--. ~...---. 11' -- THE POETRY OF RONALD DUNCAN by DANIEL CHARLES LANE A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial. fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY School of Humanities & Cultural Interpretation Faculty of Arts & Education In collaboration with The Ronald Duncan Trust December 1996 ABSTRACT Daniel Charles Lane The Poetry of Ronald Duncan This thesis is the first sustained critical analysis of the poetry of Ronald Duncan (1914-1982). As this is the first study of Duncan's poetry, a substantial part is exegesis and follows a chronological pattern. Duncan was a man of letters who wrote poetry, plays, librettos, songs, short stories, journals, autobiographies, biographies and novels. He was strongly influenced by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Their poetics and personal advice enabled Duncan to produce a series of publications that pursued some basic modernist tenets, such as an adherence to a European poetic tradition and the belief that poetry could induce cultural renewal, via an overtly subjectivised perspective. A chapter of this thesis has been allocated for each of Duncan's poetry publications. The introduction explores the personal and ideological importance of Pound and Eliot for Duncan; Pound's input into Duncan's magazine Townsman: and how Eliot, as Duncan's publisher, was able to offer a significant platform for his poetry. It also examines the position of the writer in relation to his writing, to show how the subjectivity of modernist authors compared with Duncan's belief that authorial presence was an essential part of any genuine poetic endeavour. Duncan's poetic career spanned almost forty years, from 1939 to 1977. His first publication, Postcards to Pulcinella (c1939), exemplifies his early experimentation with form. His next, and first Faber publication, The Mongrel (1950), is notable for its diversity of form and theme, and develops a greater awareness of European poetic diversity than is present in Postcards to Pulcinella. The Solitudes (1960) introduces a reworking of love poem sequences, which is developed in Unpopular Poems (1969) and For The Few (1977), and concentrates increasingly on lost love and personal grief. Between Unpopular Poems and For the Few Duncan published the five parts of his epic narrative poem M..an (1970-4). This major work charts the history of the universe and human development, and blends poetic with scientific discourse. M..an exemplifies, above all else, Duncan's on-going belief that all things exist only in his conscious understanding. The relationship between Duncan, the writing process and the resultant poetry, is a recurrent theme throughout the thesis. By drawing a distinction between author (writing subject) and the written representation of that author in the poetry (written subject) it explores the relationship between Duncan's own consciousness, the world it perceives, and the linguistic structures he uses in communicating their conjunction. Each of Duncan's poetry publications develops themes of love, sex, nature, human nature, Christianity and subjective isolation. Employing a variety of verse forms and tropes these themes are teased out book by book, but conclude with his belief that conscious expansion and cultural development through poetry was a futile, but nevertheless necessary, endeavour. Contents Acknowledgements Author's Declaration ii Introduction: Ronald Duncan: The Poetics of the Personal in the Modernist Mirror 1 1 The Mongrel: Solipsism, Complicity, Craft and Alliances 35 2 The Solitudes: Developing the Love Sequence Tradition 69 3 Unpopular Poems: Deep within the Subject 107 4 Man: The Pursuit of Consciousness 130 Part One 141 Part Two 151 Part Three 161 Part Four 170 Part Five 179 The Correlation Between the Written and Writing Subject as Signified by the Subjective Pronoun 'I' 182 Anecdote and the Autobiographical 188 Language Systems, Intertextuality and Truth Function 193 Man and the Epic Tradition 202 The Role of Women in Man 208 Stylistic Technique 211 Conclusion 218 5 For The Few: The Self and the Dead 227 Conclusions 246 Appendix 250 Bibliography 251 Acknowledgements I am grateful to University of Plymouth and The Ronald Duncan Trust for funding and organising the studentship, and allowing me sustained access to The Ronald Duncan Archive The New Collection. The archives held at King's College Cambridge and The University of Texas were also made available by those responsible. My gratitude goes to Anna Trussler, the Archivist for the Ronald Duncan Archive. Her knowledge of the archive and her willingness to search for documents proved a great help. I wish her the very best for her own research project. Special thanks to Dr Robert Gee, whose idea it was to form the partnership between the University and the Trust and whose support and advice as Second Supervisor have been invaluable. I would also like to thank Dr Andy Hannan for his support and commitment to the Research Base on the Exmouth Campus of the University of Plymouth, which has enabled all Wandale Research Students to enjoy maximum technical benefits, and is enhanced by the calm organisation of its administrator, Karen Somerfield. No one knows the rigours of a PhD better than a fellow student, so I am grateful to all the Wandale Researchers for their encouragement; especially Ian Dalgleish and Lucy Ellis who not only had to share an office with me, but were still ready to discuss Duncan's poetry and to share ideas. Ron Shannon, Ian Dalgleish, Lucy Ellis, Sue Gibbins, Amy Williams, Misri Deitch-Dey, Adrian Flemming, Simon Orpen and Bill Jenks have all helped me keep a clear perspective of my research by their encouragement, humour and friendship. And to my parents I owe a great debt, as always, for their understanding and unquestioning support. Finally I would like to thank my Director of Studies Dr Tony Lopez for his excellent supervision, constant energy and enthusiasm, patience, encouragement, and not least, friendship. j ·' . I . ' .:Autho~s 1Dedaration At no· time during .the regi*ation· for the 1degree of !Doctor of Philosophy has the• author.1been.registered for .any ,other University award .. 'fhis sttidy was firianced.·with the: aid 1ofa •studentship !jointly :fundedl,by ithe University· of ·Plymouth· and ·the Ronald 1Di.incari Trust. · Signed .•.. :.. /.}~·········• .. '" Date;.,..?.:c:.].l,~ .. l ..1"-, .. ,... , :ii Introduction Ronald Duncan: The Poetics Of The Personal In The Modernist Mirror This thesis is a study of the poetry of Ronald Duncan (1914-1982). To date there is no critical work which attempts to explore DWlcan's poetic career from the self-published Postcards to Pulcinella. circa 1940, through his volumes published by Faber and Hart-Davis, his epic Man, to For the Few (Rebel Press, 1977). Most of the writing that exists on DWlcan's poetry is in the form of book reviews. A Tribute to Ronald OWlcan (1974), a collection of essays written to celebrate Duncan's sixtieth birthday, offers slightly more detailed criticism. However, as the remit given to those asked to contribute by its editor Harold Lockyear was to write either about Duncan or on a subject that would interest him, and as the contributors ranged from scientists to singers, the subject matter of the essays is often anecdotal or irrelevant to this study. Of those that engage directly with Duncan's writing all weave together his poetry, dramas, biography and relationship to the author, with the dramas always receiving the most attention. William Wahl's essay 'The Poetic Theories of Ronald DWlcan' which appeared in Poetic Drama and Poetic Theory. University of Salzburg, 1974, No. 27, pp. 81-132, also offers little in the way of useful criticism for, as he declares: When given this opportunity to write on Ronald Duncan's poetic theories, I was determined that I should make no attempt to examine any of his poetry critically. (p. 81) In fact, Wahl's essay rewrites his interviews with OW1can which were similarly published by the University of Salzburg as 'Ronald DWlcan: Verse 1 Dramatist and Poet Interviewed by William Wahl' in Poetic Drama No. 20, 1973. Before and after Wahl there is no evidence to suggest that Duncan's poetry has been seen as worthy of analysis. This is all the more surprising when one considers that his poetic career ranged from 1939-77, included a 335 page modern epic, and that his writing developed first-hand from two of the most influential canonical writers of the twentieth century: T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. This account, therefore, offers the first sustained criticism of Duncan's poetry and examines each of his publications in chronological order. It begins by looking at the significance of his founding and editing of the magazine Townsman which marked an important point of collaboration with Ezra Pound who, along with T. S. Eliot, was to significantly affect Duncan's writing. This is not to suggest that Duncan was a mere foil for Poundian or Eliotian ideologies, but to emphasise that Duncan's style of poetry owed much to the teachings of Anglo-Arnerican modernists. What Duncan's poetry reveals most is an appropriation of modernist practices into a poetic that is at once distinctly personal. This is most apparent in Duncan's major poem M..a.n (1970-4} whose Epic intentions bind, in the latter part of the twentieth century, Duncan's desire for universal understanding to the modernist grand narratives- Ulysses (1922), The Cantos (1930-69), and 'The Waste Land' (1922) - that evolved from fin de siecle disenchantment and the determination for aesthetic renewal. In order to see how Duncan interprets and appropriates modernism it is first necessary to examine some aspects of what were then arguably its major texts.1 From here it will be possible to see how Duncan invests the notion of cultural renewal with his own notion of subjective idealism.