From Mystical Gaze to Pragmatic Game: Representations of Truth in Vorticist Art
Author(s): Patricia Rae
Source: ELH, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 689-720
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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FROM MYSTICAL GAZE TO PRAGMATIC GAME:
REPRESENTATIONS OF TRUTH IN VORTICIST ART
BY PATRICIA RAE
Ezra Pound'sproudestcontribution
to theVorticist
journalBlast,
and theonlypoem thathe was everto identify
as "pure vorticism,"
was a "DogmaticStatementon the Game and Play ofChess." The
in a fierceand
imagesin thispoem,thebrightly
coloredcombatants
immediatebattle,are nouns transformed
into verbs,chesspieces
metaphorically
identifiedwiththe Roman lettersthattrace their
actions. These luminous pawn-Y's, bishop-X's, and knight-L's
their
strike,cleave, and loop one another,breakingand reforming
patternuntilan assaulton a kingrendersone armyvictorious-and
theblack-and-white
designoftheemptychessboard,fora moment,
definitive.The truce,however,is brief.Harnessed energyleaks,
the capturedescape, and the vanquishedarise fromtheirashes to
proposea "renewingofcontest."1
Pound subtitledhis poem "Theme fora Series ofPictures,"and
thishas led a numberofcriticsto observethatits dynamicimages
mirror
and abruptrhythms
manyofthosewe encounterin Vorticist
thanthis,however,is the possibilityof
painting.2More intriguing
readingthechess gameas an allegoryforthementalprocessesboth
oftheseartsseem toembodyand encourage.In theimaginationsof
manyof Pound's contemporaries,
includingT. E. Hulme and Ernest Fenollosa, the chess or checkergame was frequently
a metaphorforabstractreasoning.3The chesspieces,by theirnaturerepresentativetypes,performed
a functionsimilarto thatofthewords
or conceptsthatin such reasoningare substitutedforparticulars.
The rulesofthechess game,in whichcertaincountersare capable
of certainmoves,seemed analogousto the rigorouslaws of logic.
thedifferent
Andthegame'sobject-to reducevarietytosimplicity,
to thesame-strikinglyresembledthegoal ofanytheoretician.
The
game ofchess,in short,was an apt imageforwhatWilliamJames,
in a seminalarticleentitled"The SentimentofRationality"(1879),
had called the "philosophicpassion par excellence":the urge to
resolvethemuddychaos ofphenomenatotheclean,geometricgrid
ofabstracttheory.In Pound's Vorticistchess game,however,this
"theoreticneed" does not reignunchecked,but seems to be re689
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peatedlychallengedand subverted.4
The pieces on thegridare not
dead counters,enablingthe abstractthinkerto remaindisengaged
fromthe subject of his calculations,but pieces "living in form,"
theirunique vitalityan integralpartoftheiridentity.5
The patterns
theymake, moreover,are inherentlyunstable,like theoriesthat
formand dissolve even as they are made. The "renewing of
contest"(CH, 19) proposedat the end ofthepoem lends an ironic
edge to Pound's subtitle:the resolutionhere is no "Dogmatic
Statement,"
buta solutionimmediatelyagain to be challenged.To
borrowonce againfromJames,thepassionforabstraction
depicted
in Pound's poem is counterbalancedby its "sisterpassion," the
"passion fordistinguishing":the preferencefor "incoherence"
overorder,forthe "concretefulness"ofthingsoverany "absolute
datum" (SR, 66,71) thatsubsumestheirdifferences."A Game of
Chess" is a poem about the almostsimultaneousoperationof two
oppositetendenciesofmind.As such,I shallargue,it is a model of
whatI shall call the "tensional"aestheticofVorticism.6
Historiansof the Vorticistmovementhave struggledto discern
betweenitsverbaland visualmanconsistentand mutualstrategies
ifestations.
Moreoftenthannot,theyhave concludedthatthepoets
and artistsofBlast were unifiedonlyby thenominalleadershipof
WyndhamLewis, and not by any rigorouscommonphilosophy.7
But thereare, indeed, commonstrategiesin the literarybranchof
thatPound called Imagismeand thevisualartadvertised
Vorticism
Vorticist.8
Lewis
as
by
distinctively
Althoughit is oftenforgotten,
Pound explicitly sought a "psychological or philosophical
definition"of Imagiste poetry,hoping thatImagisme would be
rememberedas a movementaboutthe "creation"ofpoetryas well
as its "criticism"(V, 82). The same is trueofLewis's specifications
forVorticistart,whichseem to stipulatesimilarprinciplesforthe
artist'screativeprocess.Fromtheaccountsofcreativeactivitythat
can be pieced togetherfromPound's and Lewis's earlyessays and
it is clear thatVorticismbelonged to the
manifestos,
furthermore,
traditionof expressionistaesthetics,which had originatedin the
tractsofGermanIdealism and emergedmostrecentlyin the theoreticalwritingsofPost-Impressionist
painterssuch as Whistlerand
Its primaryaim, as such,was notthe imitationof naKandinsky.9
turebut "the searchforsincereself-expression"
(V, 85). Instead of
the Vorticistupheld a "musical
pursuingmimeticrepresentations,
suitable"arrangements,"
conceptionofform,"seekingto construct
whetherin formand coloror in language,to expresshis "complex
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consciousness.'10 In seeking Vorticism's paradigmatic aesthetic, I
proceed on the premise thatany expressionistaesthetic entails necessary connections between what the theorist sees as the epistemological status of the insight his artistwishes to express, and the
structureof the product he sees as appropriateto thattask. There is,
I shall propose, an inexorable connection between Pound's and
Lewis's conceptions of the cognitive capacities of the artist,on the
one hand, and the art their aesthetics produced, on the other-a
connection which that dynamic chess game serves to exemplify.
A number of criticshave suspected thatPound's attitudeto mystical experience had a formative significance for his early
aesthetic.1"When we examine his Imagisme as a theoryof creative
activityin the Idealist tradition,the precise importof his views on
mysticism becomes clear. During the four or five years prior to
Blast, T. E. Hulme had been advertising and defending a new attitude he detected among his contemporariestoward the Idealist, or
in his terms"romantic," aesthetic. The "new classical" attitude,as
Hulme called it, was suspicious of Idealist aestheticians who represented the artistas a passive medium forsome transcendental or
mystical truth.The "new classicist," he said, while preserving the
intuitive and organic aspects of that aesthetic, was to get rid of all
the "metaphysical baggage" thatso oftenaccompanied it.12He was
to eschew all suggestions about the artist'sapprehension of entities
like the "Soul," the "Infinite" and the "Idea," which in the writings of certain English Romantics and French Symbolists had functioned to aggrandize the artist's vocation.13 He was to police his
own rhetoric,in short,forany tendency to wax excessively optimistic about the artist'scognitive capacities, to "flyaway," rhetorically
speaking, into the "circumambientgas" (RC, 120). Both Pound and
Lewis, as we shall see, regarded claims about the mysticalnature of
a poet's insight with precisely the "new classical" distrust that
Hulme described. This led both of them to feel that the particular
"arrangements" an artist chose to express his insight should not
reflectsuch mystical assumptions. As a result, the products of the
Vorticistaesthetic, fromPound's Imagiste poems to Lewis's paintings and Gaudier-Brzeska's sculptures, deliberately defied the formal principles thathad characterized the transcendentalistaesthetics of Symbolism, Expressionism, and Cubism.14
The work of William James provides a strikingmodel for the
strategiesat work in a "new classical" aesthetic; indeed, it is curious that his affinitywith them has gone largely unnoticed.15 It is
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possible to show thatJames'sideas would have been familiarto
Hulme, Pound, and Lewis-if not directly,then throughFrench
exponentslike Henri Bergsonand Jules de Gaultier,or through
recentemigresfromHarvardlike RobertFrost,T. S. Eliot, and
purposeto detailthatinfluHenryJames-butit is notmyprimary
ence here.16My aim, rather,is to demonstratethatthe issues at
intentionswere
stakefora "new classical" artistwithexpressionist
very much the same as those facing a psychologistin his attemptto determineviable waysofrepturned-philosopher
resenting"truth."WilliamJames'scareerbegan, of course,in the
and concludedwiththe formulation
fieldofempiricalpsychology,
One of his central
and defenseof the philosophyof pragmatism.
as a psychologisthad been the examinationand
accomplishments
descriptionofthoseexperiencesin whicha personbelieves he has
apprehendedsome absolutetruth:experiencesthathad habitually
and perhaps erroneouslybeen called "mystical."When he later
turnedtophilosophy,theproblemthatmostintriguedhimwas how
whenone could have
one shouldrepresentand wield suchinsights,
James'sprojseemed.
they
no wayofknowingthattheywere what
same inexothe
trace
ect as a philosopher,in otherwords,was to
a suitable
to
art:
seek
of
theorists
rablearchas the "new classical"
stafinal
epistemological
whose
mode ofexpressionforan insight
to
answer
in
he
defined
the
construct
And
tusremaineduncertain.
structensional
the
same
had
truth,
the
"pragmatic"
thisdilemma,
tureas the poems and paintingsofVorticism.
The natureofJames'sworkin empiricalpsychologyprofoundly
influencedhis laterpragmaticapproachto the question of truth.
The latenineteenthcenturysaw theemergenceofpsychologyas an
empiricalscience,and Jameshimselfwas one ofitsmosteloquent
to The Principlesof
and influentialproponents.The introductions
Psychology(1890) and Psychology:The BrieferCourse (1892) legislatecertainprinciplesbothforpsychologicalresearchand forthe
languagein whichits resultsare to be expressed.Jamescontends
ofanynaturalscience is a circumscripthatthe firstresponsibility
thefieldofinvestigation
tionofits data: in the case ofpsychology,
states of
is to include all "Thoughtsand feelings,"all "transitory
consciousness,"and along with these the "Knowledge,by these
statesofconsciousness,ofotherthings."Like the physical,chempsychologyis to
ical,and biologicalsciencesbeforeit,furthermore,
in the way it discusses these data. It is
observecertainrestrictions
to limititselfto theuncriticaldescriptionofmentalphenomena,to
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accountsofthe conditionsthatundeniablyoccurin the mind.It is
notwithinitsprovinceto engagein "metaphysical"speculation,to
inquireintotheprimary
causes orhighersignificanceoftheevents
it describes.'7This necessitates,Jameswarns,the exorcismof a
numberofspooksthathave traditionally
hauntedthestudyofmind.
It precludesjust whatHulme wished to see excised fromdiscussions of art: all "attemptsto explain our phenomenallygiven
thoughtsas productsofdeeper-lying
entities,"whetherthese entities "be named 'Soul,' 'TranscendentalEgo,' 'Ideas,' or 'ElementaryUnitsofConsciousness'"(PP, I:vi). The mindmaybe thelocus
thatone wishes to claim the particformanyeventsso mysterious
ipationofsome externalcosmicforce,butthepsychologistremains
satisfiedwithdescribingthese events as theyhappen, and shies
claims.
away fromany transcendentalist
Clearly,thisban on speculationabouttherelationshipofmental
phenomenato higherrealityis especiallyimportant
when thepsychologistconsidersthe finaldatumJameslistsas withinhis province: the kind of experience in which we feel we possess the
"Knowledge... of otherthings,"when we findourselvesin the
presenceofwhatseems to be some objectiveand necessarytruth.
In the BrieferCourse,Jamesmakesit clear thatalthoughthe empiricalpsychologistmuststudyexperiencesof knowing,he must
leave itto "moredevelopedpartsofPhilosophytotesttheirulterior
significanceand truth"(PBC, xxvi).For James,describingstatesof
knowingin termsthatscrupulously
respectedtheseboundarieswas
to become somethingofa preoccupation.He concentratedon describing the "Sentiment" we may sometimes have of the
"Rationality"ofour ideas, the "strongfeelingofease, peace [and]
rest"thatmayaccompanythem(SR, 63; myitalics),the "feelingof
[their]sufficiency"
(SR, 64; myitalics)-the feeling,in otherwords,
thattheseconceptionsare true.But while he describestheirseeming character,
Jamesrefusesto declare himselfeithera nominalist
or a realist,to characterizethoseapparentlysufficient
conceptions
either as wronglyreifiedconcepts or genuinelytranscendental
Ideas.'8 A similarsuspensionofjudgmentmarksJames'smanyattemptsto describeapprehensionsofsupernatural
phenomena.He
declares himselfcompelledto accept as "objective"factthe occasionalappearancetohumanmindsofapparitionsthatseem tocome
froma realm "beyond" them.19But-witness his account of the
experiencesof one "Mrs. Piper"-he is carefulnot to speculate
about their"materiality"
(PR, 311):
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In thetrancesofthismedium,I cannotresisttheconvictionthat
knowledgeappearswhichshe has nevergainedby the ordinary
wakinguse ofhereyes and earsand wits.Whatthesourceofthis
knowledgemaybe I knownot,and have notthe glimmerofan
suggestionto make; but fromadmittingthe factof
explanatory
such knowledgeI can see no escape. (PR, 319)
James's fascinationwith experiences of knowing culminates in The
Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), where he catalogues a
greatvarietyof momentsthathe broadly calls "mystical": moments
in which people, their wills in abeyance, seem to know certain
absolute and ineffabletruths.20It is partofJames's responsibilityas
a psychologist to note thatthese experiences are usually characterized by "convincingness" (VRE, 72), that they are "absolutely authoritativeover the individuals to whom they come" (VRE, 422),
yet it is equally incumbent upon him to refrainfrom declaring
whether such revelations are what they seem. (See also VRE, 7273, 388, 428.) In the finalanalysis, he says, the moment of enchantment mightbe a "giftof our organism"just as possibly as "a giftof
God's grace" (VRE, 47).
James's application ofthe methods of empirical psychology to the
problem of cognitive experience intrigued and inspired Edmund
Husserl, and we may see in James an incipient phenomenology.
Varieties, as James Edie has recentlyargued, is justly characterized
as the firstgenuine attempt at a phenomenology of religion.21
James speaks the language of phenomenology in stipulating that
religion means forhim "the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in theirsolitude, so faras they apprehend themselves to
stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine" (VRE,
31). His concern forrecording only what the mind undeniably experiences adumbrates phenomenology's exclusive interest in the
realm of what Husserl calls the "consciousness of" or "appearance
of" cognitions. We see in his approach, finally,a version of Husserl's own policy to "bracket," or suspend all judgments about, the
statusof transcendentobjects of knowing.22Justas James refuses to
judge mystical experiences, so Husserl was to observe that in his
phenomenological reduction "cognition is neither disavowed nor
regarded as in every sense doubtful" (IP, 2). But forboth James and
Husserl-as for Pound, whose reflections on mysticism we shall
find uncannily similar to theirs-the simple refusal to comment on
the truth-valueof cognitions does not terminatetheir inquiries. It
remains forboth a pressing problem to determine how, in the light
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judgments,a person should regard,represent,
of these restricted
and wield these insights.Both recognizethata mere decision to
remainequivocal offersno help forliving.As Husserl warns,after
outliningthetermsofphenomenologicalreduction,"we musttake
so thatwe may gain a
new steps,enteronto new considerations,
firmfootholdin the new land and not finallyrun agroundon its
shore.For thisshorehas itsrocks,and overitlie clouds ofobscurity
whichthreatenus withstormygales of skepticism"(IP, 35).
oftruth,
ofwhichthe
fortherepresentation
James'sprescriptions
are in Pragmatism(1907), The Meaning
mostmatureformulations
ofTruth(1909),and theposthumousEssays in Radical Empiricism
finallyim(1912), stop shortofthe extremelyrigorousrestrictions
posed by Husserl. But one point of resemblanceis crucial: the
stubbornunwillingnessofbothphilosophersto "relapse," as Husserl puts it,intothe "absurditiesof skepticism"(IP, 49). Pragmatism,as Jamesargued strenuouslyin The Meaning of Truth,was
not skepticism,howevermuch its hostilecriticsmighthave consideredit to be so.23 It was notskepticismbecause, as Jameshad
notedas earlyas "The SentimentofRationality"and Varieties,the
psychologicalconditionof skepticismwas both undesirableand
impossibleto sustain.Indeed, Varietiesand "Sentiment"recommend a stanceof compromisethatwas to become a prototypefor
a stancethat,while grantingfinalapprovalto neither
pragmatism:
skepticalnordogmaticimpulses,was to allow forthe operationof
both.
is determined,in
James'sroutefrompsychologyto pragmatism
part,by his fidelityto the principleof appealingto no higherauthority
thanthe streamofexperience.It cannotbe by their"roots"
thatwe judge the realityofour gods,as he notesin Varieties,but
onlyby their"fruits"(VRE, 20). When he considershow mystical
insightsare finallyto be regarded,he comparesthe psychological
effectsofvariousoptions.Awareofthatintrinsic"convincingness"
ofmysticalinsightsthatmightpropel the subjecttowardsdogmain themselves
tism,he holds thatsuch insightshave no authority
thatwould "make it a dutyforthosewho standoutsideofthemto
(VRE, 422). Butjust as he veers
accept theirrelationsuncritically"
towardsskepticism,Jamesproposes anotherattitudeto mystical
positively,he says,they
experiences.Whentheyare communicated
when
theyare regarded
mayhave beneficialpsychologicaleffects;
of otherorout
the
possibility
they
may
"open
withhope, thatis,
ders oftruth,in which,so faras anythingin us vitallyrespondsto
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them,we mayfreelycontinuetohave faith"(VRE,423). Judgingby
effects,then,Jamesconcludes thatthe only sensible attitudetowardsthemomentofmysticalinsightis one ofoptimismand openmindedness:
due simplyto their
Mysticalstatesindeed wield no authority
being mysticalstates.But the higherones amongthempointin
directionsto which the religious sentimentseven of nonmysticalmenincline.Theytell ofthesupremacyofthe ideal, of
us hypotheses,
vastness,ofunion,ofsafetyand ofrest.Theyoffer
hypotheseswhich we may voluntarilyignore,but which as
and opwe cannotpossiblyupset.The supernaturalism
thinkers
in one
timismto whichtheywouldpersuadeus may,interpreted
be afterall thetruestofinsightsintothemeaning
wayoranother,
ofthislife.(VRE, 428)
James
In suggestingthatwe regardmysticalinsightsas hypotheses,
appeasand skepticism,
chartsa middlecoursebetweendogmatism
butnotpermitting
ingourneed toinvestthemwithsomeauthority,
blind faith.A hypothesis,afterall, takes the formof a reassuring
but by definitionit is testedagainstthe empirical
generalization,
forwieldinginsightsin this
his argument
world.Jamesstrengthens
way in "The Sentimentof Rationality,"where he describes the
abstractionsand for
contrarymentalimpulses-for authoritative
empiricalchaos-as equally irresistible."When wearyofthe concreteclashand dustand pettiness,"he observes,one will undoubtofthe "immutablenatures."But the second
edly seek the comfort
tendencyensuresthathe "will onlybe a visitor,not a dweller in
[that]region"(SR, 66). The discoveryof any totalizingprinciple,
the "perfectobjectfor belief' (PP 2:317), will inevitablybringon
itsheels an urgentneed to doubt.24"Our mindis so wedded to the
processofseeing an otherbeside everyitemofitsexperience,"he
says,"thatwhen thenotionofan absolutedatumis presentedto it,
itgoes throughitsusual procedureand remainspointingat thevoid
matterforcontemplation"(SR, 71).
beyond,as ifin thatlay further
in sum,thatneithera doghas
shown,
of
philosophy
The history
withits"barrenunionofall things"(SR, 67), nor
maticrationalism,
withitsdiscomfiting
"uncertainty"
(SR, 81),
a skepticalempiricism,
is sufficient
to endureforanygreatlengthoftime.The onlypolicy
forthe majorityof men
thatwill prove psychologicallysatisfying
will be one thatreconcilesthe two tendencies,one thateffects"a
compromise between an abstract monotony and a concrete
(SR, 67).
heterogeneity"
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James'sempiricalresearchesintonoeticexperience,then,inform
a representation
of truththat,like Pound's chess game, is inherentlytensional.In his maturedescriptionofthepragmaticattitude
towardstruth,it is a balance betweenattitudesboth"dogmatical"
and "skeptical," "rationalistic" and "empiricist," "religious" and
"irreligious,""romantic"and "scientific."25The constructthe
will call a "truth"is a simplification
thatis economical
pragmatist
and aestheticallyappealing,butthatalso standsup toan immediate
testingin and againstthe "teemingand dramaticrichnessof the
concreteworld"(SR, 69).26 If the truthfailsto be corroborated
by
experience,Jamessays,or to lead to beneficialaction,it mustbe
summarily
dismantledand revised.Like thatchess game thatconcludes in a "Dogmatic Statement,"in otherwords,it is subject
truthin this
immediatelyto a "renewingofcontest."By redefining
furthers
Hulme's cause of takingall the
way,James'spragmatism
hubristic"hocus-pocus"out of cognition(LMP, 67). "Truthis no
longerthe transcendent
mystery,"
Jamessays,"in whichso many
philosophershave takenpleasure,"but dwells on thisside of the
The processofmakingand unmakingit is a
phenomenalbarrier.27
coilingand uncoilingthatneverends: "Truthsemergefromfacts;
but theydip forwardintofactsagain and add to them;whichfacts
again create or reveal new truth... and so on indefinitely"
(P, 101).
Like James'srationaleforpragmatism,
Pound's routeto a tensionalaestheticbeginsin an attemptto cometotermswithmystical
experience.As Pound's remarkson the creativeexperienceof the
Vorticistor Imagiste poet show, he imaginesthatexperience to
begin witha momentin which the artistseems to be visitedby
sometruthfrombeyondhimself.Theysuggestthathe condones,in
otherwords, the traditionalrepresentationof the poet as seer,
whichhad mostrecentlybeen articulatedin the transcendentalist
manifestosof FrenchSymbolismeand in Yeats's theoreticaltracts
on the equivalencyofartand magic.In a 1910 articleon the psychologyofthetroubadours,
publishedin a forumon psychicexperiencecalled The Quest,Pound makesan admissionsimilarto the
one Jamesmade in the face of his psychicalresearches.28It is an
"indisputableand veryscientificfact,"Pound says,thatin the normal course of life one may suddenlyfeel "his immortality
upon
him" (PT, 47), that one may be suddenly struckby a "vision
unsought,"a "visiongained withoutmachination"(PT, 50). These
are the moments,in Pound's discourse,when the "gods" appear,
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and they are moments,like Mrs. Piper's, of absolute conviction.29
Persephone and Demeter, he says, Laurel and Artemis,"are intelligible, vital, essential ... to those people to whom they occur";
they are "for them real" (PT, 44; my italics). It is a few years after
noting the "delightful psychic experience" (PT, 44) of the troubadours that Pound describes the Vorticistpoet's moment of inspiration. The creative experience of the Imagiste, he says, will begin,
like that of any Vorticistartist,with the sudden appearance, to his
conscious mind, of his "primarypigment": a vision that will both
informwhat he articulatesand the medium in which he speaks. In
the case of the poet, in particular,this vision is the "IMAGE" (VP,
154), and its qualities mark it as something descending from a
higher, noumenal world. Like any mystical vision, the "Image" is
an object ofintuition,the giftofa momentin which action, will, and
intellect are suspended (V, 91). Like all those experiences James
calls "mystical,"too, the insightgoverned by the Image seems to be
ineffable; unlike the "FORMED WORDS" that are the primary
pigment forthe writerof "LITERATURE" (VP, 154), Pound says,
the Image "is the word beyond formulatedlanguage."30 When one
encounters it, moreover,one will feel elevated above the habitual
constraintsof time and of space (Ret., 4), a factthatinspires Pound
to compare it to a equation of analytic geometry-such as (x - a)2
+ (y - b)2 = r2:
It is thecircle.It is nota particular
circle,it is anycircleand all
circles.It is nothingthatis not a circle.It is the circle freeof
space and timelimits.It is the universal,existingin perfection,
in freedomfromspace and time.(V, 91)
Described in these quasi-Platonic terms,the Image seems to govern an experience like the one Baudelaire, Mallarme, and their
successors attributeto the Symboliste poet, an experience that began, as Swedenborg, Schopenhauer, and Hegel had inspired them
to claim, with a glimpse into the "monde d'[I]dees."31 The Symbolistes had frequentlyinvoked the transcendentalIdea to account
fora process of articulationthatwas intuitiveand exploratory,and
that made the poet's mind a locus fortruthsfrombeyond himself.
Saying that artistic process begins with the apprehension of the
Idea enabled them to explain the series of unanticipated utterances
flowingfromthe artist'spen as the idea's endlessly generated particulars: the Idea that "floats before [the artist's] mind," as
Schopenhauer phrased it, "resembles a living organism, develop-
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ingitselfand possessed ofthepowerofreproduction,
whichbrings
forthwhatwas not put intoit."32In equatingthe Image withthe
equationsofanalyticalgeometry,
Pound seems to have a comparable purposein mind,fortheseare the equationswithwhich,as he
recognizes,we are "able actuallytocreate"(V,91). The Image,like
the Symbolistes'Idea, and unlikethe "dead concepts"thatinitiate
theartofallegory,is somethingthatgeneratesin thepoet innumerable unforetold
particulars:somethingthatguidesthepoet through
a process in which he will continueto discovernew ideas, new
variationson his originalinsight.33
Like the eternalIdea, Pound
says,theimageis a "VORTEX, fromwhich,and through
which,and
intowhich,ideas are constantly
rushing"(V, 92).
But ifPound's admissionsabouttheappearanceofthe gods sugthe traditionalnotionsabout the divinityof
gest thathe affirms
inspiration,
ifhis claimsaboutthepoet'sapprehensionoftheImage
resembleSymbolisteclaims about art'smysticalorigins,otherasAs
pectsoftheseaccountsabsolve themofsuchtranscendentalism.
the languageof these passages reveals,Pound observesthe same
limits,in describingthoseexperiences,as thoselegislatedbyJames
forempiricalpsychology.In his accountsofthe noeticexperience
commonto mysticand poet, thatis, Pound clearlyacknowledges
such experienceas "scientificfact,"but he scrupulouslyrestricts
his inquiryto the world as given in consciousness;he does not
speculate about the firstcauses of experiences,about whetheror
not theyare what theyseem. In the articleon "Psychologyand
Troubadours,"Pound's subjectis "delightfulpsychicexperience";
the mythicalgods are "explicationsofmood" (PT, 44): the exalted
momentsoccur when an individual"feels his immortality
upon
him" (PT, 47; myitalics).In his catechismsof 1918 and 1921,similarly,a god amountsto "an eternalstateofmind"; its statusis no
fromthe "tasteofa lemon,or the fragrance
different
ofviolets,or
thearomaofdung-hills,
or thefeelofa stoneoroftree-bark,
or any
otherdirectperception."34
And when Pound describesthe feeling
oftranscendenceoccasionedbytheapprehensionoftheImage,itis
no accident that he makes a claim only about the individual's
"sense of" thatcondition(Ret.,4), forthe Image,howevermuchit
mightresemblethe inspiringIdea ofthe Symbolistes,is in factan
entityfirmlysituatedin thatexperientialrealmapprovedby empiricalpsychology.
It has becomea commonplaceofPoundcriticism
thathis account
ofthe Image,in particularhis suggestionthatthe Image manifests
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theworkingsofa subconsciousphenomenoncalled the "complex"
(Ret.,4), owes somethingto the Freudian psychoanalystBernard
Hart.Whathas notbeen appreciated,however,is the moresignificantaffinity
betweenthe Image and a numberoflike entitiesdescribed by contemporaryempirical-associationist
psychologists
like Ribot,Paulhan,and Bergson,whichhad also made theirway
intotheaccountsofcreativeactivityformulated
by Hulme.35 In his
1915 essay "Affirmations:
As forImagisme,"Pound describesthe
Image as a "cluster"ofperceptsand ideas thathas been "fused"in
the mindby the energeticforceof"emotion":an entitythat,once
given, demands "adequate expression,"and inspiresan organic
processofmaking.36
Representedthus,it strongly
resemblesa constructdescribedby Ribotin his influential
Essai sur l'imagination
creatrice(1900), borrowedby Bergsonin a 1902 article"L'Effort
intellectuel,"and emergingmostfamouslyas partoftheaccountof
the act ofartisticcreationthatservesas an illustrativeanalogyfor
naturalcreationin Bergson'sL'Evolution creatrice(1907).37 This
"conceptionideale" (EIC, 67) or "schema" (El, 187), a clusterof
memory-images
and ideas associatedin the mindbecause oftheir
"ressemblancea base emotionnelle"(EIC, 165),enables Ribotand
Bergsontodescribea processofcreationthatis organic:bothspeak
ofit as a "unite"thatpresentsitselfunsoughtto the consciousness
of the artist,and thatchanges characterwhen translatedinto the
"details" ofwordsor matter(EIC, 132-33; El, 178-79; 187-88).38
But cruciallyforbothofthem,it does so withoutnecessitatingany
referenceto thatmetaphysicalconceptof "un archetypefixe(survivance non deguisee des Idees platoniciennes), illuminant
1'inventeurqui le reproduitcomme il peut [fixedarchetype(an
undisguisedsurvivalofthePlatonicIdeas), illuminating
theinventor,who reproducesit as best he can]" (EIC, 67-68); it enables
themto describetheintuitiveand organicexperiencedescribedby
Schopenhauerwithoutdemandinga claimaboutthepoet's contact
witha realmbeyondtime,beyondthe phenomenalfluxthatBergson called "la duree."39
Ribot'sand Bergson'sversionsof the intuitiveand organicprocess ofcreation,a processtheyknewbest as describedin the treatises of FrenchSymbolisme,make themPrometheandemystifiers
ofcreativegenius,or moreproperly,Jamesianequivocatorsabout
thestatusofthepassive,intuitive,
ineffable,
and noeticexperience
thatis creativeinspiration.For Ribot,who identifiesthe creative
experienceof the Symbolistepoets and "l'imaginationmystique"
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(EIC, 185-97), that equivocation comes in the formof a refusal to
speculate about whether the unconscious mind that furnishesthe
constituents of the developing "unite"' is ultimately material or
spiritual.40For Bergson, who was also to give the name of "image"
to the first,inspiring presence in a poet's mind, the affinitywith
James comes in the form of a refusal to commit himself on the
matterof the subjectivityor objectivityof inspiration; in the course
of an empathetic correspondence with James,he declares his belief
that "il y a l'experience pure, qui n'est ni subjective ni objective
[there is pure experience, which is neither subjective nor
objective]," and that "j'emploie le mot image pour designer une
realite de ce genre [I employ the word image to designate a reality
of this sort]."41
When Pound feels compelled to comment on the origin of the
ineffable Image, he shows just the same kind of hesitation to commithimself.Thinking,very likely,of Yeats's claim thatthe symbols
that present themselves to a poet's consciousness originate in a
universal memory,Pound acknowledges at the outset thatthe cluster of image, emotion, and idea that is the Image may have the
effectof suggesting that its constituentimage has "an age-old traditional meaning," and furtherconcedes that "this may serve as
proofto the professionalstudentofsymbologythatwe have stood in
the deathless light, or that we have walked in some particular arbour of his traditionalparadisio."42 But immediately upon suggesting this, he refuses to commit himself further,stressing that such
speculation "is not our affair"(V, 86). Pound recognizes, in other
words, that the Image may indeed be the vehicle of a "Divine
Essence" thatYeats would have it be, but he feels uneasy, as if he
has strayed into forbidden territory,when he straysbeyond phenomena to firstcauses.43 As he was to note in his "Axiomata" about
the status of those "gods" that on occasion appear so vital and
convincing-in terms that might have been taken directly out of
James's records on psychical research-these are equally likely to
be eitherphysiological and illusory,or spiritualand genuine, just as
possibly "a mirage of the senses" as a genuine "affect from the
theos" (Ax., 50). His view of mystical experience corroborates
James's view that our judgments about it must be based not on its
"roots," but on its "fruits":
The consciousnessmaybe aware ofthe effectsofthe unknown
on theconsciousness,butthisdoes not
and ofthenon-knowable
affect
theproposition
thatourconsciousnessis utterly
of
ignorant
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the natureofthe intimateessence. For instance:a man maybe
hitbya bulletand notknowitscomposition,
notthecourseofits
havingbeen fired,noritsdirection,
northatitis a bullet.He may
die almostinstantly,
knowingonlythe sensationofshock.Thus
consciousnessmayperfectly
well registercertainresults,as sensation,withoutcomprehending
theirnature.... He may even
die ofa long-considered
disease withoutcomprehending
its bacillus.... Concerningthe ultimatenatureofthe bacillus ... no
knowledgeexists;butthe consciousnessmaylearnto deal with
superficial
effects
ofthebacillus,as withthedirectingofbullets.
(Ax.,50-51)
Pound's own policy for describing the mental experience of the
Vorticistpoet, then, is very much in keeping with the guidelines
that James shared with Husserl. His sympathywith the goals of
phenomenological reduction may well have been what lay behind
his formulationof the firstand most famous of Imagiste tenets, the
resolutionto engage in the "Direct treatmentofthe 'thing,'whether
subjective or objective" (Ret., 3). The Vorticist'sinspiration,in his
account, is to remain a cognitive experience where the object of
cognition is bracketed. It is to be subject to what Husserl called the
"principle of all principles": " 'Intuition,' in primordialform. . . is
simply to be accepted as it gives itselfout to be, though only within
the limits in which it then presents itself."44
But of what significance is this policy in shaping Pound's prescriptions for Vorticist style? Pound insists that the poet himself
observe identical restrictionswhen expressing his insightsto others
as Pound has observed when describing them generally. The "serious artist," in his view, is "scientific" in that he is content to
confine his expressive effortsto the accurate record of his "state of
consciousness."45 He presents "the image of his desire, of his hate,
of his indifference,as precisely that,as precisely the image of his
own desire, hate or indifference.. ." (SA, 46). And when it comes
to articulatingthe insight that accompanies the appearance of the
Image, even if that insight has all the authorityof a mystical revelation, it is his duty simply to "render" it as he has "perceived or
conceived it" (V, 203). Pound asks the poet, in other words, to
represent his inspiration not as the authoritative insight it has
seemed, but simply as the consciousness of an insight that it has
undeniably been. "As Dante writes of the sunlightcoming through
the clouds froma hidden source and illuminatingpartofa field," so
the Vorticistpoet is to be on the watch for"new vibrationssensible
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themto be
to facultiesas yetill understood. . . neitheraffirming
'astral'or 'spiritual'nordenyingthe formulaoftheosophy."46
Like James,Pound makes it clear thatthe feelingof revelation
poet does notauthorizehimtoexpresshis
thatinspirestheVorticist
insightas dogma.The poet,he stresses,must"neverconsideranythingas dogma" (Ret.,4).47 "That whichthe philosopherpresents
as truth,"the Imagistemustsomehowpresent"as thatwhichappears as truthto a certainsortof mindundercertainconditions"
(WP,331).48 But ifhe forbidsthepoet frompresentinghis insights
as giftsfromtherealmoftheabsolute,ifhe denies himtherightto
a pitchofrhetoricthat,in Hulmeanterms,fliesuncheckedintothe
gas," Pound does notcondemnhimto an incapac"circumambient
itatingskepticism.He is just as resistantas are Jamesand Husserl
to the prospectof a worldin which truthscan never be thought
It was an acquiescence to such
anythingotherthanidiosyncratic.
limitations-as we shall see more clearly when we consider
forthe artist-thathad definedthe "flaccid"
Lewis's prescriptions
or "spreading"artsofImpressionismand Futurism(VP, 153), and
Pound is concernedthatVorticistpoetrybe more hopeful,more
"energized" (VP, 153) thanthese arts."Imagism,"he emphasizes,
between Impres"is notImpressionism"(V, 85).49 The difference
sionistand Imagistepoetry,in hisview,will be a deliberategesture
towardsthemakingofabstract
in thelattertowardsgeneralirzation,
concepts or theoriesthatmightjust possiblybe true in a world
widerthanhis own:
whichperception
ofmanas thattoward
moves.
Youmaythink
as theplastic
ofhimas theTOY ofcircumstance,
Youmaythink
RECEIVINGimpressions.
substance
fluidforce
OR youmaythink
ofhimas DIRECTINGa certain
as CONCEIVINGinsteadofmerelyobagainstcircumstance,
serving
andreflecting.
(VP,153,andsee V,90)
Pound sharesJames'sbeliefthatany man who has experienceda
seeminglyreligiousinsighthas a dutyto expressit in a tonethatis
whathe has apprehended
Neitherrepresenting
suitablyoptimistic.
as "propagandaof somethingcalled the one truth"(PT, 47), nor
offering"his ignorance[of such truth]as a positive thing"(WP,
331), he mustchartJames'smiddlecourse,and offerit "as a sortof
workinghypothesis"(PT,48). As Jamesimaginesthepsychologist's
findingsto be a "provisionalbody ofpropositions"about statesof
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mind and their cognitions,which "more developed parts of
Philosophy"mightone day discovercorrespondwithan absolute
up his insights"as the
truth,so Pound envisionsthe poet offering
enduringdata ofphilosophy,"as propositionsthatmaycontribute
Justas
to thatother,deductivequest formetaphysicalcertainties.50
truthsbeingassertedand putto work
Jamesimagineshis pragmatic
in theworld,so Pound suggeststhatthepoet's insightsoughtto be
recordedin sucha waythattheymaybe graspedand testedagainst
experience.The analyticalequations,passed on to the reader,beforliving.And Pound, like James,refusesto
come instruments
denythe possibilitythatthe insightsto whichtheylead mightbe
"superiorpointsofview, windowsthroughwhichthe mindlooks
out upon a moreextensiveand inclusiveworld"(VRE, 428):
Is theformula
oris itcabalaandthesignofunintellinothing,
tothe
understanding
andtranslating
giblemagic?Theengineer,
bridgesanddevices.He speaks
many,
buildsfortheuninitiated
thesignsarea doorintoeternity
Fortheinitiated
theirlanguage.
andintotheboundlessether.(WP,332)
There is reasonto expect,then,thatwhen Pound comes to discuss the natureof the expressive"arrangement"suitable forthe
thatis tensionalin
Imagistepoet,he will specifyan arrangement
the same sense as the pragmatictruth.It will be somethingthat
aims to satisfythe skeptical,empiricist,irreligiousand scientific
tendencyin itsreader,by keepinghis eye focusedon thephenomenal world. It will leave some opening,however,forthatphilosophic,dogmatical,religiousand romanticpartof the consciousness thatrefusesto concede thatthe quest fortimelesstruthsis
futile.Pound commentsthatanyonewho regardsinsightsas absolutewill succumbtoa stateof"paralysis"ormental"atrophy"(Ax.,
a poeticstructure
that
therefore,
52). He would hardlyrecommend,
encouragedsuch a regardin its reader.Only a constructthatenand dismantlingof truths-not
couragesthe ongoingconstruction
of
that
as
vehicle
some
essentialtruth-willcomply
one
poses the
with the restrictions
on human inquirythat Pound shares with
thatthe"Image"
James.It is in itsachievementofsuchtensionality
(whichPound uses in a second sense to designatethe poetic arfromthe "Symbol."
profoundly
rangement)differs
or "absolute" metPound definesthe Image as an "interpretive"
it thusfrom
aphor(Cav., 162,V, 85, CWC, 23).51In distinguishing
what he calls "ornamental"metaphor,he echoes the effortsof
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champions of the Symbol, from Baudelaire to Yeats, to define a
poetic ideal in contradistinctionto allegory: an artthatwill imply a
necessary ratherthan arbitraryrelation between itself and what it
signifies, and that will somehow reflect in that way the organic
ratherthan mechanical process by which it has come into being.
Pound stresses, too, that whatever message the Image conveys, it
will do so by "presentation" ratherthan "description" (Ret., 6), and
so supports the Symboliste hostility toward discursiveness. Although these similarities have led a number of critics since Frank
Kermode's Romantic Image to regardthe Image and the Symbol as
essentially identical, it is here, in fact,that the similarities end.52
The constructsthat go by the name of Symbol are, to be sure, of
many kinds. These structuresshare, however, the conceived function of revelation: they are conduits of "les splendeurs situees derriere le tombeau [the splendors situated beyond the veil]," pieces
of a "pli de sombre dentelle qui retient l'infini [fold of dark lace,
which curbs the infinite]" (Mallarme, Var., 370), transparentlamps
that glow with a "spiritual flame." The Symboliste work of art, in
the words of Andre Gide, "est un cristal-paradis partiel ou l'Ide
r'fleurit en sa purete superieure.... ou les paroles se fonttransparentes et revelatrices [is a crystal-a partial paradise where the
Idea flowers again in its supreme purity... where words become
transparentand revelatory]."51
Pound imagines the Image, however, as functioningquite differently, in accordance with the more provisional sort of truthhe is
willing to ascribe to it. If the Symboliste puts the reader in the
position of a mystic,forwhom the naturalworld dissolves to reveal
some absolute truth,the Imagiste seeks to restricthis reader's gaze
to the stream of the phenomenal, and to bring him instead to the
point of departure in the constructionof a truththat is manmade
and provisional. If a Symbol like Yeats's Rose functionssimply to
suggest things that may be identified with it, the Image is a constructthat implies an identitybetween two concrete images, each
of which it identifiesexplicitly.Pound illustrateswith his own "In
a Station of the Metro":
The apparitionofthesefacesin the crowd:
Petals,on a wet,blackbough.
(V, 89)54
In this arrangement,as in the precise interpretivemetaphor Pound
locates in Guido Cavalcanti, "the phrases correspond to definite
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sensations undergone" (Cav., 162). The interpretiveexperience it
invites is not one of casting "beyond" the images to search for a
metaphor's suppressed tenors,but ratherone of pondering the significance of the implied identitybetween two already clearly identified things.
James observes that the recognition of analogy is the first,delightfulstep in the effortof the "theoretical need" to simplifythe
world (SR, 65-66). In the essay thatPound described as containing
"the fundamentalsof all aesthetics" (CWC, 3), Fenollosa notes that
the recognition of the "homologies, sympathies,and identities" in
nature initiates the constructionof all linguistic structuresand systems ofthought(CWC, 22-24). The beauty ofa poetrythatworks by
engaging the reader at thatmomentwhen the process of abstraction
has just begun, as Pound understood,is thatit reminds him thatthe
categoryhe is beginning to see is one that is being created rather
than discovered.55 The ideal condition of English poetry, writes
Fenollosa, would be the condition exemplified by the Chinese
ideogram: a sign in which the move towards abstractionis arrested
at a stage where the particularsremain visible. Bearing "its metaphor on its face," having its "etymology... constantlyvisible," the
poem thatachieves this will not attemptto hide the factthatit is the
product of an attemptto conquer difference,but will bear the evidence ofits efforts-like a "blood-stained" battle-flag(CWC, 25). In
doing so, it will not only enable its reader to enjoy recognizing an
analogy between concrete things, but will also invite him to critique his impulse to identifythose things,to subsume them under
a common category.The Metro poem, forexample, in implying an
identitybetween the ghost-likefaces that emerge in the dark of a
subway station and the pink-whitepetals crowded on a branch in
the spring rain, directs the reader towards a generalization about
the mutual beauty and fragilityof person and blossom. Presently,
however, our satisfactionin that thought is disrupted by the uncomfortableequation of the tree-branchand the transitstationfrom
which faces and petals seem to spring. Contemplating that identification,we are compelled to object thatthe affinitybetween these
long, black, thin,backdrops is more than countered by their difference. The faces bear no organic relation to their setting as do the
petals to the bough. They do not spring fromit, but it fromthem.
The subway station is somethingthe men behind these faces have
constructed,somethingtheyhave built in order to take shelter from
that rain the petals accept with complete passivity. And with the
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refinedinsightbroughtby this recognitionof difference,
we are
compelledto seek a new, moreexactanalogy.
Such an analogy,ofcourse,will elicititsown objections,will be
mentallydismantledin favorof one thatseems still morefitting,
and so theprocesswill continue,perhapsindefinitely.
The Image,
or interpretive
metaphor,in the termsofPaul Ricoeur,represents
that"stage in the productionofgenreswheregenerickinshiphas
notreachedthelevel ofconceptualpeace and rest,"butengenders
instead a verydefinitestate of "tension,"as "the movementtowardsthe genus is arrestedby the resistanceofthe difference."56
By discouraginganypropensity
on thepartofhis readerto elevate
his insightsto the statusofabsolutetruths,
by substituting
forthe
vaguelysuggestiveand talismanicSymbola tensional,manifestly
in which,as Fenollosa willed it,
provisional,postulateofidentity,
"thecreativeprocess[remains]visibleand at work"(CWC, 25), the
Vorticistpoet tripsoffinsteada sidelongquest fortemporaryinsights,momentary
satisfactions,
incipientcategoriesthatdissolve
almostas soon as theyare conceived.The mindofhis readeris to
be no stillcenter,gazingintomysticaltruth,
buta whirlingVortex,
in which hopeful,centripetalgesturestowardtruthare as soon
undone by a centrifugal
motion.The sympathetic
readingof the
image,Pound's own secularized"symbol,"is in his carefulwords
"notnecessarilya beliefin a permanentworld,but it is a beliefin
thatdirection"(V, 84).
The affinity
between the pragmatictruthand the poetic image
extendsalso to the typeof paintingand sculpturethatWyndham
Lewis called Vorticist.Lewis's clearestprescriptions
forVorticist
art are in "A Review of Contemporary
Art,"in Blast II, which
stipulatesthe principlesthatthe Vorticistoughtto emulateand to
eschew. Addressingthe aestheticsof Expressionism,Cubism,Impressionism,and Futurismin turn,Lewis steersa course remarkably similarto those of Jamesand Pound. Like manyartistsand
in his time,Lewis identifiesthequestforabstraction
in
art-theorists
visual artwitha searchformysticaltruth.57
And the mostextreme
of this quest arouse in him the same discomfort
manifestations
Hulme,James,and Pound feelat theuncheckedflightofthe "theoreticneed." In the spiritof the "new classicism,"Lewis objects
stronglyto paintingsthatpose as conduitsforthe supernatural.
Particularly
culpable, in his view, is the Expressionistpaintingof
Kandinsky,whom he describes,fairlyor unfairly,as "the only
PURELY abstractpainterin Europe" (RCA, 40).58 Kandinsky,of
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and eloquentlyofthe artist'scapaccourse,had writtenfrequently
ityforunmediatedvision,and had representedhis own paintingas
a medium of revelation.In his Uber das Geistige in der Kunst
(1911),translatedand excerptedin thefirstissue ofBlast,he makes
an appeal foran artthatwill capturethe"eternaltruth"ofthespirit
worldbeing exploredby Madame Blavatskyand herTheosophical
Society(CSA, 13). Lewis, predictably,objectsto what he sees as
Kandinsky'sattemptto renderspiritualtruthsat the expense ofall
referencesto the empiricalworld,and calls forthe exorcismofthe
fromaesthetics:
supernatural
fluctuations
ofhis soul,and
docileto theintuitive
Kandinsky,
folanxioustorenderhishandandmindelasticandreceptive,
outofthematerial
intoitscloud-world,
lowsthisunrealentity
andsoliduniverse.
tobe
willthatresidesineachgoodartist
He allowstheBach-like
Spirit.He allows
and wandering
madewaron bytheslovenly
the rigidchambersof his Brainto becomea mystichouse
andpuerileSpook,thatleavesa delihaunted
byan automatic
catetraillikea snail.
soulin another
Spookthatneedslaying,ifit
The Blavatskyish
getsa vogue,justas MichaelAngelodoes.(RCA,43)
If,as Jamessays,"the absence ofdefinitesensible images" is the
ofthedivinehighertruths"(VRE,
"sine qua nonofa contemplation
Lewis's anxietyin the face ofKandinsky's
54), we mightinterpret
paintingas dismayat its failureto acknowledgeits own arbitrariness. Like Pound a fewmonthsearlier(AV,7; AGB, 13),he seems
to detect in Kandinsky'seffortto be "passive and medium-like"
(RCA,40) an unwillingnessto concede a role to his own "Will and
to representas eternaltruthwhat
consciousness"(AV,7): an effort
Kandinsky's own idiosyncratic mind has played a role in
designing.59
in confronting
the theoLewis experiencesa similardiscomfort
abstractartofCubism.The Cubretictendencyin theincreasingly
ist paintersaim,in the analyticalphase oftheirart,to refineaway
fromobjectsall the accidentaldetailsoflightand perspectivethat
vantagepointofthe painter.
grantdue recognitionto the arbitrary
In the wordsof a championCubist artlike Maurice Raynal,who
comparedthe Cubistachievementto thatof Mallarme,the Cubist
paintingwill,when thisgoal is completelyrealized,"offera guarin itself;thatis to say ofabsolutelypuretruth...
antee ofcertainty
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and so make the Beautiful . . . into a 'sensible manifestationof the
Idea.' "60 But as James mighthave predicted, when faced with the
"absolute datum" of a Cubist painting, once there is virtuallyno
"otherness" leftto annoy his philosophic need, Lewis is gripped by
a longing forthe very particularsthat have been sacrificed. Justas
he laments the way Kandinsky's "ethereal, lyrical and cloud-like"
paintings foregothe power and definitionof representative forms,
he regretsthat the Cubist quest forabsolute truthresults in paintings thatare "static and representative,not swarming,exploding, or
burgeoning with life ..."
(RCA, 38). It is unfortunate,he says,
when "the Plastic is impoverished forthe Idea," forthen "we get
out of direct contact with these intuitivewaves of power, that only
play on the rich surfaces where life is crowded and abundant"
(RCA, 40). With an equivocation reminiscent of Pound and James,
Lewis concludes thatalthough the artistmay "believe in the existence of the supernatural," and thinkhe has access to it, he should
regard it "as redundant," as nothingto do" with the "life" that is
properly the object of art (RCA, 44). He encourages the Vorticist
artist,thatis, as Hulme and Pound had encouraged theirpoets and
James and Husserl their philosophers, to refrainfromdedicating
himselfto recoveringtranscendentalrealityand to restcontentwith
recording phenomenal experience. In 1939, protesting Herbert
Read's representationof all modern abstractart as kind of "spiritual refuge" fromphenomenal chaos, Lewis objected tfi
cism had not been "a clinging to a lifebelt, or to a spur, or something satisfactoryand solid, in the midst of a raging perpetual
flux...." "Its artists," he continued, in language reminiscent of
Hulme, did not "'fly'" unchecked into the reassuring transcendency of "geometric expression."61
But if Lewis discourages the Vorticist painter from rendering
what he conceives as transcendentalrealities, he does not condemn
him to an uncomprehended phenomenal chaos. If he recoils from
the dogmatism of Kandinsky's Expressionism or Picasso's Cubism, he does not wholeheartedly embrace the skepticismimplicit in
Impressionism and Futurism.The Impressionists had worked from
the premise that the highest formof truthaccessible to an individual mind is, in Jules Laforgue's words, the "response of a unique
sensibility to a moment."62Their ideology was relativist,pluralist,
and democratic; they confined the individual eye to its idiosyncratic impression, and respected all honestlyrendered impressions
equally. As Laforgue summarized it,
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Each manis, accordingto his momentin time,his racialmilieu
and social situation,his momentofindividualevolution,a kind
ofkeyboardon whichthe exteriorworldplays in a certainway.
My own keyboardis perpetuallychanging,and thereis no other
like it.All keyboardsare legitimate.(Laforgue,18-19)
The Impressionist was obliged to preserve every accident, every
irregularity,in the fleeting picture present to his eye. For Monet
and Renoir, to reduce any part of the shimmering panorama of
sense-data to the skeletal lines of some mental concept would have
been too coercive an interpretation.63
But forLewis, such programmatic passivity, however much it satisfies painting's obligation to
life,is not an acceptable alternativeto pure abstraction.If the Cubist speaks too categorically,Lewis laments, the Impressionist and
his Futurist successors are so tentativeas not to speak at all, their
"democratic [states] of mind" nothing but "cowardice or
muddleheadedness" (RCA, 42). In their dedication to the "inherently unselective registeringof impressions," they are engaged in
an "absurd and gloomy waste of time" (RCA, 45). They forfeitthe
possibility of discerning and articulatingany meaning in the phenomenal chaos, and remain completely "subjugated" to Nature
(RCA, 40). In otherwords, Lewis corroboratesJames's findingsand
balks at an art that denies all abstraction.64His "theoretic need"
makes him object that the involuntary,or "mechanically reactive"
craftsmenof Impressionism and Futurism"do not sufficientlydominate the contents of their pictures" (RCA, 42). Just as Pound refuses to allow the Vorticist to remain a "Toy of Circumstance,"
Lewis insists thatthe Vorticistartistmustboth attend closely to life,
and seek its sense, or pattern:
You mustbe able to organizethe cups, saucers and people, or
theirabstractplasticequivalent,as naturally
as Nature,onlywith
the added personallogic ofArt,thatgives the groupingsignificance. (RCA,46)
The Vorticistis not the Slave of Commotion,but it's [sic]
Master.65
Lewis's Vorticist,then, will neither penetrate the phenomenal
veil, nor revel contentedly in its teeming chaos. "The finestArt,"
Lewis maintains, "is not pure Abstraction,nor is it unorganized
life."66 And the constructs that preserve this balance are, once
again, inherentlytensional, compromisingbetween abstractmonotony and concrete heterogeneity. Lewis repeatedly stresses that
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Vorticist paintings and sculptures grant free rein to neither the
philosophic tendency nor its opposite, but allow each to be checked
by the operation of the other. "We must constantly strive to ENRICH abstraction,"he says, "till it is almost plain life, or ratherto
get deeply enough immersed in material life to experience the
shaping power amongst its vibrations" (RCA, 40). Like the poem
that invites us to analogize between two images, a process countered by the phenomenal particularspreserved by the images themselves, the Vorticistpainting or sculpture "must catch the clearness
and the logic in the midst of contradictions: not settle down and
snooze on an acquired, easily possessed and mastered, satisfying
shape."67 The arrangementsof Vorticistpainters and sculptors, in
other words, must not express their insights as divine revelations,
but as human constructions,not as absolute truths,but as provisional gestures,subject to dissolution at the very instantof conception. "Finite and god-like lines," Lewis says, "are not forus, but,
rather,a powerful but remote suggestion of finality,or an elementary organization of a dark insect swarming, like the passing of a
cloud's shadow or the path of a wind" (RCA, 40).68
Lewis's vision of a tensional art, so closely akin to Pound's, is
borne out in the sculptures and paintings produced by members of
the Vorticistcircle, which included Lewis himself,William Roberts,Helen Saunders, Frederick Etchells, David Bomberg, and Edward Wadsworth. Most of the works reproduced in the issues of
Blast, or exhibited under the Vorticistbanner, maintain the tense
balance he advocates between the urge to abstractionand the impulse to recognize the fleetingparticularsof the phenomenal flux.
If the geometric formsof Malevich or Mondrian most closely emulate the condition of the eternal Idea, and if the blurred figuresin-motionof Italian Futurismin some sense carrythe contraryideal
of the Impressionists to its logical conclusion, the work of the Vorticist brings these extremes into tense coexistence. Lewis represents his ideal at one point in Blast as that of a "LIVING plastic
geometry," or, later, as the "burying [of] EUCLID deep in the
living flesh," and this ideal is operative in a number of Vorticist
works, most particularlyGaudier-Brzeska's magnificentsculpture,
"Red Stone Dancer" (1913).69 In this figure,as Pound was to note
in his book on the sculptor,the "mathematical bareness" of a triangle and circle, embedded in the face and breast, is "fully incarnate, made flesh, full of vitalityand of energy" (GB, 138) by the
motion of limbs flowing in and out of them. If the viewer's eye
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as if to whatJames
gravitatesto one ofthe unsulliedabstractions,
called an "absolute datum,"the sculptureinvitesit almostsimultaneouslyto point beyond or on eitherside of them,to see the
The whole body of the
"other" of the dancer's motion-in-time.
whirlingenergeticallyinto curves thatthen
dancer,furthermore,
line, threatens
ofthe straight
inspireto the purityand universality
but neverfullyconcedes,its idiosyncraciesto an ento surrender,
tirelyuniformabstraction.Its head and upper body thusapproximate the shape of a "sphericaltriangle"-whatPound called the
(GB, 137) in the workofLewis as well as Gau"centrallife-form"
dier-Brzeska.70
corpuscontainsmanysuchfigures,aspiringto tranThe Vorticist
scend their vitalityand become universal: Lewis's paintings
"Centauress"(1912) and "Enemy of the Stars"(1913), along with
WilliamRoberts's"Religion"(1913-14),notonlyembodybutseem
to narratesuch an aspiration,and Bomberg's"Mud Bath" (1914)
seems by its titleto allude explicitlyto the cinderyworld from
whichits highlyabstractyetstilljust recognizablyhumanfigures
spring.There are several works,too, in which landscapes hover
thenecessary
midwaybetweentheabstractand therepresentative,
and the accidental, the eternal and the temporal.In Etchell's
"Dieppe" (1913),forexample,the shape ofhouses,chimneys,and
bridges,thoughrefinedofmanyoftheiraccidentalcharacteristics,
retainthe energyof a busy portby appearingto whirlabout the
picture'scenter.The palpable tensioncapturedhere,betweenthe
in Etchell'slater
tendenciestomoveoutofand intolife,is mirrored
and less figurative"Progression"(1914-15), where the forcesof
abstractionand chaos battleit out in a degeneratinggrid.In that
painting,as in otherVorticistworkssuch as Bomberg's"Jiu-Jitsu"
(1913), where the phenomenalfluxis no longerrepresentedby
allusions,the stasisofthe squares is charrecognizablefigurative
disruptedby the instabilityof irregulartrianglesor
acteristically
exampleofthe warrhomboidsand trapezoids.Anotherintriguing
ringimpulsesatworkis Wadsworth's"Slack Bottom"(1914),where
the illusion is of a chessboardwhose perfectregularitywill not
ofthevisionof
hold,butsags at itscenter.The latteris reminiscent
a world
and
essays:
in
Hulme's
notebooks
found
theory-making
precarichessboards,
perched
resemble
where abstracttheories
momenworld,
of
the
phenomenal
ously atop the "cinder-heap"
tarilyorderingit,butthenquicklycollapsingbackintoit,waitingto
be manufacturedanew. "Slack Bottom"bring us back, too, to
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Pound's poetic chessboard,withits reminderthatno abstractresolutionis final,thateveryblack-and-white
solutionreasoningmay
bringis subject immediatelyto a new, and once again colorful,
battle.
The expressivearrangementsof the Vorticistpoet and artist,
then,are similarbothin genesis and constitution
to the representationsof truthJamesenvisionsforpragmatism.
They reflectthe
convictionof their"new classical" theoriststhatit is hubristicto
claim the capacityto grasp transcendentaltruths.They are also
informed,
however,bytherecognition
thatmomentsin whichsuch
a conditionseemstobe accomplishedare an undeniablepartofour
experience,and thatitwould be foolishto denyourselvesthehope
thattheyinspire.Jamesand Pound, in particular,are caughtbetweentheirdiscomfort
withdogmatismand theirinabilityto adopt
an attitudeof thoroughgoingskepticismtoward intuitionsthat
seem, to them,to be moreaffirmed
thandenied by the streamof
ofourquasi-mystical
moexperience.To be chronicallydistrustful
ments,as Jamespointsout to a friendwho has challengedhim to
give up his faith,and as Pound would no doubt have replied to
anyonewho wished to denythe poet his passion to articulatethe
Image,would be to assert"a dogmaticdisbeliefin anyextantconsciousnesshigherthanthatofthe . . . humanmind,and thisin the
teeth of the extraordinary
vivacityof man's psychologicalcommercewithsomethingideal thatfeels as if it were also actual."'"
The pragmatictruth,the poetic Image,and the Vorticistpainting,
are energeticassertionsthat,while notclaimingto be
accordingly,
windows on eternity,
do not extinguishall hope of celestial fire
either.They respondto our religiousneeds, our philosophicpassions, by providinghypotheses,intriguinganalogues, hints of a
Atthe same time,however,theyverydeliberuniversalgeometry.
atelypreservethe contextin whichthese insightsarise,assaulting
our peripheralvisionwithremindersof the phenomenallife that
would be sacrificedto the pattern.The truthstheyposit seem inherentlyunstable,liable to revertto chaos at everymoment,as our
reassertsitselfand focuseson thedetails
passionfordistinguishing
thatresistassimilation.By holdingeach of the two tendenciesin
fulfilltheirintendedfunctionofexpressing
check,theseconstructs
not the simple factof truthattained,but the complexfeeling of
attainingit, not the dead relic of a truthsaid-and-done,but the
The
electricityof the consciousnessof a truthcoming-into-being.
truthsof pragmatismand the poems and paintingsof Vorticism
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activelypursue the conditionHeidegger,the immediateheir of
Husserl's phenomenology,was to envision forart: they are deof the battlein whichthe
signedto be the fieldsforthe "fighting
unconcealedness of beings ... or truth,is won," the loci fortruth's
theiraudiences si"becomingand happening."72And in offering
multaneouslyboth the lightof unconcealednessand the dark of
concealment,boththe theoreticalobjectsto inspirebeliefand the
phenomenalevidenceto elicitdoubt,theyinvitethemto taketheir
is played.
place at the table wherethe chess game oftruth-making
of our
Theirchallengeis perpetual,and, ifJames'sunderstanding
restlesspsychiclifeis right,it is irresistible.
Queen's University
NOTES
I am gratefulto the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
and the Faculty Research Grant Committee of the University of Victoria for the
funding that made this research possible. I also wish to thank Mark Jones for his
many helpful suggestions.
' Ezra Pound, "Dogmatic Statementon the Game and Play of Chess" (cited in the
text as CH), in Blast II, ed. Wyndham Lewis (London, 1915; rpt. Santa Barbara:
Black Sparrow Press, 1981), 19. Pound identifiesthe poem as "pure Vorticism" in a
letterto Harriet Monroe (April 10, 1915), cited by K. K. Ruthuen in A Guide to Ezra
Pound's Personae (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1969), 75.
2 See forexample Richard Cork, Vorticismand Abstract Art in the First Machine
Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1976), 1:293; Timothy
Materer, Vortex: Eliot, Pound and Lewis (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979), 112;
and Reed WayDasenbrock,The LiteraryVorticismofEzra Pound and Wyndham
Lewis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1985), 89.
3 The image of the theoreticalchessboard recurs throughoutT. E. Hulme's essays
and notebooks. Note, forexample, his description of phenomenal and intellectual
realities in a review of Bergson's L'Evolution crgatrice, entitled "The New
Philosophy," The New Age, 5:10 (July 1909), 198: "On the one hand, the complicated, intertwined,inextricable fluxof reality,on the other the constructionsof the
logical intellect,having all the clearness and 'thinness' of a geometrical diagram. To
use another metaphor,on the one hand a kind of chaotic cinder-heap, on the other
a chessboard. In the latter,movement is always fromone square to another,always
just so; in the otherit is indefinite.The firstis an analogy forthe world of sensationthe many: the otherforthe constructsofthe intellect." See also Hulme's comparison
of the chessboard and "the gossamer world of symbolic communication," in
"Cinders" (cited in the text as C), in Speculations, ed. Herbert Read (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1924), 219. Also note his analogy between literatureand
"red counters moving on a chessboard," in "Notes on Language and Style" (cited in
the textas NLS), Further Speculations, ed. Sam Hynes (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska
Press, 1962), 94. For Fenollosa's use of the chessboard, see The Chinese Written
Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound (San Francisco: City Lights,
1936), 12; cited in the text as CWC. Pound became executor for this and other
manuscripts in 1913.
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4 William James, "The Sentiment of Rationality" (cited in the text as SR), in The
Will to Believe (New York: Dover, 1956), 65.
5 Hulme used the word "counter" in a technical sense, to designate the abstractions in symbolic reasoning, as in C, 218: "Symbols are picked out and believed to
be realities. People imagine that all the complicated structureof the world can be
woven out of 'good' and 'beauty.' These words are merely counters representing
vague groups of things,to be moved about on a board forthe convenience of the
players."
6 I borrow this termfromSanford Schwartz's excellent study The Matrix of Modernism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985), 85.
7 See for example Materer (note 2), 32-33. Materer is reiteratingthe thesis of
Richard Cork, a view shared by William C. Wees, in Vorticism and the English
Avant-garde (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1972). One of the difficultiesthese
critics have in seeing any common purpose between Pound's poetic Vorticismand
Vorticistpainting has stemmed fromthe mistaken perception of the latteras an art
"of total abstraction" (Materer, 87; compare Cork (note 2), xxiii and Wees, 151). It
has proven difficultto see the affinitybetween such an art and a poetry thatwould
"go in fear of abstractions"; see Pound, "A Retrospect" (cited in the textas Ret.), in
LiteraryEssays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot (London: Faber, 1960), 5. Dasenbrock
(note 2), whose book is by farthe best account of the Vorticistaesthetic, con-tends
that "to stress the abstractnessof Vorticism,"as Cork, Wees, and others have done,
is to distortthe movement and to deny it what originalityit did possess" (63).
8 Pound explicitly identified Imagisme with poetic Vorticism,and so I shall use
the termsinterchangeably.See Pound, "Vorticism,"in Gaudier-Brzeska (New York:
New Directions, 1970), 82. This importantarticle, which originallyappeared in the
FortnightlyReview forSeptember 1914, will be cited in the textas V. Other parts of
this book will be cited as GB.
9 See forexample James McNeill Whistler,The Gentler Art of Making Enemiues
(New York: Dover, 1962), 142-43, and Wassily Kandinsky,Concerning the Spiritual
in Art, trans. M. T. H. Sadler (New York: Dover, 1973), 34-35. The latteroriginally
appeared as Uber das Geistige in der Kunst, and was excerpted in Blast. Pound cites
both Whistlerand Kandinskyas advocating expressionistprinciples compatible with
his own. See V, 81-82, 86-87 and "Vortex. Pound," in Blast, ed. Wyndham Lewis
(London: 1914; rpt. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1981), 154. A comprehensive account of expressionism in Post-Impressionistart,and of its roots in German
Idealist theory,is found in August K. Weidmann's Romantic Roots in Modern Art
(Old Woking, Surrey: Gresham, 1979).
10 Pound, "Affirmations:Vorticism" (cited in the text as AV), in Ezra Pound and
the Visual Arts, ed. Harriet Zinnes (New York: New Directions, 1980), 9, 8. On the
quest for"arrangements,"see forexample AV, 6, V, 81, and "Affirmations:GaudierBrzeska" (cited in the text as AGB), in Zinnes, 22. See also Lewis, "A Review of
ContemporaryArt" (cited in the textas RCA), in Blast II, 39.
" See forexample Herbert N. Schneidau, Ezra Pound: The Image and the Real
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1967), 118-46; Ian F. A. Bell, Critic as
Scientist (London: Methuen, 1981), 136-44; and MartinKayman, The Modernism of
Ezra Pound (London: Macmillan, 1986), 70-72.
12 For a detailed account of the sources and implications of Hulme's "new
classicism," which has not previously been identified with the goals of empirical
psychology, see Patricia Rae, "T. E. Hulme's French Sources: A Reconsideration,"
in Comparative Literature 41 (Winter 1989): 69-99. Hulme's remarksquoted here
are from"Bergson's Theory of Art" (cited in the textas BTA), in Speculations, 149.
Hulme is discussing his preference forBergson's account of art over Schopenhauer's, on precisely these grounds.
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'3 See Hulme, "A Lecture on Modern Poetry" (cited in the text as LMP), in
Further Speculations, 67. See also NLS, 98, 100; BTA, 149, 153; and "Romanticism and Classicism" (cited in the text as RC), in Speculations, 127-29, 131, and
passim.
14 The capitalized word "Expressionism" refersto the German and Russian movement that included Kandinsky and Munch, as opposed to the Idealist tradition.
15 The only piece that has seriously addressed the question of Pound's affinity
with James is Walter Sutton's suggestive "Coherence in Pound's Cantos and
William James's Pluralistic Universe," Paideuma 15 (1986): 7-21. Sutton sees an
affinityonly between the later works of both writers(11). I would argue thatJamesian principles are implicit in Pound's poetic fromits Imagiste inception.
16 James had quite a followingin England, and had lectured to large audiences in
Edinburgh and Oxfordin 1902 and 1908-9. The psychical researchers G. R. S. Mead
and F. W. H. Myers were personal friends and correspondents, and James's work
was frequentlydiscussed in Mead's journal, The Quest. This journal, the publication
of the Quest Society, was devoted to the very Jamesian endeavor of reconciling
mysticismand science. Both Pound and Hulme regularlyattended meetings of the
Society, and Pound contributed "Psychology and Troubadours" to The Quest in
1910. For referencesto James's work in The Quest, between 1909 and 1916, see, for
example, I 358-9, 743; II 205, 499; III 787-9; IV 634; V 497, 716; VI 5, 447.
17William James,Psychology:The BrieferCourse, ed. GordonAllport(Notre
Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1985), xxvi; cited in the text as PBC. See also
James, The Principles of Psychology,vols. 1 and 2 (New York: Dover, 1950), 1:vi,
2:671; cited in the text as PP, followed by volume and page number. In an unpublished note on metaphysics at the Houghton Library,James says: the "I call essenof a transcendencyon the part of any discrimtially metaphysical,every affirmation
inable thing,idea, or representation.... [This] leads in its differentapplications to
the categories of cause, meaning, purpose, Substance (both in the noumenal and in
the phenomenal sense,) nature, Essence and objective reality.... Ordinary usage
also classes as metaphysical, notions of the absolute, the infinite, and the
noumenon" (MS. 4464, folder4; I quote with the permission of the Librarian of the
Houghton Library).
18 See PP, 2:283-87, where James represents belief as a matterof "emotion" or
"acquiescence" or "consent."
'9 James, "What Psychical Research has Accomplished" (cited in the text as PR),
in The Will to Believe, 311. James was a member of the BritishSociety forPsychical
Research from1882; in 1884, at the instigationof F. W. H. Myers, he became the
nominal leader of its American affiliate.
20 James defines mystical moments as all those that are "transient," "passive,"
"noetic," and "ineffable." See The Varieties of Religious Experience (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), 380-81; cited in the text as VRE.
21
See James M. Edie's excellent studyWilliamJames and Phenomenology
(Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1987), vii. Edie documents James's influence on
Husserl, 20-24.
22 Edmund Husserl, "Phenomenology" (cited in the text as PH), in Husserl:
Shorter Works,ed. Peter McCormick and Frederick Elliston (Notre Dame: Univ. of
Notre Dame Press, 1981), 23, 122, 125. See also Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1964), 35; cited in the text as IP. In this work,
Husserl situates his method in relation to mystical discourse:
In fact,we will harkback to the speech ofthe mysticswhen theydescribe
the intellectual seeing which is supposed not to be a discursive knowledge. And the whole trickconsists in this-to give freerein to the seeing
eye and to bracket the references which go beyond the 'seeing' and are
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entangled with the seeing, along with the entities which are supposedly
given and thoughtalong with the 'seeing,' and, finally,to bracket what is
read into them throughthe accompanying reflections. (IP, 50)
23
182.
See James, The Meaning of Truth (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1970),
24
James has just quoted Josiah Royce's observation thatthe most satisfyingobject
of belief is " 'a conception wherein the greatest fulness of data shall be combined
with the greatest simplicityof conception' " (PP, 2:316).
25
James, Pragmatism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 10, 13; cited in the text as P.
26
For James, who had abandoned an artisticvocation fora scientific career, the
aesthetic appeal of theorywas always a factorin assessing its value. Note, for example, PP, 2:312, and the analogies between theoryand musical harmonyand theory
and classical architecturein SR, 65 and P, 14.
27
in Essays in Radical Empiricismand A
James,Essays in Radical Empiricism,
30
See Pound,"ArtNotes,"in Ezra Poundand theVisualArts(note 10), 124.
Pluralistic Universe, ed. Ralph Barton Perry and Richard J. Bernstein (New York:
Dutton, 1971), 120.
28 Pound, "Psychology and Troubadours" (cited in the text as PT), The Quest 5,
October 1912, 37-53. For an account of The Quest and its contents, see note 16
above.
29 See for example "The Flame," in Collected Shorter Poems (London: Faber,
1973), 64, and Cantos 2, 3, 21, 25, in The Cantos of Ezra Pound (London: Faber,
1975), pp. 6, 11, 99, 119.
31
Charles Baudelaire, "Exposition universelle (1885)," in Oeuvres completes, ed.
Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, 1975-76), 2:596.
32
The Worldas Willand Idea, trans.R. B. Haldane and J.
Arthur
Schopenhauer,
Kemp (London: Trubner, 1883), 1:302-4; cited in the text as WWI. Compare Mallarm6's account of being inspired by the Hegelian Idea in a letterto Henri Cazalis,
May 14, 1867, cited by Robert Gibson in Modern French Poets on Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1961), 85. Also note his claims about inspiration's
origins "de source inn6e: ant6rieure a un concept," in "Sur Poe," Oeuvres completes ed. Henri Mondor and G. Jean-Aubry(Paris: Gallimard, 1945), 872, and his
commentson the ideas captured in verse, in Variations sur un sujet (cited in the text
as Var.), in Oeuvres compltes, 368, 400. See also Albert Mockel, Propos de littgrature, in Guy Michaud, Message po6tique du symbolisme (Paris: Librairie Nizet,
1947), 752.
33 For the distinction between symbol and allegory on these grounds, see the
commentsof Mockel, Propos de litterature,and Maurice Maeterlinck "R6ponse a un
Enqukte," in Michaud, 752, 750-52, and Camille Mauclair, Eltusis (Paris: Perrin,
1874), 97. Also note Schopenhauer, WWI, 68 and William Butler Yeats, "William
Blake and his Illustrations to the Divine Comedy," in Essays and Introductions
(London: Macmillan, 1961), 116.
34
Pound, "Religio" (cited in the textas R), in Selected Prose 1909-1965, ed.
William Cookson (London: Faber, 1973), 47; "Axiomata" (cited in the textas Ax.), in
Selected Prose, 50; my italics.
35 Hulme's and Pound's theories have been distinguished unnecessarily on this
issue. See, for example, Wallace Martin, "The Sources of the Imagist Aesthetic,"
PMLA 85 (1970): 203, and Martin Kayman, "A Context for Hart's 'Complex,' in
Paideuma 12 (1983): 227. For evidence of the empirical-associationistconstructin
Hulme, see Rae (note 12).
36 Pound, "Affirmations:As for Imagisme" (cited in the text as AAI), in Selected Prose, 344-47. In, for example, V, 86-88, 92, and AV, 7-9, Pound qualifies
the organic process by stressing that will and intellect must work alongside instinct.
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37
See Th6odule Ribot,Essai sur l'imaginationcr6atrice(Paris: Felix Alcan,
43
See Yeats,"Symbolismin Poetry,"in Essays and Introductions
(note32), 148.
1921); cited in the textas EIC; Henri Bergson, "L'Effortintellectuel," in "L'Energie
spirituelle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1944); cited in the text as EL.
38 See also Bergson, L'Evolution creatrice (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1948), 210, 259, 339-40.
39 Bergson distinguishes the final object of his intuitionfromSchopenhauer's in
La Pensee et le mouvant (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1946), 25-26;
cited in the text as PM.
Translations are by Albert H. N. Baron, fromRibot, Essay on the Creative Imagination (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1906), 81.
40 See the chapter Ribot contributed to Hugo Munsterberg's Subconscious Phenomena (London: Rebman, 1910), 35-39. Munsterberghad been a close associate of
James's at Harvard, and this volume is widely regarded as the source for Pound's
understandingof Hart and the other "new psychologists" he refersto in Ret. 4. The
translationsare by Albert H. N. Baron, fromRibot, Essay on the Creative Imagination (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1906), 81.
41 On the image, see PM, 131-32. Bergson delivered this lecture, on "L'Intuition
philosophique," at the Philosophical Congress in Bologna on April 10, 1911, and
Hulme was in the audience. Pound attended the lectures Hulme gave on Bergson
immediately afterhis return.Bergson's letterto William James,dated 20 July,1905,
is an unpublished manuscript quoted with the permission of the Librarian at the
Houghton Library,Harvard. The translationis by Ralph Barton Perry,rev. Bergson,
in Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston: Little, Brown,
1935), vol. 2.
42 Pound and Yeats had been in close association shortlyprior to Pound's composition of the Vorticistmanifestos.A detailed account of their association, with speculations about Yeat's influence on Pound, can be found in Herbert N. Schneidau,
"Pound and Yeats: The Question of Symbolism," ELH 32 (1965): 220-37.
4
83.
Husserl, Ideas, trans.W. R. Boyce Gibson (London: Collier MacMillan, 1962),
45 Pound, "The Serious Artist"(cited in the textas SA), in Literary Essays (note 7),
46; V, 85.
46 Pound, "The Wisdom of Poetry" (cited in the text as WP), in Selected Prose
(note 33), 331.
47 See also Pound, "Cavalcanti" (cited in the textas Cav.), in Literary Essay, 159.
48 See also Pound, "Affirmations:
Jacob Epstein" (cited in the textas AJE), in Ezra
Pound and the Visual Arts, 15.
49 The fundamentallymetaphorical nature of language, of course, makes a purely
Impressionistverse impossible. The differencebetween Impressionist and Imagiste
verse, to be more precise, would be thatin the latterthe analogies are foregrounded.
50 See Pound, "I Gather the Limbs of Osiris" (cited in the text as GLO), in Selected Essays, 23.
51 For Pound's view of metaphor as an alternative to dogmatic statement, see
GLO, 28.
52 In his influentialbook, Frank Kermode sees the antidiscursiveness and organicism of image and symbol as dominant, and downplays the significance of their
different"philosophical suits." See Romantic Image (London: Duckworth, 1960),
51. Kermode's successors on this point include Graham Hough, Image and Experience (London: Duckworth, 1960); see, forexample, 51.
53 Baudelaire, "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe," in Oeuvres completes (note 30),
2:329; Yeats, "William Blake" (note 32), 116; Andr6 Gide, Le Trait6 du Narcisse, in
Michaud (note 31), 731. My translationsof Baudelaire and Gide; the Mallarm6 is
trans. Keith Bosley, in Mallarm6, The Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 47.
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5 Reading poems like "The Secret Rose" and "To the Rose upon the Rood of
Time," forexample, is a process ofspeculating about the Rose's identitywith Maude
Gonne, Ireland, Christ, eternal beauty, etc. Yeats described the experience of encounteringpoetic symbols as one in which "We feel our minds expand convulsively
or spread out slowly like some moon-brightened image-crowded sea," in "The
Tragic Theatre," Essays and Introductions, 245.
55 Again, of course, we must make allowances forthe degree of abstractionalready
present in language.
56 Paul Ricoeur, "The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and
Feeling," in On Metaphor, ed. Sheldon Sacks (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1979), 146-47.
17
in Abstractionand Empathy,trans.
See, forexample,WilhelmWorringer,
Michael Bullock (New York: InternationalUniversities Press, 1953), 19-21. Worringer discusses the historyof art in terms of two impulses that correspond closely to
James's two tendencies: the "urge for abstraction" and the "urge for empathy."
Other identificationsof abstractionwith noumenal or mysticaltruthcan be found in
Michel Puy, "The Salon des Independants," in Cubism, ed. Edward F. Fry (London: Thames and Hudson, 1966), 65; and Guillaume Apollinaire, The Cubist Painters, and Paul Klee, "Creative Credo," in Theories of Modern Art, ed. Herschel B.
Chipp (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1968), 227-28, 185. See
also Maurice Raynal, note 60 below.
58 In spite of Lewis's perception of his work, Kandinsky in fact shared Lewis's
view thatthe artistcheated himselfifhe aimed to deny all representation.See CSA,
32.
59 See also Gaudier-Brzeska, "Vortex: Gaudier-Brzeska," in Blast, 158. Also note
Lewis's comments on Kandinsky in his 1919 The Caliph's Designh, in Wyndham
Lewis on Art, ed. Walter Michel and C. J. Fox (New York: Funk and Wagnall's,
1969), 168.
60 Maurice Raynal, Quelques intentionsdu cubisme, in Fry (note 56), 152-53. See
also Juan Gris, "Reply to a Questionnaire," in Fry, 169, and Worringer(note 56), 17.
61 Lewis, "The Skeleton in the Cupboard Speaks," in Wyndham Lewis on Art,
342.
62 Jules Laforgue, "Impressionism: The Eye and the Poet," trans. Linda Nochlin,
in herImpressionism
and Post-Impressionism
1874-1904(EnglewoodCliffs,N. J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1966), 18.
65 See Claude Monet, quoted by Lilla Cabot Perry,and Pierre Auguste Renoir,
"Credo" and excerpts fromnotebooks, in Nochlin, 35-36 and 44-51.
64 It is not true, of course, that Futuristart as a whole denied all abstraction,but
it was its dedication to the fluxthatobsessed Lewis. See Hulme, who called Futurism the "last efflorescenceof impressionism," in "Modern Artand its Philosophy,"
Speculations, 94; this lecture, which Hulme delivered on January27 1914, to an
audience that included Pound and Lewis, is cited in the textas MAP.
65 Lewis, "Our Vortex," Blast, 148.
66
Lewis, "Futurism, Magic and Life," Blast, 134.
67
Lewis, "Vortex No. 1," Blast II, 91; my italics.
68 The "tensional" condition I have identified here corresponds to the "dynamic
formism"that Dasenbrock sees as essential to Vorticistart. See Dasenbrock, 36. It
was also a condition that Hulme called forin his January1914 lecture: "A perfect
cube looks stable in comparison with the flux of appearance, but one might be
pardoned ifone feltno particularinterestin the eternityof a cube; but ifyou can put
man into some geometrical shape which lifts him out of the transcience of the
organic, then the matteris different"(MAP, 106-7) 1 thereforedisagree with Dasenbrock's contention(55-56) thatHulme's aesthetic preferencesdid not match those of
the Vorticists.
PatriciaRae
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69 Lewis, "Relativism and Picasso's Latest Work," Blast, 140; "Super-nature versus Super-real," in Wyndham Lewis on Art, 330. See also "The London Group,"
Blast II, 79, where Lewis asserts that "In Vorticismthe direct and hot impressions
of life are mated with Abstraction,or the combinations of the Will."
70 This shape was also the trademarkof Brancusi. Cork notes thathis use of it may
have inspired Gaudier-Brzeska (1:176).
71 James, letter to Charles A. Strong, April 9, 1907, in The Letters of William
James, ed. Henry James (London: Longman's, Green, 1920), 2:269.
72 Martin Heidegger, Poetry,Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New
York: Harper and Row, 1971), 55 and 71.
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