Ulrich smiles for his myrtle wand.
That swine Lillywhite has daisies to his chain?you'd hardly credit it.
She plaits torques2 of equal splendour for Mr Jenkins and Billy Crower.
Hansel with Gronwy share dog-violets for a palm, where they lie in serious embrace beneath the twisted tripod.
Sion gets St John's Wort?that's fair enough.
Dai Great-coat,3 she can't find him anywhere?she calls both high and low, she had a very special one for him. Among this July noblesse she is mindful of December wood?when the trees of the forest beat against each other because of him.
She carries to Aneirin-in-the-nullah4 a rowan5 sprig, or the glory of Guenedota.6 You couldn't hear what she said to him, because she was careful for the Disciplines of the Wars.
At the gate of the wood you try a last adjustment, but slung so, it's an impediment, it's of detriment to your hopes, you had best be rid of it?the sagging webbing and all and what's left of your two fifty7?but it were wise to hold on to your mask.
You're clumsy in your feebleness, you implicate your tin-hat rim with the slack sling of it. Let it lie for the dews to rust it, or ought you to decently cover the working parts. Its dark barrel, where you leave it under the oak, reflects the solemn star that rises urgently from Cliff Trench. It's a beautiful doll for us it's the Last Reputable Arm. But leave it?under the oak. leave it for a Cook's tourist to the Devastated Areas and crawl as far as you can and wait for the bearers.8
1937
2. Collars, like those of gold worn by warriors of Y Gododdin.
3. Character whose first name is the familiar Welsh form of David, alluding to a figure in Malory's Morte Darthur. 4. A river, stream, or riverbed. 5. Also called mountain ash, a tree with magical properties in Celtic folklore. 6. The northwest parts of Wales. The last king of Wales, Llywelyn, was killed there in 1282. Jones refers to his death in another note on this part of Wales. He adds: 'His [Llywelyn's] contemporary, Gruffydd ap yr Ynad Coch, sang of his death: The voice of lamentation is heard in everyplace . . . the course of nature is changed . . . the trees of the forest furiously rush against each other.' '
7. Two hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition. 8. This may appear to be an anachronism, but I remember in 1917 discussing with a friend the possibilities of tourist activity if peace ever came. I remember we went into details and wondered if the unexploded projectile lying near us would go up under a holiday-maker, and how people would stand up to be photographed on our parapets. I recall feeling very angry about this, as you do if you think of strangers ever occupying a house you live in, and which has, for you, particular associations [Jones's note].
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Modernist Manifestos
At the beginning of the twentieth century, traditions and boundaries of many kinds were under assault across the Western world. Rapid developments in science and technology were transforming the texture of everyday life and conceptions of the universe; psychology, anthropology, and philosophy were challenging old ways of conceiving the human mind and religion; empire, migration, and city life were forcing together peoples of diverse origins. This dizzying pace of change, this break with tradition, this eruption of modernity can also be seen in the cutting-edge art and literature of the time. Avant-garde modernism caught fire in Europe in the decade before World War I. The Spanish expatriate artist Pablo Picasso's landmark cubist painting of 1907, Les Demoiselles d Avignon (see the color insert), shattered centuries of artistic convention. Two years later the Italian poet F. T. Marinetti published his first futurist manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro, blasting the dead weight of 'museums, libraries, and academies,' glorifying 'the beauty of speed.' Written from 1911 to 1913, the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky's ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) marked such a daring departure from harmonic and rhythmic traditions in Western classical music that its first performance, in Paris, sparked a riot. Like Picasso, Marinetti, and Stravinsky, other avant-garde modernists? advocates of radical newness in the arts?exploded conventions in music, painting, fiction, poetry, and other genres, opening up new formal and thematic possibilities for the twentieth century.
In just a few years the rebellious energies and convention-defying activities of avantgarde modernism swept through the major European cities, from Moscow and Milan to Munich, Paris, and London. Some of the leading figures of avant-garde modernism published manifestos, public declarations explaining, justifying, and promoting their ambitions and revolutionary views. The modernists were not the first artists to adapt the manifesto from the political sphere, but they used manifestos widely and vociferously, trumpeting iconoclastic ideas in terms that were meant not only to rally but also, in some cases, to shock. These documents were so influential that they have become an integral part of the history of modernism.
London, where the startling impact of cubism and futurism was felt almost immediately, became a central site in the formation of anglophone modernism. London's publishing opportunities and literary ferment attracted an array of visiting and expatriate writers. The American poet Ezra Pound arrived there in 1908, at twenty-three, and soon ignited London's literary avant-garde, his apartment in Kensington a magnet for like-minded innovators. He befriended the English philosopher poet T. E. Hulme, who led an avant-garde literary group. Like the cubists and futurists, these modernists advocated a radical break with artistic convention. In lectures Hulme influentially denounced Romanticism as so much moaning and whining and proposed a 'hard, dry' literature in its stead?a notion Pound echoed in his call for 'harder and saner' verse, 'like granite.' After T. S. Eliot came to England in 1914, astonishing Pound by his having 'modernized himself on his own,' he also composed essays marked by Hulme's influence. Aggressively asserting new form and subject matter while holding up the standard of classic texts, the modernists repudiated what they saw as the slushy, self-indulgent literature of the nineteenth century?'blurry, messy,' and 'sentimentalistic,' in Pound's words. This desire to break decisively with Romanticism and Victorianism?often realized more in theory than in practice? became a recurrent feature in their public declarations. The 1914 manifesto of the
1996
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MODERNIST MANIFESTOS / 1997
journal Blast thunders, 'BLAST / years 1837 to 1900': like other avant-garde manifestos, this one damns the middle class for perpetuating Victorian taste and conven
tional mores.
The agitations, declarations, and poetic experiments of Hulme, Pound, and others resulted in the formation of
