常耀信美国文学的学习课件

Chapter 5
Modernism (1)
The 1920s ? Imagism Pound



Contents
? Historical context
? Imagism (a literary term)
? Understanding and analysis of In a Station of the Metro by Pound
Assignment
? Define the term Imagism
? List the three principles of Imagism by Pound
? What are the themes of In a Station of Metro? Take example to show the themes from the poem.
? What kind of form and meter does Pound employ in writing In a Station of Metro? What is its English form?
? What are the two images of In a Station of Metro?
? Answer the two questions on page 188 from the Selected Readings.
Historical context
? The WWI had a great impact on this period
? The society was going on a change.
? Darwin’s theories of evaluation were intensified with the development of science and technology
? People were starting to see the world differently, particularly artists and thinkers


? The WWI had a great impact on this period
*The WWI proved tremendously profitable to America. The country made a great deal of money in the war and became, as a whole, a lot richer, so here came the economic boom.
*People became a sudden jump in technology
Automobiles and radios appeared, the movie revolution and the music, notably the jazz , available to everyone now.
*The urban had badly enlarged.
People crowded into cities.
*A new type of industrial economy developed.
Mass production, mass consumption, and mass leisure became essential.

? The society was going on a change.
* Old moral codes were breaking down. Old modes of perception were questioned.
*Women appeared on social scene. They wanted the same rights and salaries as men did.
*After the war there was a letdown because nothing had changed. The heroism, patriotism and the zeal for democracy and idealism that drove people to war now proved false and tasteless. People got disillusioned.


*There was a high degree of intolerance in America then. Many Americans could not tolerate forms of radicalism and assertions of social and religious rights. Newer immigrants were discriminated.
*The Prohibition of alcohol angered popular taste. Bootleggers moved in to reap huge profits from illegal sales.


? Darwin’s theories of evaluation were intensified with the development of science and technology. God was claimed dead. People lost faith without which one could no longer keep his feeling and thought whole, and without which one no longer felt secure and happy. Now people found themselves living in a spiritual waste land as T.S Eliot suggests in his epoch poem.

? People were starting to see the world differently, particularly artists and thinkers. The three thinkers who most shaped the mind-set of the early twentieth century were Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. Their writings changed the intellectual climate in the early twentieth century. Artists and writers could no longer take for granted the structures and

values that people used to rely on.

? In American literature a whole new generation of younger writers, People were starting to see the world differently, particularly artists and thinkers. Impressionism appeared with Dadaism and Expressionism. Symbolism and surrealism became stylish and popular. High Modernism began to dominate the world of literature and art. (There are so many writers listed in textbook from p157-page 158)
Imagism
? Imagism (definition)
? Three phases of the movement
? The features of Imagism
The new age demanded a proper literary expression. Imagism movement appeared to meet the need of expressing the temper of the age.



? Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language, which first started in London in 1908. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets, who were by and large content to work within that tradition. The Imagist movement included English and American poets in the early twentieth century who wrote free verse and were devoted to "clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images."

? Three phases of the movement
*It first began in London in the years 1908-1909, initiated by a young Englishman, T.E Hulm, of which the spirit was the theorized poetic technique by Hulm of “absolutely accurate presentation and no verbiage”.

*The second phase was the period of some three years (1912-1914) when Ezra Pound took over and championed the new poetry.
Pound defined the three principles of Imagist poetry as:
① Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective.
② To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.



③ As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

*The third period (1914-1917) Amy Lowell was in the leading place.





? The features of Imagism
*Common speech is used, employing always the exact word, not the nearly exact;
*Cliché is to be avoided;
*New rhythms are created as the expression of a new mood;
*There is absolute freedom in choice of subject;
*Images are to be concrete, firm and definite in their pictures, even harsh in outline;

*Concentration is to be striven for as the essence of poetry;
*The poetry should suggest rather than offer complete statements.
*In American literary history, Imagism was only a transient phase of no longer than a decade. But it has had a great influence on later writers.

Understanding and analysis of In a Station of the Metro by Pound


In a station of the metro
Contents
? Introduction
? Brief Summary
? Line-By-Line understanding
? Themes
? Literary devices (technique)


? Introduction
This is the only Ezra Pound poem that many peop

le will read in their lives. Why? Because it’s two lines long. However, it’s not just that the poem is so short – it’s also that Pound’s other; "famous" poems are so darned long. His Cantos, for example, are so long that he couldn’t finish them. In the Station of the Metro, however, is an exercise in brevity (a fancy word for "shortness"). Pound wrote it after having a spiritual experience in a Paris metro (subway) station.

? In 1916, Pound wrote about the process of writing the poem (Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, 1916). Apparently, he originally thought he could best capture his vision in a painting. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a painter. Kind of a problem. So he wrote a 30-line poem, which he didn’t like. He pitched the long version in the waste bin. Six months later, he wrote a shorter poem, but didn’t like that one either and threw it away. Finally, a full year after the experience, he had been reading short Japanese poems called haikus, and he figured he would try to adapt this form to his vision in the metro. The result, which was published in 1913, is one the most famous, influential, and haunting works in modern poetry.

? Brief Summary
A man sees a bunch of faces in the subway and thinks they look like flowers on a tree branch.

? Line-By-Line understanding
Line 1
? The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
*The poet is watching faces appear in a crowded metro (subway) station.
(One wouldn’t know it only from reading the poem, but when one is in Paris, which means that everyone looks really nice. The beautiful French girls).


*The poet is trying to get us to see things from his perspective, and the word "apparition" suggests that the faces are becoming visible to him very suddenly and probably disappearing just as fast (answer to question 1 on p188). They almost look like ghosts. If ever been in a crowded subway, then one is probably familiar with this phenomenon.
*By calling them "these faces," he puts the reader right there in the metro station, as if he were pointing his finger and saying, "Look!"
*The station must be pretty full, because there is a “crowd.”

? Line 2
Petals on a wet, black bough.
*Although he doesn’t say so, the words "looks like" are implicit at the start of this line. The faces in the crowd "look like" flower petals on a "wet, black bough."
*A "bough" is a big tree branch.
*When is a tree branch wet and black? Probably at night, after the rain. A Paris subway, on the other hand, is always wet and black.

*Now, we’re going out on a limb here (pun!), but he may be seeing the faces reflected in a puddle over black asphalt. Or it could just be a more general sense of wetness. At any rate, the faces in the subway are being compared to flowers on a tree branch. (answer to question 2 on p188)
*Another fact to keep in mind is that Japan is famous for its beautiful flowering trees, and considering that this poem is written in Japanese hai

ku style . . . well, heck, he might just be thinking of a Japanese tree.

? Note: A haiku in English typically has seventeen syllables because it is modeled after the Japanese version. However, because the Japanese language is so different from English, seventeen syllables in Japanese allows for less words and, thus, an even shorter poem!
A traditional haiku contains a word called a kigo that hints at the season of the year. The kigo of "In a Station of the Metro" is "petals" – it must be spring, because flowers are in bloom.

? Themes
*Versions of Reality
*Man and the Natural World
*Modernization
*The Supernatural

*Versions of Reality
The poem blends two images into one. In the process, it seems to downplay the reality of everyday life as an "apparition," while the spiritual life of memory and the imagination is heightened. Pound thought that a great image could reveal the "higher" reality of something that already seems real to us, like people getting on a subway.

#"Apparition" (line 1)
*Thought: The word "apparition" often refers to the sudden and unexpected appearance of something spooky and supernatural, like a ghost or a phantom. Pound doesn’t directly call the faces "apparitions"; he only uses the word to describe the way they seem to come and go in a flash. But the word makes the faces seem like ghosts from some other realm.

# "Petals on a wet, black bough" (line 2)
Thought: Are the faces on the subway even faces at all? Maybe not. Pound uses the break between the first and second lines to create confusion over two levels of reality – the reality of everyday things and the reality of spiritual visions. It may be that the faces really are petals, at least to this particular observer.

*Man and the Natural World
In the poem, people and nature literally become one as the faces in the subway become flowers on a tree. The analogy between faces and flowers is not just a simile, which would say that one thing is "like" another. Rather, it is metaphor: the poem implies that the faces are petals on a tree.

#"Faces in the Crowd" (line 1)
Thought: The first line depicts as unnatural a setting as possible – a crowded subway station. Nowadays, people go on hiking and camping trips to get away from things like the subway. The people in the subway don’t even seem to have bodies; they are just anonymous "faces."

#"Petals on a wet, black bough." (line 2)
Thought: The second line fuses the image of the chaotic and stressful world of man to a peaceful and intense vision of a flowering tree. The first line is kind of vague and imprecise, but the second line puts the reader right there with nature. It has simple words that appeal to the senses, like "petals," "wet," and "black." These words even sound tangible, like one could reach out and touch them.

*Modernization
If you were a person living in Paris near the beginning of the 20th century, there would be a lot of

reasons to be afraid of the metro. The crowd of anonymous strangers pushing past one another, blank stares, the dirty wet ground. This poem, though, presents the new technology as the scene of a mystical experience, in which the poet and his readers are reminded of the serenity and calm of a Japanese garden.

#"In a Station of the Metro" (title)
Thought: The title is really part of the poem. Without the title, it would be impossible to know where the poem takes place. The title contains a reference to a symbol of modern technology, the metro. On the other hand, we don’t find this reference anywhere else in the poem. In this way, technology is "excluded" from the vision of the poem itself. The poem is not really about modernization; or, at least, not about modernization as most writers have portrayed it – as a bleak, scary force that turns people into workaholic zombies. The poem shows how the imagination proves to be the more powerful force when faced with the technologies of modern life.

* The Supernatural
One of the central mysteries of the poem is, why are the faces the poets sees an "apparition"? This word usually refers to ghosts or supernatural spirits. Pound seems to be comparing the beautiful strangers in the subway to ghosts who appear suddenly and then disappear from your life just as fast. You catch a glimpse and that’s it. Plus, the subway is underground, which could make a reader think of epics like the Aeneid, the Odyssey, and the Inferno, which all include journeys to the Underworld.

#"Apparition" (line 1)
Thought: "Apparition" has traditionally been used to describe ghosts or phantoms, but it can also just refer to a sudden appearance of any kind. Now you see it, now you don’t. Pound takes advantage of these two uses of the word to confuse the reader into thinking that the faces in the subway might be ghost-like. J.K. Rowling does the same thing in the Harry Potter series by saying that characters can "Apparate."

? Literary devices (technique)
*Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay
*Form and Meter
*Speaker Point of View
* the title

* Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay
#The Crowd of Faces
Line 1: The entire poem is basically a single metaphor. If you were ever confused about the difference between a metaphor and a simile, and the difference it can make to use one instead of the other, this is a great poem to look at. Pound could have said that the faces "look like" flower petals, which would have produced a simile. By leaving this expression out, the poem reads as if it were saying that the faces are petals. A metaphor. The two images are fused into one.

#The Bough
Line 2: The success of the comparison between the human faces and the flower petals depends upon making the second image seem very life-like. So Pound uses some intense natural imagery to describe the "wet, black bough" to which the petals are attached. This image connects to our sense of sight and touch,

so the reader feels like he or she could reach out and pluck the faces out of the scene like a flower from a tree. He also uses some alliteration with "black" and "bough," as if the words on the page and the images in our head were fusing together at the same time

*Form and Meter
#Haiku
The poem is a variation on the Japanese form of the haiku, a very short poem divided into three sections with a certain number of syllables in each section. In English, haikus are often written as three-line poems. The first line has five syllables, the second seven, and the third five again. The haiku is really short, but it packs a big punch.

It’s hard to achieve the same effect when writing in a language other than Japanese, which is probably why Pound doesn’t follow strict rules in creating this short poem. For example, Pound’s poem has two long lines instead of three short ones. So, how can it tell that the poem is a haiku? For one thing, the Japanese version often features a contrast between two events or images;

Pound’s poem clearly contrasts the two images of the faces in the crowd and the petals on the bough. The poem attempts to fuse these images into one. Second, the Japanese haiku usually has a word that lets the reader know the season of year. It’s not super-obvious, but Pound’s poem also has a word ("petals") to indicate the season – springtime – in which it takes place.

*Speaker Point of View
Our speaker is more like a person who seems maddeningly peaceful and meditative while riding the public bus or subway. He's got his eyes closed, and takes deep, cleansing breaths. His head sways gently back and forth.

His secret is that he reads a lot of Asian spiritual poetry, which has given him an intense love for the rhythms of nature. When we readers see a bunch of faces crammed in a station, he sees beautiful petals. He sees the reality behind the reality. He has an intense imagination and the patience to think about a single image for a long time until he figures out exactly what it means.

What's more amazing is that he can keep his cool while living in the big city. He doesn't have to go out into the forest or the countryside to find natural beauty. He sees it all around him. Even when the crowd jostles him around, he never gets angry or frustrated. Whatever he's having for breakfast, we want some.

*About the title
Considering that the title is half as long as the entire poem, we might as well put it under the microscope, as if it were part of the poem.
The title begins with a preposition: "In." This is the first sign that the poet means to put the reader, literally, "in" his shoes. The reader is going to be down there, in the metro, seeing what he sees.

In a poem this short, every word is important, even articles like "a" and "the." The poem takes place in "a" station, but the poet isn’t going to tell us which one. (In fact, it was the station called "La Concorde,"

but Pound obviously didn’t feel that giving the name would add anything to the atmosphere of the poem.) It’s meant to be vague;

the situation is so common that it could be any station. But it can’t be any metro. There’s only one metro, "the" metro. Pound wants us to think like a Parisian, so we can’t be confusing this metro with, say, the New York Subway or the London Underground.

Pound could have just called the poem, "In a metro station," but he chose to make the title longer. There are lots of reasons he could have done this – it sounds really cool, for example – but another reason might be to highlight the word "station." A "station" is a stopping-place, a place where things stand still. The poem itself is a kind of station, because it freezes all the bustle of the metro and the crowd into one lasting image. So the title isn’t just referring to a place where subway trains stop; it’s also talking about how the poem works.

(Finally, there are the "Stations of the Cross" from Christianity, which are the prayers said to remember the stages of Christ’s journey carrying the cross on the way to his crucifixion. Not to say that the metro is a place where people are crucified (we should hope not), but only that the experience described in the poem might have religious overtones. )