This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. A Re-examination of the Work of T. E. Hulme Christos Hadjiyiannis Doctor of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh February 2011 Τοσ κὐ κλοσ ηα γσρἰ ζμαηα, ποσ ανεβοκαηεβαἰ νοσ και ηοσ ηροτοὐ ποσ ὠρες υηλἀ κι ὠρες ζηα βἀ θη πηαἰ νοσ, και ηοσ καιροὐ η᾽ αλλἀ μαηα ποσ αναπαημὀ δεν ἐ τοσ, μα ζηο καλὀ κ᾽ εις ηο κακὀ περιπαηοὐ ν και ηρἐ τοσ και ηφν αρμἀ ηφ οι ηαρατἐ ς, ἐ τθρηηες και ηα βἀ ρη, ηοσ Ἐ ρφηα η εμπὀ ρεζη και ηης θιλἰ ας η τάρη... Contents Acknowledgements v Abstract vii Introduction Re-examining Hulme’s Work 1 Chapter 1 “Cinders” and “Notes on Language and Style”: Early Philosophical Concerns 1. Introduction 12 2. Reality as “cinders” 14 3. Language as “gossamer web” 22 4. Poetry as “visual” language 32 5. Conclusion 40 Chapter 2 “A Lecture on Modern Poetry”: Towards a Theory for Modern Poetry 1. Introduction 42 2. The “modern spirit” 45 3. Impressionism and free verse 57 4. The “new visual art” 68 5. Conclusion 78 Chapter 3 Writings on Bergson: An Interpretation of Bergson’s Metaphysics 1. Introduction 80 2. Bergson‟s crossing of the Channel 83 3. A philosophy against “artificial gymnastics” 87 4. The “real importance” of Bergson 95 5. Bergson‟s “conclusions” and the rising popularity of Bergson 101 6. “Bergson‟s Theory of Art” 113 7. Conclusion 124 Chapter 4 Essays on Politics: Classicism as Conservatism 1. Introduction 125 2. The Conservative Party “crisis” and the Commentator 127 3. “Anti-intellectualism” as theory of propaganda 132 4. “Diremption” 139 5. The creation of a Conservative ideology 145 6. Two kinds of classicism: the Commentator and the Action Française 155 7. “Conservative” poetry 167 8. Conclusion 174 Chapter 5 Essays on art: Abstraction and Anti-humanism 1. Introduction 176 2. Against the Renaissance: experimentation with “primitive” forms 179 3. “Humanism” and “anti-humanism” 192 4. The politics of anti-humanist art 199 5. Conclusion 213 Chapter 6 War Writings: War, Anti-pacifism and Objective Ethics 1. Introduction 215 2. Trench warfare: desperation and perseverance 216 3. The argument for war 227 4. Anti-pacifism and democracy 235 5. The ethics of anti-pacifist democracy 246 6. Conclusion 261 Epilogue “Fire away”: Re-interpreting Hulme’s work 262 Bibliography 269 v Acknowledgements I have benefited from numerous conversations with many members of staff and fellow students at The University of Edinburgh; they are too many to mention here, but special thanks to Dr. Olga Taxidou and Dr. Simon Malpas for their generous advice, support and constant encouragement, as well as Mark Bolsover for reminding me of the importance of Nietzsche in reading the modernists and for repeatedly urging me to revise my readings of Hulme. I am grateful to Prof. Claire Colebrook for her guidance in the early stages of this project and to Prof. Laura Marcus for her insightful comments and continuous support throughout the process of writing this thesis. More than anyone else, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Alex Thomson for his patience, generosity and help from day one. His sharp and intelligent comments helped shape this project and I have learned more than I could have ever wished for from his critical feedback. I have also benefited from the kindness and expertise of many Hulme scholars. Helen Burton at the University of Keele Library Archives helped me decipher Hulme‟s impossible handwriting and provided me copies of Hulme‟s manuscripts on various occasions; Susumu Kanetake has been extremely kind in sending me his out-of-print edition of Hulme‟s Notes on Language and Style; and Robert Ferguson, Prof. Ronald Schuchard and Dr. Michael Whitworth all generously shared their knowledge of Hulme‟s life and work with me. I am also grateful to the helpful librarians at the National Library of Scotland and University of Edinburgh Library, as well as to the staff at the British Library, the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, the Harry Ransom Center at Austin, Texas, the McMaster University vi Library in Hamilton, Ontario, the Hull University Archives, and the Tate Library and Archive. Glyn Salton-Cox read drafts of this thesis and urged me during many visits to the pub, in Cambridge and abroad, to re-think my argument, while Marina Fieros kindly volunteered to verify my translations from French. Karin, Mark, Silvia, Andrew, Sarah, Lila and Corey made Edinburgh a happy place during the past four years. My dear friends from back home – Elina, Mike, Nikolis and Costas – and from Cambridge – Danilo, Florian and Christoforos – have been there for me when I asked for their help and, more importantly, when I didn‟t. I could not have done this without the love and support of my brother and sister, Yangos and Demetra, and my girlfriend Hana, who has had to endure – more times than I wish to know – my stress and anxieties during these years, remaining always extremely loving and wonderfully supportive. This is in loving memory of my grandmother and for my parents, Theo and Georgia, in infinite gratitude. Εσταριζηώ. vii Abstract This project challenges a series of common interpretations of Hulme‟s work: that his arguments are contradictory; that his career can be separated into distinct “phases”; that he endorsed other thinkers‟ ideas uncritically; and that he promulgated authoritarian politics. Chapter 1 examines the entries in Hulme‟s notebooks that relate his views on the nature of reality and language. Read through ideas in the works of Bergson, Nietzsche and Ribot, these rudimentary notes present a coherent “anti-intellectualist” philosophical position, consistent with claims made in his later writings. Chapter 2 focuses on “A Lecture on Modern Poetry.” Hulme‟s rejection of nineteenth-century verse was part of a broader campaign by poets in London to find new ways of expression, yet his ideas stand independently of claims made by Flint, Storer and Pound. Hulme‟s greatest contribution to Imagism is the emphasis he put on the use of images in poetry, a method that follows from the distinction he drew in the notebooks between “direct” and “indirect” language. Chapter 3, which examines Hulme‟s essays and lectures on Bergson, demonstrates that, although he embraced Bergson‟s philosophical method, Hulme remained critical of many of Bergson‟s theories. This discredits the claim that he was simply reiterating Bergson‟s ideas. Ultimately, Bergson‟s “intuition” enabled Hulme to develop his earlier description of “modern” poetry and to recast it as “classic” poetry. Chapter 4 investigates Hulme‟s political essays. Together with Storer, Hulme participated in a debate in the Commentator concerning the parliamentary crisis of 1910. It was as part of an attempt to create an efficient propaganda strategy for the Conservative party that Hulme postulated his famous antithesis between Romanticism and Classicism. Hulme‟s analysis of the process of political conversion shows that in 1910-12 he had not abandoned elements in his thought from Bergson‟s philosophy. Moreover, far from viii sharing the authoritarian political views of the Action Française, he can be more accurately described as a “moderate Conservative.” Chapter 5 demonstrates that claims Hulme made in his art criticism are consonant with the general reaction in 1913-14 against representational art. While drawing heavily on Worringer‟s anti-materialist conception of art history, he was using it to defend his contemporaries‟ experimentation with geometric forms, in a way similar to Fry and Bell. Although, like Worringer and Ludovici, Hulme campaigned for anti- humanism and mixed aesthetics with politics, the model of art he proposed did not carry the authoritarian implications of those of Worringer and Ludovici. Finally, Chapter 6 explores Hulme‟s war writings. Hulme was not a militarist; rather, he supported Britain‟s involvement in the war on the grounds that war against Germany would protect the British political institutions. He stayed true to his Conservative principles, using ideas from Sorel and Proudhon to dissociate the “democratic” from the “pacifist” ideology. There is also evidence that, despite his explicit rejection of vitalism in “A Notebook,” Hulme continued to value Bergson‟s method of “intuition” right up to his death in 1917. This project, therefore, argues for a re-interpretation of Hulme‟s work and shows the value of scrutinising the intellectual and political context in which he was writing in understanding the precise nature of his thought. 1 Introduction Re-Examining Hulme’s Work The name of T. E. Hulme reverberates widely across early twentieth-century literary studies. It is now a commonplace that in his short but prolific career, spanning from about 1908 until his death in 1917, Hulme exerted considerable influence on intellectual thought in the early modernist period; in the words of T. S. Eliot, Hulme is “the forerunner of a new attitude of mind” (“A Commentary” 231), a verdict which has been repeated by numerous other modernist figures throughout the years.