Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Encyclopedia
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley is a long poem by Ezra Pound
. It has been regarded as a turning point in Pound's career (by F.R. Leavis and others), and its completion was swiftly followed by his departure from England
. The name "Selwyn" might have been an homage to Rhymers' Club
member Selwyn Image
. The name and personality of the titular subject is also reminiscent of T. S. Eliot
's J. Alfred Prufrock.
Speaking of himself in the third person, Pound criticises his earlier works as attempts to "wring lilies from the acorn", that is to pursue aesthetic goals and art for art's sake in a rough setting, America, which he calls "a half-savage country". "For three years, out of key with his time/He strove to resuscitate the dead art/Of poetry" resonates with Pound's efforts to write in traditional forms (e.g., Canzoni, 1911) and subsequent disillusionment. Pound in his mock-epitaph is said to be "wrong from the start", but this is quickly qualified: "No, hardly-". The rest of the poem is essentially a defense of Pound, who, like Capaneus
, was fighting against the unsurmountable flood of philistinism.
In the third stanza, Pound is said to have listened to the song of Homer's Syrens (quoted in Greek: "Ιδμεν γαρ τοι πανθ, οσ ενι Τροιη" - "We know all the things that belong to Troy"), to have confronted dangers and ignored the warnings of the prudent. This has led inevitably to his being dismissed as an outsider and forgotten by the literary establishment, "in the 31st year of his life", i.e. circa 1916, when Pound published Lustra.
In Poems II and III, Pound turns the tables upon the philistine modern age, denouncing its materialism, consumerism, bad taste and betrayal of tradition. Poems IV and V express Pound's outrage at World War I, a murderous product of that very age that has dismissed him: "There died a myriad/And of the best, among them,/For an old bitch gone in the teeth,/For a botched civilisation".
This section can be read as a wider attack upon the attitudes of society in the post-war period, on a "botched civilisation"-denounced as an intellectual and moral 'Waste Land'
only two years later by T. S. Eliot
. The exclamation "Better mendacities/ Than the classics in paraphrase!" seems to be a quip at the expense of those who continue to revere the idealistic "lies" and to dismiss works that draw on valuable traditional texts, such as Pound's own Homage to Sextus Propertius.
Poems VI-XII are a brief overview of British culture as Pound found it when he arrived in London in 1908, starting with the Preraphaelites and the Rhymers' Club
, and closing with vignettes of three writers (Max Beerbohm
, Arnold Bennett
, Ford Madox Ford
), a suburban wife and a literary hostess.
Poem XII formally closes with a criticism of the current tastes and concerns of society:
As "Pierian roses" refers to the place in Greece where the Muses were worshiped, the charge is that society has become absorbed in commodities and lost its taste for art.
Part I terminates with "Envoi", i.e. "Farewell", a poem printed in italics in which Pound in fact "resuscitates the dead art of poetry" (as he had said in Poem I) by addressing a singer in "canorous lyric measures" (Leavis). "Envoi (1919)" ends on a positive note. Its last lines are: "Till change hath broken down / All things save Beauty alone."
The second part of the poem, "Mauberley 1920," introduces the character Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, a minor poet who perfects refined but irrelevant artworks, or "medallions". Ironically, his defeat is told (by Pound) in Poem I in short minimalist lines, of the kind that Mauberley himself would write. Poem II tells us of Mauberley's love-troubles, suggesting that he observed beauty but could not act at the right moment (as a Henry James
character, see for example "The Beast in the Jungle", and Eliot's Prufrock). Poem III is a narrative criticism of Mauberley as aesthete, and Poem IV closes his story by telling us that he retired and expired in the Pacific islands. Like Part I, Part II has a farewell poem, "Medallion", the description of a female singer, seen as a work of art rather than as a woman. This poem has usually been read by critics as "written by Mauberley", an example of his kind of frosty albeit perfect writing. Mauberley in his passiveness is distinct from Pound, who however pursued for a while similar ideals of artistic perfection, and was attracted by life in beautiful and remote natural surroundings. By moving to Italy in 1925, Pound in a way exiled himself like Mauberley, while becoming increasingly involved in the conflicts of his age. Thus in Mauberley Pound portrayed and criticised certain aspects of himself, as Eliot had done in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Yet while "Prufrock" is ironic, Mauberley is largely a work of satire, reminiscence and invective, like The Cantos
.
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
. It has been regarded as a turning point in Pound's career (by F.R. Leavis and others), and its completion was swiftly followed by his departure from England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The name "Selwyn" might have been an homage to Rhymers' Club
Rhymers' Club
The Rhymers' Club was a group of London-based poets, founded in 1890 by W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys. Originally not much more than a dining club, it produced anthologies of poetry in 1892 and 1894...
member Selwyn Image
Selwyn Image
Selwyn Image was a British clergyman, designer, including of stained glass windows and poet....
. The name and personality of the titular subject is also reminiscent of T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's J. Alfred Prufrock.
Structure
The poem comprises eighteen short poems which are grouped into two sections. The first is a capsule biography of Ezra Pound himself, as indicated by the title of the first poem, which reads "E.P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre" ("Ezra Pound: Ode for the Choice of His Sepulchre"). The second section introduces us to the struggling poet Mauberley's character, career and fate. Readers have been misled by the fact that Pound assigns to every poem a title or, alternatively, a number. Thus poem I, "E.P. Ode pour l'Election de Son Sépulchre", is followed by poems II-V, that are numbered, while poems VI to IX are again given individual titles. As a consequence, in some websites poems II-V are reprinted as if they were parts II-V of "E.P. Ode". They are instead individual poems in a sequence of which "E.P.: Ode" is only poem I.A brief analysis
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley addresses Pound's alleged failure as a poet. F.R. Leavis considered it "quintessential autobiography."Speaking of himself in the third person, Pound criticises his earlier works as attempts to "wring lilies from the acorn", that is to pursue aesthetic goals and art for art's sake in a rough setting, America, which he calls "a half-savage country". "For three years, out of key with his time/He strove to resuscitate the dead art/Of poetry" resonates with Pound's efforts to write in traditional forms (e.g., Canzoni, 1911) and subsequent disillusionment. Pound in his mock-epitaph is said to be "wrong from the start", but this is quickly qualified: "No, hardly-". The rest of the poem is essentially a defense of Pound, who, like Capaneus
Capaneus
In Greek mythology, Capaneus was a son of Hipponous and either Astynome or Laodice , and husband of Evadne, with whom he fathered Sthenelus. Some call his wife Ianeira....
, was fighting against the unsurmountable flood of philistinism.
In the third stanza, Pound is said to have listened to the song of Homer's Syrens (quoted in Greek: "Ιδμεν γαρ τοι πανθ, οσ ενι Τροιη" - "We know all the things that belong to Troy"), to have confronted dangers and ignored the warnings of the prudent. This has led inevitably to his being dismissed as an outsider and forgotten by the literary establishment, "in the 31st year of his life", i.e. circa 1916, when Pound published Lustra.
In Poems II and III, Pound turns the tables upon the philistine modern age, denouncing its materialism, consumerism, bad taste and betrayal of tradition. Poems IV and V express Pound's outrage at World War I, a murderous product of that very age that has dismissed him: "There died a myriad/And of the best, among them,/For an old bitch gone in the teeth,/For a botched civilisation".
This section can be read as a wider attack upon the attitudes of society in the post-war period, on a "botched civilisation"-denounced as an intellectual and moral 'Waste Land'
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...
only two years later by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. The exclamation "Better mendacities/ Than the classics in paraphrase!" seems to be a quip at the expense of those who continue to revere the idealistic "lies" and to dismiss works that draw on valuable traditional texts, such as Pound's own Homage to Sextus Propertius.
Poems VI-XII are a brief overview of British culture as Pound found it when he arrived in London in 1908, starting with the Preraphaelites and the Rhymers' Club
Rhymers' Club
The Rhymers' Club was a group of London-based poets, founded in 1890 by W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys. Originally not much more than a dining club, it produced anthologies of poetry in 1892 and 1894...
, and closing with vignettes of three writers (Max Beerbohm
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
, Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett
- Early life :Bennett was born in a modest house in Hanley in the Potteries district of Staffordshire. Hanley is one of a conurbation of six towns which joined together at the beginning of the twentieth century as Stoke-on-Trent. Enoch Bennett, his father, qualified as a solicitor in 1876, and the...
, Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
), a suburban wife and a literary hostess.
Poem XII formally closes with a criticism of the current tastes and concerns of society:
- Beside this thoroughfare
- The sale of half-hose has
- Long since superseded the cultivation
- Of Pierian roses. (lines 216-219)
As "Pierian roses" refers to the place in Greece where the Muses were worshiped, the charge is that society has become absorbed in commodities and lost its taste for art.
Part I terminates with "Envoi", i.e. "Farewell", a poem printed in italics in which Pound in fact "resuscitates the dead art of poetry" (as he had said in Poem I) by addressing a singer in "canorous lyric measures" (Leavis). "Envoi (1919)" ends on a positive note. Its last lines are: "Till change hath broken down / All things save Beauty alone."
The second part of the poem, "Mauberley 1920," introduces the character Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, a minor poet who perfects refined but irrelevant artworks, or "medallions". Ironically, his defeat is told (by Pound) in Poem I in short minimalist lines, of the kind that Mauberley himself would write. Poem II tells us of Mauberley's love-troubles, suggesting that he observed beauty but could not act at the right moment (as a Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
character, see for example "The Beast in the Jungle", and Eliot's Prufrock). Poem III is a narrative criticism of Mauberley as aesthete, and Poem IV closes his story by telling us that he retired and expired in the Pacific islands. Like Part I, Part II has a farewell poem, "Medallion", the description of a female singer, seen as a work of art rather than as a woman. This poem has usually been read by critics as "written by Mauberley", an example of his kind of frosty albeit perfect writing. Mauberley in his passiveness is distinct from Pound, who however pursued for a while similar ideals of artistic perfection, and was attracted by life in beautiful and remote natural surroundings. By moving to Italy in 1925, Pound in a way exiled himself like Mauberley, while becoming increasingly involved in the conflicts of his age. Thus in Mauberley Pound portrayed and criticised certain aspects of himself, as Eliot had done in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Yet while "Prufrock" is ironic, Mauberley is largely a work of satire, reminiscence and invective, like The Cantos
The Cantos
The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a canto. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date from 1922 onwards. It is a book-length work, widely considered...
.