Early Writings

by Ezra Pound

  I suggest that the troubadour, either more indolent or more logical, progresses from correlating all these details for purpose of comparison, and lumps the matter. The Lady contains the catalogue, is more complete. She serves as a sort of mantram.

  “The lover stands ever in unintermittent imagination of his lady (co-amantis).” This is clause 30 of a chivalric code in Latin, purporting to have been brought to the court of Arthur. This code is not, I should say, the code of the “trobar clus,” not the esoteric rule, but such part of it as has been more generally propagated for the pleasure of Eleanor of Poictiers or Marie de Champagne.

  Yet there is, in what I have called the “natural course of events,” the exalted moment, the vision unsought, or at least the vision gained without machination.

  Though the servants of Amor went pale and wept and suffered heat and cold, they came on nothing so apparently morbid as the “dark night.” The electric current gives light where it meets resistance. I suggest that the living conditions of Provence gave the necessary restraint, produced the tension sufficient for the results, a tension unattainable under, let us say, the living conditions of imperial Rome.

  So far as “morals” go, or at least a moral code in the modern sense, which might interfere in art, Arnaut can no more be accused of having one than can Ovid.j Yet the attitude of the Latin doctor amoris and that of the gran maestro de amor are notably different, as for instance on such a matter as delay. Ovid takes no account of the psychic function.

  It is perhaps as far a cry from a belief in higher affection to a mediumistic function or cult of Amor, as is the latter from Ovid. One must consider the temper of the time, and some of the most interesting evidence as to this temper has been gathered by Remy de Gourmont,7 in Le Latin Mystique, from which:

  Qui pascis inter lilia

  Septus choreis virginum.

  Quocumque pergis virgines

  Sequntur, atque laudibus

  Post te canentes cursitant,

  Hymnosque dulces personantk

  Who feedest ’mid the lilies,

  Ringed with dancing virgins

  Where’er Thou runnest, maidens

  Follow, and with praises

  Run behind Thee singing,

  Carolling their hymns.

  Or:

  Nard of Columba flourisheth;

  The little gardens flame with privet;

  Stay the glad maid with flowers,

  Encompass her with apple boughs.l

  As for the personae of the Christian cult they are indeed treated as pagan gods—Apollo with his chorus of Muses, Adonis, the yearly slain, “victima paschalis,”m yet in the “sequaire” of Godeschalk, a monk in the Eleventh Century, we see a new refinement, an enrichment, I think, of paganism. The god has at last succeeded in becoming human, and it is not the beauty of the god but the personality which is the goal of the love and the invocation.

  The Pharisee murmurs when the woman weeps, conscious of guilt.

  Sinner, he despises a fellow-in-sin. Thou, unacquainted with sin, hast regard for the penitent, cleansest the soiled one, loved her to make her most fair.

  She embraces the feet of the master, washes them with tears, dries them with her hair; washing and drying them she anointed them with unguent, covered them with kisses.

  These are the feasts which please thee, O Wisdom of the Father!

  Born of the Virgin, who disdained not the touch of a sinner.

  Chaste virgins, they immaculately offer unto the Lord the sacrifice of their pure bodies, choosing Christ for their deathless bridegroom.

  O happy bridals, whereto there are no stains, no heavy dolors of childbirth, no rival mistress to be feared, no nurse molestful!

  Their couches, kept for Christ alone, are walled about by angels of the guard, who, with drawn swords, ward off the unclean lest any paramour defile them.

  Therein Christ sleepeth with them: happy is this sleep, sweet the rest there, wherein true maid is fondled in the embraces of her heavenly spouse.

  Adorned are they with fine linen, and with a robe of purple; their left hands hold lilies, their right hands roses.

  On these the lamb feedeth, and with these is he refreshed; these flowers are his chosen food.

  He leapeth, and boundeth and gamboleth among them.

  With them doth he rest through the noon-heat.

  It is upon their bosoms that he sleepeth at mid-day, placing his head between their virgin breasts.

  Virgin Himself, born of a virgin mother, virginal retreats above all he seeketh and loveth.

  Quiet is his sleep upon their bosoms, that no spot by any chance should soil His snowy fleece.

  Give ear unto this canticle, most noble company of virgin devotees, that by it our devotion may with greater zeal prepare a temple for the Lord.

  With such language in the cloisters, would it be surprising that the rebels from it, the clerks who did not take orders, should have transferred something of the manner, and something of the spirit, to the beauty of life as they found it, that souls who belonged, not in heaven but, by reason of their refinement, somewhat above the mortal turmoil, should have chosen some middle way, something short of grasping at the union with the absolute, nor yet that their cult should have been extra-marital? Arnaut was taught in cloister, Dante praises certain “prose di romanzi”8 and no one can say precisely whether or no they were such prose for music as the Latin sequence I have just quoted. Yet one would be rash to affirm that the “passada folor”9 which he lamentsn at almost the summit of the purifying hill, and just below the earthly paradise, was anything more than such deflection.

  CHRONOLOGICAL CHART

  The period might be made more transparent by a more thorough table of dates; affiliations of troubadours and dynasties; of books available or newly active at a given time.

  IMAGISMEo

  Some curiosity has been aroused concerning Imagisme, and as I was unable to find anything definite about it in print, I sought out an imagiste, with intent to discover whether the group itself knew anything about the “movement.” I gleaned these facts.

  The imagistes admitted that they were contemporaries of the Post Impressionists and the Futurists; but they had nothing in common with these schools. They had not published a manifesto. They were not a revolutionary school; their only endeavor was to write in accordance with the best tradition, as they found it in the best writers of all time,-in Sappho, Catullus, Villon. They seemed to be absolutely intolerant of all poetry that was not written in such endeavor, ignorance of the best tradition forming no excuse. They had a few rules, drawn up for their own satisfaction only, and they had not published them. They were:

  1. Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective.

  2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation.

  3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

  By these standards they judged all poetry, and found most of it wanting. They held also a certain ‘Doctrine of the Image,’ which they had not committed to writing; they said that it did not concern the public, and would provoke useless discussion.

  The devices whereby they persuaded approaching poetasters to attend their instruction were:1. They showed him his own thought already splendidly expressed in some classic (and the school musters altogether a most formidable erudition).

  2. They re-wrote his verses before his eyes, using about ten words to his fifty.

  Even their opponents admit of them—ruefully—“At least they do keep bad poets from writing!”

  I found among them an earnestness that is amazing to one accustomed to the usual London air of poetic dilettantism. They consider that Art is all science, all religion, philosophy and metaphysic. It is true that snobisme may be urged against them; but it is at least snobisme in its most dynamic form, with a great deal of sound sense and energy behind it; and they are stricter with themselves than with any outsider.

&
nbsp; F. S. Flint

  HOW I BEGAN

  If the verb is put in the past tense there is very little to be said about this matter.

  The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery, is of little worth. The very name Troubadour means a “finder,” one who discovers.

  So far as the public is concerned my “career” has been of the simplest; during the first five years of it I had exactly one brief poem accepted by one American magazine, although I had during that time submitted “La Fraisne” and various other poems now held as a part of my best work. Net result of my activities in cash, five dollars which works out to about 4s. 3d. per year.

  Mr. Elkin Mathews was the first publisher to whom I submitted my work in London. He printed my first three volumes, “Personae,” “Exultations,” and “Canzoni,” at his own expense. So far as I can remember our only discussion of business was as follows:—

  Mr. E. M.: “Ah, eh, do you care to contribute to the costs of publishing?”

  Mr. E. P.: “I’ve got a shilling in my clothes, if that’s any use to you.”

  Mr. E. M.: “Oh well, I rather want to publish ‘em anyhow.”

  I have not yet received a brass farthing from these books, nor do I think that Mr. Mathews has up to date a clear balance against his expenses. One’s name is known, in so far as it is known at all widely, through hearsay and reviews and through a wholesale quotation.

  My books have made me friends. I came to London with £3 knowing no one.

  I had been hungry all my life for “interesting people.” I wanted to meet certain men whose work I admired. I have done this. I have had good talk in plenty.

  I have paid a certain price, I have endured a certain amount of inconvenience, enough to put an edge on my enjoyment. I believe I have had more solid pleasure in life than any fellow of my years whom I have ever met.

  I have “known many men’s manners and seen many cities.”

  Besides knowing living artists I have come in touch with the tradition of the dead. I have had in this the same sort of pleasure that a schoolboy has in hearing of the star plays of former athletes. I have renewed my boyhood. I have repeated the sort of thrill that I used to have in hearing of the deeds of T. Truxton Hare;1 the sort that future Freshmen will have in hearing how “Mike” Bennet stopped Weeks. I have relished this or that about “old Browning,” or Shelley sliding down his front banisters “with almost incredible rapidity.”

  There is more, however, in this sort of Apostolic Succession than a ludicrous anecdote, for people whose minds have been enriched by contact with men of genius retain the effects of it.

  I have enjoyed meeting Victorians and Pre-Raphaelites and men of the nineties through their friends. I have seen Keats’ proof sheets, I have had personal tradition of his time at secondhand. This, perhaps, means little to a Londoner, but it is good fun if you have grown up regarding such things as about as distant as Ghengis Khan or the days of Lope de Vega.

  If by the question “How I began?” you mean “How did I learn my trade?” it is much too long to answer, and the details would be too technical.

  I knew at fifteen pretty much what I wanted to do. I believed that the “Impulse” is with the gods; that technique is a man’s own responsibility. A man either is or is not a great poet, that is not within his control, it is the lightning from heaven, the “fire of the gods,” or whatever you choose to call it.

  His recording instrument is in his own charge. It is his own fault if he does not become a good artist—even a flawless artist.

  I resolved that at thirty I would know more about poetry than any man living, that I would know the dynamic content from the shell, that I would know what was accounted poetry everywhere, what part of poetry was “indestructible,” what part could not be lost by translation, and—scarcely less important what effects were obtainable in one language only and were utterly incapable of being translated.

  In this search I learned more or less of nine foreign languages, I read Oriental stuff in translations, I fought every University regulation and every professor who tried to make me learn anything except this, or who bothered me with “requirements for degrees.”

  Of course, no amount of scholarship will help a man to write poetry; it may even be regarded as a great burden and hindrance, but it does help him to destroy a certain percentage of his failures. It keeps him discontented with mediocrity.

  I have written a deal about technique for I detest a botch in a poem or in a donkey engine. I detest people who are content with botches. I detest a satisfaction with second-rateness.

  As touching the Impulse, that is another affair. You may even call it “Inspiration.” I do not mind the term, although it is in great disfavour with those who never experience the light of it.

  The Impulse is a very different thing from the furor scribendi, which is a sort of emotional excitement due, I think, to weakness, and often preceding or accompanying early work. It means that the subject has you, not you the subject. There is no formula for the Impulse. Each poem must be a new and strange adventure if it is worth recording at all.

  I know that for days the “Night Litany” seemed a thing so little my own that I could not bring myself to sign it. In the case of the “Goodly Fare” [sic]2 I was not excited until some hours after I had written it. I had been the evening before in the “Turkish Coffee” café in Soho. I had been made very angry by a certain sort of cheap irreverence which was new to me. I had lain awake most of the night. I got up rather late in the morning and started for the Museum with the first four lines in my head. I wrote the rest of the poem at a sitting, on the left side of the reading-room, with scarcely any erasures. I lunched at the Vienna Cafe, and later in the afternoon, being unable to study, I peddled the poem about Fleet Street, for I began to realise that for the first time in my life I had written something that “everyone could understand,” and I wanted it to go to the people.

  The poem was not accepted. I think the “Evening Standard” was the only office where it was even considered. Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer first printed the poem in his review some three months afterwards.

  My other “vigorous” poem, the “Alta forte” was also written in the British Museum reading-room. I had had De Born on my mind. I had found him untranslatable. Then it occurred to me that I might present him in this manner. I wanted the curious involution and recurrence of the Sestina. I knew more or less of the arrangement. I wrote the first strophe and then went to the Museum to make sure of the right order of permutations, for I was then living in Langham Street, next to the “pub,” and had hardly any books with me. I did the rest of the poem at a sitting. Technically it is one of my best, though a poem on such a theme could never be very important.

  I waited three years to find the words for “Piccadilly”; it is eight lines long, and they tell me now it is “sentiment.” For well over a year I have been trying to make a poem of a very beautiful thing that befell me in the Paris Underground. I got out of a train at, I think, La Concorde and in the jostle I saw a beautiful face, and then, turning suddenly, another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful face. All that day I tried to find words for what this made me feel. That night as I went home along the rue Raynouard I was still trying. I could get nothing but spots of colour. I remember thinking that if I had been a painter I might have started a wholly new school of painting. I tried to write the poem weeks afterwards in Italy, but found it useless. Then only the other night, wondering how I should tell the adventure, it struck me that in Japan, where a work of art is not estimated by its acreage and where sixteen syllables are counted enough for a poem if you arrange and punctuate them properly, one might make a very little poem which would be translated about as follows:—

  “The apparition of these faces in the crowd : Petals on a wet, black bough.”

  And there, or in some other very old, very quiet civilisation, some one else might understand the signif
icance.

  TROUBADOURS—THEIR SORTS AND CONDITIONS

  The argument whether or no the troubadours are a subject worthy of study is an old and respectable one. If Guillaume, Count of Peiteus, grandfather of King Richard Cœur de Leon, had not been a man of many energies, there might have been little food for this discussion. He was, as the old book says of him, ‘of the greatest counts in the world, and he had his way with women.’ He made songs for either them or himself or for his more ribald companions. They say that his wife was Countess of Dia, ‘fair lady and righteous’, who fell in love with Raimbaut d’Aurenga and made him many a song. Count Guillaume brought composition in verse into court fashions, and gave it a social prestige which it held till the crusade of 1208 against the Albigenses. The mirth of Provençal song is at times anything but sunburnt, and the mood is often anything but idle. De Born advises the barons to pawn their castles before making war, thus if they won they could redeem them, if they lost the loss fell on the holder of the mortgage.

  The forms of this poetry are highly artificial, and as artifice they have still for the serious craftsman an interest, less indeed than they had for Dante, but by no means inconsiderable. No student of the period can doubt that the involved forms, and the veiled meanings in the ‘trobar clus’, grew out of living conditions, and that these songs played a very real part in love intrigue and in the intrigue preceding warfare. The time had no press and no theatre. If you wish to make love to women in public, and out loud, you must resort to subterfuge; and Guillaume St Leider even went so far as to get the husband of his lady to do the seductive singing.