Imagism

Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favoured precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language.T.S. Eliot: "The point de repère, usually and conveniently taken as the starting-point of modern poetry, is the group denominated 'imagists' in London about 1910." Lecture, Washington University in St. Louis, June 6, 1953. Imagism has been termed "a succession of creative moments" rather than a continuous or sustained period of development. The French academic René Taupin remarked that "it is more accurate to consider Imagism not as a doctrine, nor even as a poetic school, but as the association of a few poets who were for a certain time in agreement on a small number of important principles".Taupin, René (1929). L'Influence du symbolism francais sur la poesie Americaine (de 1910 a 1920). Paris: Champion. Translation (1985) by William Pratt and Anne Rich. New York: AMS.

The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of Romantic and Victorian poetry. In contrast to the contemporary Georgian poets, who were generally content to work within that tradition, Imagists called for a return to more Classical values, such as directness of presentation, economy of language, and a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms; Imagists used free verse. A characteristic feature of the form is its attempt to isolate a single image to reveal its essence. This mirrors contemporary developments in avant-garde art, especially Cubism. Although these poets isolate objects through the use of what the American poet Ezra Pound called "luminous details", Pound's ideogrammic method of juxtaposing concrete instances to express an abstraction is similar to Cubism's manner of synthesizing multiple perspectives into a single image.Davidson (1997), pp. 11–13

Imagist publications appearing between 1914 and 1917 featured works by many of the most prominent modernist figures in poetry and other fields, including Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Amy Lowell, Ford Madox Ford, William Carlos Williams, F. S. Flint, and T. E. Hulme. The Imagists were centred in London, with members from Great Britain, Ireland and the United States. Somewhat unusually for the time, a number of women writers were major Imagist figures.

Pre-Imagism The origins of Imagism are to be found in two poems, Autumn and A City Sunset by T. E. Hulme.Brooker (1996), p. 48 These were published in January 1909 by the Poets' Club in London in a booklet called For Christmas MDCCCCVIII. Hulme was a student of mathematics and philosophy; he had been involved in setting up the club in 1908 and was its first secretary. Around the end of 1908, he presented his paper A Lecture on Modern Poetry at one of the club's meetings.McGuinness (1998), xii. Writing in A. R. Orage's magazine The New Age, the poet and critic F. S. Flint (a champion of free verse and modern French poetry) was highly critical of the club and its publications.Crunden (1993), 271

From the ensuing debate, Hulme and Flint became close friends. In 1909, Hulme left the Poets' Club and started meeting with Flint and other poets in a new group which Hulme referred to as the "Secession Club"; they met at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in London's SohoWilliams (2002), p. 16 to discuss plans to reform contemporary poetry through free verse and the tanka and haiku and through the removal of all unnecessary verbiage from poems. The interest in Japanese verse forms can be contextualized by the late Victorian and Edwardian revival of Chinoiserie and JaponismKita (2000), p. 179 as witnessed in the 1890s vogue for William Anderson's Japanese prints donated to the British Museum as well as in the influence of woodblock prints on paintings by Monet, Degas and van Gogh.Kita (2000), pp. 179–180 Direct literary models were available from a number of sources, including F. V. Dickins's 1866 Hyak nin is'shiu, or, Stanzas by a Century of Poets, Being Japanese Lyrical Odes, the first English-language version of the Hyakunin Isshū,Ewick, David. "Strange Attractors: Ezra Pound and the Invention of Japan, II". Essays and Studies in British and American Literature, Tokyo Woman's Christian University, 2018 a 13th-century anthology of 100 waka, the early 20th-century critical writings and poems of Sadakichi Hartmann, and contemporary French-language translations.Kita (2000), p. 180

The American poet Ezra Pound was introduced to the group in April 1909 and found their ideas close to his own.Moody (2007), pp. 180, 222 In particular, Pound's studies of early European vernacular poetry had led him to an admiration of the condensed, direct expression that he detected in the writings of Arnaut Daniel, Dante, and Guido Cavalcanti, amongst others. For example, in his 1911–12 series of essays I gather the limbs of Osiris, Pound writes of Daniel's line "pensar de lieis m'es repaus" ("it rests me to think of her"), from the canzone En breu brizara'l temps braus: "You cannot get statement simpler than that, or clearer, or less rhetorical".Cookson (1975), p. 43 These criteria—directness, clarity and lack of rhetoric—were to be amongst the defining qualities of Imagist poetry. Through his friendship with Laurence Binyon, Pound had already developed an interest in Japanese art by examining Nishiki-e prints at the British Museum, and he quickly became absorbed in the study of Japanese verse forms.Arrowsmith, Rupert Richard (2011). Modernism and the Museum: Asian, African and Pacific Art and the London Avant Garde. Oxford University Press, pp. 103–164. . Also see Arrowsmith, Rupert Richard (2011). "The Transcultural Roots of Modernism: Imagist Poetry, Japanese Visual Culture, and the Western Museum System". Modernism/modernity 18:1, pp. 27–42; and

In a 1915 article in La France, French critic Remy de Gourmont described the Imagists as descendants of the French Symbolists.Preface to Some Imagist Poets (1916). Constable and Company. Pound emphasised that influence in a 1928 letter to the French critic and translator René Taupin. He pointed out that Hulme was indebted to the Symbolist tradition, via W. B. Yeats, Arthur Symons and the Rhymers' Club generation of British poets and Mallarmé. Taupin concluded in his 1929 study that however great the divergence of technique and language "between the image of the Imagist and the 'symbol' of the Symbolists[,] there is a difference only of precision".Taupin, René (1929). L'Influence du symbolism francais sur la poesie Americaine (de 1910 a 1920). Paris: Champion. Translation (1985) by William Pratt and Anne Rich. New York: AMS. In 1915, Pound edited the poetry of another 1890s poet, Lionel Johnson. In his introduction, he wrote

Early publications and statements of intent

In 1911, Pound introduced two other poets to the Eiffel Tower group: his former fiancée Hilda Doolittle, who by then was writing under her initials, H.D., and H.D.'s future husband Richard Aldington. These two were interested in exploring Greek poetic models, especially Sappho, an interest that Pound shared.Ayers (2004), p. 2 The compression of expression that they achieved by following the Greek example complemented the proto-Imagist interest in Japanese poetry, and, in 1912, during a meeting with them in the British Museum tea room, Pound told H.D. and Aldington that they were Imagistes and even appended the signature H.D. Imagiste to some poems they were discussing.King; Pearson (1979), p. 18

When Harriet Monroe started her Poetry magazine in 1911, she had asked Pound to act as foreign editor. In October 1912, he submitted thereto three poems each by H.D. and Aldington under the Imagiste rubric,Monroe, Harriet (1938). A Poet's Life. Macmillan. with a note describing Aldington as "one of the 'Imagistes'". This note, along with the appendix note ("The Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme") in Pound's book Ripostes (1912), are considered to be the first appearances of the word "Imagiste" (later anglicised to "Imagist") in print.

Aldington's poems, Choricos, To a Greek Marble, and Au Vieux Jardin, were in the November issue of Poetry, and H.D.'s, Hermes of the Ways, Priapus, and Epigram, appeared in the January 1913 issue, marking the beginning of the Imagism movement. Poetrys April issue published Pound's haiku-like "In a Station of the Metro":

The March 1913 issue of Poetry contained A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste and the essay entitled Imagisme both written by Pound,Pound (1913), pp. 200–206 with the latter attributed to Flint. The latter contained this succinct statement of the group's position, which he had agreed with H.D. and Aldington:Geiger (1956), p. 144

Pound's note opened with a definition of an image as "that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time". Pound goes on to state,"It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works".Pound (1918). "A Retrospect". Reprinted in Kolocotroni et al. (1998), p. 374 His list of "don'ts" reinforced his three statements in "Imagism", while warning that they should not be considered as dogma but as the "result of long contemplation". Pound (1974), p. 12 Taken together, these two texts comprised the Imagist programme for a return to what they saw as the best poetic practice of the past. F. S. Flint commented "we have never claimed to have invented the moon. We do not pretend that our ideas are original."F. S. Flint letter to J.C. Squire, January 29, 1917.

The 1916 preface to Some Imagist Poets comments "Imagism does not merely mean the presentation of pictures. Imagism refers to the manner of presentation, not to the subject."Some Imagist Poets (1916). Constable and Company.

Des Imagistes

Determined to promote the work of the Imagists, and particularly of Aldington and H.D., Pound decided to publish an anthology under the title Des Imagistes. It was first published in Alfred Kreymborg's little magazine The Glebe and was later published in 1914 by Albert and Charles Boni in New York and by Harold Monro at the Poetry Bookshop in London. It became one of the most important and influential English-language collections of modernist verse.Edgerly Firchow, Peter; Evelyn Scherabon Firchow; Bernfried Nugel (2002). Reluctant Modernists: Aldous Huxley and Some Contemporaries. Transaction Books, p. 32. Included in the thirty-seven poems were ten poems by Aldington, seven by H.D., and six by Pound. The book also included work by Flint, Skipwith Cannell, Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Allen Upward and John Cournos.Thacker (2018), pp. 5–6Pound (1914), pp. 5–6

Pound's editorial choices were based on what he saw as the degree of sympathy that the writers displayed with Imagist precepts, rather than active participation in a group. Williams, based in the United States, had not participated in any of the discussions of the Eiffel Tower group. However, he and Pound had long been corresponding on the question of the renewal of poetry along similar lines. Ford was included at least partly because of his strong influence on Pound, as the younger poet made the transition from his earlier, Pre-Raphaelite-influenced style towards a harder, more modern way of writing. The anthology included the poem I Hear an Army by James Joyce, which was sent to Pound by W. B. Yeats.Ellmann (1959), p. 350

Some Imagist Poets