H Is for Hulme

INVISIBLE CITIES XXXIV -- Chapter 5, ..... 1

(I know it's self-indulgence, but I can't help but think of T.E. Hulme's "Above the Dock," reading the Khan's description of the moon's progression in his dream.)

1. If a person is, or may be[come], master of his/her domain, and if Kublai Khan's entire empire exists merely--or maybe just possibly--as words and dreams, mightn't any person gain leadership of grand empire?
2. What of the notion that the Khan's empire is so huge and that it's impossible for him to ever visit all the cities?  Is this and Polo's descriptions anything like the famed tree that falls in a forest with no one to hear?
3. Regarding the structure of the book, do the opening expositions to each chapter--the situation the Khan finds himself in--dictate the meme of Polo's coming descriptions?  (And any thoughts at all on how much time passes during or between each chapter?)

A BEAUTIFUL QUOTATION FROM HULME

Taken from letter Hulme wrote while on the battlefront (emphasis added):

The only thing that makes you feel nervous is when the shells go off & you stand out revealed quite clearly as in daylight.  You have then the most wonderful feeling as if you were suddenly naked in the street and didn't like it. [...]  It's really like a kind of nightmare, in which you are in the middle of an enormous saucer of mud with explosions & shots going off all round the edge, a sort of fringe of palm trees made of fireworks all round it.

*

I believe I've said this before, but I'm reminded uncannily of Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front every time I read anything Hulme wrote regarding the war.  The book is a beautiful and poetic examination of WWI through a German soldier's eyes.  His narration offers the same fireworks that Hulme mentions above.

*

DUBLINERS, by James Joyce: "Araby"

only darker -- and Irish

I have read "Araby" at least six times now (I haven't carefully kept track), and I think I'm finally ready to write up my thoughts, though I am not going to do so the same way I've done the previous two entries.

My understanding of this one--such as it is, and as it did with the other two, of course--came incrementally, but also revealed a second potential interpretation--or, more likely considering it's Joyce (a fact one must always bear in mind), an additional interpretation.  In order to make this all make sense--at least for me, as I struggle to bring cohesion to my many, many thoughts here--I'm going to first list the points of discussion, interest, and question that all occurred to me while reading, then go back and fill in my interpretations.

1. the uninhabited, two-story house, which never seems to come up again, at least not directly, anywhere later in the book -- and it's gotta be there for more than just context/setting and perspective's sakes;
2. another dead priest;
3. brown;
4. the third story of three so far in the collection built on childhood, but this time verging on maturity--at least physical maturity;
5. Sir Walter Scott makes a second appearance, this time with specific works ascribed to him and no competing authors, as was the case in "An Encounter";
6. the swinging dress and other physical descriptors of the girl, Mangan's sister;
7. the leaping of the heart, the unbidden tears, the soft chanting ("O, love!  O, love!"), and all the solitude;
8. "All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves;"
9. O'Donovan Rossa;
10. the chalice;
11. "Araby," as a title, a symbol of exotic romance, as a word;
12. the day-dreaming allocation of his fantasized girl to a convent;
13. "fighting for their caps;"
14. the appearance of the second non-familial adult, Mrs. Mercer;
15. "who collected used stamps for pious purpose;"
16. the tardy and indulgent uncle;
17. "The Arab's Farewell to his Steed;"
18. the lonely train ride, its purveyance of continued solitude, and the zombie-like fervor of the pressing crowd at the stops on the way to the bazaar;
19. "silence like that which pervades a church after a service;" 
20. "the fall of coins;"
21. "remembering with difficulty why I had come;"
22. the English girl and her beaus; 
23. the vases/jars and how she turns one of them; 
24. Eastern guards;
25. her rejection/his denial;
26. looking up into the darkness;
27. "[burning] with anguish and anger."

1, 2 -- The house threw me off on the first go-through (it's not too encouraging to be so thwarted in the first paragraph of so short a story), because I couldn't see any reason for it being there.  Speaking literally, it was not the home of the narrator nor that of the priest, as he was a border of the narrator's family.  As I dug in, however, solitude rose as one of the dominant themes of this particular story, and what says solitude more than a house so lonely as to be empty-- "uninhabited" --despite its occupants' physical presence?  The dead priest, as former tenant of the empty house, only elevates the solitude, as his absence may very well represent (additional to what I'll mention next) an absence, or leaving by the wayside, the morality or moral code of religion, especially where it overlaps with the primary theme (just above that of solitude, and hand-in-hand with it) of newly discovered sexuality.

2, 3 -- There are numerous similarities between this third story and the first two of the collection, color scheme being one, religious undertones as points of internal conflict being another.  Like the first two stories, the brown here serves as a a fairly derogatory descriptor for Joyce's hometown.  But there's an additional use of the color that comes up later in the story, as he uses it for the color of the girl's dress.  To me, this could indicate the publicly-recognized dirtiness of the boy-narrator's fantasies, though he alone knows what those fantasies truly are.

4, 5 -- Not that big a deal.  These--the boy's age and the author's presence--are motifs, and I'm curious to see if they will persist through the further stories in the collection.  I have a lingering question regarding the authors, however, Walter Scott here, but also the others from the "An Encounter," which I haven't been able to answer yet.  There are potential religious applications, of course, but without familiarity with a greater portion of these men's collected works, I can't really dig into it.  Even without this particular answer, however, I think I've got a pretty good hold on this story.

6 -- The swinging dress is a beautiful description and suggests there's more going on here than strictly sexual attraction.  The narrator finds the girl beautiful and elegant.  Joyce's line reminds me of another's, which author I've discussed here at The Wall at length already (and I expect some will tire of it).  The line is Hulme's fragment, "The flounced edge of a skirt // recoiling like waves off a cliff," which, if it were intentionally applicable, would add a great deal of support (though ultimately unnecessary) to the general distance and behavior of the girl, not to mention the falling of the boy for her.  While this description (Joyce's) is potentially clean, pure, and forever distant (except for what I mentioned earlier about the brown--but I think Joyce has no problem with dualities), there's an immediate sensuality to that of the girl's neck, which holds sway over the boy's "other" eyes and is repeated twice through the story (three times?).

7, 8 -- The paragraph that holds these lines heavily indicates the extent the discovered sexuality, not to mention (as it's coming more thoroughly later) the loneliness of it.  I don't think it's necessary to explicate thought for thought, impulse for impulse what's passing through this boy's mind, heart, and body.  More importantly are his feelings of shame, isolation, and confusion.

9 -- check out Rossa at Wikipedia. I think this somewhat supports my second interpretation (coming up -- but don't get excited; it's not earth-shattering nor in anyway expounded).

10 -- While I was aware of the narrator's youthful infatuation from the arrival of the girl, the chalice was the lens that really began to bring everything else into focus.  The narrator describes his regular trips to the market with his aunt as jostling, distracting affairs--a lot of stimulus--but he carries his fantasy's name with him like a chalice.  The chalice, of course, is one of many ancient symbols for the womb.  This boy is utterly obsessed with Mangan's sister.  This symbol, repeated later, emphasizes the sexual undercurrent (of course, the more I read and review and think it over, the less under- it seems, and more blatant; in fact, keep reading and the "unmentionables" from 7 and 8 become more and more dominant), as well as maybe an additional point of internal conflict as he is perhaps split between the desire to ravish her and protect her.

11 -- "Araby," the name of the bazaar, comes from an archaic English name for Arabia.  There's a lot of interesting stuff here.  At it's most superficial, the word evokes distance, beauty, and the mysterious and exotic (and commonly used as such in literature--and likely so by inspiration from Joyce's usage here--by a variety of authors, including "S. Morgenstern" (William Goldman) in his The Princess Bride).  That's a pretty heavy task load already for a single word, and Joyce, of course, chose wisely--brilliantly.  But even more than that, and phonetically and scriptologically, he taps into both our psyche and our ancient roots.  The sounds are the first sounds of not just our, but many, alphabets.  There's a newness and youth connoted by As and Bs, as well as, at least with the A, something ancient and agrarian, and therefore earthy and visceral--inevitable.  I'm not an expert, but I've read a bit about it from various sources (Wikipedia touches on it here): the beginnings of the letter A include the image of a bull's head and, more than just this shape, indicates the repeating path the bull makes with the plow, up one row, turn, back another row, and so on, ad infinitum.

12, 13 -- Religion and the shame that accompanies the failure to adhere to communal religious zeal crops up in spades right here.  The first (12) is obvious: Mangan's sister (and I love that she remains nameless!) is so pure that she can only exist--and upon the tallest of metaphoric pillars--in a convent, forever far away and untouchable.  Like Timbuktu, only pure.  (This allusion is adequate to nullify any once-potential need for some like Hulme's fragment.)  "Fighting for their caps" is a little more elusive, and I think I've got the connection right via the appearance of the spikes of the fence mentioned just a sentence later, and the girl's upon them.  Put the religiosity together with spikes and you get Christ's crucifixion.  Go back and supply a fight for--or over, perhaps, in our vernacular--caps, and perhaps these are the crown of thorns.  And while this is very unlike me, let me say that I don't think it's entirely necessary to understand what Joyce intends by this (more than his usual brown distaste for the Catholic church), because these are the very sort of obscure images that would accompany confusion like that of the narrator, who is very unlikely to understand his own impressions, and thus emphasizing the pervasive loneliness here.

14, 15 -- I don't have Mrs. Mercer figured out.  I've got some thoughts, but only that.  First, in my mind, she pairs up with the dead priest (and since we're dealing in repetitions one story to the next, and we're at three-for-three along that line, perhaps--and I'm going out on a limb here--she is his sister) as a non-familial visitor to the narrator's "empty" home.  She seems to have little to do more than be a piece of the setting when regarding the first interpretation of sexuality.  However, her name fascinates me and seems to indicate the latter (together with Rossa) interpretation: mercer shares root with mercantile which comes from trading in fabric, specifically, if memory serves, plaid, which, of course, connects directly to Scotland (but not Ireland!).  (Rossa was Irish, but Sir Walter Scott, who has a higher point reference in "Araby," is a Scott.  This side of the interpretation is difficult--at least for one who, like me, is not an Irish/Scottish/English scholar and historian.)  Also, her name connotes mercy, which also shares root with that of merchandise and mercantile and perhaps draws further connection to the priest--or to religion.  Second to this, however and regarding the woman: the issue of piety in philately totally eludes me, particularly as the dominant fictional text I associate with the use and study of stamps is The Crying of Lot 49, perhaps the least pious book of literary significance I know.

16 -- The uncle, likely a drunk and certainly a point of earthy, unholy contrast to Mrs. Mercer, manages, in his clumsy forgetfulness and mildly hedonistic generosity, to both facilitate and frustrate the narrator's trip to romantic, dreamy, and beautiful Araby.

17 --  http://www.babsonarabians.com/Readers_Corner/Arabs_Farewell.htm  Goodbye civilized restraint and piety; hello utter animal freedm, even bestial (issue of connotation more than denotation).  Escape to Araby, your good uncle sets you free and sees you off.  Release your civilized inhibitions!

18 -- There is a distinct phallic power, independence, and ego to the lonely train ride, particularly as it inevitably enters the station and delivers its pubescent payload.

19 -- Interesting the comparison here between church service and sexual activity.  A chapel is indeed a lonely place after the meeting has finished and all but the stragglers are gone.  Of course, this being Joyce, the question becomes is he condemning the type of sexual activity that's already at subject here (at least via the morally conservative context of the time and place), or is he condemning the church and its patronage by labeling them prudish?

20 -- I'm probably tending toward the over-thinking of this one, so I'll leave it at two simple allusions: the dropping of two coins is a little like the toll paid to Charon at the river Acheron, for admittance to Hell--the payment or, more enigmatic and broader, the price, for/of sex.

21 -- Is the presence of the girl and her boys, not to mention the other distractions (but mostly the first, as we'll see in a second), so distracting that he forgets why he's come?  Literally he came to get a gift for the girl--his object as much so as a transitive verb requires an object--which he likely imagines as the gate to opening the mystery of a possible relationship with her.  Figuratively, however, he's come to Araby for the romance, mystery, and, well, sex of it.  He's forgotten her--or having a hard time remembering her--because he's left her behind.  Perhaps she is indeed pure, and by his descent into the dirt and hell of something more, again, earthy (which, in reality, and by context of the church, is most likely the dark loneliness of masturbation), he's truly left her behind, alone in her convent, where he will never arrive, unless he joins her brothers, fighting for their caps.

22, 23, 25 -- The narrator is jealous of the boys talking to the girl.  He sees her.  He sees her.  She comes over to see him, but she doesn't see him, and she turns one of the jars, or vases--really, just like a chalice, only less pure (vases and jars are everyday items, while a chalice has that lofty beauty and sanctity to it, especially if we go as far as the Cup of Christ, the most noted of chalices) --away from him.  Clearly, this jar is unavailable, maybe even already spoken for.  Finally, and in support of the sub-theme of loneliness, the exotic, and the foreign, there's really nothing more foreign and strange and exotic, and therefore lonely, than sexuality to someone just discovering it.

24 -- Maybe this is a slant against those of the East, but I don't think comparing these two young men to anybody is any kind of a compliment.  More likely, this is just further emphasis for the tone of the setting of Araby and the sad realization that it's not all it's cracked up to be.

26, 27 -- In the end, Araby has had nothing for him.  It's an ugly, dirty place--not beautiful, not exotic, and utterly frustrating, just like the sexual development of any young teen.

My second interpretation, which really isn't an interpretation at all because I've got virtually no way of justifying it and no time to do the otherwise required research is that this story is really (or additionally) about the politics--religious and civil--of Ireland at the time.  There are several things present here that indicate the socio-political while pretty much leaving alone the dominant issue of puberty and sexuality.

***

Additional thought:  If you haven't watched Disney's Pinocchio lately, I recommend picking it up or pulling it out and watching it.  "Pleasure Island" is a euphemistic representation of the bazaar, Araby.  While I haven't read it yet (I realize that this is a seriously pathetic admission, especially considering my love for all things Italian), Collodi's translated text is HERE.

***

"Araby," the story, I think is the strongest of the three stories so far, but this could just be for reason of my understanding it more thoroughly than the previous two.  While none of these stories is bounding with heart and soul, number three seems to have a bit more than the others.  This boy is truly aching, and I feel sorry for him, but my sympathy is more because I'm terribly grateful I'm done with that part of my life.  Regardless of the general sterility of passion here, however, the genius of Joyce, once again, cannot be denied.  In just four or five pages, he effectively takes us through months of this boy's tortured infatuation and struggle (indulgence versus abstinence) until he pretty much gives it up in the dark of his disillusion.  Hale the mighty pen of the master, but I'm still craving the spark of life.  It makes me really want to pick up some Salinger with all its crackling vitality.

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Sunday Poetry IV -- My Collective Rambling Take on "The Collected Poetical Works of T.E. Hulme"

WARNING!  THIS ENTRY IS HUMONGOUS!

It's no surprise by now that I love Thomas Ernest Hulme.  In spite of this love, I have attempted to keep my commentary as unbiased and broad as possible; and, as in my classroom teaching (not that any of you really require a teacher), have tried merely to point out the available doors, opening only a few, rather than shove you through them.  I am, as always, entirely open to contradiction and refutation, discussion and question, and even, if you're willing, blind sycophancy.

***

I would like to offer two categories of the beautiful, and those based upon the artists who create, rather than the works themselves.  First, there are those artists whose raw, natural abilities permit them apparently effortless access to the beautiful.  Examples: Mozart and Chopin (see playlist below), Matsuo Basho, Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt (forgive the inclusion of athletics, but I do indeed see track and field as art, truly).  Second, there are artists whose talents they must wrestle and struggle into submission in order to most efficiently and effectively magnify them.  Examples: Bach and Debussy, Mike Powell and Michael Johnson, T.E. Hulme.  The former astound like the gods; the latter astound like only the most dedicated and successful of humanity can, whose tortuous and oft tortured hard work (and think Mike Powell, a long jumper, doesn’t fit the bill?  Read about him) play out in their art and genius so much more resonantly than that of one who just does it.  The art and success don’t flow from the soul like breath; rather they’re a mortal struggle, and only the strongest survive.

The Effortless (Usain Bolt; Carl Lewis):

The Dedicated (Michael Johnson; Mike Powell):

It’s possible that Hulme is not one who managed survival.  After all, what is the measuring stick for a poet’s success?  Depending upon your functioning definition of survival, at least in this context, consider this: T.S. Eliot (no poetry slouch, I’m sure you’ll agree) claimed in his The Criterion that Hulme had written “two or three of the most beautiful poems in the language.”  But If that's the case, and in consideration of "survival," here’s what I don’t get?  If this dude—Thomas Ernest Hulme—is really so freaking great, then why doesn’t anyone ever study him!?  Why didn't he write more? Why isn't he ever on a Hallmark card?  (Perhaps this should be the ambition of teacherly life.)

Thomas Ernest Hulme only ever published 7 poems.  (Any others we have were all published posthumously.)  While there are further poems of his available now, they’ve been culled from his personal notebooks or they were published not as stand-alone works but demonstrations for his literary philosophies.  5 of the aforementioned 7 were made available by Ezra Pound, as I’ve enthusiastically mentioned before.  The 6th of the 7 is more like this:

Even before reading the poem—all 8 words of it—the title alone, “Image,” tells us it doesn’t belong.  What kind of title is that?  Well, actually, as titles go, it fits the bill, making suggestion of, without giving away, the material to follow; but it’s so generic (especially compared to two other similar poems, which we’ll look at shortly, “In a Station of the Metro,” by Ezra Pound, and “The Red Wheelbarrow,” by William Carlos Williams) as to be glib.  (It is possible the title is in fact not a title at all, but a label ascribed by some anonymous editor somewhere along the line; I recently found the two lines in their original philosophical context and it, together with a companion piece (see way below), was without title of any sort.)  This poem was an experiment, yet an experiment profound enough to warrant inclusion to major literature anthologies and, less significantly, change my life.  Here they are, Hulme's third:

     In a Station of the Metro

     The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

     Petals on a wet, black bough.

     —Ezra Pound

     The Red Wheelbarrow

     so much depends

     upon

     a red wheel

     barrow

     glazed with rain

     water

     beside the white

     chickens.

     —William Carlos Williams

     Image

     Old houses were scaffolding once

     and workmen whistling.

     —T.E. Hulme

Hulme’s definition of the concept of IMAGE is this: just what the senses can acquire instantaneously via presented material.  That being the case, each of these poems is indeed imagistic—Pound’s is the most romantic, tapping directly into the emotion of a metro station, insinuating the weather and colors and thus the mood of the place; Williams’ is very localized, yet through its few words paints a picture of an entire farm, wet, green, and gray after a storm or shower; but it is Hulme’s that is the most expansive, reaching through the entire life of a house, an "old" house—one that has survived, either for its grace, its structural integrity, historical significance, or some combination thereof.  This image, more than just the house, calls also on the reader's impressions and experiences of City and the given city’s history and the surrounding buildings.  The poem took on greater significance for me when I lived in Saginaw, Michigan (as compared to having first encountered the poem in Provo, Utah), a once-great city losing its light by the plague of rotten economy, and perhaps more similar to what Hulme had in mind.  It is a city replete with blocks and blocks of old houses that were certainly once mere scaffolding and whistling workmen, then made homes with tended yards and family traffic, then subdivided for apartments, and now forgotten and moldering under dirt and ivy.

Yet this poem, beautiful as it is—or, rather, as beautiful as its image is (there is a difference  between the sign for something—here, the poem—and the referent—the image) —was not written for its own merit, but as demonstration for his definition of Image and what the potential of words may be to literally stimulate more than just eyes or ears.  There is something about the immediacy of “Image,” the poem, that brings me the smell of wet concrete, dug earth; the sound of distant construction workers’ talking and laughing and of their hammers and the creaking timbers raised in frames, then the emotional weight of the history that follows.  While this effect, for me anyway, is less with Pound’s attempt, Williams’ "The Red Wheelbarrow," on the other hand, similarly manages to prick the schema and recall a composite of all my many Midwest memories of rain and farm and all the subsequent sensory impressions right along with them.  Pound’s lack of success--more unfair than it deserves--for me is most likely due to my absence of personal history with metro, train, or subway stations.

While none of Hulme’s poetry can be reasonably labeled as “widely published” or “recognized,” there are 5 that are at least available with relatively little digging (in order of their appearance in Hulme’s Ripostes): “Mana Aboda,” “Autumn,” “Above the Dock,” The Embankment,” and “Conversion.”  Pound’s tribute was not the first publication for all these poems, but I think there’s a measure of his own artistic touch (particularly as "Autumn" was originally published before "Mana Aboda") in his order of their presentation.  This sequence is as tangible a contribution to the overall collection’s  substance as the poetry itself, and for this organization of assembly is potentially indicated Hulme’s overall philosophy, approach, and frustration (which emotion I’m less convinced was an issue, and may actually need to be replaced with boredom, as I’m learning*) with writing poetry.  The problem is that this impression may be solely evinced by the fabrication of Pound’s assemblage, not the words of his friend that fill the after-market scaffold.

***

The Collected Poetical Works of Thomas Ernest Hulme

Whatever may be the case and what may or may not have been communicated and manipulated between Pound and Hulme for the publication of the former’s book, the progression of idea and theme through the five poems is undeniable, and I mentally compare it to a ballet—the musical elements, at least, though the dancers are not uninvited.  Consider Andy Narrell’s Green Ballet.  The pieces are disparate, yet possess between them a similarity of concept, approach, and style which work together to, as they say, make the whole greater than the pieces.  Similarly, as Hulme’s work transcends the old limitations of words, so does Narrell (a humbler accomplishment, though nonetheless beautiful) transcend the old limitations of steel drums.

Before you go on, take a moment a reread the five poems, and while reading look for the following motifs and themes: beauty, mythology (and general religiosity, especially in terms of our proximity to heaven, where deity resides), and references to agriculture; as well as a general impression of whether the poem leans toward the positive connotation or the negative.

…

Conclusion?  If you were to label just one of the motifs or themes as the one most dominant, which would it be?  It would be beauty, as far as I’m concerned, and both in mention and demonstration and as it relates to God.  While its intention is vague in Ripostes (and specific only to “Mana Aboda” in its other published locations, T.E. Hulme, Selected Writings and The Collected Writings of T.E. Hulme), the prefatory sentence is significant, despite how hard it is to really "get."  I believe that Pound, if not Hulme, saw this sentence as a viable preface not just for “Mana Aboda,” but for all five poems together, and that he intended it to behave as such.  This being the case, then Beauty is definitely our dominant theme, especially considering the final poem, “Conversion,” which takes place “in the time of hyacinths,” a classic and mythical symbol for sublime beauty, and thus the opposing book end.

So what about the poems’ connoted moods?  Is beauty not an issue of the good and pleasant and happy?  On the scale from positive to negative—zero in the middle—doesn’t beauty fall, by its very nature, dominantly, if not wholly, on the plus side?

This preface, I think, is decidedly negative.  If beauty is a soldier (recalling Hulme’s military service), it merely marks time; if it’s among the realm of physics (recalling Hulme’s other dominant interest), then it makes no waves, ineffectual and impotent; if the next—a “feigned ecstasy of an arrested impulse” —well, then we need to broaden our gaze.

Remember Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his Romanticism, in particular that of “Kubla Kahn” —the very embodiment in textual form of the definition for Romanticism?  The Romantics were all about finding the explosive ecstasy of the creative process and painting it within the frame of literature.  Hulme mocks this.  (For my part, I love Coleridge, though not as much as Hulme, but if proof is in the pudding, Coleridge is the more durable.)  That ecstasy of surging poetic expression and experience—union of natural inspiration and poetical genius—is feigned!  It’s a farce!  It doesn’t really happen!  And it’s natural end, perhaps—a piece of poetry that adequately praises beauty and its eternal creator—isn’t realized.  Nor is it in Hulme's.

Why?

Well, that’s where we get to “Mana Aboda,” which contextualizes the prefatory statement and leads us into the following four.

I've talked a little about this one before.  What it comes down to is that Mana Aboda, a goddess (but more than that if you dig into here name: the celestial home or locus of godly power in feminine form), is bored with attempted poetic praise, yet, by indication of her hunching over the Earth and her mourning, appears intent on seeing what else might come her way.  Is she sad that something better hasn't come along, that the creations (her creations?) can't manage better than they do?  Interesting the Hulme chooses "Josephs" as the descriptor for all the poets, perhaps even himself.  Joseph, the stepfather to God's son on earth.  Poets will never be gods, but what of their poetry?  Is there more potential here, and that's why she mourns?  If poets may indeed be Josephs, can their poetry be sires of God?

"Autumn" departs this small religiosity and takes a more Tolkein'ish stance--bucolic and agrarian.  But God is not absent; He's never far from one of these five poems, in fact, as Hulme seems entirely bent on maintaining an upward gaze, except in "Conversion," later one.  But here, God, or the god, present as the face of the moon (and this is the Tolkein, anti-industrialization point of comparison, I think--he and Hulme were contemporaries, after all, and served in the same war), condescends and visits the man walking (Hulme? a poet? mankind?), and shows that He is everywhere--in the stars, the town's citizenry, the growth of crops and the rest of the verdure.  Put another way: God is everywhere, and we are welcome to pass through and observe, as He observes us.  But why only the nod?

Going back to the previous poem, is the nod on this evening stroll any less respectful or complete than the well-intended though menial tribute of the rose, song, or poem?  Maybe this is all the more respectful for the practical realization that any more praise is no more complete--just frilly, as though the prayer were more for the garnered respect of other poets and men, not God.

While readily apparent in the first poem, what significance there is and so easy to recognize for its exotic words, so here is the title so easy to overlook for its blatant mundanity, but a title--at least in the hands of the skilled, or attentive, at least--is never a throwaway, and here, it is the link to the overall theme of beauty unattainable.

Such is the call of any title, and the essence that elevates it from label, which is so often the case for novels.  A poem's title, and any artistic piece's title, should be a matting and frame (consider a worn wooden frame versus a lavish gilt one, and what their careful selection can do to the artwork within), indicating significance of colors, direction of eye, intended value, audience, etcetera.  But what beauty might this frame add to the poem?  "Autumn."  I think it taps into the nostalgia of the reader, and the general experience most of the Northern hemisphere has with warmth against the chill of coming winter.  More than that, well, how beautiful is a crystal clear autumn night with a great big harvest moon hanging low?

Into the next poem, "Above the Dock," it is this moon, the oculus of God, that carries the torch, though it might be said that the torch is dropped.

There are two ways to look at this entry, and I think they go hand in hand.  One is the continued ubiquity of deity, and second is the simple beauty of the image presented.  This is another poem written just after the very invention of the new poetic movement and by its inventor after all.  Looking at this image and its beauty, it persists in the melancholy of the previous two ("Mana Aboda" is obviously melancholy, but the blue of the second rests in the season, autumn--always at least a little mournful, especially at night).  The moon is "tangled," and once looked "so far away."  If the moon is again our connection to Heaven, then we lose the benevolence of the ruddy-faced farmer.  Now He is far.  And when we realize that it isn't the moon at all--God, or his eye--it's just a balloon, which distances Him even farther from us than he was.  Notice also that there are no stars this night; they've retreated with their moon, and the stars are a device Hulme uses as frequently and pointedly.  These stars, however, make their renewed appearance in the fourth poem, "The Embankment," at least by influence, if not in personal appearance.  Here we also get a second mention of the impotence of poetry.

Scanning this poem, there appear a string of allusions and references.  An "embankment" is, most simply, a wall of earth; a "fantasia" is not typically used to represent fantasy, but is a free-from musical composition (kind of like Hulme's own free-verse poetry); the literal music of the fantasia goes with the fiddles' and their finesse, though distant they are, in line 1, and no more than a lost glamor in line 2; lines 3 and 4 indicate that futility of poetry--or "poesy," an old way of saying poetry--and itself a potential symbol for the opulence mentioned in 1; and lines 5-8 are a prayer where once again we get the great, unfortunate distance between God and the narrator, and this with the addition of a nice little bit of negative connotation in "star-eaten blanket," like the stars are no more than noisome moths at the woolens.

This poem seems a lot bigger to me than the previous three.  Is it imagistic?  Yes.  The flashes of old riches and earthly comfort are visual and even audible; the prayer has a strong tactile quality to it; the emotion--a sixth sense--is stronger here than in any of the others; and the embankment itself, like an earthy sofa for the homeless--spiritually or literally homeless--against which they may rest their backs, wrapped in a natty blanket.  Such a blanket, though, is mere fantasy for this fallen gentleman.  He's lost everything, God is too far away--either because that is the nature of this capricious God, or because the man has done something to sacrifice his favor--as is the false poetics of his former life, and there is no blanket.  In this desperate moment he prays, but without hope.

So what of beauty?  I have to confess a personal preference here: this is my favorite of all of Hulme's poem.  It is also his most famous (if famous can describe any of his works).  There's a close second in "Town Sky-Line," below, though it lacks the emotional potency of "The Embankment."  What it does have is a distinct dark beauty of language; it is despair and ugliness portrayed elegantly, beautifully, which only heightens the emotion of the solitude and emptiness the man feels.

Makes me wonder what he did or what happened to him.  Makes me wonder about the possibility of autobiography.  It sounds confessional--almost.

Before we move on, look back at the progression so far:

1. an abstract look at deity and her disappointment--with unverifiable cause--and the futility of poetry;
2. it is night, cold, and there is God, present if unreachable;
3. night lingers, God has departed;
4. the thrilling nightlife has completed its course and left a casualty, who prays for the simplest comfort but is left without.

The title of the fifth appears to offer reprieve: "conversion," the word, indicates a change from one state to another.  Has the gentleman--and is this the same man from the preceding two poems? --turned his life around?  Have prayers been answered?  Is God not so far after all--drawn near by the man, or the man having drawn himself nearer God?  "Conversion" is not, I think, a return to day and a departure to another land where, perhaps, the grass is greener or the flowers more lovely.  Given the context from the rest of the suite, I believe this is a dream, which does not remove the dreamer from his physical location and predicament, except for the temporary relief sleep might offer.

This fifth contribution returns us to the abstraction of the first, and, as I mentioned before, is the foil for the mentioned theme from the preface.  But beauty here has an almost malevolent presence.  Beauty doesn't need the encased protection and offered-immortality of poets' words; beauty, loveliness, is her own eunuch--her own protector.  The narrator--the man, Hulme, all of us, whoever--walks into this dream cheerfully, expecting relief, perhaps.  And every visual cue indicates such should be the case, but the beauty is suffocating and sweeps him away, wrapping him up bodily, just his little eyes peeking out, to the final river.  While I believe that the "peeping Turk" is just for the image of it, and the Bosphorous because it's right there in Turkey, the "final river" is the important metaphor, as there are two eternal destination, each with its own series of rivers, four a piece in fact: Paradise and Hell.

I expect at this point the man awakes, but it's not mentioned.  The end is left open.  I wonder if beauty is taking her revenge on the poet for such shoddy adulation.  Here the poet literally steps into--invades--the beautiful, rather than just attempting to transcribe it, and it is indeed a trespass.  He's not permitted, and she defends herself from his uncleanness.  Note the return of the explicit female that's been missing since "Mana Aboda," and after her attack, like an immune system, the man is carried away, ignominious as the Joseph he is.  (But come on!  Is it that insulting to be only a Joseph!?)

And that's it.  "The Collected Poetical Works of T.E. Hulme."  

So, uh, therefore what?  Is there a point?  A lesson?  Or, being a collection of imagist poetry, is it just something pretty to look and think about?  

A final thought:  Hulme is not only a master technician, but an artist.  Artists tend to have statements, or a font from which they draw the necessary emotion and passion to drive their work.  These poems are indeed emotionally driven, but I don't know enough about Hulme to make any conclusion about where the emotions draw from.  I want to say this series is autobiographical, but I can't.  Maybe instead I see myself in that man of these poems who seeks God and beauty, and is left--worst case scenario--lost in a river or cold against the embankment (interesting: in "Conversion," there is a wrapping, a blanket of sorts, while in "The Embankment" it's denied him).  I certainly fall short.  I fail over and over again, and it even seems that the very beauty I seek to explore and convey in my own writing is indeed out to get me.  She is the source and object of my inspiration, and I only ever catch glimpses of her from either end--source or result.  But this, for me, is a thing separate from seeking God; while here, for Hulme, they appear to be the same, or at least closely connected.  My problem with Hulme is that by all appearance, he let frustration and hopelessness win out.  He stopped writing poetry long before his death.

Or did he just stop while he was ahead?

***

The Treasure Hunt

Tracking down Hulme has been a treasure hunt.  It started five and a half years ago with a research project assigned to my students.  One group took Hulme.  I had only two of his pieces at that point, "Image" and "The Embankment," but knew nothing else about him--nothing.  The group worked diligently but found little, only a few more pieces that only further sparked my curiosity.  For the most part, the following years were too busy to do much more than enjoy what I did have.  The last couple months, however, have seen an increase of fervor for the hunt, and it's been exciting--from "digging up" a few more pieces online, to taking my son into the bowels of the philosophy section of the BYU library to find Hulme's Collected Writings.  There's something about this quality of the unknown, the discovered, and the required efforts and adventure that make all of it--the man, his life, his art--that much more attractive.  Maybe he's really not as great as I think he is, and that's why he's so greatly unrecognized, and maybe I'll come back to all this in a few years and wonder why I was so smitten.  Maybe it was just the thrill of the hunt.

Who cares?  I've loved every minute.  His words are still electric and inspiring.  And that's the point, I think.

***

A couple additional pieces (special thanks to Sarah C., who found these HERE (scroll all the way to the bottom of the preview and get the final few poems I didn’t know even existed—exciting!) and relayed the message):

Consider the following as a foil to “Image:”

[untitled]

The flounced edge of a skirt

            recoiling like waves off a cliff.

And one more:

Town Sky-Line

On a summer day, in Town,

Where chimneys fret the cumuli,

Flora passing in disdain

Lifts her flounced blue gown, the sky.

So I see her white cloud petticoat,

Clear Valenciennes, meshed by twisted cowls,

Rent by tall chimneys, torn lace, frayed and fissured.

***

* I wish I had all these materials--the hard-to-find and expensive collections--just with me (though that would sacrifice the adventure of tracking them down).  Alas time and money are temporarily insurmountable obstacles.  There are  available sources which could give me all the information I need—and which I really want—to write a much more complete portrait of this artist—maybe my favorite artist—than anything I’m managing here.  Unfortunately, copyright laws prohibit a full disclosure of his “Selected Writings” by Google Books, and his complete writings are only available by $200 payment or regular patronage to BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library, twenty minutes away.  I am not dissatisfied, but it’s difficult sometimes to moderate my impatience for the information and materials I really want.  Selfish, huh?

***

Playlists:

Mozart and Chopin -- 

(perhaps Mozart's "Requiem" doesn't fit the effortless/dedicated dichotomy)

[Bach and Debussy]

By the way, Hulme and the other imagists believed that the cadence of poetry should not be like the measured time of a metronome or a duple versus a triple meter, but follow the cadence of a musical phrase.  Put more simply, the meter should follow the singer or the violin, not the rhythm section or, for you steel drummers, the engine room.  Ballet, not steam engine maintenance.  In their words: Pound, “Compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metaphor;” Hulme (who appears even to mock those of the carefully measured meter in metric), “It is a delicate and difficult art, that of evoking an image, of fitting the rhythm to the idea, and one is tempted to fall back into the comforting and easy arms of the old, regular metre, which takes away all the trouble for us.”

*

Special thanks to James and Devin (here) who helped me work out a couple of especially baffling passages.

COMPARE

The Poet
by T.E. Hulme
Over a large table, smooth, he leaned in ecstasies,
In a dream.
He had been to woods, and talked and walked with trees
Had left the world
And brought back round globes and stone images
Of gems, colours, hard and definite.
With these he played in a dream,
On a smooth table.

*

Further Instructions

by Ezra Pound

COME, my songs, let us express our baser passions.

Let us express our envy for the man with a steady job

and no worry about the future.

You are very idle, my songs;

I fear you will come to a bad end.

You stand about the streets.

You loiter at the corners and bus-stops

You do next to nothing at all.

You do not even express our inner nobilities;

You will come to a very bad end.

And I? I have gone half-cracked.

I have talked to you so much

that I almost see you about me,

Insolent little beasts! Shameless! Devoid of clothing!

But you, newest song of the lot,

You are not old enough to have done much mischief.

I will get you a green coat out of China

With dragons worked upon it.

I will get you the scarlet silk trousers

From the statue of the infant Christ at Santa Maria Novella;

Lest they say we are lacking in taste,

Or that there is no caste in this family. 

INCREMENTALLY -- the best, most exciting, if not the fastest, way to learn

As I keep working on my to-be post for Hulme and the five poems of his "Collected Poetical Works," I keep finding more and more material on the man.  I don't know if my previous inquiries were just that pathetic or if there's really that much more available now.  I'm guessing the prior (I'm really too often too impatient to make my research adequately deep), because everything I'm finding was published ages ago.

If you've been paying close attention (you two or three who're paying any attention at all), you may notice that little revisions periodically crop up in old posts, and even their titles.  Well, that's what happens when I learn that either I made a mistake (more common) or one of my earlier sources has revealed itself to be unreliable (more common than you may think).

view

Most of these discoveries are exciting.  For example, a former student, Sarah C., pointed me in the direction of a generous book preview at Amazon that permitted access to still four more poems/"fragments" (published posthumously), none of which I'd ever heard of.  Two of them are great.  The other two, well....  Let's just say that more often than not (though not always, mind you), the artist knows best, and probably those poems weren't published because they weren't ready (ever watch the "deleted scenes" on the special features of your favorite DVD and said to yourself, "Well, duh!  Good thing they left THAT out!).  I'd be sick if I knew a bunch of my old stuff got published.  Not because I don't want to be published, but because they're crap!

Not that these poems are crap. They're actually still pretty freaking remarkable, just not of the same caliber as the stuff he was proud enough of to put out there on his own in the first place.

Another pretty cool thing:  When Jacob and I went to the BYU library, each of the poems listed were annotated.  For one of them there was a reprint of the very postcard on which he had actually written the first draft of the poem, right along with its original crossings out and word changes and shifts....  Super cool.

I've got a couple days' work left to do on the big entry (and big it will certainly be), and I expect I'll find out a bunch more along the way.  

A CITY SUNSET, by T.E. Hulme

*

Alluring, Earth seducing, with high conceits
is the sunset that reigns
at the end of westward streets....
A sudden flaring sky
troubling strangely the passer by
with visions, alien to long streets, of Cytherea
or the smooth flesh of Lady Castlemaine....
A frolic of crimson
is the spreading glory of the sky,
heaven's jocund maid
flaunting a trailed red robe
along the fretted city roofs
about the time of homeward going crowds
--a vain maid, lingering, loth to go....

*

This poem, together with "Autumn," is considered the birth of Imagism.  It was published in 1909 with "Autumn" by The Poet's Club in London as part of a distributed Christmas booklet.  By some sources, it was put alongside "Autumn" in later editions of Pound's Ripostes.

THE MAN IN THE CROW'S NEST, by T.E. Hulme

(Look-out Man)

*

Strange to me the sounds the wind that blows
By the masthead in the lonely night.
Maybe 'tis the sea whistling--feigning joy
To hide its fright
Like a village boy
That, shivering, past the churchyard goes.

*

THE POET, by T.E. Hulme

*

Over a large table, smooth, he leaned in ecstasies,
In a dream.
He had been to woods, and talked and walked with trees
Had left the world
And brought back round globes and stone images
Of gems, colours, hard and definite.
With these he played in a dream,
On a smooth table.

*

This poem is taken from one of Hulme's notebooks and is prefaced with this:

The exact relation between the expression and the inside image: (i) Expression obviously partakes of the nature of cinders, cf. Red girl dancing. (ii) But on the other hand, vague hell image common to everybody makes an infinite of limited hard expression.

The poem is followed immediately by:

(cf. the red dancer in his head.)


Expression (Metaphysical)
     A red dancer on a stage.  A built-up complex of cinders so not due to any primeval essence.  Cinders as foundations for (i) philosophy (ii) aesthetics.
     The old controversy as to which is greater, the mind or the material in art."

Hulme goes on, but without having the actual book with me, I'm nervous about proceeding and misinterpreting his intentions.  As it stands, this is a lovely piece, though intended to demonstrate a point--mind over mind, as it were.

SUSAN ANN AND IMMORTALITY, by T.E. Hulme

*

Her head hung down
Gazed at earth, finally keen,
As the rabbit at the stoat,
Till the earth was sky,
Sky that was green,
And brown clouds passed
Like chestnut leaves along the ground.

*

A QUESTION OF INTERPRETATION

Some of you may have thought I've forgotten (and those of you who are really paying attention will notice the given "announcement" is now missing) our man, Thomas E. Hulme, but I have not.  I've been working semi-steadily at getting a collective and concise--relatively--commentary/interpretation done on the six works we've got here.  But I need help.  There are a couple quotations that are still giving me trouble, and so--

I AM SOLICITING YOUR HELP.

It is certainly within Hulme's evident style to mask his full intentions, and some of his lines do a more thorough job than others, which beggars the question (which question is bolstered by the fact that there are only six pieces in the first place), Did he write these poems for others or just himself (or, only slightly better, for self and maybe one or more friends, which really, being insular, is the same thing)?  If the former, then we are intended to get something from them, making some connection within the poem, ourselves, or between the two; and for that to effectively happen, the reader must have the capacity to make sense of AT LEAST MOST of the words and phrases.  Well, I'm not satisfied with MOST, I want ALL, dangit!  If the latter--that he wrote it all just for himself--then it's all wide open, and by "understanding" (and what does that even mean, anyway, when it comes to art of any kind) the ideas and connections, we're getting a fairly candid peek into this man's head.

So I'm putting the ball in your court.  I've got probably 85% of the stuff figured out in these six poems.  The remaining 15%, well, like I said before--

Here they are:

1:

(from the introductory sentence--which may actually be introduction to all the "collected poetical works" that follow it --of "Mana Aboda")

Beauty is the marking-time, the stationary 

vibration, the feigned ecstasy of an arrested im-
pulse unable to reach its natural end.
Keywords of interest: "marking-time," "feigned ecstacy," "natural end" --all ambiguous!

2:

(from "Conversion")

loveliness that is her own eunuch

,

the final river

and

As any peeping Turk to the Bosphorous.

I know what a eunuch is, of course, but how can one be "her own?"  As far as the "final river" is concerned, it seems to indicate either the final river in paradise or the final river in the inferno, both of which, if I remember correctly, has four.  Which eternal location; which river therein?  Or is it something else, because it also indicates one river in particular: the Bosphorous.  Why?  Is it the final river, or a river among them?  And why "peeping turks?"  I don't know.

What do you think?

IMAGE, by T.E. Hulme

*

Old houses were scaffolding once
and workmen whistling.

*

This poem was not included in Ezra Pound's Ripostes, so I don't know it's original format.  This is the format as I found it in my old literature anthology from college.

MANA ABODA, by T.E. Hulme

*

     Beauty is the marking-time, the stationary 
vibration, the feigned ecstasy of an arrested im-
pulse unable to reach its natural end.


MANA ABODA, whose bent form
     The sky in archéd circle is,
     Seems ever for an unknown grief
          to mourn.
Yet on a day I heard her cry :
" I weary of the roses and the singing
     poets--
Josephs all, not tall enough to try."

*


If you're looking for analysis of this and/or the others of Hulme's poetry collected by Ezra Pound in Ripostes, I assembled my thoughts here.  If they're helpful, or if you've got questions, please leave a comment.

AUTUMN, by T.E. Hulme

*

A TOUCH of cold in the Autumn
          night--
     I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a
     hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

*


If you're looking for analysis of this and/or the others of Hulme's poetry collected by Ezra Pound in Ripostes, I assembled my thoughts here.  If they're helpful, or if you've got questions, please leave a comment.

ABOVE THE DOCK, by T.E. Hulme

*

ABOVE the quiet dock in mid night,
     Tangled in the mast's corded
          height,
Hangs the moon.   What seemed so far
     away
Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after
     play.

*


If you're looking for analysis of this and/or the others of Hulme's poetry collected by Ezra Pound in Ripostes, I assembled my thoughts here.  If they're helpful, or if you've got questions, please leave a comment.

THE EMBANKMENT, by T.E. Hulme

*

(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a

cold, bitter night.)

ONCE, in finesse of fiddles found I
          ecstacy,
     In the flash of gold heals on the
          hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth's the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in
     comfort lie.

*


If you're looking for analysis of this and/or the others of Hulme's poetry collected by Ezra Pound in Ripostes, I assembled my thoughts here.  If they're helpful, or if you've got questions, please leave a comment.