Eliot’s and Pound’s Declensions of the Past and Present: When Time Becomes Space

[EN]The aim of this paper is to analyze the way in which Pound’s and Eliot’s Modernist poetics assume the task of what Longenbach calls the “existential” historian who endeavors in Bradley’s words “to breathe the life of the present into the death of the past.” It argues that stylistically, this approach of time does away with the temporal dimension inherent in a literary text and privileges instead spatiality, which is a characteristic feature of the figurative arts. In the first instance it analyzes the modernist conception of newness and the relationship between past and present, and in the second part it argues that the required technique to reflect the conception of time as a palimpsest together with the non-mimetic aesthetics of modernist poetics transform the modern epic into primarily a spatial poem

Paideuma concreto e como dar dimensões ao poema

Purpose: this article seeks to account for the renewing concerns of language in the Brazilian concrete poetry, delving into the concept of paideuma. Topics: to fulfill this purpose, a review and explanation of the term is included herein, drawing on the proposals made by brothers Augusto and Haroldo de Campos and Decio Pignatari in Olho por olho a olho un (manifiesto). Development: additionally, the poetry of the authors selected and considered by this trio as precursors of new forms, themes, and modes of expression of this Latin American artistic and literary program is explored.  Conclusions: thus, the Brazilian concrete poetry involves a change in the use of literary language as it questions the manner in which contents are expressed through some stylistic procedures, dictated from the influential poetic heritage of writers like Joyce, E. E. Cummings and Ezra PoundPropósito: Este artículo busca dar cuenta de las preocupaciones renovadoras del lenguaje en la poesía concreta brasileña, ahondando en el concepto paideuma. Temas: Para cumplir este propósito, se hace aquí una revisión y explicación de este término, recurriendo a los planteamientos realizados por los hermanos Augusto y Haroldo de Campos y Decio Pignatari en “Olho por olho a olho un (manifiesto)”. Desarrollo: Asimismo, se explora la poesía de los autores seleccionados y establecidos por este trío como precursores de las nuevas formas, temas y modos de expresión de este programa artístico y literario latinoamericano. Conclusiones: Así, la poesía concreta brasileña entraña un cambio en el uso del lenguaje literario, pues problematiza el modo en que se realiza la expresión de los contenidos a través de algunos procedimientos estilísticos, dictados desde el influyente acervo poético de autores como Joyce E. E. Cummings y Ezra Pound.Propósito: este artigo busca refletir as preocupações renovadoras da linguagem na poesia concreta brasileira, aprofundando no conceito paideuma. Temas: para cumprir esse objetivo, é feita uma revisão e explicação deste termo, recorrendo as colocações feitas pelos irmãos Augusto e Haroldo de Campos e Décio Pignatari em Olho por olho a olho um (manifesto). Desenvolvimento: igualmente, explora-se a poesia dos autores selecionados e estabelecidos por este trio como precursores das novas formas, temas e modos de expressão deste programa artístico e literário latino-americano. Conclusões: assim, a poesia concreta brasileira possui uma mudança no uso da linguagem literária, já que problematiza o modo em que se realiza a expressão dos conteúdos através de alguns procedimentos estilísticos, ditados desde o influente acervo poético de autores como Joyce, E. E. Cummings e Ezra Poun

Art and authority : a comparative study of the modernist aesthetics of Ezra Pound

Due to the pressure to define a contemporary literature, 'High' modernism in English is often presented as a univocal canon of authors and works whose ideals have been identified and surpassed. This study attempts to re-emphasise the diversity of this writing by showing how crises in inherited authority were 'staged' by its aesthetics. The manner of this staging is examined in the writings and programmes of a selected group of authors while a focus is provided by the aesthetics of Ezra Pound. Pound's work is taken to be of especial interest because of the scope of his influence in establishing a 'modern' movement, the extremism of his writing's antagonism to authority, and the ambiguity of critical responses that the politics of his project continue to elicit. Chapter 1 examines the ways in which Pound promotes an 'aesthetics' of history and politics as the key to contemporary revolutionary change, and views his writing through a body of thinking which considers that the artwork, and not authority, might 'found' a modem culture. Chapter 2 treats Pound's metaphysics, showing how 'de-authorised' conceptions of religion, sexuality and language underpin this project. Chapter 3 deals with the writing of T. S. Eliot, and with the particular anti-aesthetics that inhabit his criticism and the draft of The Waste Land. Eliots project is shown to oppose Pound's by defining a desired authority against the power of art, an opposition that Pound's editing of The Waste Land effectively masks. Chapter 4 discusses the 'mass' aesthetics of James Joyce's Ulysses, and shows that the processes of self-interrogation that feature in this work realign the antipathy between art and authority in ways that militate against the ideals of a Poundian art of 'power'. Chapter 5 treats the work of D. H. Lawrence as a site where an empowered art and culture is both overtly promoted and intrinsically challenged. The proximity of Lawrence's programmatic modernism to Pound's is stressed, while an inbuilt antagonism to its own ideals is shown to sharply distinguish the dynamic trajectory of Lawrencean aesthetics from a Poundian art of self-authorisation. While establishing the antagonism between art and authority as a common focus for modernism, this study underlines differences and antipathies that emerge between the projects and texts under discussion, charting the diversity of responses to a commonly felt crisis. The study concludes with a discussion of Pound's post-war poetry, examining the fate of a writer who failed to extend into his own aesthetics the insights that modem crises in authority delivered

Text and performance in Africa

In written literary traditions the distinction between text and performance seems self-evident. The text is the permanent artifact, handwritten or printed, while the performance is the unique, never-to-be repeated realization or concretization of the text, a realization that "brings the text to life" but which is itself doomed to die on the breath in which it is uttered. Text fixes, performance animates. But even in written traditions, there are all kinds of different relations possible between a "text" and a "performance." Written texts can be cues, scripts, or stimulants to oral performance, and can also be records, outcomes, or by-products of it. Even texts usually thought of as belonging purely within the written sphere can have a performative dimension. If, as is true in many traditions, text depends on performance and performance on text, comparative literary studies should help us to conceptualize the nature and degree of these varying relations of dependency.Issue title: Performance Literature II

Explorations, Vol. 2, No. 3

Cover image: Ezra Pound Dedication: With affection and respect, this issue of EXPLORATIONS is dedicated to Carroll Terrell, Professor Emeritus of English. Articles include: Carroll Terrell and the Great American Poetry Wars, by Burton Hatlen Adventures in China, by H.Y. Forsythe, Jr. Harry Kern and the Making of the New Japan, by Howard B. Schonberger From the Dispatch Case: update on malnutrition in Maine, by Richard Cook Changing Approaches to Protein Structure Determination, by Robert Anderegg The Search of Effective Policy: Meeting the Challenge of an Aging Society, by Dennis A. Watkins and Julia M. Watkins Citizen Survey of the Maine State Police, by Robert A. Stron

Broadcasting modernity: eloquent listening in the early twentieth century

This thesis, ‘Broadcasting Modernity’ is an account of sound technology, namely wireless, as a feature of early twentieth century literature. If modernism is a historical-specific movement, and language a repository of time, then the advent of radio broadcasting cannot be ignored - a medium which inscribed itself into the pages of books. The present study is original, in that it establishes radio as a portal through which to regard the wider cultural mentality, cross-cutting, or ‘crashing’ the written word, and thus producing the effect of two wires instantly reacting to one another. Therefore, just as radio may be accessed through literature, certain texts between 1900-1945 may be reinterpreted acoustically. To qualify this argument, a select group of writers are discussed individually, and at length – figures who allowed radio to affect their creative output, at various levels, in a period of rapid technological change

The Impersonal Modes of Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens

This thesis examines the impersonal modes refined by Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens. It argues that these major poets, commonly placed at opposite ends of the spectrum of modernism, share important formal and thematic preoccupations. Each evolves an impersonal sensibility designed to free the poet from the limitations of his merely private associations and social circumstances, and to licence extraordinary ambitions: Pound’s paradiso terrestre and Stevens’ supreme fiction constitute unifying artistic responses to a shaken, fragmenting and sceptical culture. Supreme fictions are not in vogue, and both poets have been chastised for the didacticism, elitism, or even pretension latent in their poetic theories: it is argued that their reach exceeds their grasp. But this thesis is not a critique of theory; it is a study of praxis. It explores the techniques of both poets’ greatest poems, and proposes the impersonal mode as one reason for their uncanny power. Chapter I explores poetic impersonality under three headings: “Inheritance”; “Sensibility”; and “Technique”. Chapter II contrasts the irregular progression of Pound’s early verse with the eerie precision of Stevens’ Harmonium. Chapter III traces the expansion of Pound’s impersonal voice through A Draft of XXX Cantos, and argues that “The Man with the Blue Guitar” is of crucial importance to the development of Stevens’ later style. Chapter IV argues that, in the plangent and elemental forms of Cantos XLVII and XLIX, and in the rôle of the “possible poet” explored in “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”, Pound and Stevens come closest to fulfilling their early desires for a transcendent and autonomous rhetoric. Chapter V finds each poet plunged into crisis, toppling the fleeting consolations of Canto XLVII and “Notes”, and requiring new, more urgent and more expansive poetic modes. Pound’s Pisan Cantos, in their search for an idiom newly resistant to severe external pressures, are comparable to “The Auroras of Autumn” and “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven”, which reveal Stevens’ own bout of intense creative uncertainty. Chapter VI shows how the enduringly impersonal techniques of Pound’s and Stevens’ final poems – which preserve, on their surface, a grammatical and lexical detachment – increasingly come to register deeper emotions. The effect of subduing personal experience to an impersonal aesthetic is to enhance the poignancy of the very emotions and frailties that are all but veiled

Prototyping Mina Loy\u27s Alphabet

An important branch of digital humanities involves prototyping the past. This entails approaching material forms of knowledge as sites within which epistemological and ontological problems may be evaluated as physical embodied practices. This essay discusses the interpretive and methodological implications of using 3D printing technologies to prototype the archival diagrams of a proposed but never constructed plastic segmental alphabet letter kit – a game designed by Mina Loy for F.A.O. Schwarz. Although it is intended as a toy for young children, “The Alphabet that Builds Itself,” is also a work of object typography which articulates a theory of language as kinetic, geometric, recombinant, and open to mutation. Alphabetic segments extend into the x, y, and z coordinates in exponential iterations and conjoin according to polarities established with magnets. Combining elements of contemporaneous typefaces derived from Bauhaus principles of simplicity and the liberatory Futurist typographic fantasy of pure graphemes – free of history – these recombinant three-dimensional letters realize Loy’s unpublished modernist poem; an articulation of language as a physical substance which infers its own morphology