Ezra Pound Poetic and Literary View


Pound calls for knowledge of the human nature of man, since,"it is obvious that ethics are based on the nature of man, just as it is obvious that civics are based upon the nature of man when living together in groups". This necessary knowledge can only be supplied by the arts especially by poetry, which in consequence are given the status of an anthropology distinct from the other sciences. Pound's idea of the basic function of poetry, is that poetry provides an objective "study on man".

Pound's Poetics:
Pound constantly preaches an "historical sense", the consciousness of the past as a part of the poet's necessary equipment, and a preliminary preoccupation with the literary landmarks.

According to Ezra Pound, there exists absolute standards by which poetry can be evaluated and that basically the same kind of "good" and "bad" poetry can be encountered in all ages. For Pound too, good poetry is always the same, the changes are superficial. We have the real poem in nature. The real poem in nature. The real poet thinking the real poem absorbs the decor almost unconsciously.

Poetry for Pound is sometimes looked upon as verbal expression composed according to certain pre established sets of rules and sometimes as verbal expressions shaped according to forces inherent in the material of poetry, and the two following quotations mark the two poles around which Pound's conception of poetry has crystallized.

"Poetry is an art, an art with a technique with media" and "poetry is the statement of overwhelming emotional values; all the rest is an affair of cuisine, of art" "I think the artist should master all known forms and systems of metric."

Pound is from the beginning conscious of the impact of this dualism, he says:"I think there is a "fluid" as well as a "solid" content, that some poems may form as a tree may has form, some as water poured into a vase.

In Pound poetics there are two conceptions: The conception of the "normative" form; and that of the "organic" form these two forms, Pound claims coexist all along, and neither of them is given precedence. The conception of poetry as a vase can as such of course be affiliated to all the "normative" treasures of prescribing the composition of poetry in accordance with the preexisting rules. As to the "organic" form, it counts on the expressive force of emotions.

Pound's "formulation of the basic principles of modern poetry" is postulated as "objectivity, and again objectivity", the poet's desirable readiness "to say what to say, and to shut up when he has said it." So Pound has formulated this principle as:"The artist seeks out the luminous detail and presents it. He doesn't comment." Here stands the principle of impassibilite (which is adopted from Flaubert), which necessitates a dualism between the poet as creator and the other activities of his personality, excluding emotions together with intellectual and moral reflections. The very first of the Imagist principles read:"Direct treatment of the 'thing' whether subjective or objective."

The influences on Pound:
More closely and more constantly than with anything else Pound coupled the formulation of his basic poetics with the literary principles and practice of Gustave Flaubert, the most devoted and persistent of craftsmen, "le Christ de la literature": Imagism "set out 'to bring poetry up to the level of prose' since Flaubert lifted prose to the rank of a 'finer art'."

Ford Madox Hueffer had once announced:"I had to make for myself the discovery that the verse must be at least as well written as prose if it is to be poetry. Its sentences must be as well constructed; its thought as close; its language as nervous. Both Heuffer and Pound have adopted such an attitude.

Pound's Image:
According to Pound, "An 'Image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time".

The image is distinct from the-often arbitrarily used-metaphoric expression, which is intended as either an ornament, or as an explanatory reinforcement of what has been said in a discursive manner. Pound is quite explicit:"The point of Imagism is that it does not use image as ornaments. The ornamental metaphor and simile belong to the same category as the 'superfluous' ornamental epithet and is condemned by Pound. Pound is sufficiently cautious to remark that it is "hard to draw an exact border line" between the image and the "explanatory metaphor", and one is not sure whether Pound has any consistent ideas in which cases the difference is qualitative or merely quantitative.

The image cannot be dispensed with, not because it adds to the beauty, the meaning, the effectiveness of poetry, but because in an Imagist poem there is no communication at all without the image:"The image is itself the speech."

"The image can be of two sorts (always according to Pound). It can arise within the mind. It is then subjective." External causes play upon the mind, perhaps; if so they are drawn into, fused, transmitted, and emerge in an Image unlike themselves. Secondly, the Image can be objective. Emotion seizing upon some external scene or action carries it intact to the mind; and that vortex purges it of all save the essential and dominant or dramatic qualities, and it emerges like the external original."

The image is consistently presented by Pound as a direct emanation of the emotion or the "emotional force"- "the emotional force gives the image."

The very considerable difference between Imagism and Symbolism lies in the manner and the proportion in which the various elements of poetry are used: the poetry of the great Symbolists was generally speaking, despite extensive use of visual symbols, above all concerned with the musical property of the words, Verlaine's "De la musique avant tout chose" has become commonplace. The Imagists concentrated their efforts on the visual: in terms of Pound's subsequently established categories, (the Symbolists were aiming at melopoeia, the Imagists at phanopoeia).

On verse libre:
On this issue, Pound says:"Unlike a man can put some thematic invention into verse libre, he would do well to stick to 'regular' meters which have certain chances of being musical from their form." As a conclusion Pound leaves the poet in a position to choose between the 'normative' and the 'organic', and this position is characteristic of Pound's poetic altogether:"I have never claimed that verse libre was the only path to salvation. I felt that it was right and that it had its place with the other models."

Ezra Pound's Technique in his Poetry: The Use of Haiku

Ezra Pound's interest in Japanese poetry has long been acknowledged, but only as an eccentric sort of literary relation which has little understandable connection with his critical theory or his poetry. Earl Miner assures that Pound's interest in haiku aims at a partial explanation of his Japanese studies that enjoy a prominent place alongside with Latin and Provencal poetry. This one form of Japanese poetry has influenced Pound's theories of poetic imagery, and has offered him techniques, which have exfoliated into all his writing. 

Haiku is a short Japanese poetic form, which developed about the middle of the seventeenth century. It consists of seventeen syllables in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. In order to transcend the narrow limits of their form, Japanese poets have evolved a style of condensation, ellipsis, suggestion, image, symbol and echoing of well-known older poems. These characteristics of style present a texture more tightly woven than the most eccentric metaphysical conceit. The possibility of haiku being easily understood by someone unfamiliar with the language and that culture is obviously remote. Yet what haiku has been misapprehended in our own day. However, the point is that significant poetry has often resulted from such partial understanding. It may be true in a sense that the misunderstanding of haiku is one key to our understanding of Pound's theories regarding the image and some of his poetry. Having no understanding of the language, and little knowledge of the culture, Pound's understanding of haiku has been confined to the imagistic technique and to the consideration and suggestiveness that are so much a part of the method of haiku. Pound and the other Imagists, who formed their theories of Imagism by taking into account Japanese art and poetry commonly regarded the image in a pictorial or a visual sense. This usually ruled out a conception of the image as an impression of any of the other senses and also precluded using the term to describe any merely metaphorical figure. Pound's interest in the Japanese is largely pictorial and this suggestion is strengthened by his writings on the image and confirmed by the most important evidence i.e. his own poetry. Pound has used the Japanese poetry as starting points and points of reference in developing his theories of the image.

Pound has explained how haiku has entered into the process of composition of one of his best known poems "I wrote a thirty-line poem and destroyed it because it was what we call work of the second intensity. Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following hokku-like sentence.
The apparition of these faces in a crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Pound defines the technique which he had adopted "The one image poem is a form of super-position, that is to say it is the one idea set on top of another. This super-pository technique has clearly evolved out of Pound's knowledge of Japanese poetry, for he thought that he was imitating or utilizing the technique of haiku. Actually he has been using only one of the methods which haiku employs to overcome the limitations of its brevity. This leaves him open to the charge of inadequate understanding of Japanese poetry; however, it is enough to have a glimpse into the creative process as the poet seizes upon his subject, shapes it according to a technique learned from another literature and presents us with the finished object of art. The program which pound presents for Imagism is that its techniques are "Japanese" and its justifications are the excellence of Japanese poetry.

Before casting the light on his modification of the technique of super-position in his poetry, we have to consider the role which haiku has played in the formation of Pound's theories about Imagism. In description of his experience, in the "metro" he speaks of the loveliness of "that sudden motion" and the discovery of "the expression...not in speech but in sudden splotches of color " This account may be compared with his famous definition of the image "an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time... It is the presentation of such an image which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art."

It seems likely that Pound quoted definition of the image is based upon his enthusiasm for haiku. Moreover, there is a continuity of the development of Pound's theories concerning the image. The definition, which was first stated in terms of an instantaneous perception transcending the boundaries of time and space, is broadened to mean on image or metaphor about which the meaning of a longer poem might cohere. There are various poems that present the haiku technique in Pound's poetry; we shall restrict ourselves in presenting one poem "Fan-Piece for her Imperial Lord" and portray the nature of Pound's use and misuse of Japanese techniques.

O fan of white silk,
Clear as frost on the grass-blade,
You are also laid aside.

As a haiku consists of seventeen syllables, this poem is made up of seventeen words and these in the haiku pattern of five, seven and five in three lines. Then we have a modified version of Pound's form of super-position through the narrative explicit statement "O fan of white silk...You are also laid aside." In addition, we have a super-posed image of frost on a grass blade.

The title tells us that a wife or mistress sends the poem to an imperial prince, "her lord". The woman shows her tact and restraint by addressing the compliant to the fan instead of to her master. The nature of her complaint is made clear only in the last line with the shock of utilizing the adverb "also", we understand from that the woman has been deserted or forgotten.

We must notice the importance of the super-posed image to this theme. The resemblance of the silk of the fan to the frost on the grass is not one only of color. The point is that the clear frost melts quickly in the morning sun, that beautiful fans are used by imperial princes for only a short tim, and that even a woman's beauty will serve as an attraction for only a season.

Certainly Pound has achieved a poetic success in this lament or complaint. Imagery, rhythms and suggestions fuse to give a unified moving poem. However, this poem differs from haiku in various aspects. First, haiku are nature poems and exclude such topics as love complaints. Second, Pound's suggestion of the season (frost suggests autumn) lacks the over-riding importance of nature which is characteristic of haiku. Third, there is a difference in the meaning of the poem since it is restricted to psychological and esthetic truth and is void of religious symbolism which gives haiku a profound universality. What Pound's poem lacks is a centuries-old tradition of nature symbolism and a poetic practice to express it, as well as a language highly developed for brief, suggestive and allusive poetry. But what amazes us is the degree to which Pound has emulated the techniques of haiku and the skill with which he has reproduced the tone of melancholy and restrained the plaintive sense that is common in Oriental poetry but rare in Western poetry.

The use which Pound made of haiku and of the super-pository image technique is found in the Cantos. He uses the super-pository technique in two ways, either as a striking end for a canto or within the canto to express with an image what has gone before or what follows directly, such device is noted in his short poems. Most examples of the use of the technique, which he adapted from haiku, are found in the early cantos. Pound uses the technique both within Canto XVII and to end it:"sunset like the grasshopper flying." Also the technique is shown in the following lines of Canto XLVII:

By this gate art thou measured
Thy day is between a door and a door
Two oxen are yoked for plowing
Or six in the hill field
White bulk under olives, a score for drawing down stone.

In the same canto, in the twenty-fifth line, there is the lovely super-pository image:

"But in the pale night the small lamps float seaward,"

These examples familiarize a reader of Pound's poetry with the technique. It might be said that this form of super-position has been most found it useful to him in poems and passages which are elegiac or lyric; also Pound has found it useful to gather several lines of narrative and exposition into one opposite image.

Such a survey shows that haiku has made an important contribution to Pound's theory and practice. It has given him material and examples for much of his theory concerning imagery, and a flexible technique which he called the "form of super-position." It is also assumed that he has been attracted by the suggestive, allusive, condensed and concrete qualities of Japanese poetry. The extraordinary aspect of the use of this technique lies in the clarity, the logic and the assurance with which its author developed and promulgated it from poetry written in a language he neither read nor spoke.