Born in London, F. S. Flint (1885?1960) worked in the British civil service, translated poetry (mostly French), and eventually published volumes of his own imagist poetry. Ezra Pound (1885?1972) was born in Hailey, Idaho, and was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College. During his twelve years in London, from 1908 to 1920, where he became closely associated with W. B. Yeats and T. E. Hulme, he was the most vigorous entrepreneur of literary modernism, helping James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and other writers launch their careers. In London he also began working on material for his major work, the massive poem The Cantos. Living briefly in Paris and then for twenty years in Italy as an ardent supporter of the Fascist regime, he was arrested for treason in 1945, having made Rome Radio broadcasts against the
U.S. war effort. He spent twelve years, from 1946 to 1958, in a Washington, D.C., asylum for the criminally insane before returning to Italy, where he fell into an almost complete silence until the end of his life.
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200 4 / MODERNIST MANIFESTOS
Imagisme1
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.2 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.
F. S. Flint A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste
An 'Image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the term 'complex' rather in the technical sense
]. In response to many requests for information prescribed form ['Editor's Note' from original]. regarding Imagism and the Imagistes, we publish 'Vers libre': free verse (French). this note by Mr. Flint, supplementing it with fur-2. Francois Villon (1431-after 1463), French ther exemplification by Mr. Pound. It will be seen poet. Sappho (fl. ca. 610?ca. 580 B.C.E.), Greek from these that Imagism is not necessarily associ-poet. Catullus (ca. 84?ca. 54 B.C.E.), Roman poet. ated with Hellenic subjects, or with vers libre as a
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POUND: A FEW DON'TS BY AN IMAGISTE / 2005
employed by the newer psychologists, such as Hart,1 though we might not agree absolutely in our application.
It is the presentation of such a 'complex' instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art.
It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.
All this, however, some may consider open to debate. The immediate necessity is to tabulate A LIST OF DONT'S for those beginning to write verses. But I can not put all of them into Mosaic negative.2
To begin with, consider the three rules recorded by Mr. Flint, not as dogma?never consider anything as dogma?but as the result of long contemplation, which, even if it is some one else's contemplation, may be worth consideration.
Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. Consider the discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco-Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres.
Language
Use no superflous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.
Don't use such an expression as 'dim lands of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol.
Go in fear of abstractions. Don't retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths.
What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow.
Don't imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as the average piano teacher spends on the art of music.
Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it.
