Literature
American
688
A
The AmericanPoeticRenaissance,i9io-i950.
By Albert Gelpi. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. I987. X, 482
pp. $34 5?
COHERENT
SPLENDOR:
If it were simplya livelyand thoroughstudyof eleven twentiethcenturyAmerican poets,A CoherentSplendorwould be an ambitious
achievement; being, in addition, a continuationinto the modernist
period of the analysis of the American poetic traditionthat Albert
Gelpi began in The TenthMuse, this book assumes sweeping scope
and importance.
A CoherentSplendorexemplifiesseveral impulses increasinglyevident in recentscholarshipabout Anglo-AmericanModernism: to reassess the relationof Modernismto the precedingliterarymovements
of Victorianismand, as in this case, Romanticism;to identifya diversityof trendswithin Modernism;and to explore issues of gender
thatshaped Modernism.Believing-as manynow do-that the continuitiesbetweenModernismand Romanticismare more profoundthan
their points of contrast,Gelpi stressesthe Romanticcharacterof the
epistemologyand metaphysicsof the major Modernistshe discusses.
Two opposing strainswithin Modernism-Symbolisme and Imagism-developed, he argues, froman epistemologicaltension within
Romanticism between, in Eliot's terms,"escape from the world of
fact" and "devotion to brute fact." Gelpi contraststhe Symboliste/
Imagist positionson the poet's relationto language and nature'srelation to poetic experiencein part throughJungianreadingsanalyzing
the interactionof masculine and feminine,animus and anima within
various poets.
Romanticism,Gelpi argues, assumed that meaning proceeds from
moments in which subject and object completeeach other,and Romanticpoetryattemptedto renderindividualexperiencesof such synthesisor correspondence.Because the momentsof participativeinsight
became steadilymore difficultto validate,the earlytwentieth-century
anti-Romantic
Modernistsfelt impelled to assume a self-consciously
position,explicitlyrejectingIdealist and personalart and stressingthe
autotelicnatureof the artwork.In fact,however,Modernismevolved
fromRomanticism,"with Symbolismeand Imagism enactingthe disbroadlyspeaking,
solutionof the Romanticsynthesisand constituting,
its subjectiveand objectiveepistemologicalpoles: Symbolismerepresenting the mind's propensityto dissolve impressionsof things into
the mind's propenfiguresof its own processes,Imagism representing
sityto be shaped by its impressionsof things."Those Modernistswho
are primarilySymbolistein their inclinations-Stevens,Eliot before
Four Quartets,Tate, and Crane-nonetheless seek escape fromsolip-
BookReviews
689
sism, oftenby reconstituting
earliertraditions,while the outspokenly
anti-RomanticImagists Pound, Williams, and H.D.-in assuming,
for instance,an interdependencebetweensubject and object essential
to the act of perception,or a polytheisticsense of nature and the
psyche-in fact attemptto recoversomethingof the Romantic epistemology.To framehis discussionof these Modernists,Gelpi begins
with a chapteron the pre-ModernistsFrost and Ransom, who do not
share the distinctively
Modernistfaithin the imagination'spower to
fashionfromthe untidymaterialsof experiencean autotelicwork of
"coherentsplendor"(the phrase derivesfromPound). He closes with
a chapter on two anti-Modernists:Winters,who opposed Modernwho rejectedit because
ism because of its Romanticism,and Jeffers,
of its anti-Romanticism;their contrastingperspectiveshighlightthe
dialectic withinModernismthatis Gelpi's focus.
The chaptersin which Gelpi solidifieshis historicalargumentare
almost monographs,providingextensivechronologicalanalysesof the
major works spanningeach poet's career.His methodologyand interests are eclectic,if somewhatold-fashioned:Gelpi offerslively,intelligentclose readings;thesesupporta usuallyJungianargumentabout
the poet's development.Engagementwith the psychologicalsources
of art involves him also in biographicalcriticism,most extensively
with H.D. Demonstratingthe coherenceof Americanliteraryhistory,
Gelpi constantlycompareshis Modernistsnot only with the Romantic
but also with a range of authorsfrom Bradstreet
transcendentalists,
to Ashbery.His scrutinyof the poets' theologicalorientations,especially theirrelationto the Americanreligioustraditionscentralto The
TenthMuse, helps illuminatethe differencesamong various versions
of Modernism.
Gelpi is explicit about his desire to "read the work from the inside," and the book demonstratesthe rewardsof such a sympathetic
procedure.For instance,his treatmentsof Tate, Ransom,and Eliotin a time when New Criticismusually servesmerelyas a strawman
-explain how the New Critics'focus on irony,paradox,and an impersonal approach to art grew fromparticularcultural,metaphysical,
and psychologicalcontexts.Thus, the pre-modernist
Ransom, lacking
the Modernist faith in the imagination'spower to contend with or
transformits situation,depends on ironyas "both defenseand offense
against desperate cosmological odds." Eliot, Gelpi argues, championed the "classical" because he needed to resistthe temptationsof the
Romantic engagementwith nature that entailed passions and emotions-areas of experiencemen have objectifiedas feminine-he both
feared and desired. Eliot posited an objective aestheticabsolute to
counter his own narcissisticSymbolistesubjectivity.Tate's dilemma,
690
American
Literature
too, was that of "the would-be Christianclassicistwith the Romantic's psychologicaland spiritualproblems,"and his obsessionwith the
dangersof the "angelic imaginations"of Crane and Poe reflectsa battle againsthis own inclinations.Approachedthisway,the poet-critics'
dicta "take on the vitalityof directreferenceand relevance."
Gelpi's compassionatebut even-handedreadingof Pound "fromthe
inside," demonstratinghow Pound's Modernism was modified and
even underminedby deep-seated Romanticism,produces one of the
book's strongestchapters.Gelpi countersreadingsof The Cantos that
perceiveitsdiscontinuousstructureproducingindeterminacy
of meaning by arguingthatthe epic assumescoherencewhen read in termsof
psychologicalprocess. With a seriesof superbclose readings,he persuasivelyargues that the archetypesof ego, shadow, anima, and self
provide a typologyforthe dramaticpersonaeof The Cantosand illuminate the continuityof the periplum.Pound's political errorsGelpi
explains-not excuses-as a consequence of his outward projection
of his own shadow.
Gelpi's frequentinvocationof conceptslike anima, animus,and anand blockingawareness
drogynerisksperpetuatinggenderstereotypes
of the social constructionof gender.Sometimes,too,the Jungianinterpretationsseem disjoined fromGelpi's historicalanalysisof Romantic/
Modernist epistemology.Still, his Jungianreadings are always instructiveand lend coherence to the progressof other careers besides Pound's. Gelpi's mappingof Eliot's developmentin termsof his
changing relationto the feminine-with intriguingrevelationsabout
unpublishedearlypoems-is particularlyelegant.
A CoherentSplendoroffersfresh,compellinganalysesof individual
poets' careersas well as a useful model forconsideringthe diversity
of practicescommonlydesignatedas Modernist.
Madison.
University
of Wisconsin,
LYNN KELLER.
POETICS
OF IMPERSONALITY:
T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. By
Maud Ellmann. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press. I988. xvi, 207
PP. $22.50.
THE
The best thing to say about this book is that the sum of its parts
is greater than the whole. Maud Ellmann sets out to attack one of
the centraldoctrinesof modernliterature,
advocated most notablyby
Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, thata poet should striveto be impersonal:
instead of expressinghis own personalityand emotions directly,he
should constructa verbal image (Pound) or findan objectivecorrelative (Eliot) or speak througha personaotherthan himself,in orderto
She contendsthatthe
express his personalityand emotionsindirectly.