DAPHNE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE GROTESQUE IN MODERN POETRY A Dissertation by THOMAS HENRY MARTIN Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2008 Major Subject: English DAPHNE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: THE GROTESQUE IN MODERN POETRY A Dissertation by THOMAS HENRY MARTIN Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Paul Christensen Richard Golsan M. Jimmie Killingsworth Janet McCann Head of Department, M. Jimmie Killingsworth May 2008 Major Subject: English iii ABSTRACT Daphne in the Twentieth Century: The Grotesque in Modern Poetry. (May 2008) Thomas Henry Martin, B.A., The University of Texas at Austin; M.A., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Paul Christensen This dissertation seeks to expose the importance of the grotesque in the poetry and writings of Trans-Atlantic poets of the early twentieth century, particularly Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore and T.S. Eliot. Prior scholarship on the poets minimizes the effect of the grotesque in favor of the more objective elements found in such movements as Imagism. This text argues that these poets re-established the grotesque in their writing after World War I mainly through Hellenic myths, especially myths concerning the motif of the tree. The myths of Daphne and Apollo, Baucis and Philemon, and others use the tree motif as an example of complete metamorphosis into a new identity. This is an example of what Mikhail Bakhtin entitles grotesque realism, a type of grotesque not acknowledged in art since the French Revolution. Since the revolution, the grotesque involved an image trapped between two established forms of identity, or what Bakhtin refers to as the Romantic grotesque. This grotesque traps the image in stasis and does not provide a dynamic change of identity in the same way as grotesque realism. Therefore, these poets introduce the subversive act of change of identity in Western literature that had been absent for the most part for nearly a century. The modern poets pick up the use of the iv complete metamorphosis found in Hellenic myth in order to identify with a constantly changing urban environment that alienated its inhabitants. The modern city is a form of the grotesque in that it has transformed its environment from a natural state to a manmade state that is constantly in a state of transformation, itself. The modern poets use Hellenic myths and the tree motif to create an identity for themselves that would be as dynamic in transformation as the environment they inhabited. v DEDICATION To my parents, Warren Martin and Dorothy Gaye Martin for waiting so long vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Paul Christensen, Dr. Richard Golsan, Dr. Janet McCann for teaching me how to be a scholar and Dr. M. Jimmie Killingsworth, for making sure I kept going up that hill to my goal. I would also like to thank members of the English Department’s staff, including Amelia Reid, Barbara Newsom, Martin Anderson, and Paulette Lesher for assisting me when I was completely confused on which direction to go. In addition, I would like to add Ede D. Hilton-Lowe for also helping me out. I would like to extend my thanks to those who helped me personally as well. First I would like to thank Cathy Schlund-Vials for supporting my dreams and helping me with the subject matter for this dissertation. I would like to thank Daniela Kukrechtova for keeping it International when all else was hopelessly provincial. On the other hand, a shout goes out to Lindsay Illich and Crystal Goodman for keeping it provincial: Lindsay by demonstrating that South Texas is an impairment, not just a state of mind and Crystal by planning to entitle her autobiography “I Eat All I Can and Sell the Rest.” Here’s to Julie Groesch for helping to make sure that my autobiography will be titled “Between the Black Outs.” I would also like to thank Tembi Bergin, Crystal Boson, Maggie Carstarphan, Erin Hollis, Scarlet Kogel, Carmen Johnson, Tracy Jones, Melissa Nichols, Erika Skogebo, Susie Taylor and Shane Trayers. On the guys’ side, I would like to thank Larry Bonds, Joe Buenaflour, David Garcia, Collins Illich, Eric Janes, Ryan Malfurs, Paul McCann, Jim McPhail, Roger Reeves and Jesse Tijerina. I would also like to acknowledge the cast of characters at Fitzwilly’s who kept me vii entertained when I needed it. Finally, thanks to my family for helping with the weight of this dream. Sisyphus would’ve had more fun if he had a little help. I know I did. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT …………………………………….…………………………………... iii DEDICATION ……………………………………………………………………... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ……………………….………………………………….. viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: GODS AND MONSTERS …………………… 1 II PARADISE IS NOT ARTIFICIAL ……………………………... 33 III PHANTASMAGORIA ………….…………………………………. 68 IV MYSELF A WANDERING PLANET ……………………………. 115 V CONCLUSION: THE PHANTASTIKON ……………………….. 165 NOTES ………………..…………………………….………………………………. 203 WORKS CITED …………………………………………………………………. 206 VITA………………………………………………………………………………... 214 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: GODS AND MONSTERS This is a love story. With all of its complexities and academic rhetoric and dusty quotes, this is nothing more than a tragic little love story. The lovers never managed to embrace in the end. They were torn apart by the world they inhabited. In the end they remained apart, drifting to their own little corners of the world that battered them about. Oh, I believe they tried to come together. They desperately tried to remake their angry world. They searched and tore apart and rebuilt everything they thought would help to remake this world, or at least to connect back to it, to be a part of it. They wanted to rid themselves of that feeling of alienation: that feeling of drifting outside of the world they inhabited. That was their passion: to connect, to transform and to connect. They were grasping at completeness, because, alone, they knew they were withering away. These lovers were poets. At one time they were engaged. But the environment in which they lived became too corrosive for their own personalities as well as for their relationship. One lover followed the other half way around the world in order to maintain the relationship. Unfortunately, the urban environment half way around the world was much the same. Too many obstacles appeared: obstacles that were a part of their own characters. After all, they were affected by their own environment. The two poets were H.D. and Ezra Pound. As in every love story there were other characters involved as well. And in this ____________ This thesis follows the style of PMLA. 2 one, the main supporting players were William Carlos Williams and Sigmund Freud. Neither character participated directly in the relationship between H.D. and Ezra Pound. However, they did manage to illuminate the common bond between the two poets. The third poet, William Carlos Williams, also shared a similar desire. These three poets were concerned with the idea of unifying the inhabitants of the cities, particularly American cities, with their constantly changing environment. All three felt that poetry was a useful tool in orienting their reader to the changing environment of the cityscape. Other poets, such as Marianne Moore, Mina Loy and T. S. Eliot, also felt poetry could be used for such a task. However, the poet works out a poetics to deliver the audience from being alienated from their environment to feeling attune with it. This power involves mastering the nature of the grotesque, because the grotesque, properly invoked, brings forth complete metamorphosis. The reason American poets of the high modernist period wished to access the grotesque as a tool for metamorphosis concerns the rise of the city as a locus for determining contemporary character. The city is grotesque in its power to transform nature into manmade objects. However, the built environment is constantly in metamorphosis, according to Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau. This constant state of flux creates problems for the inhabitants of the city. For an inhabitant to survive, he must constantly be adept at navigating and, in some cases, manipulating his environment. In order to be adept in the city as an environment, the inhabitant must endure the constant changes of an industrialized landscape, as well as recognize its basis in the artificial. By the end of the nineteenth century, most of the inhabitants of western, 3 particularly American, cities did not see the city in its artificial, mercurial state. In The Revolt of the Masses, Jose Ortega y Gasset describes how the environment of the modern city is inhabited by a type of human being he labels a Naturmensch: a human being who can only read his surroundings in a pastoral sense. The world is civilized, but the inhabitant is not: he does not even see its civilization, but uses it as if it were a part of nature. The new man wants his automobile, and enjoys using it, but he thinks it is the spontaneous fruit of some Eden-like tree. His mind does not encompass the artificial, almost unreal nature of civilization, and the enthusiasm he feels for its instruments does not include the principles which make them possible. (Ortega y Gasset 70) The urban environment twisted the natural forms of nature into mechanical shapes, such as the ivy patterns on buildings or the embossed figures of flowers decorating locomotives and dynamos of power plants. When Prince Albert opened the Crystal Palace exhibition in 1851, he designed a series of hothouses in which nature and the machine are merged into a new hybrid figure.