Imagism

Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that rejected the sentiment and artifice of Romantic and Victorian poetry as well as the contemporary Georgian poets in favour of precision of imagery in clear, sharp language. Group publication of work under the Imagist name in magazines and in four anthologies appearing between 1914 and 1917 featured writing by many of the most significant figures in Modernist poetry in English, as well as a number of other Modernist figures who were to be prominent in fields other than poetry.

Early Imagism

In the first ten years of the 20th century, Alfred Austin was the serving British Poet Laureate. Poetry still had a large audience, and volumes of verse published during the decade included Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts, Christina Rossetti's posthumous Poetical Works, Ernest Dowson's Poems, George Meredith's Last Poems, Robert Service's Ballads of a Cheechako and John Masefield's Ballads and Poems. Future Nobel Prize for literature winner William Butler Yeats was devoting much of his energy to the Abbey Theatre and to on writing for the stage, producing relatively little lyric poetry during this period. In 1907, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Rudyard Kipling. In general, the poetry of the period was formally traditionalist and decorous in content. These literary figures and values provided the context that Imagists emerged in as a self-consciously avant-garde movement.

Related Topics:
Alfred Austin - Poet Laureate - Thomas Hardy - Christina Rossetti - Ernest Dowson - George Meredith - Robert Service - John Masefield - Nobel Prize for literature - William Butler Yeats - Abbey Theatre - 1907 - Rudyard Kipling

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The origins of Imagism are to be found in two poems, Autumn and A City Sunset by T. E. Hulme. 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 who had set up the club to discuss his theories of poetry. 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. From the ensuing debate, Hulme and Flint became close friends. They started meeting with other poets in an unnamed new group at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Soho to discuss plans to reform contemporary through free verse and the tanka and haiku and the removal of all unnecessary verbiage from poems. The interest in Japanese verse forms can be placed in a context of the late Victorian and Edwardian revival of interest in Chinoiserie and Japonism as witnessed in the 1890s vogue for William Anderson's Japanese prints donated to the British Museum, performances of Noh plays in London, and the success of Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Mikado. 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 isshu, a 13th-century anthology of 100 tanka, the early 20th-century critical writings and poems of Sadakichi Hartmann, and contemporary French-language translations. This group included F.W. Tancred, Joseph Campbell, Edward Storer, Desmond FitzGerald and the writer and actor Florence Farr, who also worked with W.B. Yeats on performances of poetry to a musical accompaniment on the psaltery.

Related Topics:
T. E. Hulme - 1909 - Poets' Club - A. R. Orage - F. S. Flint - Free verse - Soho - Tanka - Haiku - Victorian - Edwardian - Chinoiserie - Japonism - 1890s - William Anderson's - British Museum - Noh - Gilbert and Sullivan - Operetta - The Mikado - F.V. Dickins - 1866 - Hyakunin isshu - 13th-century - Sadakichi Hartmann - French-language - F.W. Tancred - Joseph Campbell - Edward Storer - Desmond FitzGerald - Florence Farr - W.B. Yeats - Psaltery

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In April 1909, the American poet Ezra Pound was introduced to this group and found that their ideas were close to his own. In particular, Pound's studies of Romance literature 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". These criteria of 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 and he quickly became absorbed in the study of Japanese verse forms.

Related Topics:
Romance - Arnaut Daniel - Dante - Guido Cavalcanti - Rhetoric - Laurence Binyon - Japanese art

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In a 1928 letter to the French critic and translator René Taupin, Pound was keen to emphasise another ancestry for Imagism, pointing out that Hulme was, in many ways, indebted to a Symbolist tradition, linking back via W.B. Yeats, Arthur Symons and the '90s generation of British poets to Mallarme. In 1915, Pound edited the poetry of another 90's poet, Lionel Johnson for the publisher Elkin Mathews. In his introduction, he wrote "no one has written purer Imagisme than has, in the line 'Clear lie the fields, and fade into blue air.' It has a beauty like the Chinese."

Related Topics:
1928 - French - Critic - Translator - René Taupin - Symbolist - W.B. Yeats - Arthur Symons - '90s - Mallarme - 1915 - Lionel Johnson - Elkin Mathews

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