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Ó American Sociological Association 2011 DOI: 10.1177/0094306111419106 http://cs.sagepub.com SPECIAL ESSAY

Modernism

MARY DE RACHEWILTZ, Brunnenberg, Italy

‘‘miracleoffiveintelligentvisitors/such a gathering possible OUTSIDE a bughouse ?’’ Editor’s note: An invited essay inspired by wrote to Olivia Rossetti Agresti Modernism in the Magazines: An from St. Elizabeths Hospital. In Rome, Via Introduction,byRobert Scholes and Ciro Menotti 36, the old lady did her best. Clifford Wulfman. New Haven, CT: She offered tea on Sunday afternoon. Her Yale University Press, 2010. 340pp. ‘‘gathering’’ consisted of three contempora- $40.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780300142044. ries: her sister Helen, usually accompanied by her daughter Imogen Dennis, Luigi Mary de Rachewiltz is the daughter of Villari, Cammillo Pellizzi and a young cou- Ezra Pound. ple in their twenties. ORA’s voice, lined with transparent irony when speaking of ‘‘isms,’’ used to quote her uncle, the ‘‘Pre- since in the appendix, Studies in Contempo- Rafaelite’’ Dante Gabriel Rossetti: ‘‘I am no rary Mentality, Pound is allowed to speak for Ite, I am a Poet.’’ Thus teaching the young himself. The book opens with three epigraphs, to ‘‘sort out the animals,’’ i.e., learn the two quotations from letters to and names and the dates of the founders and of and one from Make It New, participants in various movements, as well with the incisive statement : ‘‘You can’t as examine their motives and productions. know an era merely by knowing its best’’ Pound has been known as the founder of (p. 1). It might equally be said: by knowing and , though he soon its worst, let alone when speaking of a poet went his own way. He was spared being or even of a political movement and a coun- linked to Futurism, but not other next door try. There are sharp pointers to two essential isms, such as Fascism and racism. However, books for the serious reader: Donald Gall- he always took responsibility for his own up’s Ezra Pound: A Bibliography (University words: ego scriptor and ‘‘Ezra Pound of Virgina Press 1983) and David Moody’s speaking.’’ Ezra Pound : Poet : A Portrait of the Man and In recent years scholars and critics more His Work; Volume 1, The Young Genius 1885– and more often refer to him as the founder 1920 (Oxford University Press 2007). of Modernism. So it’s time to distinguish Pound says that we advance by discrimi- between modernism and modernity which nation and by practicing the virtue of ‘‘. . .inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it precision. is able to solve’’ (cf. Joshua Clover, ‘‘A form The authors of Modernism in the Magazines adequate to history,’’ Paideuma 37: 325). A are not afraid of calling Pound an ‘‘elitist.’’ number of books such as Michael North’s Though the tensions may remain insoluble, The Dialect of Modernism : Race, Language, the elitist must include also the pluralist. In and Twentieth-Century Literature (Oxford Uni- PRAEFATIO AD LECTOREM ELECTUM, versity Press 1994), Modernism and Copyright: (1910: 6) he said: Modernist Literature and Culture, edited by ‘‘[. . .] many dead men are our grandchil- Paul K. Saint-Amour (Oxford University dren’s contemporaries.’’ Note the ELEC- Press 2010) and Modernism in the Magazines TUM. Half a century later, in Thrones by Robert Scholes and Clifford Wulfman (Canto XCVI: 679) there’s one of the very are enlightening. The latter is especially so rare footnotes: ‘‘If we never write anything

533 Contemporary Sociology 40, 5

Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on September 14, 2011 534 Special Essay save what is already understood, the field of appear in Blast: ‘‘I cling to the spar. . . .Cow- understanding will never be extended. One ardly editors threaten: ‘If I dare’. . . Then they demands the right, now and again, to write will have my guts; They will cut down my for a few people whose special interests and wage,–’’ etc., July 1915. . . whose curiosity reaches into greater detail.’’ As late as 1959, in a BBC interview, one can may still be waiting for a contem- hear him lament ‘‘they don’t get the IRONY.’’ porary reader, ‘‘the pyramid builder,/ wait- When a young man sets out to build a ‘‘para- ing there to be born’’ (CXIII: 808). And diso terrestre,’’ to achieve the possible, he always a good Concordance will be the best must perforce skim over large territories, guide to the Epic that includes economics. looking at coast lines, bounding in , But let’s not stray from the Collection making mistakes, yet willing to ‘‘correct it of Little Magazines with their roster of with cheerfulness.’’ By the time he came to advertisements—a kind of sottisier, which rely on the principles of Confucius, the reads like a detective novel. A somewhat dif- Unwobbling Pivot, the enemy had been iden- ferent jesting is to be found in Sigismundo tified in das Leihkapital. It was time to be seri- Malatesta, talking to his steward: ous. In ? Versus Camouflage, January 10, 1918 (p. 322) one senses the stress of the war ‘‘And one day he said: Henry, you can and the awareness that have it,/ On condition, you can have it: for four months/You’ll stand any ‘‘Anyone can run to excesses,/ It is reasonable joke that I play on you, / easy to shoot past the mark, And you can joke back/ provided you don’t get too ornry.’’ (XI: 52). It is hard to stand firm in the middle’’ (XIII: 59). Could the little booklet SUPERMAN, pub- lished by Constable & Co., Ltd, London Yet when asked in 1965 to contribute to the 1934, edited by Ephraim Pundit, have been T.S.Eliot ‘‘Memorial’’ in The Sewanee Review, a late redress ? after paying the high homage: ‘‘His was One of the pleasures Scholes and Wulfman the true Dantescan voice –’’ he asked: offer is the highlighting of the hilarious ‘‘Who is there now for me to share a joke ‘‘hirsuta et pexa’’ game, the rough and the with?’’ smooth, Pound played with the various Both Modernists in excelsis may at times magazines, contrasting the aim of the one have fallen prey to identity politics or reli- to the other, ‘‘Making no compromise with gion, but that’s when they most teased each the public taste’’ (p. 13). While ferociously other. While Pound went on feeding cats or attacking the contemporary British mentali- stranded artists, his friend the Possum wrote ty, he divides the audiences and the aims The Book of Practical Cats, (now I am being of the periodicals into five categories, some- catty: Eliot as Chief Editor at Fabers having what with tongue in cheek, from those chan- previously refused, because it would not nelling thought to those designed to stop sell, Br’er Rabbit’s translation of his 12- thought altogether. year-old daughter’s ‘‘Gais: The Beauties of A triumphant 23-year-old wrote to his the Tyrol’’). parents from Venice in 1908: ‘‘Sound the ‘‘Don’t lose your sense of humor’’ is the best trumpet, let zipp the drum & swatt the big advice I’ve ever had, and from my mother at bassoon. It pays to advertise.’’ His first book that. Have present-day Modernists kept theirs of poems, , had just been or have they succumbed to the vulgarity of published—at his own expense—ergo also materialism hatching violence? The two Mas- the art of advertising had to be practiced to ters have stated ‘‘In my end is my beginning’’ achieve distribution, and fame. and ‘‘Things have ends and beginnings.’’ Mod- In London, as the WWI years dragged on ernism may by now be passe´. Only high Poet- and a ‘‘cold and bitter’’ wind blew across ry keeps the beginnings alive, sets forever the country, the weariness of the job, writing keel to brakers, renews itself with every sun. to pay the rent, despite the banter, is clearly All isms can be considered stepping stones readable between the lines. The let-ups across the great river of Art, ever flowing,

Contemporary Sociology 40, 5

Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on September 14, 2011 Special Essay 535 never the same water, reflecting the land- Chancing on ‘‘a lonely De Gama doubling scape, carrying the jetsam and flotsam (two an uncharted cape’’ (Blackwoods, 23 August words that bring to mind e.e.cummings, is 1917:229 will make you smile—aha, already he a modernist? He undoubtedly had a sense then. . .and in Canto VII: De Gama wore of humor as well as a sense of Tradition). striped pants in Africa. A whole lesson in They all need Kindergarten, was Pound’s detail to be learned. Or from other such constant complaint at St. Liz. When he names that were not familiar before one returned to Italy, his complaint was: they had to look them up for the ‘‘detail’’ in their expect me to be a telephone directory.Wheth- historical context. er this has any relevance to the different edu- cational systems or different mind sets, is an open question. One thing experience dic- Reference tates: the enjoyment with the sottisier will Pound, Ezra. 1996. The Cantos of Ezra Pound. New be greater after having digested the Cantos. York, NY: New Directions.

Contemporary Sociology 40, 5

Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on September 14, 2011