BOOKS AND WRITERS
THE extraordinary poetic reputation of Ezra Pound, that has caused him to be placed on a level sometimes higher than that of W. B. Yeats or T. S. Eliot, has not yet been effectively investigated, either to establish it as something worthier than a fashion, or to dismiss it as nothing else. The book which might have decided this is a collection of essays to be presented to Ezra Pound on his 65th birthday, under the editorship of Mr. Peter Russell.* This is an interesting book, for, by describing his vital personal influence, and in one or two sketches picturing him as the impresario of modern poetry, the book is partly a record and partly an explanation of the literary fashion which Pound set for a certain group of writers. It is an important book, for it attempts to convince the reader of the greatness of Pound's poetry, where it does not already assume this. It is also an affecting book, for it shows to what extreme • of uncritical admiration friendship and gratitude may carry the disciple. But it is a bad book, if it is meant to be " an unbiased and representative criticism."
Among several other reprints, ii contains one article which was written as early as 1925 by Ernest Hemingway, and another by Mr. Eliot published in 1946. As several of the other writers quote Mr. Eliot's introduction to a volame of Pound's Selected Poems published in 1928, and as he himself in this recent article has found nothing of importance to alter in- his former view, one may take that view as being one of the most important critical foundations for the reputation of Pound's verse. In 1928, having described Mauberley as a great poem, Mr. Eliot went on to call the Contort' (of which all but the Pisan Cantos have now been re-issued) " by far his most important achievement": but the importance which Mr. Eliot saw in this work was not the greatness, dignity, wisdom or imagination of theme, subject, character or conception, but the ability of the poet to use words and rhythms in a skilful manner. He has written : " As for the meaning of the Cantos, that never worries me, and I do not believe that I care . . . I am glad that the philosophy is there, but I am not interested in it." This emphasis which exalts the verbal and rhythmic dexterities of Pound—which are as felicitous when applied to something incomprehensible or trivial as they are when used for some clear or vital statement=may be the only satisfactory one, but it precludes Pound's importance as a poet.
Certainly in Mr. Russell's book the several essays which attempt to explain either the meaning or the philosophy or the structure of the Cantos restore the critical balance by attempting-to establish the Cantos as something better than an open storehouse of modern cadences. Mr. Russell's view—"To try to separate the poetic essence from the didactic substance of the poem would be valueless pedantry or, at best, adolescent romantic aestheticism "—does at least allow from the starting-point- of discussion the possibility of Pound's greatness : Mr. Eliot's hardly does that. For one may imagine the work of a poet being held up for attention only because it contains certain virtues of language, but one cannot conceive the recommendation of such work as great poetry, except by a perversion of one's idea of greatness and poetry. As poetry is composed of words only, any theme it contains depends entirely on the words : there cannot be a thought which one may extract from a poem and call great, while the language is mediocre ; nor can there, as in this instance, be a language which is great when- it expresses mediocre thoughts. Because of this, although one must agree with Mr. Eliot that the only value-of the Cantos is stylistic,- one does not rate the total value very high. Perhaps to poets the value may be immeasurable. Pound's greatest achievement is probably his having encouraged, and made innumerable precedents for, the inclusion of a large number of new and several previously offensive words in the vocabrof English poetry. , In the rectification of the purism of previous poets he went too far, especially in adopting too frequently a syntax that derives from the language spoken today- by men of inferior habits of speech.. For all _this, he is undoubtedly the .superb master, ".the oldie begetter," of the tfiodern exaltation of novelty and ingenuity of verbal technique, over and above nobility or depth of subject. yet his value is still obscured by his admirers, and ignored by the rest.
The rest have od the whole dismissed the Cantos as obscure. This is unnecessary : one has difficulty in understanding what the author says only when one does not share with him a knowledge of the object or the circumstances to which he refers, or the language, such as Chinese, which he uses. It is our incapacity, not his obscurity, which causes the difficulty. His fault is the graver one of conception, more than of execution. Because his subjects, such as the methods -of conduCting financial houses, or the chronicle of the Chinese dynasties, are of the kind which in principle no one need know to appreciate poetry—as in principle we .must have a certain knowledge of nature to appreciate any poetry—the real fault is not that their presentation is obscure (though he could have made it much easier, in fact he deliberately conceals his meaning), but that any poem which has this kind of subject cannot, without a' miracle of imagination, command serious consideration—and consideration which, in its proper nature, is obliged to pay little attention to what is being said, because the miracle has not been performed, cannot lie called serious.
Should one apply to the Cantos the full power of an alert con- centration, such as withdraws from reading recognisably great poetry with a sensation of having met a far greater than its own image, one will be repelled after a very, short time ; should one do the same to The Testament of Beauty one may be disappointed, but one will not be repelled. For Pound's work resists serious atten- tion. If one does not accept the surface of not always reasonably connected images as containing a sufficient sequence of sense, one will find nothing else to accept. If one is not adapted to the recon- ciliation of the meanest kind of language as it is employed is the meanest kind of conversation with the idea of language that is proper to poetry, then one will conclude that there is much in this . work which is not poetry. No one will deny that there are parts of this book which draw a momentarily pleasing picture ; that there are lines of extraordinary beauty ; that there are more diversity of syntax and more novelty and originality of.expression than in any. other poem of this period. But force of syntax is more important than diversity, as the aptness of words is more important than their mere use ; and the kind of novelty which is exhibited in Pound's work, and which has been elevated falsely to one of the major poetic virtues by his numerous imitators, is not the novelty that is bred out of the operations ofaa poiverful imagination, but the kind of novelty which a man of vast and ill-digested erudition might be able to produce by effort of will.
This, of course, is the core of the matter : how it was done, and why it was done : how such a masterpiece of unbelievable, unneces- sary ingenuity could have been performed. Pound's object of com- posing a hundred Chntos is now in sight of being achieved. Of his readers no one is really fit to judge the work : no one is qualified to say whether the model of a Bach fugue is faithfully followed and bestows its unity on the whole. For there is only one person who can say whether this work is a whole work, whether it is good or bad.. It is, constructed on principles that belong to one man's mind alone, which has built out of its ideas a castle which it has made even more dense than that of Axel, seated at Auersperg, in the centre of the impregnable forest ; but Pound's castle is neither as noble nor as interesting an edifice Even his greatest admirer has dekribed the place to which Pound sent the society of men condemned in the Cantos as " a Hell without dignity,: without tragedy, and it presupposes a Paradise without dignity. But perhaps the most acute criticism of Pound's work is contained in its description, -brp George Seferis, as " a poetry where the impor- tant and the trivial have the same value." RICHARD MURPHY.
* Ezra Pound. Edited by Peter Russell. (Peter NevilL 12s. 6d.) t Sevenof Camas.- Ity Ezra- Poimd. (Faber. 25s.) -
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