[No surviving envelope]
I said that I might send a few more notes about the poets. You may wonder particularly why I sent aHulme, Thomas Ernest ('T. E.')Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art;a4 big book of prose by HulmeHulme, Thomas Ernest ('T. E.')his influence on TSE and modernism;a1 with only five little poems at the end.1 The reason is that these little poems have been a kind of symbol of the whole of the first phase of modern poetry in England: say from about 1909. Hulme was an extraordinary man,2 who has had a great stimulating influence on many of us (his views on Humanism and Original Sin are the starting point for Herbert ReadRead, Herbertindebted to Hulme;a13 and myself, and Ivor RichardsRichards, Ivor Armstrong ('I. A.')indebted to Hulme;a14 and Ramon FernandezFernandez, Ramon;a15 know his work etc.) He wrote the poems as a tour de force, among a group of friends, MonroMonro, Haroldpart of Hulme's circle;a1,6 FlintFlint, Frank Stuart ('F. S.')and Hulme;a2, PoundPound, Ezrawithin Hulme's circle;a2 and others, as a kind of illustration of ‘Imagism’ and they should be read in connexion with what he says about modern poetry in the prose text. I think ‘ConversionHulme, Thomas Ernest ('T. E.')'Conversion';a3’ is very beautiful, though I do not understand it.7
IOwen, Wilfredqua poet;a1 agree with ReadRead, Herberton Wilfred Owen;a2 about Owen:8 he belonged to no group, and his interesting technical innovations are all his own, though he may have known the work of Gerard HopkinsHopkins, Gerard Manleypossible influence on Wilfred Owen;a1.9 Look at Auden’s ‘PaidAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.')and EP's 'Seafarer';a1Auden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.')Paid on Both Sides;d2 on Both Sides’,10 which has an interesting new metric based on Pound’s ‘SeafarerPound, Ezra'The Seafarer';e8’ and on original study of Anglo-Saxon. It is people like these, and partly MacleodMacleod, Josephpromising young poet;a1,11 and also young StephenSpender, Stephen'Four Poems';d6 Spender12 (see the last Criterion13) who are making new verse; and not those like the SitwellsSitwells, thetheir poetic limitations;a2, who contribute nothing new except a rather gaudy sense of visual beauty. I cannot see anything very big about Robert GravesGraves, Robertaspersion on;a1.14
IHale, Emilyreturns to Boston;a2 hope that you will have had a good crossing. I hope that I may, in some way or another, see the text of your lecture and of anything you write.
1.T. E. Hulme, Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Herbert Read (1924).
2.T. E. Hulme (1883–1917), poet, critic and aesthetic philosopher. See Michael Roberts, T. E. Hulme (F&F, 1938); Alun R. Jones, The Life and Opinions of T. E. Hulme (1960); Ronald Schuchard, ‘Hulme of Original Sin’, in Eliot’s Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art (1999), 52–69; Robert Ferguson, The Short Sharp Life of T. E. Hulme (2012).
3.Herbert ReadRead, Herbert (1893–1968), English poet and literary critic: see Biographical Register.
4.I. A. RichardsRichards, Ivor Armstrong ('I. A.') (1893–1979), theorist of literature, education and communication studies: see Biographical Register.
5.RamonFernandez, Ramon Fernandez (1894–1944), philosopher, essayist, novelist, was Mexican by birth but educated in France, where he contributed to Nouvelle Revue Française, 1923–43. Works include Messages (1926) – which included an essay 'Le Classicisme de T. S. Eliot’ – and De La Personnalité (1928).
6.Harold MonroMonro, Harold (1879–1932), poet, editor, publisher, bookseller: see Biographical Register.
7.‘Conversion’, by T. E. Hulme:
Light-hearted I walked into the valley wood
In the time of hyacinths,
Till beauty like a scented cloth
Cast over, stifled me. I was bound
Motionless and faint of breath
By loveliness that is her own eunuch.
Now pass I to the final river
Ignominiously, in a sack, without sound,
As any peeping Turk to the Bosphorus.
8.WilfredOwen, Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), soldier and war poet, was killed in France one week before the end of WW1. See Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen: A Biography (1974).
9.GerardHopkins, Gerard Manleyhis importance as poet;a2n Manley Hopkins (1844–89), innovative poet and priest. Strongly influenced by the Oxford Movement, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church by John Henry (Cardinal) Newman in 1866, entered the Jesuit noviciate in 1874 and was ordained priest in 1877. After working in a variety of parishes and teaching appointments, he was appointed in 1884 to the Chair of Greek Literature at University College, Dublin. Following a self-imposed poetic restraint that lasted for seven years (he believed that writing poetry was at odds with his priestly vocation), in 1875 he wrote ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’, working all the time to realise certain idiosyncratic and sometimes eccentric rhythms and other techniques, including ‘sprung rhythm’. He wrote further poems including ‘The Windhover’ and a series of sonnets. It was only after his death that his poetry was first collected by his friend Robert Bridges, in 1918; a second edition (1930) attracted much critical attention, and proved to be influential.
TSE wrote of Hopkins in an undelivered lecture, ‘The'Last Twenty-Five Years of English Poetry, The';a1n Last Twenty-Five Years of English Poetry’ (1939), written for an Italian audience: ‘He is a Victorian, certainly, but such a highly individual one that I should place him among the “eccentrics”. He was aloof from the popular currents of his time; and he was a Jesuit priest leading a religious life. The originality and the beauty of his verse, and often the greatness of the poetry, are incontestable; though it has a certain resemblance to that of his contemporary George Meredith. Hopkins is I think the greater poet of the two. His vocabulary, and his metric are both very original. His influence has been that which one might expect of a powerful eccentric poet suddenly appearing complete: it was immediate, it was very patent, taking the form of imitation of his metres and his verbal ingenuities such as the fabrication of new compound words. I think it may be transient, but it cannot be overlooked in considering the writing of some of the younger poets.’ After quoting the first eight lines of ‘TheHopkins, Gerard Manley'The Windhover';a8 Windhover’, the lecture picks up: ‘It appears to be a kind of fusion of the image of a hawk seen in the air, and the thought of Our Lord. You will recognise that Hopkins is highly idiosyncratic; that although he is not traditional, his speech is his own peculiar speech, and not the common speech of his own or any period. In this respect, I should call him, in the French sense, a less classic poet than the later Yeats.’
TSE responded to a written question about the influence of Hopkins upon his own work: ‘Nothing at all. Remember that Pound and I had both written a great deal before we ever heard of Hopkins. I remember glancing at the first edition of Hopkins on the table of Roger Fry the art critic, who was interested. I did not read Hopkins until the edition came out which was prefaced by Charles Williams. [Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Robert Bridges, 2nd edn, with additional poems and introduction by Charles Williams (1930).] I don’t know whether Pound has ever read him at all. Hopkins became known just in time to influence poets like Auden, Spender and Day Lewis. Anybody who was young enough could hardly escape his influence. Day Lewis most, I think; but he seems to me closer to Thomas Hardy.’
10.W. H. AudenAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.') (1907–73), poet, playwright, librettist, translator, essayist, editor: see Biographical Register.
11.JosephMacleod, Joseph Macleod (1903–84), poet, playwright, actor, theatre director, historian and BBC newsreader, was educated at Balliol College, Oxford (where he was friends with Graham Greene), and in 1929 joined the experimental Cambridge Festival Theatre, of which he became director, 1933–5 (his productions included Chekhov’s The Seagull and Ezra Pound’s Noh plays, and five of his own plays). In 1938 he joined the BBC as announcer and newsreader, retiring to Florence in 1955: it was during the BBC period that the poetry he produced under the pseudonym ‘Adam Drinan’ became sought-after in Britain and the USA: he was much admired by writers including Basil Bunting and Edwin Muir. His first book of poems, The Ecliptic (1930), was published by TSE at F&F. His plays included Overture to Cambridge (1933) and A Woman Turned to Stone (1934). See Selected Poems: Cyclic Serial Zeniths from the Flux, ed. Andrew Duncan (2009); James Fountain, ‘To a group of nurses: The newsreading and documentary poems of Joseph Macleod’, TLS, 12 Feb. 2010, 14–15.
12.Stephen SpenderSpender, Stephen (1909–95), poet and critic: see Biographical Register.
13.Spender, ‘Four Poems’ – dedicated to W. H. Auden – Criterion 10 (Oct. 1930), 32–4.
14.RobertGraves, Robert Graves (1895–1985), English poet, historical novelist, critic and classicist; author of numerous volumes of verse; a celebrated and graphic early autobiography, Good-Bye to All That (1929); works of contentious literary criticism including A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927); and novels including the lauded and lucrative I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935). Despite his generally low regard for Graves’s poetry, TSE was to accept for publication by F&F – and to puff in a blurb – his astonishing study The White Goddess: An Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1948).
10.W. H. AudenAuden, Wystan Hugh ('W. H.') (1907–73), poet, playwright, librettist, translator, essayist, editor: see Biographical Register.
5.RamonFernandez, Ramon Fernandez (1894–1944), philosopher, essayist, novelist, was Mexican by birth but educated in France, where he contributed to Nouvelle Revue Française, 1923–43. Works include Messages (1926) – which included an essay 'Le Classicisme de T. S. Eliot’ – and De La Personnalité (1928).
2.F. S. FlintFlint, Frank Stuart ('F. S.') (1885–1960), English poet and translator: see Biographical Register.
14.RobertGraves, Robert Graves (1895–1985), English poet, historical novelist, critic and classicist; author of numerous volumes of verse; a celebrated and graphic early autobiography, Good-Bye to All That (1929); works of contentious literary criticism including A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927); and novels including the lauded and lucrative I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935). Despite his generally low regard for Graves’s poetry, TSE was to accept for publication by F&F – and to puff in a blurb – his astonishing study The White Goddess: An Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1948).
11.JosephMacleod, Joseph Macleod (1903–84), poet, playwright, actor, theatre director, historian and BBC newsreader, was educated at Balliol College, Oxford (where he was friends with Graham Greene), and in 1929 joined the experimental Cambridge Festival Theatre, of which he became director, 1933–5 (his productions included Chekhov’s The Seagull and Ezra Pound’s Noh plays, and five of his own plays). In 1938 he joined the BBC as announcer and newsreader, retiring to Florence in 1955: it was during the BBC period that the poetry he produced under the pseudonym ‘Adam Drinan’ became sought-after in Britain and the USA: he was much admired by writers including Basil Bunting and Edwin Muir. His first book of poems, The Ecliptic (1930), was published by TSE at F&F. His plays included Overture to Cambridge (1933) and A Woman Turned to Stone (1934). See Selected Poems: Cyclic Serial Zeniths from the Flux, ed. Andrew Duncan (2009); James Fountain, ‘To a group of nurses: The newsreading and documentary poems of Joseph Macleod’, TLS, 12 Feb. 2010, 14–15.
6.Harold MonroMonro, Harold (1879–1932), poet, editor, publisher, bookseller: see Biographical Register.
8.WilfredOwen, Wilfred Owen (1893–1918), soldier and war poet, was killed in France one week before the end of WW1. See Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen: A Biography (1974).
3.Ezra PoundPound, Ezra (1885–1972), American poet and critic: see Biographical Register.
3.Herbert ReadRead, Herbert (1893–1968), English poet and literary critic: see Biographical Register.
4.I. A. RichardsRichards, Ivor Armstrong ('I. A.') (1893–1979), theorist of literature, education and communication studies: see Biographical Register.
12.Stephen SpenderSpender, Stephen (1909–95), poet and critic: see Biographical Register.