Hello everyone, I am happy to welcome you
to yet another session of the NPTEL course,
the
History of English language and literature.
Today’s lecture is based on Modernist poetry,
it is
also important to state right in the outset
that we shall not be able to look and take
a very
detailed look at individual poles and individual
works. But since Modernist in itself is a
very
complex and a complicated phase, we shall
be taking a look at Modernist poetry in general
trying to locate the major aspects of it and
also identifying the major influences that
shapes
perhaps the most representative poetsof the
period.
Having given a very detailed introduction
to the modernist period and also having shown
the
various forces which were at work when the
modernist literal period had begun, we try
to
look at the general features of poetry and
also at the outset we shall also be giving
this a
that it is impossible perhaps to give a very
linear discussion of Modernist poetry. In
that sense we shall be talking about some
of the shifting tendencies in the way one
overlaps
with the other, but nevertheless a holistic
and comprehensive attempt is being made here
in
the form of a short lecture.
We have already taken a look at the and the
Georgian period and also had
underlined that the worldhad played very important
role in shaping the modernist
sensibilities. Let us take a look at one of
the statements made by a major poet of the
early 20 th
century Wilfred Owen who is also classified
as one of the World’s poets. He wrote like
this in
his preface to poems, “I am not concerned
with poetry. My subject is war and the pity
of War.
The poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies
are to this generation in no sense conciliatory.
They
may be to the next. All a poet can do today
is warn. That is why the true poets must be
truthful.”
Here we get every different sense of poetry,
a kind of poetry that is not about poetry
itself but
more about the socio political sensibilities
of the period. So now we begin to look at
what
actually characterise the 1st world war poetry.
The characteristic response to war until the
world war was that war was a matter of duty,
we do find that is explicated in the Rupert
Brooke’s The soldier which we had taken
a look in the previous section. Brooke’s
attitude to
war was very conventional and romantic one
and he also had very deep patriotic feelingsin
place.
But the horrors of the First World War and
whatever that followed, it in fact had marked
the
end of phase of European liberal culture.
This also had led to a massive loss of life
which also
had shocked the entire humanity in the early
20 th century. We go by what historians say,
over
9 million lives were lost from Europe and
the British Commonwealth and the USA. And
this
also had inflicted deep psychological wounds
and a sense of desolation across the world
and
we also find that it was getting more and
more difficult not just for English people
but for
anyone who was involved with this horrors
of war. To continue to believe in the values
expressed in the Brook’s poem “The soldier”.
So the war poets and their writings could
be seen as a reaction to this conventional
understanding of and the realisation that
war is no longer a solution to any of the
problems
that the modern world was facing. One of the
important poets of this period is Siegfried
Sassoon criticised the war vehemently in response
“counter attack” and “they” we find
them
talking about useless suffering rejection
of notions of glory and heroism and also a
moving
away from the glorification of patriotism.
Edmund Blunden made undertones of war talks
about war as something that destroys nature
and we also find him being very anguished
with
the memories of his dead comrades.
In the war poetry, the dead soldiers are not
seen amiably as heroes but they are seen as
losers
and victims contradictory to the popular patriotic
standing. In one of his poems in 1916 seen
from 1921, he exactly depicts all the horrors
that were inflicted upon not just the soldiers
but
also on their extended families and also the
society in general. Edward Thomas and Isaac
Rosenberg also wrote about various casualties
of the war.
And it was not just that they were all writing
about the casualties of war, the war poets
themselves had in fact died in these words.
Wilfred Oven perhaps the most known and the
most anthologised of these war poets was killed
in the First World War. It was considered
as
an eye-opener and many others to continue
to expose their vainglory associated with
the over
glorification of war. In fact in Owen’s
poems and writings in general we find that
he believed
the no cause justifies the loss of life on
such a colossal scale and many did agree with
him.
And some of his works “Anthem for doomed
youth” and “Strange meeting” and “Disabled”
in these poems there are no heroes, in fact,
he only talks about maimed characters coping
with physical disability and also horrific
memories. In fact there is no room for patriotism
and
or nationalism when one is affected with this
sort of tragedy in life and this also leads
him to
question, “Was there ever an enemy?” There
will also these women poets Medeline Ida
Bedford, Eva Dobell and Jessie Pope who wrote
about the horrors and also about the
vainglories of war.
In terms of poetry, A E Houseman’s A Shropshire
Lad published in 1896 deserves a very
special mention, it was a compilation of 63
poems. In fact it was said that this was the
volume
that most of the soldiers in the trenches
in the First World War carried with them because
the
poem largely spoke about love and loss, the
English countryside and seasons, the passing
of
time and death and also about the reflection
about the lost love and these were the things
that
the soldiers perhaps love to read and talk
more about when they were leading such a tragic
life within the trenches.
A E Houseman A Shropshire Lad also holds a
very unusual distinction for a collection
of
poetry, it is a volume that has never been
out of print. And some of his poems are immensely
popular even today and one goes like this
“because I liked you better than suits a
man to
say/It irked you and I promised to throw the
thought away”.
A famous poem of his which continue to be
anthologised and widely read is “Terence,
This is
stupid stuff” it goes like this “Terence
this is stupid stuff, you eat your victuals
fast enough,
there cannot be much amiss tis clear. To see
the rate you drink your beer. But ohh good
Lord
the verse you make, it gives a chapthe belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, and she is dead, it
sleeps well the horned head. We poor lads,
tis our turn now to hear such tunes as killed
the
cow. Pretty friendship tis to rhyme your friends
to death before their time. Moping
melancholy mad. Come, pipe a tune to dance
to lad”. So he did writes it very humorous
verse
which also enlightens the mood perhaps during
the war toned phrase.
Let us have a look at some of the very important
movements of this period which influence
poetry art and the general cultural temperament
in England. Imagism was one of the foremost
movement of this a kind, in fact this was
a movement in art which emphasised a form
about
everything else. In fact, it also called for
the removal of the poet from the poem and
also
heightens sense of objectivity, the poet who
was following a imagist mode he or she did
not
focus on any extra ornamentation on abstractions,
in fact the words were to convey accurate
and precise meanings and no more or no less.
There was this Imagist manifesto which also
celebrated hard and clear picture of art and
literature and they also privilege the clarity
of expression through us of precise visual
images
more than anything else. And also some of
them believe that the intention was to capture
emotions and events in an instant of time.Some
of the Practitioners of this Imagist School
of
poetry were Ezra Pond, T E Hulme, E A Robinson,
Ford Maddox Ford, Amy Lowell and
Hilda Doolittle also known as HD and F S Flint,
and they were the one who formulated the
aesthetic of this predominantly art movement.
There is also a literary rumor that Pound
is said to have invented Imagism to launch
Hilda
Doolittle’s career in 1912. Shortly take
a look at how Pound was influential in shaping
and
reshaping the career, moods of most of the
writers of early 20th-century.
Pound himself edited volume Des Imagists in
1940 and though this was this did have a lot
of
followers in the early 20th century, it was
considered as a very short-lived movement
and this
moment was primarily designed in the early
20th-century to replace the soft voice of
Victorian
verse and also “nearer the bone”. And
among the chief contributors and the chief
practitioners
of imagist poetry includes James Joyce and
DH Lawrence. But however there are people
like
DH Lawrence whose poetry could be considered
imagist but were not really associated with
the movement.
So in that sense we do find a lot of ways
in which the beginning of the 20 th century
and the
beginning of modernism begins on a very complex
node because it becomes very difficult to
identify particular poets with particular
kinds of movements. There are lots of overlaps
and
also radical that characterised their work
as well as their general lifestyle. And the
other imagist poets were Norman Cameron, David
Gascoyne and Charlotte Mew, And
Charlotte Mew in fact continues to be mentioned
as one of the significant women poets of the
early modernist period.
Futurism was another movement which laid the
foundation of modernist poetry. The Futurist
manifesto was published in 1909 and with a
different edition in 1912 by FT Marinetti.
this
sort of move was towards an emphasis on vibrant
energy and it also celebrates the beauty of
speed keeping in tune with the fast industrialised
space in which England and Europe in
general were moving ahead. And this sort of
poetry written with a Futurist manifesto,
it sort
more dynamic language and expression. And
we also find accordingly the poetry getting
characterised by extreme energy, violent and
vivid imagery and also descriptions of
movement and action.
We also find these sorts of poetry and poets
celebrating technology and also glorifying
war
and violence quite in contrast to the war
poets of the early period. And we also find
that
integral elements and the integral motives
in these works are automobile, speed and
movement, which also was a way in which the
modernist period was getting manifested
itself.
Vorticism was another movement in art and
literature, it was in fact a movement which
involved high degree of abstraction influenced
by both the Futurist and the Cubists. It was
mostly confined to England and these set of
poets also show the fascination with technology,
energy and also attempts were being made to
relate art with industrialisation. This movement
was particularly influential in poetry, painting
and sculpture as Ezra Pound put it,“The
image
was a vortex through which ideas rush through”.
So the visual element which was getting all
the more important in the modernist phase
was coming through most of these movements
and
most of the works of those times.
Wyndham Lewis who was a writer, painter and
publisher of the modernist time is perhaps
the most important practitioner of Vorticism.
He used a lot of colour, swirling patterns
and
images of violent movement and energy in his
works. In fact, journals of those times Blast
which was jointly published by Pound and Wyndham
Lewis, it did celebrate a vorticist
movement to a great extent in its inaugural
issue, Blast did speak about the living plastic
geometry which was also an extension of the
movement of Vorticism.
Blast though it ran only for about few issues,
it was immensely popular, it continues to
be
referred as a modernists manifesto and also
as a matter of historical interest.
Surrealism was another movement which was
characterised mostly in the visual arts than
in
poetry and Salvador Dali was perhaps the most
important practitioner and proponent of
Surrealist art. Surrealist manifesto published
by Ander Burton in 1924 had laid the foundation
to this. And in this movement we find the
use of unconscious as the source of creative
energy
and the also the art is also use a weird combinations,
non-linear and random sequences as we
can see in this very famous painting by Dali
titled “The persistence of memory”.
Here we find it, there is a lot of use of
abstractions and also weird kind of combination
which
are being used. The other literary practitioners
includes Dylan Thomas, James Joyce,
Gascoyne and Martin Amis.
So altogether we can find that a lot of movements
and lot of forces by coming to whether to
produce what is generally and loosely known
as modernist poetry, so taking a look at a
particular kinds of writings and particular
writers, we shall begin with Ezra Pound who
lived
from 1885 till 1972.
He was born in USA and move to Britain and
Europe at a later point and his reputation
chiefly rest in a very difficult verse that
he produced during his life time and he is
reputed
accordingly as one of the most difficult poets
of the 20 th century. He has also said to
have
launched the writing careers of several modernist
writers and in fact he was at the forefront
of
Vorticism and imagism and it is very difficult
to say whether his poetry belonged to one
kind
or the other. He was very instrumental in
shaping the writing and also the career of
Eliot,
Joyce, Frost and Hemingway. And as mentioned
earlier, he is also said to have launched
Hilda Doolittle’s poetic career.
But he did have a controversial side to his
life, he supported Mussolini during the Second
World War and accordingly got arrested in
1945 by the American forces, he was however
declared insane after trial but he was released
only by 1958 which also mended he had to
spend considerable amount of time in in prison
and he then returned to Italy where he spent
the rest of his life. In fact, his reputation
had declined considerably during this period
due to
its political choices and then the trial and
the present period that he had undergone.
And in
Times Magazine in which came out in 1933,
there was this particular comment about Pound
that he was a cat that walks by himself, tenaciously
unhouse broken and very unsafe for
children”.
Some of his important works include Ripostes
and Cathay which was a translation, the set
of
SES Make It New and also a long series of
poems which is also considered as one of his
best
works The Cantos.
When we talk about Pound’s modernism, it
would be impossible not to talk about the
translations and the adaptations that he had
carried out. In fact, his interest was very
weird,
his range was from the old English writers
till some of the 20 th-century Chinese poets
and this
also made his poetry extremely inaccessible
because most of the material that he accessed
was very esoteric and also not very known
to everyone. And we find him assimilating
the
ancients and also the non-European cultures
in English poetry. This was interesting thing
but
it also made it very difficult to access his
poetry without a reference source.
Eliot makes this comment about Pound “he
was objectionably modern and objectionably
antiquarian” so it is very difficult to
locate and identify the source of his poetic
genius. Pound
was also a portrait who had given adequate
attention to form in fact, he was an advocate
of
spare imagery and free verse as we can see
in poem “In a station of the Metro”.
In fact, this poem written in 1913 it only
has about 2 dozen words, “The apparition
of these
faces in the crowd Petals on a wet black bough”,
the entire poem is comprised of these 14
words. But in Cantos we find a very prolific
poet at work, it had about 120 sections and
it
could be considered as a multicultural epic.
It included almost everything under the sun
such
as Chinese characters, quotations in European
languages, references from African history,
but
however Pound never bothered to explicate
his references and this also led to him composing
a lot of unconnected sections and fragmented
imagery. It nevertheless made the reception
of
the work all the more difficult, it continues
to be one of the most difficult text to access.
Since this work Cantos also has a lot of autobiographical
elements adapt into it, and keeping
in tune with the time he also had a major
fascination for economics and we find banking
occupying a key schematic interest in his
writings. In fact, Hemingway had opined about
Pound’s work “The best of pound’s writing
and it is in the Cantos will last as long
as there is
any literature”. So that was a kind of impact
that Pound had left in the modernist period.
Now we take a look at the event known as the
Irish literary revival, it was nothing but
an
upsurge in interest in Celtic myths and legends,
particularly in Ireland’s Gaelic heritage.
This
was also nicknamed as Celtic Twilight based
on a poem by Yeats published in 1893. But
however, this was seen more as a Renaissance
than as n decline and this movement was
Centred in Dublin and also in London. This
was quite similar to the sentimental Scottish
Kailyard School and however on the contrary,
the interest and the concern was more with
national identity and cultural individuality.
This a period was struggle for Irish nationhood,
it also saw an increase in heightened sense
of
Irish national consciousness. Some of the
important publications of this time include
the
Gaelic journal, which was exclusively devoted
to the preservation and cultivation of the
Irish
language. And we also find the Irish literary
Society being founded in 1892, even some of
the
major important writers being a part of this.
Refer Slide Time: 18:14)
William Butler Aid was perhaps the most important
and the most noted figure of the Irish
literary revival, he lived from 1865 till
1939. His work in fact stretches across the
late
Victorian period towards the early modernism.
In that sense we can find in his work more
marked changes than that could be in Thomas
Hardy’s and he was a quite different from
many of his contemporaries. I mean in his
work we do find that he was not as restlessly
experimental as Eliot nor was he as content
as Hardy. However, in terms of his poetic
genius
he is considered as the greatest modern poet
of Ireland. His 1 st poetry was published
in 1885
and he also went on to warn the Nobel Prize
in 1923.
He was in immensely influenced by the French
symbolists, but however his ambivalent
attitude towards Ireland struggle had made
him little unpopular for a while. In fact,
Maud
Gonne on whom him he also had some romantic
interest for a while, she viewed Yeats as
being insufficiently radical in his nationalism.
It was in his poem Easter 1916 that we find
certain kind of a transformation that Yeats
underwent and in fact he talks about the
transformation of Ireland as well as the changes
that has come about in his view of
relationship with Maud Gonne.
And this poem Easter 1916 was immensely popular
and immensely important in the social
history of Ireland as well as because it did
talk about the Easter rising that happened
in 1916.
It was also very important part of the Irish
struggle for independence. And in his poem
“Meditation in the Times of Civil War”
Yeats mocks himself or his indifference because
he
was quite aware of the way of his own limitations
and also about the way in which he could
not commit himself radically to the cause
of Irish nationalism.
Yeats’ poetry experiments could be considered
very interesting, he was interested in
mysticism and also practised something that
he called as automatic writing that is writing
in a
trance. And he also tried to develop a feminine
persona through his writing because he tried
to compose a Two voiced poetry, which included
both feminine and masculine elements. And
he believed that he wanted to explore his
own fragmented personality through his poetry
because according to him mind was not just
male or female but a bit of both. And in he
in this
argument we can also find a very profound
influence of Freuds theory.
And his love poems such as “Leda and the
Swan” they considered deeply erotic and
violent,
they also considered quite objectionable by
some of the writers of those times. And in
his
works such as “Sailing to Byzantium” we
also find an anxiety about body, mortality
and
death, which also exemplified many of the
struggles and many of the fears that the modernist
mine had. His work “The second coming”
is perhaps the best known poem and the best
conceived a poem of Yeats. In this define
him articulating the vision of civilisation
and
destruction and also he also talks about Christianity’s
peak and destruction after 2000 years.
And he also composed 2 poems known as the
Byzantium poems, “Lapis lazuli” and “The
tower”.
And throughout his work we can identify 3
different stages in his poetry. The 1 st was
when he
was associated with the aesthetic movement
of the 1890s and the Celtic Twilight and the
2 nd
one was dominated by his commitment to Irish
nationalism and the 3 rd one was the fusion
of
both periods. While the 1st phase was mostly
private, the 2 nd was mostly public and in
the 3 rd
period we find him becoming less public and
more personal. And he also began to celebrate
the eternity of art in his works.
And in fact when we talk about his poetry
and compare it with Eliot the other important
of this period. We can find that Yeats adheres
strictly to the traditional forms than
Eliot, in fact he is more comfortable with
direct expression of personal self. In his
work we
notice a less ironic tone but also he is less
distrustful of romanticism than Eliot. In
fact,
overall we also find that Yeats is less willing
than Eliot to embrace a single religious
vision.Overall in the modernist period characterised
by the various complex poets that work,
we also find these writers trying to compose
radically different poetry from one another.
Thomas trance Eliot who lived from 1888 till
1965 could be considered as the representative
poet of the modernist period. He was one writer
who moved from USA to England in 1914
and he also renounced his American citizenship
by the time he turned 39 years old. He also
went on to win Nobel Prize in literature in
1948. Though he lived during the war-torn
period,
his poetry has got very little direct reference
to war, but however he talks about a wasteland
in his point with the same title and he talks
about a land which is laid waste by war, though
they are no direct references to the First
World War. In fact, he believed that war had
led to a
spiritual and cultural ruin of the entirely
humanity.
And in this poem in one of the sections he
talks about “these fragments I have shored
against
my ruins”. So the specific reference is
not there but however one do find that the
war had
attacked not just the physical spaces but
also the general spirituality and also the
cultural
artefacts of those times. In his poetry we
do find a radical break from the past, but
critics are
also of the opinion that he had to be radically
different because one had to change the poetic
idiom which was already exhausted. And he
also practised a free verse in poetry and
not
subscribe to any rigidities.
And he alsohadhis work on 3 principal qualities;
the 1 st one was his particular sense of the
age in which he live, the 2nd one was that
in his poetry he use the poet’s emotions
as a starting
point. And in that sense he also developed
this theory of impersonality, in that sense
he also
developed the theory of impersonality through
his poetry which also begin the basis of most
of his works. The 3rd was that he used quotations
from an allusions to other works and leading
to a sense of continuing inter-textual communication
and community in all his works.
Quoting a hymn from his critical work Sacred
Wood “Immature poets imitate; mature poets
steal; bad poets deface what they take and
good poets make it into something better or
at least
something different”.
We find that in Eliot’s poetry he continues
the tradition of dramatic monologue and I
also
exploits the past for the use in the present.
He also considered himself thoroughly English
though he was immensely influenced by lot
of European traditions. He also practised
the
stream of consciousness technique in his work
“The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock”.
And
his later poetry we also find him searching
for spiritual peace for instance “The journey
of the
Magi” is a supreme example of this.
But however his reputation was also clouded
by a lot of charges of anti-Semitism and as
one
of the historian note “Eliot’s conservative
religious and political convictions began
to seem
less congenial to the post-war world, other
readers reacted with suspicion to his assertions
of
authority, obvious in Four Quartets and implicit
in the earlier poetry. The result, fuelled
by
intermittent discovery of Eliot’s occasional
anti-Semitic rhetoric, has been a progressive
downward revision of his once towering reputation”.
But nevertheless, his influence on literary
history continues to be quite immense, he
was also
the modernist writer who revived the interest,
the critical interest in Metaphysical poetry
through work 1921. He also had included a
lot of shocking and bewildering images in
his
poetry, in fact he believed that the reader
had to rebuild the fragments by an indirect
process
of association which he identified as objective
or correlative.
To give his own definition, “The only way
of expressing emotions in the form of art
is by
finding an objective qualitative. In other
words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain
of events
which shall be the formula for that particular
emotion such that when the external facts
which
must terminate in a sensory experience are
given, the emotion is immediately evoke”.And
a
few others also were quite instrumental in
shaping his poetic career, Charles Baudelaire
and
also Dante who was a historical inspiration
for most of his poetry.
Eliot also had composed a few plays such as
Murder in the capital, The cocktail party
and
The confidential Clerk. He also had a very
interesting collection of old Possum’s book
of
practical Cats and his most important poetic
work continues to be The Wasteland which was
published in 4 different parts. And also he
wrote a series of essays and poetries and
criticism
and published it under the title The Sacred
Wood, this continues to be one of the foundational
works in terms of modern and literary criticism.
He was also the assistant editor of the
Journal The Egoist, which was published in
the early 20th century.
In this we also draw attention toe Eliot’s
letter to Wyndham Lewis who was also a
leading poet and painter of those times. In
fact, Wyndham Lewis is the one who made the
portrait of Eliot which was also quite acceptable
to Eliot himself and also to posterity. in
Eliot’s letter he wrote “It seems to be
a very good portrait and one by which I am
quite
willing that posterity should know me, if
it takes any interest in me at all... And
I certainly
have no desire now that my portrait should
be painted by any painter whose portrait of
me
would be accepted by the Royal Academy”.
And we also find him moving away from the
art which was set by the Royal Academy and
going ahead to an artist who
was not really appreciated by the Royal Academy.
The other popular modernist poets of those
times were Robert Bridges and John Masefield
and they were also incidentally the bestselling
poets of the 1920s. And both these poets;
Bridges and Masefield, they were both poet
laureates, Bridges was poet laureate from
1913
till 1930 and Masefield from 1930 to 1967,
this perhaps is also the most opportunistic
time to
take a look at the other remaining poet laureates
in England.
Cecil Day Lewis became the poet laureate in
68 and continued till 72, Sir John Betjeman
from 72 till 84, Ted Hughes from 1984 to 98
and Andrea Motion from 1999 till 2009. The
present poet Laureate of England is Carol
Ann Duffy who was appointed to the post into
2009.
The important poets of 1930s modernism include
Hugh Syke Davies, Hugh MacDiarmid,
WH Auden, Stephen Spender and John Bentjeman,
Kathleen Raine, Welsh Dylan Thomas,
George Barker were also important figures
of those time. And David Gascoyne’s name
we
find in multiple contexts because he was writing
from the early modernist time onwards.
There was also a set of poets known as movement
poets who wrote from 1930 to 1945, they
celebrate a sense of the anarchic and also
believed that a violent kind of poetry was
needed
for this violent age. And they also popularized
a poetry of terror and extremity and some
also
considered their work as being highly immoral.
Some of the important poets whose names
are associated with the movement poets include
Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie,
Elizabeth Jennings, Herbert Read, Barker,
Dylan Thomas and Gascoyne. And most of these
writers were primarily English in character,
we do not find any writers of other origins
being
associated with this movement.
And it is generally said that the decline
of the movement poets began with the publication
of
the New Lines Anthology and this also led
to many of the others dissociating with this
movement. In fact it was through this decline
that a new movement was launched in 1956
named the “Angry Young Men” and this became
more popular during the turning point of the
movement and writers mostly dramatist associated
with the Angry young men movement
includes John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Philip
Larkin, John Wain and Kingsley Amis.
So by now we have noticed that there is a
wide range of writers and wide range of influences
that we talk about when we talk about modernist
poetry. It is very difficult to identify a
singular trance in which one can bring in
a group of people or one can begin to talk
about
modernist poetry in a linear phase. It is
a multifaceted, it is a complex and it is
also quite
inherently complicated. So with this understanding
we try to wrap up today’s discussion on
modernist poetry, thank you for listening
and we look forward to seeing you in the next
session.
