So Imagism Began
Abstract
The paper aims at exploring the importance of the first period of Imagism development in the twentieth-century literary history. Turning our mind to the dawn of Imagism is important because the analysis of its first stage helps uncover the main goal of the research – to prove that the short success history and the long-term influence of Imagism on the twentieth-century English-language poetry and lyrical narrative history have been rooted both in the practical “behaviour rules” for the new poetry and in the complex aesthetic debate with the previous tradition – Classicism, Romanticism and Symbolism.
The new focus of the research is the investigation of “The Poets’ Club” (T. E. Hulme, F. Flint et al.) and particularly Edward Storer’s activity in Imagist theory and practice elaboration. This aspect of the paper adjusts and deepens the generally accepted point of view on the Ezra Pound’s decisive role in shaping the movement being the only “impresario” of Imagism and Modernism. T. E. Hulme’s ideas of breaking with the Romantic aesthetics for the Classicist one; substituting metaphor with analogy; focusing on particular physical image ((“Lecture on Modern Poetry”, 1908; “Romanticism and Classicism”, 1911) were supported by Edward Storer. The search for new verse poetics denying the absolute imperative of syllabic tonics, artificial rhythm and rhyme, was also common. First imagists’ theoretical views review is backed up with the analysis of Hulme’s (“Autumn”, “Embankment”, “Conversion”) and Storer’s (“Illusion”, “Image”, “By the Shore”) poems on the background of Romantic and Georgian poetry.
It’s hardly possible to over-estimate the role of T. E. Hulme, F. Flint, E. Storer and “The Poets’ Club” in Imagism making as they were not just proclaiming the new relations “author/persona – text/image – reader” but also exhibiting the concern for the receptive side of poetry; new objectiveness instead of Romantic abstraction; impersonality, technical freedom and “new symbolism” found in “small dry images”.
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