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MODERNISM IN LITERATURE: Cultural movement that refers to the first half of the
20th century

1910s-1920s  REVOLUTIONARY PHASE  the
beginning of a new movement is always more
revolutionary than the later development of the
movement itself because a break with whatever has
been done in the past is needed

1930s-1940s  EXPERIMENTATION +
EXPLORATION of new ideas and techniques

o Historical Background Timeline: p
...
266 to p
...
280)
Imagism – Ezra Pound
W
...
Yeats
T
...
Eliot
War poetry: concentrated just on the perception of the description of the war
experience in their works
...
In the case of WW1, the feelings derived from trench
war)

Recurrent themes:
o ABOLITION OF THE PAST (NEWNESS)  Especially in the revolutionary phase refers
to the abolition of the past and a new idea of what is new, of whatever is considered
innovation, revision of past values
...
S
...
The reaction of writers, poets, artists was to
describe this feeling of uneasiness, desolation, discomfort, disorientation in their works (with regard
to Yeats and Eliot)
The early phase of Modernism and the romantic movement in England can be related to each other
because they both originated in a phase of intellectual and social change
...

Modernist artists and writers need a cultural readjustment with the past
...

Similarly to Romanticism, which also produced some radical changes in the language used
(Wordsworth pretended to be using the language really used by men), poets and artists in the early
20th century will have to adapt their linguistic choices to the new realities they feel they have to
describe, as well as to the message they need to convey through their works
...
Narrative style in Mrs Dalloway and Dubliners  Realistic
elements in the descriptions of places and situations, but always interfused with a variety of
symbolic meanings that each situation and place acquires in the general pattern of the story
...
The poem by W
...
Yeats The centre
cannot hold (The second coming) represents the expression of this feeling
...
There are
no moral values to refer to (not only with regard to literature, but also to ordinary people)
...
Yeats finds the solution to
the desolation of society in the world of arts (≈Keats and, in a way, to Oscar Wilde), whereas Eliot
finds it thanks to religion and his spiritual faith

IMAGISM
Ezra Pound
He was born in 1885 and was of American origin, but his family was of English descent , which
justifies his fascination towards European culture
...
He also lived in London and his thoughts about poetry both influenced Yeats and Eliot

(production always interrelated to each other  triangle)
...
He lived in Rapallo, where he stayed for 24 years
...
He then returned to the U
...
because
he had a trial there (he had been accused of treason, which is the reason he was put in a
concentration camp)
...
C
...
During this period, he was always helped by many artists and last,
when he was finally released, he came back to Italy and died in Venice in 1972
...

Imagism implies that Ezra believed in a one-image poem (poem based just on one image)
...

Ezra refers to the Japanese tradition
...
It is the
presentation of this complex which gives a sense of
sudden liberation and a sense of freedom from both
time limits and space limits
...
The images poets (or one-image
poem) should use either no ornament or a good
ornament
The third important element is to avoid abstraction

The one-image poem by Ezra Pound

In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough

Lack of syntax
Avoidance of development: it is in
the mind of the poet, but not
expressed in words
No verbs, no connections
Colour is basic to the poem
Symbolic meaning of words

Petals: heart of the poem

Pound has the memory in
his mind of the apparition
of many beautiful faces and
he reproduces it years after
in this poem
These: the poet refers to
the uniqueness and beauty
of some faces he has
These
impressed in his mind
...
physical
and emotional perception

All these elements make this poem
Pleasant to read, but quite complex to
understand

Crowd
related to the title: in a station of
the metro you are likely to find
yourself in a crowd

The rules that he used in his oneimage poems will become
patrimony of the poems of the 20th
century:
 Attention towards one image
 Symbolic meaning of words

The sweetness of the image (the apparition of these beautiful
faces) clashes with the dreariness, impersonal characteristic of
the atmosphere and the movement in a metro station
...

Wet implies something that is alive  a living entity
Black: it reminds of the atmosphere of the metro station and a feeling of
inadequacy in spite of the positive apparition of the faces

These faces are defined as petals
...




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