UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL INSTITUTO DE LETRAS PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS Martin John Fletcher The view from The Waste Land: how Modernist poetry in England survived the Great War PORTO ALEGRE 2016 UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL INSTITUTO DE LETRAS PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS The view from The Waste Land: how Modernist poetry in England survived the Great War Tese de doutorado em Literatura Inglesa, submetida como requisito parcial para a obtenção do título de doutor. Orientadora: Profa. Dra. Kathrin Rosenfield Doutorando: Martin Fletcher Area de concentração: Literatura inglesa PORTO ALEGRE 2016 CIP - Catalogação na Publicação Fletcher, Martin The view from 'The Waste Land': how Modernist poetry in England survived the Great War / Martin Fletcher. -- 2016. 233 f. Orientadora: Profa. Dra. Kathrin Rosenfield. Tese (Doutorado) -- Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Instituto de Letras, Programa de Pós- Graduação em Letras, Porto Alegre, BR-RS, 2016. 1. T. S. Eliot; Ezra Pound; Imagism; Herbert Read; Harold Monro.. I. Rosenfield, Profa. Dra. Kathrin, orient. II. Título. Elaborada pelo Sistema de Geração Automática de Ficha Catalográfica da UFRGS com os dados fornecidos pelo(a) autor(a). For Ana, my wonderful Carioca wife, and my loving son Edward For my mother, Grace May, who has supported me in all I have done, and my brother Graham, a true friend In memory of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and all the Great War poets who gave their lives selflessly and gifted us with their poetry THANKS AND APPRECIATION Thank you to all my teachers and colleagues at UFRGS who gave me invaluable advice, direction, comfort and warmth throughout this long journey of discovery: To Sandra Maggio for embracing me into the Letras fold when I was lost and confused, and without whom none of this would have been possible To Elaine Indrusiak who, by her insight and learning, directed me to a quotation which transformed my approach, and who has always been generous with her time and advice To Lawrence Pereira, whose learned perceptions about my work have always proved to be golden, and whose generosity of spirit and love of poetry inspired me And a great big thank you to my marvellous ‘orientadora’ Kathrin Rosenfield, whose sparkling intellect, judicious direction, big heart and words of encouragement have been a comfort and inspiration RESUMO O poema icônico de T. S. Eliot The Waste Land, publicado em 1922, é indiscutivelmente o texto principal de poesia moderna em inglês. Eliot residia em Londres no momento da sua composição, e embora o poema contenha numerosas citações literárias e culturais, The Waste Land não é considerado como tendo sido influenciado por nenhum dos poetas ingleses que foram contemporâneos de Eliot. Pelo contrário, o poema é tido como um afastamento radical e uma reação contra, a poesia inglesa escrita antes e durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial (1914-1918). Neste artigo, eu argumento que The Waste Land contém ecos da obra dos poetas ingleses Harold Monro e Herbert Read, ambos os quais conheciam Eliot bem. Olhando retrospectivamente a partir de 1922, tendo The Waste Land como meu texto modernista base e ponto de partida crítico, eu conduzo uma reavaliação da cena poética inglesa do período 1910- 1922, a partir dos Georgian Poets do pré-guerra até o aparecimento, no pós-guerra, da obra- prima de Eliot. Ambos Monro e Read foram influenciados pelo movimento radical 'Imagism' de Ezra Pound, que formou um elemento central na cena da poesia progressiva de Londres nos anos que antecederam a guerra. Portanto, utilizo ambos The Waste Land e os experimentos 'Imagist' de Pound como modelos de prática modernista através dos quais comparar e contrastar a obra dos Georgian Poets (especificamente Wilfrid Gibson), a poesia produzida durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial, e a obra de Monro e Read. Os princípios orientadores da minha abordagem analítica são dois: em termos de prática poética, eu avalio o trabalho de Eliot e seus contemporâneos, comparando as suas abordagens quanto à forma, a fim de demonstrar como a forma poética não apenas define o conteúdo, mas também revela mudanças nos valores culturais. Em segundo lugar, minha abordagem teórica é baseada nos conceitos mutantes da função estética da poesia, buscando demonstrar como valores estéticos estão historicamente relacionados a, e determinam, a produção e a recepção da poesia, expondo como os experimentos modernistas de Eliot e Pound estão historicamente relacionados com princípios estéticos românticos. Palavras-chave: T. S. Eliot; Ezra Pound; Imagism; Georgian Poetry; Herbert Read; Harold Monro. ABSTRACT T. S. Eliot’s iconic poem The Waste Land, published in 1922, is indisputably the key Modernist poetry text in English. Eliot was living in London at the time of its composition, and although the poem contains numerous literary references, The Waste Land is not thought to have been influenced by the poetry of Eliot’s English contemporaries. On the contrary, the poem is regarded as a radical departure from, and reaction against, the English poetry being written before and throughout the Great War (1914-1918). In this paper, I argue that The Waste Land contains echoes of the work of English poets Harold Monro and Herbert Read, both of whom knew Eliot well. Looking back retrospectively from 1922, with The Waste Land as my exemplary Modernist text and critical starting point, I carry out a reassessment of the English poetry scene from 1910 to 1922, from the pre-war Georgians to the post-war appearance of Eliot’s masterpiece. Both Monro and Read were influenced by Ezra Pound’s radical ‘Imagism’ movement, which formed a central plank in the progressive London poetry scene in the years leading up to the war. I therefore employ both The Waste Land and Pound’s ‘Imagist’ experiments as models of Modernist practice by which to compare and contrast the work of the Georgians (particularly Wilfrid Gibson), the poetry produced during the Great War, and the work of Monro and Read. The guiding principles of my analytical approach are twofold: firstly, in terms of poetic practice, I evaluate the work of Eliot and his contemporaries by comparing their approaches to form, assessing how poetic technique both defines content and offers insight into shifts in cultural values; secondly, my theoretical approach is based on changing concepts of the aesthetic function of poetry, revealing how aesthetic values are historically relative to, and determine, the production and reception of poetry, ultimately exposing how Eliot and Pound’s Modernist experiments are historically related to Romantic aesthetic principles. Keywords: T. S. Eliot; Ezra Pound; Imagism; Georgian Poetry; Herbert Read; Harold Monro. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...08 Part One: T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and the birth of Modernism………………………….24 1.1 ‘Hiding Behind Form’: Modernist Poetics and the escape from personality………..25 1.2 The Aesthetic of the Image: Ezra Pound and the emergence of Modernist poetry in England………………………………………………………………………………….42 1.3 Fusing the Voices: the appropriation and distillation of The Waste Land…………..61 Part Two: The Shadow of War: Eliot’s English contemporaries………………………..79 2.1 More than ‘rainbows, cuckoos, daffodils and timid hares’: a reassessment of The Georgians………………………………………………………………………………..80 2.2 Changing perceptions of the Great War: patriotism, propaganda and protest in English poetry, 1914-1918……………………………………………………………………….98 2.3 Forgotten voices 1: Wilfrid Wilson Gibson………………………………………...128 2.4 Forgotten voices 2: Harold Monro………………………………………………….145 2.5 Forgotten voices 3: Herbert Read………………………………………………......165 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...187 Bibliographical References……………………………………………………………..195 Annexes….……………………………………………………………………………..200 Annex One: T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land………………………………………...…….201 Annex Two: Harold Monro, Strange Meetings………………………………………...211 Annex Three: Herbert Read, Eclogues……………………………………………........217 Annex Four: Herbert Read, The Scene of War…………………………………….......226 Introduction Though Eliot is unquestionably a central figure in the development of modern poetry, his achievement cannot be isolated from that of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries: in codifying the aims of the twentieth-century poet and clarifying his intentions, he pointed the way ahead, but his direction had already been determined by those who preceded him. John Munro (MUNRO, 1968, p. 34) The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. Jorges Luis Borges (IRBY & YATES, 2000, p. 236) When a work of literature appears which transforms the landscape of imaginative writing, a shadow is cast over existing works which can suddenly find themselves exposed as naïve or out-of-date. We might think of Sterne’s 18th century novel Tristram Shandy, which, amongst other things, radically challenged the concept of temporal representation in fiction. We may also cite Joyce’s Ulysses, which, in a sense, advanced the issue of representation by revealing an inner world of random thought processes hitherto ignored by the purveyors of realism. The publication of The Waste Land, however, (subsequently referred to as TWL) revolutionised not only the reading and writing of poetry, it also played a major role in establishing English Literature as a legitimate academic subject.1 Before TWL, the close reading of poetry, what we understand today as the exegesis of the literary text, had been considered neither appropriate nor necessary. At a stroke, Eliot’s 1922 poem symbolises the emergence of Modernism after the Great War and ushers in a new era of critical analysis. The attention received by TWL in academia has hardly diminished in the century since its publication. In stark contrast, the lack of attention now given to Eliot’s English contemporaries, who were writing and publishing poetry before, during and after the war, is lamentable. One of the unfortunate consequences of TWL is that its striking originality intoxicated critics and scholars to such an extent (as it does to this day) that they began to reject Eliot’s immediate predecessors as irrelevant.