (165). From the outset, Pound engaged in that struggle against provincialism and the rights of personality to be expressed in literature and the arts.

In contrast to leaders who desire followers with uniformity of thought, Pound offered the example of Confucius: Confucius’ emphasis is on conduct … the thought is for the community. Confucius’ constant emphasis is on the value of personality, on the outlines of personality, on the man’s right to preserve the outlines of his personality, and of his duty not to interfere with the personalities of others (163).

Pound may have expressed these attitudes in articles he wrote during his years in London, but his views took shape during his undergraduate years. These views are an important key to Pound’s early aesthetic values. Evaluating works of art, he came to believe, requires a willingness to accommodate work representing various cultures as well as individual artistic styles. Recognizing and respecting such differences enabled him to appreciate artists’ work that departed from what was currently fashionable, conventional, or established. It also helped him to develop his own individualistic approach to writing criticism and poetry.

As he continued his formal studies at Hamilton College, Pound records his literary ventures in letters to his parents. Amid his requests for money and descriptions of his health and activities, Pound mentions what he is reading, offering insight into his developing literary and aesthetic interests. Just after he had first enrolled at Hamilton, he writes his father, 13 October 1904, Reading Garnett’s ‘Hist. of Ital. Lit.’ (Letters to Parents 26). The next day he writes his mother that he is reading the history of Italian literature & am enjoying it (26). By mid-October 1904, he adds to his list of readings, telling his mother, Plugging at Sordello & Dago Lit. also got Taines ‘Lectures on Art’ & some of Stevenson’s essays today (27). He complains to his father, Am still in Taine and Garnett, no excitement (28); but by early November he declares, I’ve got through Sordello. & am plugging Taine ‘Philosophy of Art.’ Etc. Also have some work required by college to fill in with. (Letters to Parents 30). In a letter to his mother, 5–7 November, he sounds more enthusiastic about his selected reading material: Taines lectures on Art are the real thing. (30); and by January 1905, he writes to her, Have been reading a few moments in Taine. The more I get of the man the more I respect him (Letters to Parents 39).

The use Pound will make of his study of Italian literature is well known; his early work on Dante and the troubadors informs his critical writings and poetry throughout his life, and has been the subject of countless studies. The question that emerges, however, concerns his work with Taines ‘Lectures on Art,’ in particular, the Philosophy of Art. What might Pound have found of such interest in the writings of Hippolyte Taine? What caused him to think Taine’s ideas, his lectures on art, are the real thing, deserving of respect?

Presumably because Pound’s letters to his parents were not published and readily available until 2010, major biographers of Pound do not even mention Taine. Thus, the possibility of his influence on Pound’s intellectual development is not considered in Noel Stock’s The Life of Ezra Pound, Humphrey Carpenter’s A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound, or most recently, David Moody’s Ezra Pound: Poet Volume I The Young Genius 1895–1920. Yet Taine’s Lectures on Art caught Pound’s attention; and as it turns out, these lectures offer important clues to Pound’s early aesthetic views.

The French philosopher, historian, and critic Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893) has been associated, for better or worse, with historicism and sociological positivism, even given credit for beginning historicist criticism. Friends with Émile Zola, he became identified with the school of naturalism; he also maintained close contact with such writers as Théophile Gautier, Gustave Flaubert, and the Goncourt brothers. Ranging from the fables of Jean de La Fontaine to an account of the French revolution, his voluminous writings include the monumental Les Origines de la France contemporaine (1876–1894, 6 vols.) as well as the Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise (1863–1869, 5 vols.). His works published in English translation include the History of English Literature (1864), Italy, Rome, and Naples (1868), Art in Greece (1871), Art in the Netherlands (1871), and English Positivism: A Study on John Stuart Mill (1870). Pound, however, writes home about Taine’s work on Philosophy of Art and Lectures on Art.

Taine’s Philosophie de l’Art was originally published in l865 and translated that same year into English by John Durand. Subsequently, it became the first section of Lectures on Art. The second section, The Ideal in Art, was first published in 1874, then combined with The Philosophy of Art to form Volume I of Lectures on Art in 1875. Volume II included Art in the Netherlands, Art in Greece, and Art in Italy. Pound doesn’t mention which edition, or if he read both volumes of Lectures on Art, but he would have had easy access to these volumes—the current catalogue for Hamilton College, Burke Library, lists Lectures on Art by Hippolyte Taine, Volumes I and II, edition c1875 among its holdings. The library also owns the second edition of Taine’s The Philosophy of Art, translated by Durand and printed in 1873. Whichever edition Pound read, these gathered lectures contain ideas that can be traced in Pound’s critical writings and seen as influencing the development of his own modernist poetry.

David Moody notes that as a student, Pound complained that he could find no one ‘with a view of literature as a whole,’ or who had a ‘coherent interest in literature as such (as distinct for example from philology)’ (Moody 16). Pound was more interested in comparative valuations, critical responses, or discussion of whether one text was more or less pleasing, instructive or life-enhancing than another (16). Taine, however, does offer such a view of literature as a whole and a coherent interest in literature as such. He also offered Pound a path for making comparative valuations, critical responses, or discussion. Taine announced his undertaking—to study the different branches of art, architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and music (Lectures on Art 36) from different countries and ages in order to develop "a philosophy of the Fine Arts—what is called an aesthetic system (36). Discovering Taine’s The Philosophy of Art" gave Pound what he had been seeking: a systematic study of comparative literature and aesthetic values.

An aesthetic system that provided a way to evaluate the origins and characteristics of art at various times and places through history would have appealed to the young Pound who wanted to understand how literature and art evolved and acquired meaning; it would also have helped him develop confidence in his judgment of others’ work across the arts as well as a direction for creating his own work. Indeed, an examination of Lectures on Art reveals that Taine’s views on art and aesthetics echo throughout Pound’s critical writings to come; considering these views offers a productive way to approach, appreciate, and understand Pound’s poetry.

In the preface to his 1865 translation of The Philosophy of Art, translator John Durand explains that this book consists of

a course of Lectures delivered during the winter of 1864—before the students of Art of the École des Beaux Arts at Paris by H. Taine, Professeur de Esthétique et d’Histoire de l’Art in that institution. These lectures, as a system of Aesthetics, consist of an application of the experimental method to art, in the same manner as it is applied to the sciences.... The author undertakes to explain art by social influences and natural causes.... [this method] seems to possess many advantages. Among others, it tends to emancipate the student of art, as well as the amateur, from metaphysical and sentimental theories ... he is not misled by an exclusive appreciation of particular schools, masters, and epochs. (v–vi)

Taine’s aesthetic philosophy dealt with a range of creative styles such as Pound would have encountered during his European travels, offering him a method of evaluating different styles without being limited by the values of particular schools, masters, and epochs. In his own writings, Pound will continually advocate having such an inclusive aesthetic; for example, referring specifically to poetry in The New Age article, Analysis of this Decade, he emphasizes the need for an active sense not merely of comparative literature, but of the need for a uniform criticism of excellence based on world-poetry, and not of the fashion of any one particular decade of English verse, or even on English verse as a whole (rpt. Gaudier 115).

Taine also wanted to move aesthetic values away from metaphysical and sentimental theories associated with the belief that art was divinely inspired and created by individual genius—views that still dominated the literary and artistic landscape when Pound was a student. Instead, Taine compared his method of evaluating art to that of a scientist. Rather than attributing artistic achievement to innate intuition or divine inspiration, he credited the artist with acquiring specialized knowledge and developing skilled techniques.

Pound will also come to express these views. He will pursue a system of aesthetics that applies the experimental method to art, in the same manner as it is applied to the sciences (Philosophy of Art v), although he will adapt the analogy between science and art for his own purposes. Calling it aesthetic science, Taine compares the study of art to the study of plants—botany:

Aesthetic science is like botany, in which the orange, the laurel, the pine, and the birch, are of equal interest; it is a kind of botanical method, applied not to plants, but to the works of man.... I mean works of art arranged by families in galleries and libraries, like plants in an herbarium. (Lectures On Art 35–36)

Pound in turn will formulate such an analogy, but use biology, chemistry, or mathematics for his comparisons. In ABC of Reading, for instance, he insisted,

The proper METHOD for studying poetry and good letters is the method of contemporary biologists, that is careful first-hand examination of the matter, and continual COMPARISON of one ‘slide’ or specimen with another. (ABC 17)

In I Gather the Limbs of Osiris, Pound compares his method of analyzing poetry to that of a scientist describing data on a spectrum:

In ‘The Spirit of Romance’ I attempted to present certain significant data on mediaeval poetry in Southern Europe, of the troubadours, of the Tuscans, of Villon, and coming on to the Renaissance, of Lope de Vega, of Camoens, of certain poets who wrote in Latin—to make a sort of chemical spectrum of their art. (Selected Prose 24)

As he cites his early recognition of the usefulness of a scientific method when evaluating works of art, Pound confirms his belief in its continuing validity: "One of the pleasures of middle age is to find out that one WAS right, and that one was much righter than one knew at say seventeen or twenty-three" (ABC 26).

In his 1913 article for The Egoist, The Serious Artist, Pound makes use of the analogy between science and art, but expands it to identify himself with the artist, rather than just the critical theorist: I take no great pleasure in writing prose about aesthetic. I think one work of art is worth forty prefaces and as many apologiae (Literary Essays 41). However, he explains that since he had been asked how one can distinguish between good and bad art and what position the arts are to hold in the ideal republic (41), he felt compelled to express his views on evaluating works of art. To do so, he describes how artists are like scientists:

the arts, literature, poesy, are a science, just as chemistry is a science.