Three Voyagers in Search of Europe: A Study of Henry James, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512802382

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Credits
Contents
Introduction
1. The Quarrel With America
2. Natives and Cosmopolitans
3. Past and Present
4. The Failure of Europe
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Three Voyagers in Search of Europe A Study oí H e n r y James, Ezra Pound, and T . S. Eliot

Three Voyagers in Search of Europe A Study of Henry James, Ezra Pound, and T . S. Eliot

ALAN

HOLDER

Philadelphia U n i v e r s i t y o f P e n n s y l v a n i a Press

© 1966 by the T r u s t e e s of the U n i v e r s i t y of L i b r a r y of C o n g r e s s C a t a l o g u e C a r d N u m b e r : Second Printing, 1968

7486 P r i n t e d in t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s of A m e r i c a

Pennsylvania 64-24513

For my mother and father and for Jeannine

Acknowledgments I AM G R A T E F U L TO THE COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y LIBRARY

AND

the New York Public Library for the use of their holdings. Special thanks are due to the Harvard University Library, the Yale University Library, and the library of the University of California at Los Angeles for the generous way in which they m a d e their resources available to me. Mrs. Ezra P o u n d and the Yale Library have kindly allowed me to reproduce passages f r o m the copies in that library of M r . Pound's unpublished letters. H a r f o r d W. H. Powel, Jr., has permitted me to draw on his unpublished study of T . S. Eliot's early life, and has been most patient in answering my queries about Eliot. Williams College has generously given me assistance through its Class of 1900 Fund. I am indebted to F. W. Dupee for launching me on my study of James, Pound, and Eliot, to the late Richard Chase for his advice and encouragement, and to John Unterecker for his conscientious reading of an earlier, slightly different version of the present work. Finally, I would like to thank my wife for having put up with it all.

7

Credits Permission to quote f r o m the following works of T. S. Eliot has been granted by the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., and Faber and Faber, L t d . : The Complete Poems and Plays, copyright 1952 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.; Collected Poems 1909-1962, © 1963 by T. S. Eliot; The Rock, copyright 1934 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., © 1962 by T. S. Eliot; Murder in the Cathedral, copyright 1935 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., © 1963 by T . S. Eliot; The Family Reunion, copyright 1939 by T. S. Eliot; Four Quartets, copyright 1943 by T. S. Eliot; The Cocktail Party, copyright 1950 by T. S. Eliot; The Confidential Clerk, copyright 1954 by T. S. Eliot. Permission has been granted by the publishers, Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, Inc. and Faber and Faber, to quote f r o m T. S. Eliot's The Elder Statesman © 1959 by T. S. Eliot. Permission to quote f r o m the following works of Ezra Pound has kindly been granted by the publishers. New Directions Inc., and A r t h u r V. M o o r e : Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound, copyright 1926 by Ezra Pound (copyright renewed 1954); The Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright 1934, 1937, 1940, 1948 by Ezra Pound; Section Rock-Drill, 85-95 de los cantares, © 1956 by Ezra Pound; Thrones: 96-109 de los cantares, © 1959 by Ezra Pound.

Contents Introduction

11

1

The Quarrel With America

19

2

Natives And Cosmopolitans

84

3

Past and Present

190

4

The Failure of Europe

268

Bibliography

361

Index

391

Introduction THE CONJUNCTION ΟΓ AT LEAST T W O O F T H E NAMES IN T H E

subtitle of this work should surprise few students of contemporary literature. "Pound and Eliot" has become as standard a pairing as "Keats and Shelley" ever was, and with good reason. The close association of the two poets early in their careers (Pound's blue-penciling of the original manuscript of The Waste Land and Eliot's dedication of the poem to him are well known results of that association), their mutual temphasis on the poet's need to assimilate literary "tradition" and to think of poetry as a craft, their having both employed the "mythical method" in their works, their having championed each other's efforts over the years, their having both been central figures in the creation of "modernist" poetry—all these help explain why critics so often speak of them in the same breath. "James, Pound, and Eliot" is a less frequent combination, but not a rare one. And in a sense, the two poets themselves have encouraged this juxtaposition with the novelist. The nature and frequency of their references to James offer unmistakable testimony both to their high regard for him, and to their continual awareness, over the last half-century, of his accomplishments. He could hardly have asked for more 11

12

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

generous praise than that accorded him in the essays Pound and Eliot wrote for the "Henry James" number of The Little Review, which appeared in August, 1918 (the novelist had died in 1916).' There, Pound flatly declared James "the greatest writer of our time and of our own particular language,"' while Eliot described him as "the most intelligent man of his generation.'" In the course of their careers, both poets have repeatedly called on James and his works to serve as illustrations for their remarks, both have linked him with the most honored names in their criticism, and both have regarded his work as furnishing a standard by which to measure other writers/ A more subtle and intimate tribute to James than any found in their prose works is the manner in which they have incorporated him into their poetry. As John J. Espey has so brilliantly demonstrated, Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley appears to echo, in a half-conscious way, a number of the themes, phrases and names found in a collection of James's stories.' Also, there are references to James or his works at 1

This number was produced under Pound's direction, and his comments on James take up almost two-thirds of the issue. In preparation for his essay, Pound appears to have plowed through the whole of the first Macmillan edition of James's collected works. Pound's study has been reprinted, with only minor additions and excisions, in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot ( N e w York, 1954), pp. 295-338. All references to it will be based on the version in this volume. Eliot's two essays have been reprinted with no changes or additions in The Question of Henry James, ed. F. W. D u p e e ( N e w York, 1945), pp. 108-119. 1 Pound, Literary Essays, p. 331. 3 Question of James, p. 111. ' See my articles, "The Lesson of the Master : Ezra Pound and Henry James," American Literature, X X X V (March, 1963), 71-79, and "T. S. Eliot on Henry James "PMLA, L X X I X (Sept., 1964), 490-497. 5 See John J. Espey, Ezra Pound's Mauberley (Berkeley, 1955), particularly pp. 49-61. The name of the collection in question is Embarrassments (London, 1896).

INTRODUCTION

13

several points in the Cantos. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" owes much to James's "The Beast in the Jungle" and "Crapy Cornelia,'"1 unless the striking similarities that leap out at us when we compare the poem with the two stories are sheer coincidence. F. O. Matthiessen has given us reason to believe that "Burbank with a Baedeker : Bleistein with a Cigar" was partly inspired by The Aspern Papers, and has pointed out an allusion to James's "The Jolly Corner" in The Family Reunion,T In addition, there are thematic a n d / o r verbal parallels between The Confidential Clerk and What Maisie Knew, between The Elder Statesman and The Wings of the Dove. However, most of these echoes and parallels have only an ancillary interest for the present study, which is not primarily concerned with the question of how James's works "influenced" those of Pound and Eliot. Rather, the aim of the chapters that follow is to relate Pound and Eliot to James (and to each other), not through any matter of literary borrowings, but via the great fact common to the lives of all three of these men, the fact of expatriation. Their mutual rejection of America and their choice of Europe as a place in which to live and work, is a broader, albeit less explicit, basis for bringing the two poets and the novelist together than the series of parallels cited above. (Indeed, it is highly probable that the poets' longsustained interest in James, which partly manifests itself in these parallels, has stemmed not only from the intrinsic " In his tireless tracking d o w n of Eliot's sources, Grover Smith has f o u n d parallels between "Prufrock" and "Crapy Cornelia," but has not demonstrated them with as m u c h force or fullness as he might have. See his T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays (Chicago, 1960), p. 15. T h e f a m o u s w o m e n in Eliot's p o e m , w h o " c o m e and g o / Talking of Michelangelo," may derive not only from a passage in "The Beast in the Jungle" but from a lesser-known James story, "The M a d o n n a of the Future." ' See F. O. Matthiessen, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot ( N e w York, 1955), pp. 24, 176, respectively.

14

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H OF E U R O P E

qualities of his writings but f r o m his having been the most notable literary expatriate to h a v e c o m e out of this country prior to their o w n migrations.) H a d P o u n d and Eliot never even mentioned James, w e w o u l d still d o well to think of them in relation to him, because these t w o poets and this novelist f o r m a kind of natural triad in our literary history. W i t h each of the three men, the decision to leave A m e r i c a and settle in E u r o p e did not simply terminate in the dise m b a r k a t i o n on E u r o p e a n soil; that decision did not simply effect a neat break in their careers. O n the contrary, it c a m e to operate as a large and constant presence in those careers, the life and w o r k of each s h o w i n g as a steady and consummate dramatization of that decision. T h u s , after they had escaped A m e r i c a , they all continued to voice their objections to it f r o m a b r o a d . M a d e particularly conscious of "nationa l i t y " by their transplantation, they all repeatedly concerned themselves with the artist's relation to his native heritage and, more generally, with the place of nationality in civilization. C o m i n g f r o m a country with comparatively little history and tradition, they all were peculiarly aware of the E u r o p e a n past and attempted wholesale appropriations of it in their w o r k s . L a n d i n g in the O l d W o r l d with the high d e m a n d s on it that only an A m e r i c a n could m a k e , they all registered their discoveries of its shortcomings with especial intensity. A s I indicated earlier, a number of critics have brought the names of the three men together, usually on the basis of their expatriation. But as a rule, such critics h a v e done so for the space of a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph. James, P o u n d and Eliot are too important, and expatriation is too crucial a fact with all of them, to have that fact treated adequately in a f e w remarks. M o r e o v e r , critics too o f t e n simply l u m p the three together, thereby ignoring the particular qualities of each m a n ' s expatriation, the particular style

INTRODUCTION

15

each came to work out for himself. It is important that we remain alert to the distinctions a m o n g the three in this respect if we wish to understand their work. At the same time, there is a certain large pattern, c o m m o n to them in their expatriation, which I d o not think has been articulated hitherto; it is discussed in my last chapter. What this study undertakes to do, then, is to formulate, with greater fullness and refinement than I have seen attempted elsewhere, both the contents of each m a n ' s expatriación and the way those contents c o m p a r e with their corresponding elements in the lives and writings of the other two men. My h o p e is that by doing this, I will elucidate a number of the m a j o r patterns within the career a n d works of each, and also, will provide the reader with an accurate way of contemplating the three as a group. T h a t is, I wish to help the reader perceive both the similarities a n d the differences in their reasons for leaving America, in their attitudes toward nationality and cosmopolitanism, in their apprehension of the E u r o p e a n past, and in their c o n f r o n t a t i o n of the European present. My concluding pages try to suggest briefly why expatriation has held a dwindling attraction f o r American writers since the 1920's, the great decade of expatriation; why it no longer exerts an appeal as a genuii.e a n d desirable alternative to permanent residence in the United States, the kind of appeal it had had for the three men w h o are the subjects of this study. Ironically, there is no more forceful testimony to the withering away of modern E u r o p e ' s glamour than the very works of James, Pound and Eliot, w h o all came to celebrate images of the Old World that partook more of the past than of the present, more of d r e a m than of reality, as no one knew better than they.' " D u r i n g t h e c o u r s e of t h e s t u d y , I shall h a v e f r e q u e n t o c c a s i o n t o

16

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

r e f e r to m a t e r i a l s d r a w n f r o m The Cantos of Ezra Pound (New Y o r k , 1948). In such cases, both t h e c a n t o n u m b e r a n d t h e p a g e n u m b e r of each specific r e f e r e n c e will be given, because of t h e b r o k e n p a g i n a t i o n of t h e v o l u m e , p u b l i s h e d by N e w D i r e c t i o n s . A l s o , I shall f r e q u e n t l y cite u n p u b l i s h e d letters of P o u n d . W i t h only o n e o r t w o e x c e p t i o n s , such r e f e r e n c e s h a v e been d r a w n f r o m typescript copies of t h o s e letters m a d e by D . D . Paige, which a r e l o c a t e d in t h e A m e r i c a n L i t e r a t u r e collection at Y a l e U n i v e r s i t y . P a i g e h a s r e p r o d u c e d h u n d r e d s of P o u n d ' s u n p u b l i s h e d letters, a n d has a s s i g n e d a different n u m b e r to each t y p e s c r i p t . E a c h r e f e r e n c e t o m a t e r i a l s in this collection will be i n d i c a t e d in t h e a p p r o p r i a t e f o o t n o t e by t h e p h r a s e " P a i g e t y p e s c r i p t , " f o l l o w e d by t h e n u m b e r of t h e p a r t i c u l a r typescript in q u e s t i o n . U n l e s s o t h e r w i s e noted, r e f e r e n c e s t o J a m e s ' s fiction a n d p r e f a c e s will be b a s e d on The Novels and Tales of Henry James ( N e w Y o r k , 1907-17), 26 vols. T h i s is t h e original " N e w Y o r k " edition.

Three Voyagers in Search of Europe A Study o f H e n r y James, Ezra Pound, and T . S. Eliot

I

The Quarrel With America IN CHOOSING

TO

LIVE ABROAD,

JAMES,

POUND AND

ELIOT

registered in the most acute way possible both the pull they felt toward Europe and the distaste induced in them by America. The attraction and repulsion were, of course, complementary—Europe seemed to promise them what America lacked and offered refuge from what they found undesirable in American life. It is the nature of their discontent with this country that I shall focus on in the present chapter, remembering that with each of the three men, the quarrel with America did not terminate with their departure; rather, the great bulk of it was conducted from abroad, where I shall follow its course. If his recollections are accurate, James gave indication, when he was only fifteen, of his eventual decision to settle in the Old World. He spent most of the period of 1855-60 in Europe with the members of his family, a stay punctuated in 1858 by their return to this country for a year's stay. Recalling that return, James tells us that he sighed at having to remove himself from the European social order. 1 1 Henry James, Autobiography, 1956), p. 271.

ed. F. W. Dupee (New Y o r k ,

19

20

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

Living in Boston and Cambridge during the 1860's and 70's, he complained about his milieu; America bored him. He wrote to his friend Thomas Sergeant Perry in 1867: "There is nothing new of course in the universe of American letters—except the projected resuscitation of Putnam's Magazine. Great news, you see! We live over here in a thrilling atmosphere." 1 That same year he told his brother William: "Life here in Cambridge—or in this house, at least—is about as lively as the inner sepulchre.'" He asserted, the following year, that society, in the sense of "good company," could not be found in the United States.' It was to relieve his boredom, Leon Edel suggests, that James attended the séances and speeches that were to be so acidly treated in The Bostoniens.s Judging from his portrait of Cambridge in that novel, he found the town not only dull, but ugly. In 1869, he took a trip to Europe (the first of two that leavened his long stay in America). Reminiscing about that trip many years later, he said that he was trying at the time to disconnect himself radically from his homeland." During this sojourn he had been eagerly interrogated about his country by some Englishmen : There were, it appeared, things of interest taking place in A m e r i c a , and I had had, in this absurd manner, to c o m e to England to learn it . . . nothing of the smallest interest, by 2

Henry James, The Selected Letters of Henry James, ed. Leon Edel (New York, 1955), p. 21. ' The letter in which this appears, together with many other letters from Henry to William, is reproduced in Ralph Barton Perry's The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols. (Boston, 1935). This particular passage appears in I, 251. Henry was to express intense boredom when visiting Washington in 1882. See Edel, Henry James: The Middle Years (Philadelphia, 1962), p. 30. ' Henry James, "Sainte-Beuve's Portraits," Nation, VI (June 4. 1868), 454. ' See Edel, Henry James: The Conquest of London (Philadelphia. 1962), p. 26. "James, Autobiography, op. cit., p. 558.

THE QUARREL WITH

AMERICA

21

any perception of mine, as I s u p p o s e I should still blush to recall, had taken place in A m e r i c a since the War. H o w could anything, I really wanted to ask. . .

That is, how could anything of interest have taken place, James goes on to say, comparable to the display of English manners unfolding before him. America had seemed to him lacking in events and definition, "too negative" to be related in any way to London ." (Of course a great deal had begun to take place, in that America was becoming industrialized and expanding more and more to the west, but this was not the sort of thing that excited James's imagination.) After returning from his trip, he expressed mixed feelings about this country, saying he liked it "enormously" but that he feared his aversion to it was "too old to end in a grand passion,"" and apparently it continued to irritate him. He observed that if the English had a genius for uniting the picturesque and the comfortable, America's genius lay in combining their opposites.10 In retrospect, the Boston and Cambridge he returned to seemed terrible places indeed. He wrote in 1913 : "I have a superstitious terror of seeing them at the end of time again stretch out strange inevitable tentacles to draw me back and destroy me."" He went to Europe again in 1872 so that he might, according to Leon Edel, "show whether his pen could accomplish in Europe what it had failed to do in America—give him freedom and independence, the sense of being footloose and unattached, and above all self-possessed."" Failing to ' Ibid., p. 559. "Ibid., p. 557. "James, Selected Letters, p. 38. " Henry James, "A Summer in Europe," Nation, IV (August 8, 1872), 86. " Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock, 2 vols. ( N e w York, 1920), II, 317. '"' Edel, James: The Conquest of London, p. 62.

22

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

achieve complete financial independence, he decided, in 1874, to return home. He wrote his mother that he did not find America "simpatico," but was coming back for practical reasons—he would be able to find more work "by being on the premises," and thereby relieve his parents of the financial burden he had thus far imposed upon them " Some years later, after having settled permanently in England, James gave a different version of why he came home in 1874. He claimed that he did so "to 'try New York,' thinking it my duty to attempt to live at home before I should grow older, and not take for granted too much that Europe alone was possible. . . ." He came back "eager to be 'interested' " but found he was "interested but imperfectly."" When he returned to Europe in the fall of 1875, it was for good. He might well have had himself in mind when he wrote an article in the spring of that year, concerning the paintings of Frank Duveneck (paintings that eventually were to include a portrait of James's father). He said that Duveneck, after having had an exhibition in Boston, was invited to come to that city, assured of orders for a dozen portraits. But the painter decided to decline the invitation, indicating that before producing on this large scale he needed to fortify his foundations. He is now about to return to Europe. This, doubtless, is the wisest course. . . . We confess that, as things stand with us at present, almost any young artist of promise is likely to do better out of America than in it. We are fatally prone, in such cases, to use the superlative degree when the comparative is abundantly adequate, and to force second-rate power, over against its conscience, into attempting tasks of first-rate magnitude.15 When James wrote "artist" here he was not only thinking " Lubbock, I, 38. " The Notebooks of Henry James, ed. F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock ( N e w York, 1947), pp. 24^25. " H e n r y James, untitled article, Nation, X X (June 3, 1875), 3 7 λ

T H E QUARREL W I T H AMERICA

23

of painters; in his Hawthorne (1879), he says that "the gentleman or the lady who has written a book is in many circles the object of an admiration too indiscriminating to operate as an encouragement to good writing.'" 5 James occasionally took the position that it was inadvisable for the American artist to go abroad," but at this time he seemed concerned with the deleterious effects on the young painter or writer, of what he regarded as the flabby critical atmosphere of America. But Hawthorne contains an observation more central to James's criticism of American culture, one that he had given voice to before and that he reiterated after his expatriation. Namely, James described America's social texture as thin, raw, monotonous, undefined. His psyche and his art required salience of definition, clarity of distinction, multiplicity of forms, and evidence of "type," all of which he felt conspicuously absent in this country. Whatever tribute James paid in his works to the American spirit, he rarely felt anything but deprived by what he considered the aesthetic poverty of the country's appearances, as these manifested, or rather failed to manifest themselves, in street scenes, customs, dress, and social classes. As a boy, for example, he was struck by an impeccably dressed young dandy, who stood out sharply from those about him. This personage, sporting a monocle and a terrier, was like "some type in a collection of types—that was the word for it; and, there being no collection, nor the ghost of one, roundabout us, was a lone courageous creature in the desert of our bald reiterations."1* Americans abroad, James found, superficially " H e n r y James, Hawthorne (Ithaca, 1956), p. 24. See also The American Essays of Henry James, ed. Leon Edel (New York, 1956), p. 67. " I will take up James's contradictory sentiments on this issue in the next chapter. '"James, Autobiography, p. 452.

24

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

carried more signs of their national origin than any other people, but these were all "of the negative kind," and indicated that the individual came from a country "in which the social atmosphere, like the material, is extremely thin."" America was deficient even in the variety of its physiognomies. During his brief, abortive attendance at the Harvard Law School, starting in 1862, James had studied the faces of his fellow students in the hope of determining the particular kind of American each represented. Recalling this in later years, he says he did not dream then "of the stiff law by which, on the whole American ground, division of type . . . was more and more to break down for me and fail. . . .'"" A convenient compendium of several of James's dissatisfactions with this country's social scene can be found in an essayistic story he published in 1882, "The Point of View."' 1 Several of the people in it complain about the formlessness of both character and landscape in the United States. Also scored are the intrusions on privacy, the failure of the adults to discipline the children, and the excess of "nature" and lack of artifice found in the American woman. In an uncharacteristic but memorable passage, combining comic hyperbole with a sense of nightmare, a Boston hotel is described not only as lacking European graces but as a veritable chamber of horrors ("There's a great crowd around you, but there's also a great stillness; every now and then you hear some one expectorate")" The thin social atmosphere of the United States, the " H e n r y James, " H o m b u r g R e f o r m e d , " Nation, X V I I ( A u g . 28. 1873), 143. M James, Autobiography, pp. 4 4 9 - 4 5 0 . James's italics. 21 It should be noted that James permitted o n e of the characters in the work to enter counter-arguments against the criticisms of America. " Henry James, The Novels and Tales of Henry James, X I V , 583.

T H E QUARREL W I T H AMERICA

25

absence of variety and type, James saw as having unhappy literary consequences. Hawthorne's work, he believed, suffered from being conceived in such an atmosphere, and in James's own day, the fiction of William Dean Howells demonstrated that "our native-grown imaginative effort is . . . a making of small things do great service. Civilization with us is monotonous, and in the way of contrasts, of salient points, of chiaroscuro, we have to take what we can get."21 James tells us that in writing Roderick Hudson (1875), which deals with a young sculptor who goes abroad to work, he wanted to create in the book's depiction of a New England town, "the image of some perfectly humane community which was yet all incapable of providing for [art]. . . After a quarter of a century lived in Europe, James leveled much the same criticism against his native land. Lambert Strether, the hero of The Ambassadors (1903), feels that his home town of Woollett (based on Springfield, Massachusetts) has only two types of people—male and female." It offers opinions on only "three or four" subjects.'" Strether's compatriot, Waymarsh, views with hostility "the discrimination of types and tones" that Europe presents.2' Here Waymarsh is apparently meant to be representative of the United States, which for James, when he visited this country the year after publishing The Ambassadors, still lacked definition and variety, and abhorred discrimination.1" For example, America had as yet not arrived at a standard of speech, of Henry James, "Howells's 'Foregone Conclusion,' " Nation, X X (Jan. 7, 1875), 13. 4 " James, Novels and Tales, I. x. 25 Ibid., XXI, 53. "Ibid., 173. ' Ibid., 41. " S e e Henry James, The American Scene (New York, 1946), p. 305.

26

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

vocal tone, which James thought of as "the touchstone of manner," and which all other peoples had achieved.19 In America, unlike Great Britain, religion had failed to furnish the country with a density of picturesque forms, and the landscape suffered from the absence of the squire and the parson." Village families seemed all alike, and James, in viewing the blankness of the village street, asked himself "Is that a//?" Academy and metropolis offered no relief from the absence of pastoral forms. If as a young man James had scanned the faces of the students at Harvard, hoping to find among them the signs of a variegated society, he did so again in 1904, but failed to discover the "possible range of origin and breeding" present in the students of European schools.31 New York, which as a city passionately dedicated to business he had always felt closed to his apprehension, seemed more than ever committed to money-making, and what he could see of the process did not delight him. He spoke of the consummate monotonous commonness, of the pushing male crowd, moving in its dense mass—with the confusion carried to chaos for any intelligence, any perception; a welter of objects and sounds in which relief, detachment, dignity, meaning, perished utterly and lost all rights.3' Undoubtedly, James was thinking of this crowd, among other things, when he said that "the main American formula" is "to make so much money that you won't, that you don't 'mind,' don't mind anything. . . ."" This was not a formula H e n r y J a m e s , The Question of Our Speech, The Lesson of Balzac: Two Lectures ( N e w Y o r k , 1905), p. 13. See " T h e Point of View," p. 487, for a n o t h e r e x a m p l e of J a m e s ' s u n h a p p i n e s s with American speech. 30 James, American Scene, pp. 23-24. " Ibid., p. 66. James's italics. 3Î Ibid., p. 83. "Ibid.. p. 237.

T H E QUARREL W I T H AMERICA

27

he himself could subscribe to. America's material prosperity had produced little of beauty or charm, and although James felt he could share in that prosperity by settling here, he declared that he "would rather live a beggar at Lamb House [his English home in Rye], . . In The Ivory Tower (1918), James offers as the mark of his hero's superiority, that as a man bred in Europe and now coming to America for the first time, Gray Fielder has never in his life had anything to do with business, with endless money-getting" One wonders whether James, even if he had been able to penetrate the workings of the American business world, would have cared to write about them. He once spoke of " 'goods' and shares and rises and falls and all such sordidities. . . His imagination was primarily engaged by the possible uses of leisure, by what people did and could become when they had been spared or had put behind them, the acquisition of material necessities. But the America James encountered both early and late in his career was immersed in the life of business and busyness. Thus, during his trip of 1869, he was excited by the English social order "in which everyone wasn't hurled straight, with the momentum of rising, upon an office or a store."" On his return, the villas and cottages, the "beautiful idle" men and women of Newport, reminded him of Europe so far as they suggested "the somewhat alien presence of leisure" in this corner of America.38 The Old World, he said in 1877, had provided an " Lubbock, II, 28. "James, Novels and Tales, X X V , 112-113. This work was never completed by James and was published after his death. In his story, "The Jolly Corner," James clearly shows his antipathy to the life of business Spencer Brydon would have followed had he remained in America. M James, American Scene, p. 342. "James, Autobiography, p. 561. M Henry James, "Newport," Nation, XI (Sept. 15, 1870), 171. In "The Point of View," one of the characters sees Newport, not as

28

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

ingenious system of arrangements whereby people might expend their leisure, but America's civilization in this respect was undeveloped.39 The America he visited in 1904 did not seem to have enlarged or enriched its leisure. Like Henry Adams, among others, James observed that this country's overwhelming concern was with business, which left a social and cultural vacuum that American women were expected to fill. Alas, they did not do so, at least not to James's satisfaction. Twenty-five years after publishing Daisy Miller,

a study

in the limitations of undisciplined energy, of "doing as one likes" without regard for an accepted standard or ideal of conduct, James found his young countrywomen still as helpless and innocent and inane as his heroine had been." The American girl, called upon to supply all the interest of the scene that was not "the mere interest on the money,"41 had been let loose unaided by any notion of manners or tone or propriety, questions to which American society at large was spectacularly indifferent, in James's view." He believed, here reminding us of Matthew Arnold's remarks on England in Culture and Anarchy,

that the country ascribed too much

value to impulse and spontaneity, that it rejected the idea of discipline and preparation as savoring of "the unholy critical spirit."" Our novelist may have been provoked into making part o f A m e r i c a , but as the " b a c k o f E u r o p e . " Novels and Tales, X I V , 563. " See H e n r y James, " A n English Easter," Lippincott's Magazine, X X (July, 1877), 52. " S e e James, American Scene, p. 33, and also H e n r y James, " T h e M a n n e r s o f A m e r i c a n W o m e n , Part I , " Harper's Bazaar, XLI ( A p r i l , 1907), 355-359. " James, American Scene, p. 431. " S e e H e n r y James, " T h e M a n n e r s o f A m e r i c a n W o m e n , P a r t I I , " Harpers Bazaar, X L I ( M a y , 1907), 454. " H e n r y James, " T h e M a n n e r s o f A m e r i c a n W o m e n , P a r t I I I , " Harpers Bazaar, X L I (June, 1907), 537-538.

THE QUARREL W I T H AMERICA

29

these remarks solely by the sight of the giggling, freemannered young, but his distaste for that spectacle led him to question the very essence of the country's spirit which, combining the "theory of social equality . . . with [the] unsurpassed disposition to accumulate those dollars that lighten the burden of consciousness . . ." produced a smug culture, untroubled by any doubts as to its worth, uncritical of its impulses." In this unflattering reference to the theory of equality, James was expressing a characteristic bias against democracy, which he did not judge as a political system, but in social and aesthetic terms. American democracy seemed to him to encourage not only a monotony of social type and a reluctance to engage in self-criticism of its manners, but gregariousness, a passion for the public and communal. (Judging by The Bostonians and The Reverberator, he seemed to associate the atmosphere of publicity generated by newspapers with America in particular.) This grated on James, who loved not only variety and distinctions, but privacy, the sense of having shut the door on the world at large. His preferences in this respect are already evident in a comparison he made between Saratoga and Newport in 1870. At Saratoga, he found "the wholesale equalization of the various social atoms. . . ." The ladies of the town, giving evidence of "the democratization of elegance," dressed for everybody, and in James's eyes, this was "practically, to dress for no one." In Europe, women dressed but for "the appreciation of the few."" After Saratoga, Newport seemed "really . . . civilized" to James. At Newport, life is public, if you will; at Saratoga it is absolutely common. . . . Saratoga perhaps deserves our great" Ibid., 538. " H e n r y James, "Saratoga," Nation,

XI (Aug. 11, 1870), 88.

30

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

er homage, as being characteristically democratic and American; let us, then, make Saratoga the heaven of our aspiration, but let us yet awhile content ourselves with Newport as the lordly earth of our residence." James's residence in England only seemed to confirm his original preference in this matter. He found the United States, on his return in 1904, continuing to display a spirit of gregariousness and publicity which, he thought, was precisely what worked against the formation of manners and variety in American life " New York displayed an "air of unmitigated publicity. . . All the elements of the city seemed to contribute to a single large effect, and under such conditions, "there couldn't be any manners to speak of . . . the basis of privacy was somehow wanting for them. . . ."" Villages were similarly plagued, their families unable "to escape from participations and communities. . . Indeed, James found America's public buildings, in contrast with Europe's, too public, too open to penetration, devoid of a prohibited inner sanctum. (One of the characters in "The Point of View" had complained that in Washington there were "No functionaries, no doorkeepers . . . no reservations, no authority. . . Though Harvard may have failed to provide the physiognomical variety James hungered for, it had at least thrown up gates around itself, and with its cloistered air, its separation from the crowd, its aura of "brooding on discriminations," the university impressed him as a happy refuge of privacy in a country which he characterized as "the land of the 'open door.' "" The closing,s

James, "Newport," 171.

" See Henry James, "The Manners of American W o m e n , Part IV," Harpers Bazaar, X L I (July, 1907), 6 4 7 - 6 4 8 . " J a m e s , American Scene, p. 9. "Ibid., p. 10. "Ibid., p. 31. 51 James, Novels and Tales, X I V , 592. 52 James, American Scene, p. 62.

THE QUARREL WITH AMERICA

31

off of Harvard Yard he found "an admirably interesting example of the way in which the formal enclosure of objects at all interesting immediately refines upon their interest, immediately establishes values."" Perhaps America struck him as the land of the open door not only because of the face of publicity it seemed to turn toward him everywhere, but because of the apparently limitless hospitality it extended to the immigrant, whose ubiquitous presence deeply disturbed a James remembering the relatively homogeneous America of his youth." The immigrant made the treatment of the American character a problematical affair, robbing it of the possibilities of clarity and definition.1" But did not the new arrivals bring to the United States some of the color of their native countries and thereby enhance the American scene? James got the impression that the immigrants were intent on discarding the manners that they had possessed in Europe and that had so appealed to him there." James's response to the new presence of the immigrant may be seen as an example of his characteristic discomfiture in the face of change," and the only element of permanence America seemed to offer was the promise of perpetual change. Even the great, imposing skyscrapers of New York appeared to await a destruction he thought would surely follow the discovery of something cheaper or more efficient." For America was a scene of continual obliterations. Noting that the house he was born in had been destroyed and replaced by another edifice, that his birthplace was una

Ibid. Ibid., pp. 8 5 - 8 6 . " Ibid., p. 121. x Ibid„ pp. 127-128. " I shall say more about this in Chapter 3. " J a m e s , American Scene, p. 77. M

32

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

acknowledged by even a tablet, he complained that New York lacked the civic piety exhibited by European cities, that it refused to record "birth, sojourn, or death, under a celebrated name. . . Change haunted not only America's buildings but its social structure as well. Philadelphia seemed to James an exception among American cities in exhibiting a "confirmed and settled" society, possessed of a serenity unrivalled elsewhere in America.™ In general, James's comments on this country's literary culture were no more flattering than the observations we have recorded thus far. (I have already noted his remark on the propensity of the American criticism of his time to offer excessive praise to native artists.) In the 1870's he dreamed of "a great American novel, in which the heroine shall be infinitely realistic, and yet neither a school-mistress nor an outcast."*1 He found American magazines "vulgar,"*3 and said that he understood why Howells, as an editor, "should go in for cheerful endings. . . Of a novel that Howells himself had written, James declared that it was "a feeble piece of work for a man of his years—& sex ! "" Howells's bo«ok must have struck him as representative of much American fiction, for two years after making this observation he statted that "The amount of a certain sort of emasculate twaddle produced in the U.S. is not encouraging,"" and the followiing year asserted that story-telling in both England and America "Ibid., pp. 91-92. Ibid., p. 277. "James, "Newport," 171. " In a letter to his friend T h o m a s Sergeant Perry, reprinted in Virginia Harlow, Thomas Sergeant Perry (Durham, 1950), p. 2!94. This volume reproduces several interesting letters f r o m James to Perry. " Selected Letters, p. 68. " Harlow, p. 296. It is difficult to say just what Howells n o v e l James is referring to here ; possibly it is A Counterfeit Presenrmient. "Ibid., p. 303. 10

T H E QUARREL W I T H AMERICA

33

was "mainly in the hands of timid. . . women, whose acquaintance with life is severely restricted, and who are not conspicuous for general views. The novel . . . is almost always addressed to young unmarried ladies, or at least always assumes them to be a large part of the novelist's public.'"* On his trip of 1904 to this country, James found no reason to change the low estimate of America's magazines that he had held years earlier, and in commenting on them he pointed to the spurious images they promulgated. The illustrators of the magazines . . . improvise the field of action, full of features at any price, and the characters who figure upon it, young gods and goddesses mostly, of superhuman stature and towering pride; the novelists improvise, with the aid of the historians, a romantic local past of costume and compliment and sword-play and gallantry and passion; the dramatists build up, of a thousand pieces, the airy fiction that the life of the people in the world among whom the elements of clash and contrast are simplest and most superficial abounds in the subjects . . . of the theatre; while the genealogists touch up the picture with their pleasant hint of the number, over the land, of families of royal blood." James regarded the American reception of some of his own works as a further indication of the low state of literary culture here. His Hawthorne irked American reviewers, for while he praised the New England writer, he saw him as standing out "from the general flatness of the literary field that surrounds him,"™ and as I have already indicated, he pointed to the disadvantages of America's social texture for the novelist. The hostility of the book's notices drew a sharp response from James. Writing from London, he said that " Henry James, The Future of the Novel, ed. Leon Edel (New York, 1956), p. 94. See also the remalles of one of the characters in "The Point of View," Novels and Tales, XIV, 590. "James, American Scene, p. 458. M James, Hawthorne, p. 2.

34

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

The vulgarity, ignorance, rabid vanity & general idiocy of them all [the reviews of the book his father had sent him] is truly incredible. . . . The whole episode projects a lurid light upon the state of American "culture" & furnishes me with a hundred wonderful examples, where, before, I had only more or less vague impressions. Whatever might have been my own evidence for calling American taste "provincial," my successors at least will have no excuse for not doing it. . . . Yes, there is no denying that this is a higher civilization, in literary respects." Proof of England's superiority, James undoubtedly felt, was furnished by the success his works were enjoying in London at this time. He wrote to his friend Perry : " Ί have got a good deal of fame and hope some day to get a little money. . . . I have had, I think, more success with the dull British public in a few months than with that of my native land in all these long years that I have been scribbling to it.' " ,0 Many years later, James was surprised by the favorable reception in England of the first of his autobiographical volumes. A Small Boy and Others. He had felt "it could be only Americanly understood; but it doesn't, chez nous, seem to have been Americanly understood in the least, or anything but very Americanly & illiterately & childishly derided and abused."" II Ezra Pound has complained more than once about the reception of his works in America. As late as 1938, we find him saying that there is no place in this country where any of his critical writings "can be printed without just as much " Harlow, p. 306. James's italics. " Q u o t e d in Edel, James: Conquest " Harlow, p. 340. James's italics.

of London,

p. 344.

THE QUARREL WITH AMERICA

35

struggle, delay, fuss and obstruction as when I was 23 years of age.'" : Pound may be alluding here to the rejection by several leading American magazines of manuscripts he had sent them from London in 1908.;1 He may also be referring to his expectation that year of having his first volume of poetry, A Lume Spento, brought out by an American pirate publisher, Thomas Mosher. (Pound had previously had the book printed at his own expense in Venice.) Mosher failed to publish the book.14 In 1909, a collection of his poetry came out in London and was enthusiastically received." Selections from this second book, Personae, had to await their American appearance until the following year, when they were included in Provenga, published in Boston. A long time afterward, Pound was heard to say that his poems did not appear in American magazines until they had been collected into English books." The original rejection of his work in the United States must have rankled in the mind of a young man as contemptuous as Pound was of the poetry that did get printed in this country. A few years after settling in London, he issued a sweeping dismissal of that poetry. Speaking of his "last tortured visit" to the United States (after going to Europe in 1908 he had come back here in 1910 for a stay of several months), he claimed that he found "no writer and but one reviewer who had any worthy conception of poetry, The :: Ezra P o u n d , "The State Should M o v e Like a D a n c e , " British Union Quarterly, II, ( O c t . - D e c . . 1938), p. 50. Actually, Pound d o e s not seem to have had as m u c h difficulty in securing American publication in the 1930's as this statement would indicate. 71 See John H a m i l t o n Edwards, "A Critical Biography of Ezra Pound, 1885-1922," unpublished dissertation, University of California (1952), p. 49. " See Charles N o r m a n , Ezra Pound ( N e w York, 1960), p. 30. 15 Ibid., p. 37. : *See M a l c o l m C o w l e y , Exile's Return ( N e w York, 1959), p. 121.

36

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

Art."" Pound has always insisted on viewing the composition of poetry as a craft, one which must be patiently learned, which involves an unswerving, conscious attention to form; it was such attention that he found conspicuously absent in his compatriots. In 1913 he wailed to Harriet Monroe, "Honestly, besides yourself and Mrs. Henderson [Alice Corbin Henderson], whom do you know who takes the Art of poetry seriously? . . . Who Cares? . . . Who in America believes in perfection and that nothing short of it is worthwhile?'"" If James found that this country, in its social behavior, attached too much value to impulse and spontaneity, and too little to form and discipline, Pound found this true of American poetry. He once wrote, again to Harriet Monroe, "You constantly think I undervalue élan and enthusiasm. I see a whole country rotted with it, and no one to insist that 'form' and innovation are compatible."" America's hostile treatment of his works seems to have played a greater part in provoking Pound's quarrel with his native land than James's, possibly because Pound suffered rejection of his initial offerings. James, after all, had to endure unfriendly notices in America only after he had become an established writer. He experienced no trouble in getting his first critical pieces, and later, his early short stories, into American publications. Also, he and his father were friendly with the literary powers of the time, and James was offered the editorship of the North American Review when he was only twenty-five. As opposed to Pound, the young James could not possibly have felt himself a ,T Ezra Pound, Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. D. D. Paige ( N e w York, 1950), p. 9. See also Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance (Norfolk, 1952), p p . 3 6 - 3 7 . ™ Pound, Letters, p. 15. '•'Ibid., p p . 5 5 - 5 6 .

THE QUARREL WITH AMERICA

37

victim of the editorial and publishing branches of this country's literary establishment. Un-Jamesian, too, were the circumstances of Pound's humiliation by another branch of that establishment, the academy. Given an instructorship at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Pound was fired from his job after a few months, supposedly because he had allowed a stranded burlesque dancer to spend the night in his room (although there may have been other reasons). Pound's biographer, Charles Norman, believes this incident to have played a crucial part in the poet's decision to live abroad. 80 This is open to question. But certainly, Pound had hated the town from the first and his ejection from the college could only have confirmed him in his attitude." Twenty-eight years after his dismissal, he wrote, "I am by natr thank god I M P A T I E N T , if I hadn't been, I shd. still be teaching half wits in a desert beanery, at Crawfurd'sville, Indiana, which is lowern hell."" Perhaps he was thinking of the incident at Wabash when he wrote "L'Homme Moyen Sensuel" (1917), a poem satirizing sexual hypocrisy in A m e r i c a " Pound may also have harbored a grudge against the University of Pennsylvania, where he had done both undergraduate and graduate work, for its failure to offer him a job (though it had granted him a fellowship)." His treatment at the hands of Wabash and Pennsylvania possibly explains, at least in part, the energy with which he has attacked the American university, one of his standard targets. In 1917 he found this country's universities guilty of substituting an ideal of Λ0

N o r m a n , p. 23. See ibid., pp. 2 2 - 2 3 . '"From a letter to Stanley Nott, February, 1935, Paige typescript, no. 1207. (See f o o t n o t e 8, p. 15). " E z r a Pound, Personae ( N e w York, n.d.), pp. 2 3 8 - 2 4 6 . M See N o r m a n , p. 24. M

38

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH O F EUROPE

" 'scholarship,' " derived from Germany, for an "ideal of humanity."" 5 According to him, it was his criticism of the emphasis given to philology in the study of literature at Pennsylvania that made him "very much persona non grata" there."0 He was also irked by the American university's neglect of modern literature."' For Pound, the university, together with the publishing houses and the magazine editors, formed an insidious literary bureaucracy in America, a three-headed dragon that he frequently fought. Like James before him, he showed his dissatisfaction with those American magazines whose descendants we generally refer to today as "middlebrow." But as an outsider from the start, Pound waged a more intense and extended battle against them and the "genteel tradition" they embodied, than the novelist did.*8 It is true that James was unhappy with the literature that later came to be signified by that phrase. He had, for example, commented on the lack of masculinity in Howells's work, as we have seen. But Howells was his friend, and James expressed his criticism in private. Pound was a good deal less genteel than James in his attack on this tradition, on the magazines which provided an influential voice for it, and on Howells in particular. He once wrote : "Certain fusty old crocks have pretended to look after American 'culture,' they have run fat, dull, and profitable periodicals for their own emolument . . . and for the card-boarding of the American mind."" He found Robert Louis Stevenson's being shown the Ezra P o u n d , "Provincialism the E n e m y , " I, New Age, XXI (July 12, 1917), 245. "" Ezra P o u n d , "Studies in C o n t e m p o r a r y Mentality . . . X V I I , " New Age, X X I I ( D e c . 27, 1917), 168. " S e e e.g., Letters, p. 115. ""The phrase is, of course, Santayana's. P o u n d d o e s not share James's a m b i v a l e n t feelings t o w a r d the genteel t e m p e r a m e n t . " E z r a P o u n d , " U n a n i m i s m . " Little Review, IV (April, 1918), 26.

T H E Q U A R R E L W I T H AMERICA

39

door at the office of R. W. Gilder's Century magazine in 1879, the "symbolical act" of Gilder's generation" (Many years after the Stevenson incident, the Century was to be one of the publications that rejected Pound's early poems; Pound evened the score by satirizing the Century's genteel standards in "L'Homme Moyen Sensuel.")" In 1918 Pound referred to "Mr. William Dean Howells . . . and [hisl never to be sufficiently ridiculed and wholly contemptible generation of male American matrons. . . .""' In Pound's estimation, America's "better" magazines had been doing real harm to the cause of literature in this country. He claimed in 1913 that one of the diseases of American letters was "magazitis."' 3 The following year, he described the "typical" American editor of the preceding two decades as having "resolutely shut his mind against serious American writing."" He accused the magazines, in 1915, of having "defunct" standards; when the young writer complied with those standards, under the illusion that they were "classical," he was ruined.85 So strongly did Pound continue to feel about the damage caused by the magazines, that in 1933 when William Rose Benêt, editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, offered him twenty-five dollars if he would contribute some poems to an anthology Benêt was bringing out, Pound turned him down. Explaining his refusal (Benêt thought he was objecting to the sum), Pound said: I think I shd. forgo the 25 dollars for the sake of critical integrity. . . . The foetor of the Sat. Rev.'s critical effort to w

¡bid., 27. " Pound, Personae, pp. 243-245. " Ezra Pound, untitled note, Little Review, IV (May, 1918), 62. 1,3 Ezra Pound, Patria Mia (Chicago, 1950), p. 37. "Ezra Pound, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (New York, 1954), p. 384. ,: · Ezra Pound, " 'The Pleasing Art of Poetry,' " New Age, X V I I (July 8, 1915), 229.

40

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE uphold the almost-good and the not-quite-dead. . . . H o w the deuce d o y o u expect me to swallow all that for the sake of a small sum of m o n e y ? "

The magazine ultimately had its revenge. In 1949, it served as the vehicle for a fierce attack by Robert Hillyer on the awarding of the Bollingen Prize to Pound's Pisan Cantos' Pound often spoke of America's intellectual life as characterized by the circulation of stale ideas, and for this he held the magazines largely responsible. When The Hound and Horn published a Henry James number in 1933, Pound pointed out that The Little Review, under his direction, had brought out such an issue fifteen years earlier " America's intellectual lag was showing again, a lag Pound had previously complained about. In 1928 he had found this country fifteen or twenty years " 'behind the times,' "" and in 1930 he contrasted the flourishing of the new in European literature, music and painting, with the American condition of "lag-behind, of inertia, timidity, lack of good will, hatred of the unfamiliar.'"00 Long before this, he had regarded America's "lag" as perverse, claiming that our magazines and publishers refused to keep abreast of what was happening in European art : "America has not listened to Europe. She has tolerated a 'better magazine' language, and a system of publishing which has advised her NOT to listen to Europe.'"01 Judging from his remarks about America's cul" Pound, Letters, p. 244. " See Robert Hillyer, "Treason's Strange Fruit," Saturday Review of Literature, X X X I I (June 11, 1949), 9-11, 28, and "Poetry's New Priesthood," same volume, (June 18, 1949), 7-9, 38. m Letter to Γ. C. Wilson, October 25, 1933, Paige typescript, no. 1084. "Pound, Literary Essays, p. 393. 100 Ezra Pound, "This Subsidy Business." Poetry, X X X V (Jan. 1930), 213. 101 Ezra Pound, "What America Has to Live Down, II," New Age, XXIII (August 29, 1918), 281.

THE QUARREL WITH AMERICA

41

turai isolation, Pound seemed to assume that this country was incapable of producing independently, that is, without fertilization by foreign influences, an art worthy of his attention. There is another strain in Pound's criticism of America that would seem to contradict his remarks about its cutting itself off from Europe. For he repeatedly asserted that this country's literary culture was only too open to European influences, or more specifically, English influences.102 He was greatly annoyed, for example, by the immense Kipling vogue which began here about the turn of the century. In 1933 he stated that he originally came to England "to escape Ersatz; that is to say, whenever a British half-wit expressed an opinion, some American quarter-wit rehashed it in one of the 'respectable' American organs.""" The following year he again explained his expatriation by referring to America's subservience to England : "There is every reason to live outside America as long as the American vie intellectuelle sits patiently under the great British bum, carefully collecting and cataloguing the droppings.1" The apparent discrepancy between Pound's strictures concerning our ignorance or rejection of Europe, and his objections to our colonial intellectual status vis-à-vis England, is easily explained if we take account of his assertions that America did not open her mind to the proper foreign influences, which for him emanated pre-eminently from France.105 He said, for example, in 1917: 102 See, e.g., Ezra Pound, "Paris," Poetry, III (October, 1913), 27, and Personae, p. 240. 103 Ezra Pound, "Murder by Capital," Criterion, XII (July, 1933), 585. ""Letter to T. E. Lawrence, N o v . 29 or 30, 1934, Paige typescript, no. 1159. ,M I shall discuss this matter m o r e fully in Chapter 4.

42

T H R E E VOYAGERS IN SEARCH O F EUROPE

T h e necessity, or at least the advisability of c o m p a r i n g English or American work with F r e n c h work is not readily granted by the usual English or A m e r i c a n writer. If you suggest it, t h e Englishman answers that he h a s not thought a b o u t it—he d o e s not see why he should b o t h e r himself a b o u t what goes on south of the channel; the A m e r i c a n replies by stating t h a t you are 'no longer A m e r i c a n , ' and I have learned by long experience that this is the bitterest epithet in his vocabulary.'""

In Pound's view, American artists and intellectuals were cut off not only from Europe, but from each other. He lamented the absence of a metropolis in this country where they might gather in discourse, his models being London and Paris. (Cf. this with James's lament about the absence of "good company" in America.) In 1913 he complained that in the United States "so few people know each other. . . ,'"o; From Rapallo, in 1925, he wrote to R. P. Blackmur, "I don't know, from here, why various people in America seem to exist to [sic] total oblivion of each other. . . .""" N o system of intercommunication existed in America, he said a decade later. "Lights, as they are considered of the American intellectual world, pass their days shut in a village, and get their news fifteen years late, faded and colorless.'"09 This country, Pound asserted, not only failed to give to its artists the nurture of European achievement, it not only failed to bring them into contact with each other, but it also failed to provide them with a decent income. Pound saw himself as the victim of this situation. He told of one of his former professors who, shortly after coming into an inheritance, wrote to Pound for free copies of his books at a time ""Ezra P o u n d , "T. S. Eliot," Poetry, X ( A u g u s t , 1917), 265. Pound, Literary Essays, p. 13. P o u n d . Letters, p. 199. 109 Ezra P o u n d , Social Credit: An impact, pamphlet (London, 1951), p. 12. This work w a s originally p u b l i s h e d in 1935. 101

T H E QUARREL W I T H AMERICA

43

when the poet was "on the edge of starvation." This man's "interest in contemporary literature," Pound characterized as "typical of . . . America.'""1 Two years after making this bitter comment, Pound wrote to his father, "Of course I shall not come to America. . . . America offers me no means of livelihood. . . .'"" He could point, in 1916, to the institutional support being given to English writers, who were helped out by pensions or by monies from a royal fund set aside for that purpose.1" He cited James Joyce's grant from the British government as an example of such support. By way of contrast, there was a letter he received from Carl Sandburg in America which he quoted for his readers : " 'It's hell when poets can't afford to buy each other's books.' '"" This country not only kept its artists in poverty, but also stigmatized that condition; whereas in Italy, Pound said, poverty was "decent and honorable.'"" He once attributed his interest in monetary theories to his dissatisfaction with the economic status of the artist,'" a status he seems to have found particularly precarious in the United States. This country's neglect of its good writers when they did appear must have been very ironic to a man who felt that we had little in our literary past to be proud of. For with the exception of Whitman and James (and James of course had gone abroad), earlier American literature usually provoked sharply contemptuous responses from Pound. When still in 1,0

Pound, Letters, p. 99. Letter to Homer L. Pound, October 19, 1916, Paige typescript, no. 440. " Ezra Pound, "Literary Prizes," Poetry VII (March, 1916), 304305. ' " Q u o t e d by Pound in Literary Essays, p. 13. Pound, Letters, p. 204. 115 See Ezra Pound, " M u r d e r By Capital," Criterion, XII (July, 1933), 585-592. 111

44

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF E U R O P E

college, for example, he had expressed a distaste for Emerson that stayed with him.1" He distinguished between the "strictly local American product / Emerson, Whittier, etc. and literature.'"" Emerson for him was associated with the genteel tradition. In one of his attacks on the representatives of that tradition, Pound went on to say, "One should express one's contempt for these people, and for the Concord school, in fact for the gensdelettres of our country from Emerson to Mabie, with a certain regularity. . . .""* For Pound, American literature from 1870 to 1910 could be summed up in the mot: "Henry James stayed in Paris reading Flaubert and Turgenev. Mr. William Dean Howells returned to America and read the writings of Henry James.119 Pound's quarrel with America is a much more specialized one than James's. We have seen that James's grievance against America's social texture was largely the grievance of a novelist looking for a suitable subject. Also, some of his criticisms of this country were specifically directed at the conditions of the American literary world. But his point of view in regarding the United States was not necessarily confined to that of the writer per se. It was often the point of view of an intelligent, wonderfully articulate observer, who made no special reference to the writer's particular problems. The American Scene, for example, is a statement of what it is like for a man, but not necessarily a man who is a writer, to encounter the life of this country after a long '"See letter to Isabel Pound, February. 19C5, Paige typescript, no. 28. 1,1 See letter to Louis Zukofsky, March, 1935, Paige typescript, no. 1236. Slant line appears in the typescript. "" Ezra Pound, "Unanimism," 26. The reference is to Hamilton Wright Mabie, an influential nineteenth-century editor and critic. "'This remark is quoted by Pound in "The Reader Critic," Little Review, IV (October, 1917), 38. It was originally made by Ford Madox Ford. See Ford, Thus to Revisit (London, 1921), p. 105.

THE QUARREL W I T H AMERICA

45

sojourn in Europe, and the book cuts a wide swath through American civilization. Pound's America, at least as it emerges from his quarrel with it, is a much smaller world than James's, although that quarrel does show a few brief traces of James-like observation. Thus, Pound spoke of the dullness of rural New England, of its "pastoral inanity.'"*1 Referring to the work of D. G. Phillips, he said that there was a paucity of social types in America." 1 Every man in this country, he declared, "or practically every man, with enough mental energy to make him interesting is engaged in either business or politics. And our politics are by now no more than a branch of business.'"" He claimed that "the only salvation of democracy lies in a depreciation of the shop-window and hustings-talent, and in an appreciation, a vastly greater appreciation, of the qualities which make a man possible company in private.'"" But unlike James, Pound most often judged the country not by its manners, nor its social texture, nor the general tone of its principal cities, but by the way it treated its writers, and by its literary standards. His America frequently seems to shrink down to the professional world of the literary artist. This country would have had to change its essence, would have had to become something completely different, in order to eliminate the grounds for James's criticism of it. With Pound, however, we frequently get the feeling that all that was required to meet his objections was the establishment of government aid to writers, and a change of personnel in the universities and editorial offices of the nation, placing in them a group of Ezra Pound, "Studies in Contemporary Mentality . . . X I X , " New Age, XXII, (Jan. 10, 1918), 208. 121 Pound, Patria Mia, p. 49. 121 Ibid., p. 37. m Ezra Pound, "Revolt of the Intelligence-Ill," New Age, X X V I (Dec. 18, 1919), 107. Pound's italics.

46

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

men sympathetic to new work and au courant with European literature. This difference between the two men is related to their divergent conceptions of what a culture or civilization consists of, a matter that will be taken up in the next chapter. But while Pound has looked at America primarily through the eyes of the native artist struggling both for intellectual and material sustenance, he has also directed some of his anger at the country as it has impinged on all its citizens. He has commented several times, for example, on what he considered excessive governmental restriction of personal freedom in the United States. Writing in 1923, he f u m e d : One merely becomes inarticulate at the sight of America naively blundering and blubbering into the evils of paternalism, red tape, paper-forms, regulations, short-time passports, et cetera, that Europe has already discovered to be a foulness. The interference of government, the excess of government! ! He was particularly incensed at Prohibition and with characteristic fury he made this declaration in 1931 : Europe wasted ten or fifteen years with the bestial idiocy of the war; America has wasted ten or fifteen years with the greater imbecility of the eighteenth amendment. War-makers and interferers with the private lives of others deserve no human pity and it is almost regrettable that the stock-yards have other uses for their machinery than that of eliminating this waste product."' Even before the enactment of the eighteenth amendment, Pound saw personal freedom in this country threatened by what he called the "Comstockian" element in American morality, and the occasion was one that especially provoked Ezra P o u n d , "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I V ( M a r c h , 1923), 279. Ezra P o u n d , "The Situation," Poetry, X X X V I I I ( M a y , 1931), 95-96. 125

T H E Q U A R R E L W I T H AMERICA

47

him because it involved an attempt at literary censorship. In 1916, John S. Sumner, Anthony Comstock's successor as head of the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice, threatened the publishers of Theodore Dreiser's The "Genius" with criminal action unless they withdrew the book from circulation or removed its allegedly lewd passages. Pound joined the many American intellectuals who protested this action, saying that he found "few signs that personal freedom, or the freedom of the Press, or of the arts, will survive West of the Atlantic. Let those who will shed their tears.'"1* In the light of Pound's later enchantment with Fascist Italy, we cannot read such passages without a sense of irony. But Pound's attraction to Fascism does not represent a complete break with his past, for while his admiration of Mussolini was certainly at odds with his libertarian sentiments (though he would deny this),"' it was consistent with his contempt for democracy, a contempt he voiced as early as 1913"5 and which constitutes part of his animus against America. In 1917 Pound edited a volume of selections from the letters of John Butler Yeats to his son, W. B. Yeats. The father had come to America in 1908, for what was originally supposed to be a visit, but he ended up remaining in this country until his death in 1922. One of the passages Pound culled from his letters declared that America was a true democracy in its dislike of the exceptional.129 Another said: ' " E z r a P o u n d , " D r e i s e r Protest," Egoist, III ( O c t o b e r , 1916), 159. " ' S e e Ezra P o u n d , " T h e R e v o l u t i o n B e t r a y e d , " British Union Quarterly, II ( J a n . - M a r . , 1938), 45. ""See E z r a P o u n d , " T h r o u g h A l i e n E y e s , I," New Age, X I I ( J a n . 16, 1913), 252. "* J o h n Butler Y e a t s , Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats: Selected by Ezra Pound ( C h u r c h t o w n , 1917), p. 50.

48

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE Personality has a difficult time in America. Their idea of equality, of individual independence, and their constant fraternal desire to find each other alike, are enemies. . . . Democracy also is the e n e m y to personality. T h e public personality swallows the individual. . . .,3n

(In 1914 Pound himself had written that democracies have always fallen because none of them has ever given sufficient place to the "outstanding personality" that "humanity craves.""1) On the evidence of his letters, Pound referred to the elder Yeats as "a detached critic . . . [who] without any tinge of didacticism . . . has defined and described America.'"" In 1938, the year in which the armies of Fascism began their drive to conquer Europe, Pound spoke of "The total democracy bilge, by which I mean the clichés, the assumptions, the current cant about 'the people'. . . Pound's own references to "the people" in earlier years had usually been scornful. The same year he edited Yeats's letters he described "the people" (his specific reference being to the London masses) as "undependable, irrational, a quicksand upon which nothing can build, and which engulfs everything that settles into it; docile, apathetic, de-energized, or, rather, unacquainted with energy, simply The Quicksand.'" 1 ' Earlier that year, he had written "There is no misanthropy in a thorough contempt for the mob. There is no respect for mankind save in respect for detached individuals."1 (In "The Point of View," one of James's characters had complained that America was "more and more the country of the many; the few find less and less place for Ibid., pp. 56-57. Pound, Literary Essays, p. 224. Ezra Pound, "The Yeats Letters," Poetry, XI (Jan. 1918), 223 113 Ezra Pound, Impact (Chicago, 1960), p. 9. '"Ezra Pound, "Studies in Contemporary Mentality . . . VII,'' New Age, XXI (Sept. 27, 1917), 465. "'Ezra Pound, "Editorial," Little Review, IV (May 1917), 6. 1,1

111

T H E QUARREL W I T H AMERICA

49

them; and the individual—well, the individual has quite ceased to be recognized.")'" As I have noted before, Pound's quarrel with this country centers on the place and condition of the arts and the artist in America. Even his attacks on democracy, on the dogma of "the people's" virtues, which seem to constitute a broader criticism of the United States than his denouncements of its literary culture, stem from this preoccupation. When Pound, for example, spoke of democracy's aversion to the superior man, it was pre-eminently the artist that he had in mind. His remark about democracy's failure to produce outstanding individuals occurs in an essay discussing the possibilities of a poetic revival in America. At the time (1914), he apparently hoped that American democracy would provide its artists with honored positions. The hopeful note was still present the following year, when Pound asked whether real democracy can only exist under feudal conditions, when no man fears to recognize creative skill in his neighbour; or, are we, as one likes to suppose, on the brink of another really great awakening when the creative or art vortices shall be strong enough, when the people who care will be well enough organized to set the fine fashion, to impose it, to make the great age?"7 However, when he reprinted this passage in Pavannes and Divisions (1918), he omitted the second part of his question."" But even in 1914, when Pound held forth the possibility of an artistic Renaissance in America, he quarreled with Poetry's using as its motto the statement of Whitman that IM James, Novels and Tales, XIV, 553. But if this was James's own view, he was not consistent in it. See the remark I cite on p. 65. Ezra Pound, "Affirmations," New Age, XVI (Jan. 7, 1915), 247. la * The essay containing this passage is reprinted in Literary Essays, as it appeared in Pavannes and Divisions (New York, 1918). See the Essays, p. 436.

50

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

" T o have great poets there must be great audiences too." He claimed that each generation had "a few intelligent spirits," but as for the rest—"this rabble, this multitude—does not create the artist. They are aimless and drifting without him. They dare not inspect their own souls."'" In 1917 Pound spoke of "the mob's hatred of all art that aspires above mediocrity,'"" and his selections f r o m the Yeats letters published that year focused on the faults of American democracy in relation to its artists. "Democracy devours its poets a n d artists," Yeats had said. He had also claimed that American democracy, with its ideal of service, with its tendency toward gregariousness and its corresponding aversion to solitude, with its pursuit of happiness, is directly opposed to the poetical mind, which eschews the notion of service, which thrives on solitude, and which believes in an ecstasy and pain inextricably joined, as opposed to a prosaic happiness. M ' W e have already seen some evidence of James's antidemocratic sentiments, and other instances can be cited. In The Bostonians for example, Basil Ransom meditates on a talk given by Verena Tarrant concerning women's rights : T h e sort of thing she was able to do, to say, was an article for which there was m o r e and more d e m a n d — f l u e n t , pretty, third-rate palaver, c o n s c i o u s or unconscious perfected h u m bug; the stupid, gregarious, gullible public, the enlightened d e m o c r a c y of his native land, could swallow unlimited draughts of it."L' "" Ezra Pound, "The Audience, " Poetry, V (October, 1914). 30. In an unpublished, undated letter to Frederick Manning, sent from London, Pound said. "The N . Y . editors have lost their childlike faith in public intelligence and are going in for the real thing." This letter is in the Special Collections section of the U C L A library. ',0 Pound, Letters, p. 116. M 'J. B. Yeats, op. cit., pp. 9, 14-15, 19, 31-32. The italics are in Pound's reprinting of the original. Henry James, The Bostonians (New York, 1956), p. 328. I am assuming (and I think the novel as a whole supports this assumption) that Ransom speaks for James here.

T H E Q U A R R E L W I T H AMERICA

51

Present in this novel is the only crowd James ever attempted to handle at any length in his fiction; and, significantly, when we last see this segment of the democratic public, it is on the verge of turning into a mob. Moreover, James's characteristic selection of persons and settings, his celebration of the private, comparatively secluded life, may be considered implicitly anti-democratic. His contempt for public taste could be as extreme as Pound's, and like Pound, he could think of the artist as heroically isolated, working without reference to an audience. In 1902, his remarks touched off by the reception of The Wings of the Dove, he said that he had a chronic sense—[of] the more than usual childishness of publics: and it is (has been,) in my mind, long since discounted, and my work definitely insists upon being independent of such phantasms and on unfolding itself wholly from its own "innards." Of course, in our conditions, doing anything decent is pure disinterested, unsupported, unrewarded heroism; but that's in the day's work.1" But James was less apt than Pound to associate "the public" with American democracy (although even in Pound this association is not always present). Also, James placed less emphasis than Pound on the hostility of America's democratic ethos to the artistic personality, and more on the failure of this country's democratic order to provide adequate materials for the artist to work with. Moreover, he expressed his distaste for democracy speaking as a man as well as a writer, while Pound almost always denounced democracy speaking solely as a poet. ' " L u b b o c k , op. cit., I, 415-16.

52

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

III T. S. Eliot seems to have been gifted with prophecy when, as a youth, he wrote a poem (later entitled "At Graduation") employing this simile : As colonists embarking from the strand To seek their fortunes on some foreign shore Well know they lose what time shall not restore, And when they leave they fully understand That though again they see their fatherland They there shall be as citizens no more We go. . . Eliot received his baccalaureate and master's degree from Harvard and returned there for graduate work after spending the academic year of 1910-11 at the Sorbonne. But in 1914 he set out for Europe again to complete his graduate studies in Germany. Perhaps he did not intend at this time to settle permanently in Europe; nevertheless, he ended u p like the colonists of his poem, for he was not to return to these shores till almost two decades had passed, and then only as a British citizen come for a temporary stay. Compared to James and Pound, Eliot was niggardly about making comments on his native land, and not much more generous in the attention he gave to American literature in his criticism. (Part of that attention was directed to the work of his two fellow expatriates.) This neglect caused one critic to remark that " . . . Eliot seems almost entirely blind to the American tradition, if not in flight from it.'"" ' " T . S. Eliot, Poems Written in Early Youth (Stockholm, 1950), pp. 18-19. A c o p y of this v o l u m e , which was privately printed, is available in Harvard's H o u g h t o n Library. '"Stanley Edgar H y m a n , The Armed Vision ( N e w Y o r k , 1955), p. 57.

THE QUARREL WITH AMERICA

53

Included among his early poems are several pieces— "Portrait of a Lady," "The Boston Evening Transcript," "Aunt Helen," "Cousin Nancy," "Mr. Apollinax"—which satirize genteel society in America. (As a group, they might be regarded as the Eliotic equivalent of James's The Bostonians.) Probably, however, we should not attribute too much importance to them as such. At least two of the poems, according to Herbert Howarth, were regarded by Harvard men as falling into a standard Harvard mode, that of the "local iconoclasm at which class after class had aimed.'"" But we do have some significant evidence of Eliot's attitude toward America at the time he was still living here, evidence that points to his discontent both with the literature of the U.S. and with the country itself. Eliot's classmate and one-time friend, W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez, in a memoir of their senior year at Harvard, said, "that world we faced . . . was a smug, somnolent world . . . by the time we left [Harvard] we found, or rather sensed, an atmosphere of fin-de-siècle, even of disillusion, in the literary and political world.'"" The American literary scene impinged on TinckomFernandez and, apparently, on Eliot, in much the same way it had on Pound. It was dominated and monopolized by a coterie of pundits, a sort of superannuated, mutual admiration circle. Their prestige might have been said to rest upon an axiom like "that which is new is not true, and that which is true is not new." Some held chairs of literature and others were editors.1" Eliot himself said, echoing James in his time, that the Herbert Howarth, Notes on Some Figures Behind T. S. Eliot (Boston, 1964), p. 123. "'W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez, "T. S. Eliot, '10," Harvard Advocate (Dec. 1938), 7. "" Ibid., 8.

54

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

world of American letters that confronted him as a young man, was "dead as a doornail.'"" He also referred to it as "a period of notable sterility for creative literature.'" 50 Although he claimed that this was true of England as well, and referred to both countries at that time as forming an "intellectual desert," the English desert could at least boast "a few tall and handsome cactuses, as well as James and Conrad . . . [but] in America the desert extended, à perte de vue, without the least prospect of even desert vegetables.'"·' As an undergraduate, Eliot wrote a review which provides a clue to the way he felt then about America at large. Although in later years he was to speak of Van Wyck Brooks's Wine of the Puritans and The Ordeal of Mark Twain as "merely querulous,""' in 1908 he commended the first of these books for its "unusual acuteness of distinction and refinement of taste.'" 53 This work, which anticipates much of Brooks's later criticism, was written in the form of a dialogue between two Americans traveling abroad. It found the Puritan spirit still persisting in an America whose development had made that persistence an anachronism. The stamp of Puritanism survived in the country's overwhelming concern with commerce, in its preoccupation with keeping perpetually busy, in its inability to accept art and leisure as natural and desirable components of the good life. The similarity here to James's comments on America is obvious. (We might note too, that Eliot, in one of his essays on ,

Eliot, "A C o m m e n t a r y , " New English Weekly, 27. ' " T . S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays ( N e w York, 1952), p. 128. T . S. Eliot, "Christianity and C o m m u n i s m . " Listener, VII (March 16, 1932), 383. m Ibid. " ' T . S. Eliot, "Building U p the Christian World." Listener, VII (April 6. 1932), 501.

PAST AND PRESENT

247

made it clear that they are not to be regained simply by a study of history : we cannot simply pick and choose, by historical study, the g o o d things out of the dustbin of the past and polish them up as fresh as new. For if we had kept them then, they would have been living in us; in, that is, our ancestors for all the generations between any period we call "the past" and ourselves; they would not be quite the s a m e as what w e inspect through the telescope of history. Our task, then, is not antiquarianism; it is just the permanent task of making the permanent truths live in us in our own brief and particular m o m e n t of time.'"

One wonders whether Eliot, when he said this, was thinking of Pound's poetry, which often seems intent on doing just what Eliot describes, selecting out of history's dustbin examples of admirable acts or policies or emotions, and asserting that they are relevant to the modern world. The Cantos certainly seem to express faith in the usefulness of studying the past, faith in the direction it can provide for contemporary society. Eliot's seeing the poet as simultaneously conquering the new and recovering the old, his eschewing antiquarianism while advocating a study of the past to see what has been lost to us, are examples of the balanced attitude he sometimes maintained in formulating the proper relationship of the present to former ages. But he occasionally felt the need to take sides on the question of past versus present, although not always the same side. Thus, one of the quarrels he had Ibid., 501. C f . Eliot's remark that "The most fanciful kind of interest in the Middle Ages is not the interest in a remote or obscure 'period' ; but the interest which finds lessons for the present time from particular traditions of art, of philosophy and theology, or of social organization." T. S. Eliot, untitled review of Charles Homer Haskins's The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, Times Literary Supplement (Aug. 11, 1927), 542.

248

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

with the present age s p r a n g f r o m its belief in progress a n d what he saw as an implication of that belief, rejection of the past. He said, in 1932, " N o age has been m o r e egocentric . . . than o u r o w n " ; it r e g a r d s the past simply as "a necessary evil—evil in itself, but necessary because it led u p to the p r e s e n t . ' " " C u r i o u s l y , what Eliot cited as an a c c o m p l i s h e d fact in 1932 b e c a m e , in 1944, only an e m e r g i n g tendency; but it still p r o v o k e d his hostility : there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism, not of space, but of time; one for which history is merely the chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no shares.17" L i k e the idea of progress, the theory of evolution has o p e r a t e d in the p o p u l a r m i n d , Eliot says in " T h e D r y Salvages," as " a m e a n s of d i s o w n i n g the p a s t . ' " " E l i o t ' s criticism of the p r o p e n s i t y of the present to put the past b e h i n d it is similar to the distaste J a m e s felt f o r w h a t h e f o u n d in A m e r i c a at the turn of the century, an intentness on forgetting what little past the c o u n t r y h a d accumulated."" In these a t t a c k s on the rejection of the past, Eliot was extending t o a wider f r o n t a c a m p a i g n begun in 1917 with " T r a d i tion a n d the Individual T a l e n t , " in which he b r o k e s h a r p l y with the h a b i t h e f o u n d in c o n t e m p o r a r y literary criticism, of assigning p e j o r a t i v e or trivial c o n n o t a t i o n s to the w o r d "traditional.'" 1 0 '"T. S. Eliot, "A Commentary,·' Criterion, XII (October, 1932), 73-79. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets, p. 72. "T Eliot, Poems, p. 132. ""See James, The American Scene, pp. 35, 143, 171. See also Chapter 1 of this study. A later expatriate, Henry Miller, was to voice a similar criticism of America. See Annette Kar-Baxter, Henry Miller Expatriate (Pittsburgh, 1961), pp. 77-78. "'See Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 3.

P A S T AND P R E S E N T

249

But the very same year he published his famous essay, which has done much to label him a "traditionalist," he wrote a brief review in which he said that "all the ideas, beliefs, modes of feeling and behaviour which we have not time or inclination to investigate for ourselves we take second-hand and sometimes call Tradition." He then directed his readers to consult—as "an authoritative [n.b.l condemnation of theories attaching extreme importance to tradition as a criterion of truth"—a papal encyclical ! H o w wonderfully ambivalent and characteristic of Eliot. For if he expressed fears that our culture might undergo a voluntary amnesia and pretend that it was born yesterday (or better yet, today), he also expressed some apprehension about its developing hardening of the arteries. Both strains of thought are evident in his repeated assertions that while we need to keep in touch with the old we must maintain an openness to the new, both in literature and in society. Thus he tells us that the poet's task "is both to respond to change and make it conscious, and to battle against degradation below the standards which he has learnt from the past.'""1 For a people to maintain its literary creativeness there must be "an unconscious balance between tradition in the larger sense—the collective personality, so to speak, realised in the literature of the past—and the originality of the living generation.'"" In the lectures which were printed as After Strange Gods (1934), he pointed out to his audience that traditions in general embody both the good and the bad, the important and the trivial, the permanent and the ""' T. S. Eliot, "Reflections on C o n t e m p o r a r y Poetry," Egoist, IV ( N o v e m b e r , 1917), 151. m T. S. Eliot, Selected Prose, ed. J o h n H a y w a r d (Aylesbury, 1955), p. 66. See also p. 148. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets, p. 58.

250

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E 3

transient.'" T h e same year he published these lectures, Eliot, in discussing the preservation of English historical sites, f o u n d such buildings worth keeping u p because they remind the people of both the glorious and the shameful in their country's past, and he went on to say that "an accumulation of old buildings, however beautiful, means death unless we can also m a k e beautiful new buildings.'"" In 1951, talking about the art and music to be f o u n d in cathedrals, he said : I deplore excessive conservatism where there is new work to be done; and I had rather take the risk of a great modern artist, when we have one, than employ a man who can be depended on to produce a close imitation of the devotional art of an earlier age.1" It need hardly be stated that Eliot's own poetry combines the old and the new in the sense that while it displays a constant awareness of earlier literature, it creates its own f o r m s and takes on the task of expressing the quality of life in the u r b a n world of the twentieth century. But despite his calls f o r a balanced view of the past and his respect for the achievements of the present, we often find Eliot showing a decided bias in favor of the old; that is, his sense of the losses suffered through the passage of the centuries is a good deal more pervasive than his sense of the gains. For like James and Pound, he employed the past as a standard by which the present stands condemned. If anything, this use of the past is more central to his work than it is to that of James and Pound, though it is certainly important in their writings. "Sweeney Erect" and "Sweeney A m o n g the Nightingales" are examples of poems in which "*T. S. ,M T . S. 88. T . S. pamphlet

Eliot, After Strange Gods ( L o n d o n . 1934), pp. 19, 29-30. Eliot, " A C o m m e n t a r y , " Criterion, XIV (October, 1934), Eliot, The Value and Use of Cathedrals (Chichester, 1951), p. 7.

in England

Today,

PAST AND PRESENT

251

Eliot sets up a characteristic counterpoint between a sordid, drab or inconsequential present and a dignified, passionate and beautiful past. In "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar," he juxtaposes memories of the one-time grandeur of Venice with a quick cataloguing of the motley tourists who infest it now, thus echoing James's feeling that the forms and manners of his day seemed poor, shrunken things against the magnificence of Venice. The speaker in Gerontion, apparently intended as representative of modern man, distinguishes, in his expression of emotional dessication, between his own life and heroic images drawn from the past. The Waste Land, which of course up to the appearance of the Four Quartets was the showpiece of Eliot's career, uses as one of its major devices the juxtaposition of reminders of the past and scenes of modern urban life, to the decided disadvantage of the latter. Whatever examples of physical magnificence the present holds are seen only as relics of the past, "withered stumps of time.'"" The poem suggests that this magnificence corresponded to an order and vitality in the life of the past, while the present receives it only as an undeserved legacy. The "splendour of Ionian white and gold," in the Church of Magnus Martyr, is "Inexplicable" in the context of contemporary London. 1 " Echoes of Virgil, Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell and Goldsmith sound through the poem, heightening the bleak aspects of the modern city by contrast. The use of such contrasts constitutes Eliot's mythic method. He noted the importance of this method in a review of James Joyce's Ulysses, which had been published in 1922, the same year The Waste Land first appeared. The review came out the following year and said : Eliot, Poems,

'"Ibid., p. 45.

p. 40.

252

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

In u s i n g the m y t h , in m a n i p u l a t i n g a c o n t i n u o u s parallel bet w e e n c o n t e m p o r a n e i t y and a n t i q u i t y , Mr. J o y c e is pursuing a m e t h o d w h i c h o t h e r s m u s t p u r s u e a f t e r him. . . . It is . . . a w a y of c o n t r o l l i n g , o f o r d e r i n g , of g i v i n g a s h a p e and a signifi c a n c e to the i m m e n s e p a n o r a m a of futility and a n a r c h y w h i c h is c o n t e m p o r a r y history. . . . Instead of narrative m e t h o d , w e m a y n o w use the mythical m e t h o d . It is, I seriously b e l i e v e , a s t e p t o w a r d m a k i n g the m o d e r n world p o s s i b l e for art. . .

The "parallel" of which Eliot speaks is largely ironic of course, and it is on such a parallel that The Waste Land depends for its effect. His poem seems to express implicitly a thought he stated several years after writing it. Speaking of Dante, in 1929, he maintained that the pageantry found in The Divine Comedy belongs to the world of "the high dream, and the modern world seems capable only of the low dream.""* Eliot not only saw in our world a falling-off from the world of Dante, of Elizabethan England, of Goldsmith's eighteenth century, but he claimed, like James, to have witnessed a deterioration within his own lifetime. In 1949 he says, "We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline; that the standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and that the evidences of this decline are visible in every department of human activity."1'"0 In the concluding stanza of The Waste Land, a jumble of quotations, Eliot tells us "These fragments I have shored against my ruins.'""' referring to the fragments of the literary past which are present in this stanza and also strewn throughI

*" T . S. Eliot. " U l y s s e s . O r d e r , a n d M y t h ; ' Dial. L X X V ( N o v . 1923). 483. ""' Eliot. Selected Essays, p. 223. E l i o t ' s italics. 190 T . S. Eliot, Notes Toward the Définition of Culture ( N e w Y o r k . 1949). p. 17. Eliot, Poems, p. 50.

P A S T AND P R E S E N T

253

out the poem. But the work as a whole gives very little assurance of any staying power furnished to the poet by his contemplation of the past. The remembrances of that past are fitful, flickering, and on being admitted into the poem suffer immediate adulteration by the present. An allusion to Marveil's " O d e to His Coy Mistress" becomes "at my back f r o m time to time I h e a r / T h e sound of horns and motors. . . .'"9: Such recalls of the past do not so much sustain Eliot as they deepen his gloominess about his own age—he cannot lose himself in the contemplation of earlier periods. There is not in him, as there is in James, a capacity to be made quietly exultant bv a sense of the long vistas of European history; he does not thrill as does that novelist to the sheer weight of experience that the past contains. Nor is there in Eliot anything like the relish with which Pound recounts the exploits of Odysseus or the troubadours, nor certainly anything like Pound's gusto as he gives us a clamorous sestina spoken by Bertrans de Born, in the prefatory note to which Pound asks us "Judge ye! / have I dug him u p a g a i n ? ' " " Eliot does not show much interest in such joyous excavations. When he chooses to speak through the mask of a character out of the past, as he does in the "Journey of the M a g i " and " A Song f o r Simeon," it is to express the same mood of weariness, attrition and malaise that dogs his contemporary characters—Prufrock, the Hollow Men, the speaker in " G e r o n t i o n . " (Eliot's drawing on the past for such speakers would seem to qualify, of course, the invidious distinctions he makes between past and present, a matter I shall turn t o shortly). A similar observation can be made of that section in "Little Gidding" where Eliot introduces a m a n out of the past, "some dead master" (variously identified by critics as ""Ibid., p. 43. Pound, Personae,

,8a

p. 28.

254

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O I ' E

Dante, Milton and Yeats), who tells of the experience brought on by old age, the dying of the senses, and the feeling of shame engendered as one reviews one's life.'" There is not much "shoring" material to be found here. Pound has used an adaptation of Eliot's line to open Canto VII—"These fragments you have shelved (shored)'"9'—and it appears that the borrowed assertion fits him more than it does its original owner. The texture of a large portion of the Cantos is that of the fragmented Eliot stanza where the line in question is found, but the fragments of the past in Pound's poem do more to sustain him than those in The Waste Land sustain Eliot. Moreover, Eliot needed a greater shoring up against the present than Pound does or than James usually did. For one thing James could think of the present as being enriched by the past, not necessarily shamed by it. In addition he could conceive of contemporary characters, such as Christopher Newman and Isabel Archer, who merit our respect and admiration, and are worthy to walk amid the splendors of the European past. Eliot tends to be contemptuous of the great majority of the people who pass through his poetry and plays, be they Bleistein, Aunt Helen Slingsby, Hakagawa, or Lavinia Chamberlayne; at best they elicit his pity but only in isolated instances does he admire or even enjoy them. He regards as of little worth the experience available to these characters, since it is only secular experience, which he tends to see as boring, drab, or trivial, and which cannot protect them against an enveloping sense of inner emptiness. Eliot does not share Pound's capacity to be diverted by contemporary personages and events, to respond genially to the world around him. Pound hankers after the past but he can also m

Eliot, Poems, pp. 141-142. '"Canto VIII, p. 28.

PAST AND PRESENT

255

tell us of a shop-girl he had seen, as beautiful as Swinburne's women; he can evince admiration for, and attempt to imitate the accent of, a philologist he once met; he can devote two pages of the Cantos to recounting a bawdy tale told by a friend of his at a boring bankers' meeting; he can recall affectionately a visit he made to a synagogue during which a snuff-box was passed around and finally offered to him. In short he can find in contemporary life an interest and enjoyment that Eliot cannot. The Hollow Men are more completely representative of the present for Eliot than they are for Pound. However, having indicated how poorly the present often fares when compared with the past in Eliot's work, I should point out that there is an important strain in that work which counters his impulse to make invidious distinctions between past and present, not surely because the present can offer something valuable of its own, but because it is seen as being really no different from the past. The forms of civilization may change, Eliot tells us, but not the essential issues of life : "fundamentally our individual problems and duties are the same as they have been for others at any time—and equally our opportunities.""* In an introduction to Pound's poetry, he writes that "If one can really penetrate the life of another age, one is penetrating the life of one's own.'"" He has Thomas à Becket say, in Murder in the Cathedral: "We do not know very much of the future/ Except that "* Eliot, "A Commentary," Criterion, X I I (October, 1932), 79. See also Eliot, "A Commentary," Criterion, X V (April, 1936), 461. Eliot o n c e told an interviewer : "What I have d o n e in all m y plays after Murder in the Cathedral has been to look for a p e r m a n e n t h u m a n situation, in s o m e Greek drama, and d e v e l o p it freely in our world of today." See "T. S. Eliot . . . An Interview," The Granite Review, X X I V ( N o . 3), 1962, no pagination. T. S. Eliot, "Introduction" to Ezra P o u n d , Selected Poems ( L o n d o n , 1928), p. xii.

256

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

f r o m generation to generation/ The same things happen again and again./ Men learn little f r o m others' experience."""• Eliot's " C o r i o l a n " may be regarded as a dramatization of this assertion, shifting back and forth as it does between the time of the R o m a n Empire and the present, and indicating that in both eras there has been a misguided trust in political leaders, misguided because those leaders have been looked to as a source of the ultimate poise and power that is the property only of deity. Ironically, the leaders, though they encourage such adulation by their public pose, secretly cry out for a source of loving authority, for the unmoved mover, "the still point of the turning w o r l d . T h e poem implicitly suggests that the present has learned nothing f r o m the past, that now as then we find the futile worship of secular power. (Here we find the "mythic m e t h o d " being used to indicate an actual parallel between past and present.) In " C o r i o l a n , " the merely secular content of history collapses into "the row of family portraits, dingy busts, all looking remarkably R o m a n , / remarkably like each other, lit u p successively by the flare/ Of a sweaty torchbearer, yawning."' 00 A dinginess and futility boring the present—that is all the past can amount to in "Coriolan," for that is all that has ever h a p p e n e d in time can amount to. A similar view emerges in "East Coker," where the speaker has a vision of peasants dancing in Elizabethan England. T h e details of the scene are regarded as part of a pattern of recurrence, a rhythm of monotony and futility: "Feet rising and falling./ Eating a n d drinking. Dung and death.""' A little later, this scene, or rather its demise, is recalled as the poem tells us Eliot, Ibid., ï0 ° Ibid., "'Ibid.,

Poems, p. 184. p. 86. p. 88. p. 124.

PAST AND PRESENT

257

"The dancers are all gone under the hill." Following immediately on this line, the next section of the poem opens with : O dark dark dark. T h e y all g o into the d a r k , T h e vacant interstellar s p a c e s , the vacant into the v a c a n t , T h e captains, merchant bankers, eminent m e n of letters, T h e g e n e r o u s p a t r o n s of art, the s t a t e s m e n and the rulers, D i s t i n g u i s h e d civil servants, c h a i r m e n of many committees, Industrial lords a n d petty c o n t r a c t o r s , all g o into the dark . . . A n d w e all g o w i t h t h e m , into the silent funeral, N o b o d y ' s f u n e r a l , f o r there is n o o n e to bury. 10 '

Death is the great solvent here; it liquidates not only all distinctions among men of the present, but whatever distinctions there may have been between past and present. All men are made one by their common fate. What Eliot sees in the early 30's with "Coriolan," what he sees in the early 40's with the Four Quartets, is essentially what he saw in The Waste Land when he reviewed the fall of successive civilizations and empires—"Jerusalem Athens Alexandria/ Vienna London/ Unreal'"01—the evaporation of the differentiae of the past, history turning into a list of disappearances, its variety and abundance ordered into a uniform nothingness by death. But also ordered somewhat differently in the Four Quartets, by the intimation of eternity. At Little Gidding, an Anglican religious community once visited by Charles II, Eliot meditates on the English civil wars of the seventeenth "'•Ibid.. Ibid.,

p. 126. p. 48.

258

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

c e n t u r y , on the m e n w h o d i e d in them a n d on the men w h o d i e d in o t h e r times a n d p l a c e s . H e a s k s : Why should we celebrate These dead men more than the dying? It is not to ring the bell backward N o r is it an incantation T o summon the spectre of a Rose. We cannot revive old factions We cannot restore old policies Or follow an antique drum. These men, and those who opposed them A n d those whom they opposed Accept the constitution of silence A n d are folded in a single party. T h e y h a v e b e c o m e a " s y m b o l p e r f e c t e d in d e a t h " of

the

t e m p o r a l g a t h e r e d u p in the e t e r n a l , the eternal w h i c h w a s s o u g h t out b y the m e n w h o c a m e to L i t t l e G i d d i n g .

The

true s i g n i f i c a n c e of the p l a c e d o e s not lie in its being a n a t i o n a l s h r i n e in the u s u a l sense, that is. a r e p o s i t o r y of h i s t o r y , of w h a t t o o k p l a c e " i n t i m e . " Its true s i g n i f i c a n c e t r a n s c e n d s h i s t o r y ; it is a p l a c e w h e r e the v a r i o u s p a t h s of the lives that led to it h a v e intersected in the timeless, a n d w h e r e that v a r i e t y h a s been o b l i t e r a t e d b y the intimations of e t e r n i t y that the p l a c e e m b o d i e s : It would be the same at the end of the journey, If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for . . . If you c a m e this w a y , T a k i n g any route, starting f r o m anywhere, A t any time or at any season, It would always be the same: you would have to put off Sense and notion. Y o u are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity O r carry report. Y o u are here to kneel Where prayer has been valid.·"'' M

Ibid., p. 143. ' Ibid.. pp. 138-139.

PAST AND PRESENT

259

Such passages set Eliot off sharply from both James and Pound, for whom all significance is rooted in earthly life. In James, history's multiplicity tends to disappear and its outlines dissolve almost completely, not because it has passed into the timeless and eternal, but because it has become a marvelous whole greater than the sum of its parts, a whole "impregnated with life," but not life moving toward the transcendent. For James as for Eliot the past becomes a symbol perfected by death; however, for James, it is not a symbol of the temporal gathered into the eternal, but of a concentration of human experience. Pound's version of timelessness has nothing of Christian divinity about it, being composed of humanistic elements. Moreover, the multiplicity of history, which is dissolved by death in Eliot, persists strongly enough for Pound so that he must try to order it; that ordering is not done for him by the passage of time. In addition, he has tried to "restore old policies," whether they be those of a Chinese emperor, Martin Van Buren, or the Mount of Pity bank of Siena. And he has striven to "revive old factions." The disputes of history are very real to him, deeply felt—the passion with which he tells of Malatesta's betrayal would make one think he had been in that condottiere's army. It is instructive to compare Eliot's lines about the warring parties of the past having accepted the constitution of silence and having been folded in a single party, with these lines from the Pisan Cantos: Tudor indeed is gone and every rose Blood-red, blanch-white that in the sunset glows Cries: "Blood, Blood, Blood!" against the gothic stone Of England, as the Howard or Boleyn knows. Nor seeks the carmine petal to infer; Nor is the white bud Time's inquisitor

260

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

P r o b i n g to k n o w if its n e w - g n a r l e d root T w i s t s f r o m Y o r k ' s head or belly of Lancaster. . .

The factions of the past have indeed disappeared here and found a common grave, but the lines seem to be lamenting the loss of all the life and energy they represented, a life and energy still very vivid and present to the speaker's mind. We get neither of these effects in Eliot's lines, which are only too ready to consign the dead to oblivion. The life of the past is important to James and Pound because the life of the present is important, and vice-versa; in much of Eliot's poetry, all life is rendered equally insignificant except where it reaches out to the divine, beyond the categories of past and present, beyond life on earth. So far as the past is a record of enterprises which have not had such reaching out as their goal, so far as it is secular, it tends to be all of a piece for Eliot—only the yearning toward the Christian God can relieve the fatal repetitions of history. Thus, Grover Smith contends that "Gerontion" should have dispelled the notion that . . Eliot was sentimentally contrasting a resplendent past with a dismal present. . . . What are contrasted in this poem are the secular history of Europe . . . and the unregarded promise of salvation through Christ."20' But this is only partially true—there are passages in Eliot's poetry, including "Gerontion," where he does contrast past and present; instead of ignoring such contrasts, we should say that they exist together with other passages in which Eliot seems to see all of history under the aspect of eternity, and in doing so finds history dissolving before him. Its essential record consists of those instances where men have looked beyond the turning ^ Canto L X X X , p. 94. :0 'Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot's p. 60.

Poetry

and Plays

( C h i c a g o . 1956).

PAST AND PRESENT

261

world to the still point and endured the agony that accompanies, in Eliot, the movement toward faith. One of those instances is furnished by T h o m a s à Becket, an archbishop of the twelfth century, murdered for his refusal to capitulate to the secular authorities, and hero of Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. One of the tempters in the play tells T h o m a s that men of the future will do their best to forget his death. A n d later is worse, w h e n m e n will not h a t e you E n o u g h to d e f a m e o r to e x e c r a t e y o u , But p o n d e r i n g the q u a l i t i e s t h a t y o u lacked Will only try to find the historical fact. W h e n m e n shall d e c l a r e that t h e r e w a s n o m y s t e r y A b o u t this m a n w h o p l a y e d a c e r t a i n p a r t in history.

The rhyme of "history" and "mystery" is of course ironic, the similarity of form setting off the discrepancy of content. History as it is usually thought of, Eliot suggests, keeps no place for mystery, for such transcendence of the ordinary life as was achieved by the martyrdom of Thomas. It is such transcendence that constitutes the reality of history for Eliot; this is what he means when he says "history is a pattern/ Of timeless moments. Eliot's concern with these moments tends to deny the importance of any distinctions between the past and present, because as far as the achievement of timelessness goes, there is no difference; no one age, he sometimes suggested, has been more favorable to its attainment than another. The mystic intuition of divinity has been equally available at all times since the coming of Christ, and has also been equally difficult of attainment at all times. In relation to penetrating the timeless, the individual has been perennially out of joint with his age. "Gerontion" tells us : ™ Eliot, Poems,

™ ¡bid., p. 144.

p. 192.

262

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE H i s t o r y has m a n y c u n n i n g p a s s a g e s , c o n t r i v e d corridors A n d issues, d e c e i v e s w i t h w h i s p e r i n g a m b i t i o n s , G u i d e s us by v a n i t i e s . . . . . . G i v e s t o o late W h a t ' s not believed in, o r if still b e l i e v e d . In m e m o r y o n l y , r e c o n s i d e r e d p a s s i o n . G i v e s too s o o n Into w e a k h a n d s , w h a t ' s t h o u g h t c a n be d i s p e n s e d with Till the refusal p r o p a g a t e s a fear. 210

"Journey of the M a g i " and " A Song for Simeon" may be thought of as dramatizations of the last lines of this passage. The speakers of these poems, w h o are living at the very beginning of what will come to be labeled the Christian era, attempt to articulate the impact of Christ's coming on their lives. Their fearfulness and perplexity, and their desire to rid themselves of both through death, illustrate history's giving "too soon into weak hands." T h e modern age, on the other hand, confronts a history that "Gives too late/ What's not believed in. . . ." In both the past and the present, man has had to struggle for faith and endure the agony of the struggle. "People change, and smile : but the agony abides.'"" Eliot has said that it is a "gross e r r o r " to think that the sense in which Christianity "can be spoken of as developing and changing, implies the possibility of greater sanctity or divine illumination becoming available to human beings through collective progress." 1 - But if it is not easier in the present than it was in the past to achieve sanctity and divine illumination, neither is it more difficult: " A good deal too much has been said in general about 'ages of faith'; as if faith were fundamentally easier, or more difficult, for people who think as well as feel, in our age than in a n o t h e r . T o Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 133. ''"T. S. Eliot, Notes Toward the Definition 1949), p. 28. 2,3 T. S. Eliot, Religious Drama: Medieval ( N e w York, 1954), no pagination.

of Culture and Modern,

( N e w York, pamphlet

PAST AND PRESENT

263

be sure, Eliot himself was hardly innocent of encouraging the belief that religious faith is particularly difficult or especially rare in the twentieth century.'" But such a view is denied in his pageant play. The Rock, which addresses itself to precisely this question of the ease or difficulty of faith in a given age. The chorus, lamenting that our time has seen something unprecedented in history, a turning away from God not to other gods, but to no god, is chided by the Rock. He tells the chorus that it is "fainthearted, and easily unsettled. . . He sends to it one Blomfield, Bishop of London, "who built [a church] in a time which was no better time than this."'" The chorus itself says that among the hearers of Peter the Hermit "were a few good men,/Many who were evil,/And most who were neither,/Like all men in all places. . . ."'" Much of the play is given over to showing that faith has been difficult in all periods and this common difficulty puts aside whatever characteristics may seem peculiar to a given age. The Rock says that nothing will happen to make the future any different from the past or the present. "There shall be always the Church and the World/ And the Heart of Man/Shivering and fluttering between them, choosing and chosen,/Valiant, ignoble, dark and full of light/Swinging between Hell Gate and Heaven Gate."11" That the chorus has learned this lesson is indicated when it says "the Temple is forever building, forever to be destroyed, forever to be restored. . . Although Eliot could deny that there was ever such a This is the implication of much of his poetry. See also T. S. Eliot, Idea of a Christian Society ( N e w York, 1940), p. 33, and Essays, pp. 233, 332. '-',5T. S. Eliot, The Rock (New York, 1934). pp. 51-52. ""Ibid., p. 53. '•"Ibid., p. 56. '·'" Ibid., p. 47. "'Ibid., p. 78.

264

T H R E E VOYAGERS IN SEARCH O F EUROPE

thing as the "ages of faith," the period of history to which this term commonly refers exerted a strong pull on his mind, and partly at least, because the Middle Ages, more than any period before or since, were ruled by the dogmas of Christianity. Eliot felt that these dogmas gave medieval Europe an intellectual unity, in contrast to the present which is characterized by "anarchy" and "chaos."" 0 Also, the small communities of the Middle Ages made possible the "nexus of direct personal relationships" that Eliot wanted to see revived in his Utopian Christian state."' He also desired to see restored the prominence that period gave to the ideal of the monastic life."1 (The Middle Ages obviously had a different significance for Eliot than they do for Pound, who was drawn to their turbulence, to the wandering life of the troubadours. When James thought of that period, which was not very often if we judge by his writings, he tended to regard it as the dark ages.) Eliot once said that he did not want to be classified as a medievalist," 3 but this was clearly an admission that he had created the impression of being one, and there is no denying the period's attraction for him.""' F o r instances of Eliot's application of these terms to the m o d e r n age, see Essays, p. 42 and T . S. Eliot, "Literature and the M o d e r n W o r l d , " in America Through the Essay, ed. A. T h e o d o r e Johnson and Allen T a t e ( N e w Y o r k , 1938), p. 382. His essay on D a n t e in the Essays reflects his nostalgia f o r medieval "unity." T h e antithesis he draws b e t w e e n that unity a n d m o d e r n c h a o s reminds o n e of Henry Adams. Eliot, Idea of a Christian Society, p. 33. Ibid., p. 35. Eliot, "Christianity and C o m m u n i s m , " 383. H i s Murder in the Cathedral as well as his interest in D a n t e are o b v i o u s e x a m p l e s of this attraction. H e o n c e spoke of the "sweetness and light of the m e d i a e v a l s c h o o l m e n . " Eliot, " A C o m m e n t a r y , " Criterion, III ( O c t o b e r , 1924), 2. See also his remarks on medieval writers in his u n s i g n e d review of Charles H o m e r Haskins's The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century in the Times Literary Supplement ( A u g u s t 11, 1927), 542. S e e as well Herbert H o w a r t h , Notes on Some Figures Behind T. S. Eliot ( B o s t o n , 1964), pp. 7 2 - 7 7 .

PAST AND PRESENT

265

Eliot also displayed nostalgia for the eighteenth century. Like James's preference for the age of Balzac, this attraction had a literary basis but of a different sort. Whereas James envies Balzac his age for the opportunities its salient social variety afforded the novelist, Eliot seems to envy the eighteenth century its artistic uniformity. Its common poetic style stands in contrast to the diverse styles of the present." 5 Moreover, both literary criticism at this time and life in general displayed a certain uniformity. Eliot was "thankful" for Dryden's "critical orthodoxy,"'"* and said that unlike critics since his time, ". . . Johnson was in a position . . . to write purely literary criticism, just because he was able to assume that there was a general attitude towards life, and a common opinion as to the place of poetry in it.'"" He wrote for a society which was "settled," which believed in itself, and in which there was not an extreme divergence of religious and political views."' Eliot's nostalgia for medieval Europe, on the one hand, and for the eighteenth century on the other, seemed to proceed from a single desire, a desire for an orthodoxy both in life and literature which he did not find in the modern age. Orthodoxy as it is embodied in church dogma served Eliot in the same way as did his mystic apprehension of the timeless—it was a means of withstanding the sound and the fury of history. Armed with the Augustinian view provided by his church, namely, that history is a record of man's sinfulness and suffering, and that the only salvation and meaning must come not within history, from man's efforts, but beyond it, from the hand of God, Eliot had an intellectual still point from which to view the turning world, whose alterations and Eliot, ^ T . S. Eliot, ibid.,

On Poetry and Poets, p. 188. Eliot, John Dryden ( N e w Y o r k , 1932), p. 66. On Poetry and Poets, p. 212. p. 221.

266

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

mortality his work is so conscious of. With this Christian view, the past, otherwise a huge kaleidoscopic nightmare of change, became arranged f o r Eliot much in the pattern he once described when discussing Dante's Inferno. He said then that the personages of the poem, both real and mythical, " a r e all representative of types of sin, suffering, fault and merit, and all become of the same reality and contemporary."^ Eliot showed a tendency, characteristic of "modernist" literature, to leap beyond the historical process, a process which seems to have become to many men of our time an increasingly meaningless affair. Pound has made a jump, too, but only through myth, not religious orthodoxy. The two poets journeyed on their respective ways after burrowing through the past, or at least certain portions of it. James neither burrowed nor leaped. T h e past for him was primarily a body of experience that had left a rich residue on the surfaces of the present, a great aesthetic treasure; he had no impulse to explore it. His apprehension of history was decidedly tenuous, his relationship to it a relaxed one. He could afford this attitude, because his present, despite its faults, seemed to him an essentially humane and civilized era; he felt no need to investigate strenuously the past that had produced it. T h e revelation of the First World War did not burst upon him until his life had almost run its course. P o u n d and Eliot, however, were confronted comparatively early in life with a E u r o p e whose upheavals and disintegration forced upon them the problem of seeking out some way of ordering history that would help them explain, or at least e n d u r e (and in Pound's case, control) the present Eliot, Essays, pp. 2 0 9 - 2 1 0 . ""Harriet M o n r o e observed that for Pound, the First World War was "a sordid and tragic interruption, destructive of man's finer

PAST AND PRESENT

267

This is largely what their i m m e r s i o n in the past c a m e to mean f o r them, w h a t e v e r the n a t u r e of their original interest in it. T h e y traveled different w a y s in their p u r s u i t of o r d e r , but each m a n " s o l v e d " history only by a n n i h i l a t i n g it. Eliot was conscious of what he h a d d o n e , but P o u n d s e e m s to think he has actually p r o d u c e d a c o n v i n c i n g e x p l a n a t i o n of things in historical terms.

activities and aspirations." Harriet York, 1938), p. 355.

Monroe, A

Poet's

Life

(New

4 The Failure of Europe AS MUCH AS THEY MAY QUALIFY THEIR STATEMENTS ON THE

matter, indeed, as much as they may contradict those statements, James, Pound and Eliot all show a tendency to speak unfavorably of the present when measured against the past. That present, as the previous chapter should have begun to indicate, is composed of Europe at least as much as of America. For though these three expatriates were often severe on the America they could not live in, they came to be quite as unsparing of the Europe that had promised them refuge. In effect, much of their work depicts their discovery of the Old World's inability to provide the kind of milieu that each, in his own way, sought. All three men eventually turned to creating images of European possibility or ideality which only serve to emphasize how alienated they came to feel amid the actual conditions of Europe. 1 1 In a limited sense, James, Pound and Eliot did find satisfactory homes in Europe as opposed to America. James and Eliot settled permanently in England, and Pound, as soon as he was released f r o m confinement in this country, returned to Italy. But 1 am speaking, in this chapter, of something larger than a private home. I am referring to a world, a cultural situation, that was sought f o r but never found.

268

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

269

In our attempt to chart James's discovery of Europe, we might do well to start out from Percy Lubbock's observation that James came to England "more by a process of exhaustion than by deliberate choice. . . Lubbock attempts to cover too much ground in these few words and does not do justice to James's original feeling for England, but his remark contains a kernel of truth. We can think of James testing first Italy, then France, as possible places of permanent residence, finding both countries wanting, and settling finally on England. He spent the first portion of his European trip of 1869-70 in Great Britain, and was intensely charmed by what he saw. But, he confessed, when forced for reasons of health to return to that country after several months in Italy, "it was an insufferable disappointment; I was wretched and brokenhearted. Italy appeared to me at that time so much better than anything else in the world, that to rise from table in the middle of the feast was a prospect of being hungry for the rest of my days.'" He experienced an " 'absolute sense of need—to see Italy again.' '" T o his brother William, he had described with rapture the approach to Florence" and written ecstatically of Rome, saying that the latter made all other cities, including London and Oxford, seem like "pasteboard." He felt that in encountering the Italian capital, he was, for the first time, living.' If "Europe" to James meant form and style and social variety, if it meant beauty, art, and a present suffused with the past, then Italy seemed to repre" This statement is f o u n d in the introduction to The Letters of Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock, 2 vols. ( N e w York, 1920), I, x x v . 3 Henry James, A Little Tour in France (Boston, 1885), p. 211. ' Q u o t e d by Lubbock, I, 12. 5 See Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols. (Boston, 1935), I, 313. This work c o n t a i n s a g o o d m a n y of the letters exchanged by the t w o brothers. " Lubbock, I, 24.

270

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

sent for him the quintessence of Europe. One of James's early stories is set in Isella, an Italian border town that he himself had passed through in coming down f r o m Switzerland. T h e American n a r r a t o r of the tale declares that Italy "is the h o m e of history, of beauty, of the arts," and that his countrymen, inhabiting a land "barren of romance a n d grace," are brought up to think that when they have earned their leisure they may c o m e to find "on Italian soil the primal substance—the Platonic 'idea'—of [their] consoling d r e a m s a n d (their) richest fancies."' During his E u r o p e a n s o j o u r n of 1872-4, James was again depressed on departing f r o m Italy, feeling that he had left his "genius" behind in Rome." H e revisited the country in 1877 a n d f o u n d she was "still m o r e her irresistible ineffable old self than ever, a n d getting away f r o m R o m e was really no joke."" H e thought Italy the most beautiful country in the world and his love f o r her is revealed in his travel sketches, a love, he said late in his career, he had never fully been able to express. 1 " But there were several flies in the Italian ointment. J a m e s could revel in the dense presence of history in that country, but so far as he thought of the past as evil, it was the Italian past he usually h a d in mind. In Naples, for example, he f o u n d himself loathing " t h e hideous heritage of the past."" A n d in one way or another, r e m n a n t s of old Italy could e n t r a p a m a n of the present. I have already discussed one story, " T h e Last of the Valerii" (1874), that embodies this theme. A n o t h e r story, " A d i n a " (1874), tells of how an American, James, The Complete Tales of Henry James, vols. (New York, 1962), II, 327. "Lubbock, I, 34. 'Ibid., I, 57. 10 Henry James, Novels and Tales, I, viii. " Perry, I, 313.

ed. Leon Edel. 12

THE FAILURE O F E U R O P E

271

eager to possess a precious relic of ancient Rome, succumbs to greed, and loses his fiancée as a result. Italy appeared to hold peculiar perils for the artist. "The Madonna of the F u t u r e " (1873) is concerned with an American painter in Florence who aspires to be a modern Raphael, but who never does anything except talk of producing a contemporary madonna, while his model grows middle-aged. Roderick Hudson's disintegration as a man and an artist takes place in Rome, as he permits his passion for Christina Light to rage uncontrolled. T h o u g h James himself, to be sure, appears to have suffered no such fate as Roderick, he did feel his work hampered in the Italian capital. As we have seen in another connection, he thought that William Wetmore Story, an earlier expatriate who belonged to the American colony in Rome, had m a d e a mistake by remaining in Italy instead of being content simply to have gathered his subjects there and executed them elsewhere. This attitude may have come partly out of James's own experience. F o r though he found the atmosphere of R o m e "priceless" for the collection of impressions, it was inimical to actual artistic production, its languid atmosphere a "nuisance" to one who wanted to settle down at the writing-table. 12 Leon Edel suggests that in addition to the mediocre Story, such other artist compatriots as James met in R o m e were hardly of a caliber to inspire confidence in the possibilities of the American novelist who took up residence there. 13 But if these men and James's own Roderick succumbed too much to Italy, James could not succumb enough, a fact that he recognized at once and was disturbed by. Writing f r o m Venice during the first month he ever spent in Italy, he " S e e L u b b o c k , I, 35, 57. See Edel, Henry James: The Conquest 1962), pp. 93-97. 11

of London

(Philadelphia,

272

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H OK E U R O P E

accused himself of responding to that country as though he "had been born in Boston. I can't for my life frankly surrender myself to the Genius of Italy, or the Spirit of the South, or whatever one may call the confounded thing : but I nevertheless feel it in all my pulses."" (James seems to have drawn on these feelings for his portrait of Rowland Mallett in Roderick Hudson.) At this time he anticipated never being able to approach Italy as anything but an outsider, whereas in England he had felt he was breathing "the air of home."" It was in Florence, in 1874, that he made his statement, which I have cited earlier, that an American stood in a "much less factitious and artificial relation" to America than to Europe. Complaining that his conversation in Italy had for almost a year been restricted to washerwomen and waiters, he was aware of the "absurd want of reciprocity between Italy itself and all my rhapsodies about it."" But these last remarks were made during his second stay in Italy. A notebook entry indicates that it took this second encounter to convince him Italy would not do as his permanent residence.' 7 He drew on his trips to that country for several of his early stories, and in later years it served him as the scene of delightful travels. But with the publication of Roderick Hudson (1875), Italy ceased to function as a major focus of his imagination, so far as that imagination was expressed in his fiction.1* Ultimately, the country's glamour was to reassert itself in the person of Prince Amerigo of The Golden Bowl (1904), but in highly abbreviated form. " P e r r y , I, 303. J a m e s ' s italics. "Ibid.. I, 304. " L u b b o c k , L, 3 6 - 3 7 . " S e e The Notebooks of Henry James, ed. F. O. Matthiessen and K e n n e t h M u r d o c k ( N e w Y o r k , 1947). p. 24. "The Aspern Papers (1888), employing a Venetian setting, is the o n e i m p o r t a n t exception to this statement.

THE FAILURE O F E U R O P E

273

Writing to William the year before publishing that novel. Henry said that "the day is past when I can 'write' stories about Italy with a mind otherwise pre-occupied."" When James came to Europe in 1875, having decided to settle there but knowing that Italy could not be his permanent home, he turned to Paris. He had been exposed to that city very early in life and claimed that his earliest memory was of the Place Vendôme.™ If Italy seemed to him, as a young man, the consummate essence of Europe, the Louvre's Galerie d'Apollon had, at least in retrospect, some claim to that title as well. It represented for him "not only beauty and art and supreme design, but history and fame and power. . . This last remark was made in his old age, but he had praised France long before. In 1867 he had referred to Paris as "city of my dreams ! . . When a man has seen Paris somewhat attentively, he has seen (I suppose) the biggest achievement of civilisation in a certain direction and he will always carry with him a certain little reflet of its splendour.'" 3 Visiting the French capital in 1872, he described himself as "fast becoming a regular Parisian badaud. . . .":3 The enchantment Paris held for James is reflected in the city's effect on Hyacinth Robinson in The Princess Casamassima (1886) and on Lambert Strether in The Ambassadors (1903). Paris appealed to James not only in itself but as the chief home of the French literary mind. (There had been nothing corresponding to this in his attraction to Italy.) While com" Lubbock. I, 426. Henry James, Autobiography, 1956), pp. 32-33. "Ibid., p. 196. " Henry James, Selected Letters (New York, 1955), p. 21. •3 Ibid., p. 43. M

ed. F. W. Dupee (New York, of Henry James,

ed. Leon Edel

274

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

posing Roderick Hudson, he tells us, he had been conscious of the towering example of Balzac," who remained for him throughout his career, the novelist par excellence. He praised such writers as George Sand, Maupassant, and the brothers Goncourt for bringing new areas of feeling and perception into fiction. As a youthful literary critic writing for the Nalion, he hoped to emulate the "intelligence . . . patience and vigour" of Sainte-Beuve," and regarded Taine as the "most powerful" writer of the day."' (He continued to pay homage to French criticism in later life, holding it up as a standard to the English") He was struck by the monk-like dedication to literature of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve and Zola, a dedication he himself was to display. Even after deciding to leave Paris and settle in London, he could still declare that France was "the most brilliant nation in the world."" But leave Paris he did, late in 1876, after a stay lasting little more than a year. Looking back, in 1881, at this departure, he claimed it was largely caused by his disgust with the American colony in that city, which, he said, he had been unable to escape. " He had made similar complaints about both Paris and Rome on his previous stay in Europe, but the letters he wrote during his Parisian residence do not indicate this as a crucial motive for his leaving. ConSee J a m e s , Novels and Tales, I, xi. * James, Selected Letters, p. 23. See also Henry James, "SainteBeuve's First Articles,"· Nation, X X (Feb. 18, 1875). 1 17-118. Also H e n r y James, "Saint-Beuve." North American Review, C X X X (Jan. 1880), 51-68. 26 H e n r y James, " T a i n e s Italy,"' Nation, VI ( M a y 7, 1868), 373. 21 See e.g., H e n r y J a m e s . " T h e Science of Criticism," New Review. IV ( M a y , 1891), 398-400. "'"Henry J a m e s , "Langel's F r a n c e Politique et Sociale,"' Nation. X X V (Oct. 18, 1877), 244. 38 James, Notebooks, p. 26.

THE FAILURE O F EUROPE

275

tinuing his retrospection, he said he had seen that he would be "an eternal outsider."" in France, and this does square with sentiments that he expressed during his year's stay in the French capital; however, I should point out that at the time his attitude toward Paris was an oscillating one. The month of his arrival there, November of 1875, he declared he found it the same old Paris and would exchange fifty of it for London, "but if one can't be in London, this is next best.'"' Why could James not be in London, why the note of constraint? Perhaps the same sense of duty to his calling that had warned him against the langorous atmosphere of Italy, had directed him to a city that was the center of a literature he admired for its mastery of form, its attention to craftsmanship. Because of this admiration, he must have been flattered to discover soon after he reached Paris, that his story, "The Last of the Valerii," had been pirated by the Revue des Deux Mondes, a publication that James numbered among the chief journals of the world.32 Three months after he had come there, he indicated that his choice of Paris had been a happy one; he liked the city very much and found it "an excellent place to work." 33 By May of 1876, he was speaking of himself as "an old, and very contented Parisian : I feel as if I had struck roots into the Parisian soil. . . But the same letter carrying these sentiments to William Dean Howells in America noted that James had seen little of the city's famous writers, and that there were "fifty reasons" why he should not; he did not like their wares, they 3,3 F o r a good t r e a t m e n t of James's attitude t o w a r d Paris and its writers, and a fuller one than will be a t t e m p t e d here, see F. W. Dupee. Henry James, (New Y o r k , 1956), pp. 75-80. See also Edel, James: Conquest of London, pp. 201-270. 31 Perry, I, 361. '"'See Edel, James: The Conquest of London, pp. 202-203. 33 James, Selected Letters, p. 67. Lubbock, I, 48.

276

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

did not like any others (one of the articles on Paris that he undertook at this time for a N e w York newspaper complained of French self-worship), 15 and besides, they weren't very hospitable. 1 * Moreover, if James was turning into an old Parisian in May, two months later he spoke of shedding his resistance "to a long-encroaching weariness and satiety with the French mind," and of "turning English all over"; he claimed to have gotten "nothing important out of Paris" nor did he expect to. , : On the Fourth of July that year, his country's centennial, James in effect dramatized his American origins, the earnestness and high demands with which he c a m e to Europe, when he wrote, "The longer I live in France the better I like the French personally, but the more convinced I am of their bottomless superficiality.'" s Undoubtedly, James was thinking here of their literature. For, running through his critical pieces on French letters 35 H e n r y J a m e s , " P a r i s i a n T o p i c s , " New York Daily Tribune ( F e b . 19, 1876), 3. 36 Edel says t h a t " W e m u s t m a k e large allowance f o r these complaints. . . . T h e t r u t h was that he greatly enjoyed himself a m o n g his y o u n g F r e n c h peers and he saw m o r e of them than he a d m i t t e d . " See Edel, James: Conquest of London, pp. 220-221. 227-231. But Edel also notes that while J a m e s gained entry into a limited " c o s m o politan enclave." he could not p e n e t r a t e into the larger Paris he desired to see. W h e n he visited t h e French capital in 1884, he was reported t o h a v e said t h a t i h e F r e n c h writers themselves had but limited access to society. See Edel, James: The Middle Years (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 101-103. 31 L u b b o c k , I, 51. K Perry, I, 369. M a n y years later, J a m e s reportedly delivered himself of a similar statement a b o u t t h e French but in h u m o r o u s fashion. W h e n the y o u n g E d w a r d M a r s h i n f o r m e d J a m e s that he was taking a trip to Paris, t h e novelist told him not to allow himself to be put off " 'by t h e superficial a n d external aspect of Paris ; or rather (for t h e true superficial a n d external aspect of Paris has a considerable fascination) by what I m a y call the superficial and external aspect of t h e superficial a n d external aspect of Paris.' " See Sir E d w a r d M a r s h , A Number of People ( N e w York, 1939). p. 116. Italics in original.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

277 19

written during, before, and after this period, is the contention that while the French are masters of the surface, while they are incomparable at rendering the world of physical fact and sensation, and while they are to be admired for their seriousness and honesty, they are weak in handling the moral consciousness, reflection, the weighing of fine issues, the world of the spirit. They expand their attention and energies on such unworthy subjects as Emma Bovary; Flaubert, the most prominent man of his literary generation, was James's special target in this respect. But while James believed that Flaubert and his circle represented a falling-off from the generation of 1830,'"° he included even his beloved Balzac in referring to the "Gallic lightness of soil in the moral region.'" 1 Violating his own principle that to quarrel with a writer's choice of subject was both wrong and futile, James expressed a certain discomfort in viewing the sordid materials favored by such men as Baudelaire, Flaubert and Zola. In this, perhaps, he was exhibiting a prudery brought over from America; here too he might have said he was responding to Europe as though he had been born in Boston. A native priggishness appeared to figure as well in his distaste for the free manners of his French contemporaries. He was puzzled by Turgenev's easy comradery with these men; the Russian permitted himself to play games on all fours in Paris salons. While James was charmed by Turgenev's antics,'" he seemed taken aback by the French writers themselves, just as many years later, he was reported to have 39 A number of these pieces have been collected in Henry James, French Poets and Novelists (London, 1878), p. 175. ,0 Henry James, untitled review of books by Ernest Feydeau and Theophile Gautier, North American Review (October, 1874). 4 2 0 421. " James. Frcnch Poets and Novelists, p. 175. See also Henry James, Notes on Novelists (New York, 1914), pp. 156-157. See Lubbock, I, 46.

278

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

gazed with "the Puritan refinement of Boston" at an example of Parisian buffoonery invading the sanctity of Rye : Hillaire Belloc and a friend arriving from Dover unshaven, dressed like workmen, shouting for food and drink." James's discomfiture when confronted with the behavior of the French writers in Paris and the nature of their subject matter, may have combined with the uneasy feelings he had previously experienced there of a revolutionary turbulence beneath the calm surface of the city," producing a sense that the French capital did not offer the order, decorousness, and stability he seemed to desire from E u r o p e " In The Ambassadors, James was to laugh at Lambert Strether watching the Parisian women's vigorous use of their pens at the post office, "implements that symbolized for Strether's too interpretative innocence something more acute in manners, more sinister in morals, more fierce in the national life.""" Nevertheless, Paris at the time James lived there, seemed to strike him as too fierce, too acute for comfort. Neither Italy nor France, then, would do as a European home for James, and partly for the same reasons. Even before he had attempted Paris for a year, he had told his American readers that T h e faculty of making m u c h of c o m m o n things and converting small occasions into great pleasures is, to a son of communities strenuous as ours are strenuous, the most salient characteristic of the so-called Latin civilisations. It charms him and vexes him, according to his mood; and for the most part it represents a moral gulf between his own temperamental and indeed spiritual sense of race, and that of French" S e e Simon Nowell-Smith, ed. The Legend of the Master (New York, 1948), pp. 150-151. " See Perry, I, 329. " A similar view is expressed by Dupee, Henry James, p. 77. " James, Novels and Tales, X X I I , 271.

THE FAILURE O F

EUROPE

279

m e n a n d Italians, f a r v.ider t h a n t h e w a t e r y l e a g u e s t h a t a steamer may annihilate.'

James went on to indicate that he was by no means contemptuous of the Latin temperament; nevertheless the gulf was still there, and he soon turned to England. No other European country outside of these three, i.e., England, France and Italy, ever figured for him as a possible home. Henry never shared William's enthusiasm for Germany;"' Spain he had merely glimpsed and did not return to. Yet, although the choice of England seems to have been partly determined by his inability to come to satisfactory terms with either Italy or France, that choice cannot be regarded as merely a last resort. As we have already noted, James indicated at the outset of his approach to Paris that his heart was in London. There is nothing surprising about this; the forging of James's ties to England went back to his boyhood. Recalling that period, he could scarcely remember any books in his home that were not of British authorship. The bookstore that his father frequented, taking him along, was "overwhelmingly and irresistibly English." At that store the young James eagerly inquired for the current number of The Charm, a British periodical of the time, and was greatly disappointed when it failed to make its expected appearance. He also read Punch. In retrospect, it seemed to him that the conversation of his mother and father had been full of English references, to the exclusion of almost everything else. His conviction that getting back to England constituted success in life "was the result of the very air of home. . .

J a m e s , Great Short Novels, p. 19. M J a m e s , Novels and Tales, II, xx.

288

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

about the circumstances he constructed to effect that victimization. But might not his failure to detect the spuriousness of the circumstances have been due to an originally romantic conception of the Bellegardes, i.e., of aristocrats' capacities?" It was, we should note, thirty years after writing The American that J a m e s conceded the improbability of the behavior he had assigned the Bellegardes. His reconsideration may well have been part of his general disillusionment with the possibilities of E u r o p e a n aristocracy, a disillusionment that had grown during the intervening years in England, and that revealed itself in the characters he created. When British readers showed their displeasure with An International Episode, J a m e s noted their reaction and said that he liked the English too m u c h "to go into the satirebusiness or even the light-ironical in any case in which it would wound them. . . ."M Nevertheless, he had already wounded them and he did go into the light-ironical and satire business, wholesale. (Eliot was to assert in discussing James's work that had the British public been more aware, it would not have been c o m f o r t a b l e "confronted with a smile which was so far apart f r o m breaking into the British l a u g h . P e r h a p s that public was more aware than Eliot realized.) For example. Lord L a m b e t h of An International Episode may be said to have several descendants in James's fiction. A pair of these are L o r d W a r b u r t o n ' s sisters in The Portrait of a Lady, amiable creatures but dull and colorless, possessed of limited conversational resources, and indistinguishable f r o m each other. In Lady Barberina (1884), the heroine is described by her father, significantly named Lord " J a m e s ' s p o r t r a i t o f L o r d W a r b u r t o n in The Porirait of a Lady c l e a r l y s h o w s a h i g h c o n c e p t i o n o f a r i s t o c r a t i c possibility. " • L u b b o c k , I, 6 8 . " T. S. E l i o t , " O n H e n r y J a m e s , " in The Question of Henry James, ed. F. W . D u p e e ( N e w Y o r k , 1945), p. 112.

T H E FAILURE O F E U R O P E

289

Canterville, as "a clever, well-grown girl . . . [who] takes her fences like a grasshopper."" James continued to have fun with the inarticulateness of the British upper class and their passion for sport, when he described a young lady in The Princess Casamassima, daughter of a country magnate, holding up her end of a conversation with Hyacinth Robinson by asking him "with what pack he hunted . . . whether he went in much for tennis" and by eating three muffins."0 The very children in A London Lije (1889), sons of the stupid and ineffectual Lionel Berrington, a member of the country gentry, prattle about hounds. Nobody loved English country-houses or London clubs more than James, but for all that, his satire of the people of the upper class who frequented those places could be deadly. In his notes for "The Real Thing" (1892), he speaks of depicting the little tragedy of good-looking gentlefolk, who had been all their life stupid and well-dressed, living, on a fixed income, at country-houses, watering places and clubs, like so many others of their class in England, and were now utterly unable to do anything, had no cleverness . . . could only show themselves, clumsily, for the fine, clean, well-groomed animals that they were, only hope to make a little money by—in this manner—just simply being.™ The story itself indicates the pathetic emptiness of Major and Mrs. Monarch, how much they have been mere handsome mannikins. This couple would have been eminently suited to the life of the country-house at Matcham in The Golden Bowl, where it is "but dimly perceived" that "wit, as discriminated from stature and complexion, a sense for " J a m e s , Novels and Tales, XIV, 54. -'Ibid., VI, 29. 90 James, Notebooks, p. 102. James's italics.

290

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

'bridge' and a credit for pearls, could have importance. . . ."'" Like the Monarchs, Captain Sholto of The Princess Casamassima has no inner being. "He was nothing whatever in himself and had no character or merit save by tradition, reflexion, imitation, superstition.""' But while James treats the other persons I have been citing with urbane humor, while he displays them with a sense of amusement rather than bitterness, a darker note enters his characterization of Sholto : "He had travelled all over the globe several times, 'for the shooting,' in that murdering, ravaging way of the English, the destruction, the extirpation of creatures more beautiful, more soaring and more nimble than themselves." " Lord Mark in The Wings of the Dove is, like Captain Sholto, a sinister creature; both men are parties to the betrayal of others. There is in them a hardness and cruelty that we do not get in a Lord Lambeth, for example, and their portrayals reveal a fiercer James than is shown in the treatment of such aristocratic lightweights as L a m b e t h , a James angered and disgusted by England's upper classes. In The American, the novelist's concern with Newman's victimization may have stemmed f r o m his own feelings of exclusion f r o m the circle of Parisian writers; in his later images of victimization he may well have been drawing on a feeling of having himself been betrayed by the English. How could the promise of Britain have proved so empty, how could wealth and leisure have come to so little? How could there have arisen so great '•" James, Novels and Tales, X X I I I , 338. James's italics. Edel quotes James as declaring, years before writing " T h e Real Thing," that at his age he had " 'purposes far too precious . . . to be able to devote long clays sitting a b o u t and twaddling in even the most gracious country h o u s e s . ' " See Edel, James: The Middle Years, p. 81. E. S. N a d a l , visiting J a m e s in 1892, f o u n d him " ' t i r e d ' " of English society. See Edel, p. 307. *J James. Novels and Tales, VI, 82. "3 Ibid.

THE FAILURE OF

EUROPE

291

a disparity between the physical magnificence of E n g l a n d ' s aristocratic settings, and the life that they c o n t a i n e d ? Meditating on the English gentry. L a u r a Wing of A London Life wonders that "it had taken so much to produce so little," and feels a "curious duplicity" at her brother-in-law's c o u n t r y home. the way the genius of such an old house was all peace and decorum and the spirit that prevailed there . . . was contentious and impure. She had often been struck with it before— with that perfection of machinery which can still at certain times make English life go on of itself with a stately rhythm long after there is corruption within it." A London Life and What Maisie Knew depict an English aristocracy bent solely on pleasure, irresponsible, promiscuous, continually on the verge of scandal. If James, in The American, had pictured the French aristocracy as haughtily exclusive, resisting the entry of commoners into its ranks, he came to think of the English aristocracy as being only too open to ingress from below. We have already noted his reconsideration of the Bellegardes; he found the English no better. In "The Siege of London" (1883), the city's upper crust thinks the American Mrs. Headway amusing, and is ready to accept her; she has a dubious past, but only needs to put up a façade of respectability to gain admission.' 5 Eventually, however, according to James's image of English society, even such a façade was not required—all barriers were down, all distinctions lost. In a notebook entry of 1895, James says he must copy down a statement he has seen concerning "The demoralisation of '""Henry James, A London Life (New York, 1957), pp. 22-23. 55 Leon Edel reads " 1 he Siege of L o n d o n " as James's "farewell to L o n d o n society. H e seemed to feel now that it was not m u c h of an achievement to get into it. . . ." Edel, James: The Middle Years, p. 50.

292

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

the aristocracy—the cessation, on their part, to take themselves seriously; their traffic in vulgar things, vulgar gains, vulgar pleasures. . . .'"* Milly Theale is told, in The Wings of the Dove, "that there was no such thing, today in London, as saying where any one was. Every one was everywhere— nobody was anywhere." 9 ' L o n d o n society was simply a great a m o r p h o u s mass. If the English capital was f o r James a m o d e r n equivalent of ancient R o m e , he came to think of it as being in a state of decline and fall. In 1886, the same year that The Princess Casamassima appeared, he wrote to Charles Eliot Norton that the condition of England's aristocracy seems to me to be in many ways very much the same rotten and collapsable one as that of the French aristocracy before the revolution—minus cleverness and conversation; or perhaps it's more like the heavy, congested and depraved Roman world upon which the barbarians came down.9* When, in 1914, public events indicated that England might indeed be on the verge of collapse, James again brought the upper classes into invidious comparison with the F r e n c h : "if anything very bad does happen to the country, there isn't anything like the French intelligence to react—with the flannelled fool at the wicket, the muddied oaf and tutti quanti, representing so much of our preferred intelligence.""" For James, aristocracy in its ideal state was characterized by a sense of f o r m , refinement, selectivity, and discrimination, while he connected democracy with their opposites. Moreover, these associations had for him their literary analogues. T h u s he claimed that Turgenev's tales owed their " James, Notebooks, p. 192. " J a m e s , Novels and Tales, X I X , 150. " L u b b o c k , I, 125. J a m e s ' s italics. w Ibid., II, 391. J a m e s ' s italics.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

293

"exquisite form" to the Russian's "aristocratic," "fastidious" temperament."" while he said that an essay by Edmund Gosse on the novelist Björnsterne Björnson made the Norwegian sound "like the sort of literary fountain from which I am ever least eager to drink : the big, splashing, blundering genius of the hit-or-miss . . . without perfection, or the effort toward it, without the exquisite, the love of selection : a big super-abundant and promiscuous democrat.""" If the English aristocracy failed miserably to fulfill James's notions of what it should have been, so too did English fiction and criticism fail to display that cluster of qualities James associated with "aristocracy." There was not an element of disillusionment for him in the literary failure as there seems to have been in the social, though what he conceived of as England's literary sins did contribute to the dark mood he displayed in the 1880's and 90's, for he saw those sins manifesting themselves in the British response to his own work. As early as 1875, he had described the English novel as having come "in general to mean a ponderous, shapeless, diffuse piece of machinery, 'padded' to within an inch of its life.""" On a visit to Paris in 1884, he saw Edmond de Goncourt and Alphonse Daudet, and said that their "intellectual vivacity and raffinement make an English mind seem like a sort of glue-pot .""" Concern with technique, with the conscious craftsmanship necessary to produce shape and form, was "abhorrent" to the "wondrous Anglo-Saxon mind.""* As a writer who tried to avoid the failures of form he 100 H e n r y J a m e s , " I w a n T u r g é n i e w , " North American Review, C X V I I ( A p r i l , 1874), 350. L u b b o c k , I, 227. 10= H e n r y J a m e s , " H o w e l l s ' s ' F o r e g o n e C o n c l u s i o n , ' " Nation, XX ( J a n . 7, 1875), 13. "" L u b b o c k , I, 103. " " J a m e s , Future of the Novel, p. 155.

294

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

detected in the English novel, as one who strove always for perfection, James felt himself an acutely isolated figure in England. Thus, in 1892, he wrote to Robert Louis Stevenson: "I pine for you as I pen these words, for I am more and more companionless in my old age—more and more shut up to the solitude inevitably the portion, in these islands, of him who would really try, even in so small a way as mine, to do it.'""The following year he told Howells : "I am so utterly lonely here—on the 'literary plane'—that it is the strangest as well as the sweetest sensation to be conscious in the boundless void . . . of any human approach at all or any kindly speech.'"™ These feelings, heightened by James's unhappy experiences with the English stage,"" are reflected in such of his artist tales as "The Middle Years," where Dencombe, "a passionate corrector" of his texts, finds an ideal, admiring audience of one, and in "The Next Time," where Ralph Limbert, try as he may to produce pot-boilers, can only succeed in writing masterpieces that do not sell. The two strains in James's discontent with England which I have been treating, his disappointment with a fatuous aristocracy that was becoming increasingly vulgarized, and his quarrel with the failure of English literary taste to pay sufficient tribute to "aristocratic" values in fiction, converge in at least two of his stories, "The Death of the Lion," and "Broken Wings." The first of these tells of Neil Paraday, a brilliant but neglected novelist, who is suddenly taken up by the fashionable world. He falls ill at a country house (pointedly named "Prestidge") where none of the guests have 105 L u b b o c k , I, 196. James's italics. '"¡bid., I, 202. "" This aspect of James's life is treated in great detail by L e o n Edel in his introduction to The Complete Plays of Henry James ( N e w York, 1949), and in his Henry James: The Middle Years ( N e w Y o r k , 1962).

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

295

m o r e than begun his latest b o o k , a n d w h e r e his hostess m a n a g e s to lose his latest m a n u s c r i p t . He dies, having been simply a passing f a d of the leisure class. " B r o k e n W i n g s , " again set largely in a country-house, is c o n c e r n e d with a pair of writers w h o h a v e r e f u s e d to c o m p r o m i s e their s t a n d a r d s a n d h a v e thereby lost the following they once e n j o y e d . T h e y decide that they will n o longer allow themselves t o be u s e d by the rich; the latter, lacking cleverness themselves, i m p o r t it i n t o their d r a w i n g r o o m s t h r o u g h invitations to the t w o writers, whose b o o k s they neglect to r e a d . In these stories, the English aristocracy h a s failed to fill its potential role of p r o v i d i n g genuine, a p p r e c i a t i v e p a t r o n a g e of the arts, a n d this, f o r J a m e s , is an index of its general failure. T h a t the i n a d e q u a c i e s of E n g l a n d ' s u p p e r classes w e r e i n d e e d connected in J a m e s ' s m i n d with the s h o r t c o m i n g s of E n g l i s h literary practice a n d taste, is d e m o n s t r a t e d by his c o m m e n t s on " T h e R e a l T h i n g . " In that story, M a j o r a n d M r s . M o n a r c h , their f u n d s e x h a u s t e d , try t o get w o r k a s m o d e l s f o r p o r t r a i t s t o b e used in novels of f a s h i o n a b l e life. T h o u g h themselves " t h e real t h i n g , " they p r o v e i n a d e q u a t e f o r the job, while a c o c k n e y girl succeeds a d m i r a b l y at it by the exercise of her acting ability. In his n o t e s f o r t h e story, a f t e r a passage (cited earlier) w h e r e h e s p e a k s of E n g l i s h gentle-folk being i n c a p a b l e of a n y t h i n g except

displaying

themselves, J a m e s goes on to s a y : What I wish to represent is the baffled, ineffectual, incompetent character of their attempt, and how it illustrates once again the everlasting English amateurishness—the way superficial, untrained, unprofessional effort goes to the wall when confronted with trained, competitive, intelligent, qualified art— in whatever line it may be a question of.10* " " J a m e s , Notebooks,

p. 103. J a m e s ' s italics.

296

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

Moreover, if James could think of the breakdown of the English aristocracy in tèrms of its democratization, that is, its loss of a sense of separateness, its failure to maintain distinctions, its willingness to admit all kinds of people into its ranks, thereby producing a social hodge-podge, so too he could express his criticism of the contemporary English novel in similar terms. Thus, in 1914, he found that novel a pre-eminent illustration of the way "the democratic example, once gathering momentum sets its mark on societies and seasons that stand in its course." He does not say this because the novel deals with the lower classes as never before, but because its nature amounts . . . to the complacent declaration of a common literary level, a repudiation . . . of the idea of differences, the virtual law . . . of sorts and kinds, the values of individual quality and weight in the presence of undiscriminated quantity and rough-and-tumble "output". . . England, then, as James apprehended it, failed him in the two most important ways it could have : first, in the decline of its upper classes, whom he originally looked to, as a partial source at least, for his image of the felicitous life, of life at its richest, freest, and most refined; second, in the inadequacies of its literary tastes and standards, which showed insufficient appreciation of the qualities he prized, and denied him a wide following. England's failure was " E u r o p e ' s " failure, in the sense that E u r o p e had come to mean England for him more than any other country. T h e theme that joins James's criticism of the aristocracy to his attack on the contemporary English novel, that of a breakdown of distinctions, is found too in his comments on the changing relationship of England and America. Thus, ""James, Notes

on Novelists,

p. 316.

THE FAILURE O F EUROPE

297

in 1 8 8 8 , h e e x p r e s s e d h i s w e a r i n e s s w i t h the " i n t e r n a t i o n a l " t h e m e that h a d b e e n f o r c e d u p o n h i m as a sort of virtue or obligation. 1 can't look at the EnglishAmerican world, or feel about them any more, save as a big A n g l o - S a x o n total, destined to such an amount of melting together that an insistence on their differences becomes more and more idle and pedantic; and that melting together will c o m e the faster the more one takes it for granted and treats the life of the two countries as continuous or more or less convertible, or at any rate as simply different chapters of the same general subject. 110

Here, James does not seem angered by the "melting together," but simply appears to be accepting a historical fact that he wants to reflect in his fiction. In 1903, he voiced similar sentiments,'" and World War I strengthened his sense of a decreasing differentiation between England and the United States." 1 But as we have seen earlier in another connection,'" James could not always look with equanimity on the cultural merging of the two countries, or more generally, on the merging of Europe and America; he could not always register without protest the disappearance of those differences that had fascinated him and had served as the basis for his coming abroad originally. As early as the 1870's, he expressed distaste for what he regarded as the Americanization of Paris and Rome. In 1895 he was provoked into connecting what he hated in England with the American presence there; if London was a modern version of ancient Rome, festering from within, so too it had its enemies from without, the visitors from the United States. Writing in his 110

Lubbock, I, 143. Ibid., I, 426. ibid., II, 479. 111 See Chapter 2. 1,1

298

T H R E E VOYAGERS IN S E A R C H OF EUROPE

notebooks that year of a possible subject to be f o u n d in the m a d whirl of the L o n d o n season, he considered portraying this overwhelming, self-defeating c h a o s or cataclysm toward which the w h o l e thing is drifting . . . the deluge of people, the insane m o v e m e n t for m o v e m e n t , the ruin of thought, of life, the negation of work, of literature, the swelling, roaring crowds, the " w h e r e are y o u g o i n g ? , " the age of Mrs. Jack, the figure of Mrs. Jack, the A m e r i c a n , the nightmare . . . the mad, ghastly climax or d é n o u e m e n t . . .

He goes on to speak of " T h e A m e r i c a n s looming u p — d i m , vast, portentous—in their millions—like gathering w a v e s — the b a r b a r i a n s of the R o m a n E m p i r e . " " ' In 1903, he f u r t h e r indicated his displeasure at the Americanization of the O l d W o r l d : "It has really ceased t o be feasible . . . to get a w a y f r o m America. T h e west is in the east, the east, by the s a m e token, m o r e a n d m o r e in the west, and every one and everything everywhere a n d a n y w h e r e but where they, in the vernacular, belong." 1 " T o the leveling d o w n of differences that J a m e s felt in E u r o p e itself—in his a u t o b i o g r a p h y , for example, he asserts that L o n d o n h a d lost the characteristics which once distinguished it f r o m all other capitals'"—history had added the leveling down of differences between E u r o p e and A m e r i c a , and had thereby betrayed him. It had left him c o n f r o n t i n g a shifting society in which the aristocracy was sinking out of sight, a society that was getting bigger, increasingly '"James, Notebooks, p. 207. Mrs. Jack is Mrs. John Gardner, who collected art treasures from all over the world. James may have been annoyed by her easy familiarity with pugilists, among others, although in general he seems to have been fond of her. Perhaps it was only the prospect of an endless multiplication of Mrs. Jacks that dismayed him, not the woman herself. 1,6

Ibid., p. 207.

Henry James, William Wetmore in 1, (New York, 1957), I, 28. "'James. Autobiography, p. 555.

Story

and His Friends,

2 vols,

THE FAILURE O F EUROPE

299

amorphous, disturbingly mobile, unable to distinguish the public from the private, a society that jumped from one fad to another, a society whose principal feature for him was the sheer quantity of vulgarity it was capable of.'1" James, perhaps taking a cue from his friend Charles Eliot Norton,"1· had complained in the 1870's about the democratization of Europe, but only the last decade of the century seems to have revealed to him how extensive the process had become, how much it had permeated the England whose great feature for him had once been the "aristocratic constitution" of its society Perhaps the disappearance of the "international theme" from James's fiction of the 1890's reflects his feeling that the once-existing distinctions which gave that theme its point were diminishing. F. W. Dupee has remarked of the novels of this period that "the English scene is simply the world rather than the old world. London, as it appears in What Maisie Knew or The Awkward Age, is merely the modern metropolis. . . .""' In James's "major phase," the period which produced The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl, he resurrected the international theme. If we keep in mind his response during the 1890's to the actual European scene and to the Americans who were invading it, his idealization in those books of both Europeans and Americans is all the more evident. For James, in writing these works, refused to give up his inalienable right as an American to possess a romantic image of Europe (though to be sure Europe as depicted in the major phase is hardly pure romance). When, ""See James, Notes on Novelists, pp. 429-433. See also Lubbock, II, 377. " ' S e e Rahv, Discovery of Europe, p. 251. See Chapter 4, footnote 73. 121 Dupee, Henry James, p. 163.

300

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

in The Golden Bowl, Amerigo tells Maggie, " 'You Americans are almost incredibly romantic,' " she replies, " O f course we are. That's just what makes everything so nice for us.' This exchange recalls one that took place in The Portrait of a Lady when Ralph Touchett had warned Isabel Archer that the only romance that existed at Gardencourt was what she had brought, and she had answered " 'I've brought a great deal; but it seems to me I've brought it to the right place.' Eight years before the appearance of Portrait, James had said that "If the visible romantic were banished from the face of the earth I am sure the idea of it would still survive in some typical American heart. . . The idea does survive, in Maggie, in Lambert Strether, in Millie Theale. Europe, the "great lighted and decorated scene" of the international novels, i:s remained for James "the right place" on which to expend the romantic elements of his sensibility. Comparing his largely indirect method of portraying Milly Theale to the way an actual princess is usually viewed, that is, from a distance, James says that in the case of the latter, "the balconies opposite the palace gates . . . rake from afar the mystic figure in the gilded coach as it comes forth into the great place"'" However distasteful much of European life had become for him, James remained open to the appeal of the European setting, the appeal of the homes and avenues, the palaces and parks, the museums and galleries. As I suggested in the previous chapter, whatever the present had become for him, the European past remained inviolable and fixed, embodied in these settings. The physical features of London, Paris and J a m e s , Novels and Tales, X X I I I , 11. '"Ibid., I I I , 62. 1:4 J a m e s , Italian Hours, p. 137. 1,1 J a m e s , Novels and Tales, X V I I I , xviii. "'Ibid., X I X , xxii.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

301

Venice—all receive homage from James in his three late, great novels. Rome does not figure directly in any of the three books, but James makes up for its omission by paying tribute to the Eternal City in William Wetmore Story and His Friends, published the same year as The Ambassadors. The Story biography, with its evocation of one of Europe's great places, is a fitting ancillary to the work of the major phase. James, who like Laura Wing in A London Life was struck by the "curious duplicity" of Europe, the gap between the promise of European place and the a^iual spirit of European life, attempts to close that gap in his three novels by creating characters worthy of their settings. He once wrote that he knew English society as well as if he had made it, but added that if he had, "I would have made it better ! In his three late novels, he peopled the European scene with a society, or at least a group, that he did "make." Most of the major characters seem to a large extent drawn not so much from observation as from his personal vision of high human possibility. The Italians and the French, who in real life induced ambivalent responses in James, are largely purged of their disturbing elements, or rather have those elements made part of their interest, and are represented by the idealized Prince Amerigo and Madame de Vionnet, respectively. The English, present in greater number in these novels, come off in mixed fashion. James suggests that the philistine Mrs. Lowder in The Wings of the Dove is representative of the English middle class, and the insidious Lord Mark is, of course, English. But we also have the magnificence of Kate Croy (albeit a tainted magnificence), and the moral growth of Merton Densher. It is hardly necessary to point out that the Americans who are brought over to Europe in these L u b b o c k . I, 130.

302

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH O F EUROPE

novels are as far from being "barbarians" as they can be; the Ververs (despite the ambiguities of their characterization), together with Milly Theale, are among James's most idealized characters. However, what I wish to emphasize here, is the great importance of place in these novels—they could not have been set in America. For example, in The Golden Bowl, though James has largely kept his English characters in the wings, and has imported Americans and an Italian to fill the center of his stage, he has called on England to supply the stage itself, to supply London and, pre-eminently, the English country-house, which he had called years earlier "one of the ripest fruits of time. . . The spirit of ease, decorum, leisure and dignity generated by the country house is an important presence in the novel, and one to which all the major characters pay implicit homage, even Charlotte Stant in her amour with the Prince and in her subsequent defeat by Maggie. But as for the English themselves, James is so unwilling or unable to take their upper classes seriously, that he is content to have them represented in the novel by the inconsequential Bob Assingham, and by Lady Castledean, who exists on the margin of the action in amorous dalliance with a Mr. Blint. Thus, the final work of the major phase testifies at once to the failure of English life, and to James's unrelinquished vision of what that life could have been or perhaps might be in Britain's great good places. Confronted by a Europe changing, in his mind, for the worse. James's imagination, as it operated in his return to the international theme, carved out an imaginary garden which acknowledged reality by the human toads he set hopping about in it, but which remained a place of enchantLubbock, I. 64.

THE FAILURE OF

m e n t nevertheless.

,JS

EUROPE

303

In o n e of t h e m o s t s i g n i f i c a n t c o m m e n t s

that E l i o t e v e r m a d e o n J a m e s , t h e p o e t s a i d : the fact that, an American, his view of E n g l a n d — a view which very gradually dissolves in his d e v e l o p m e n t — w a s a romantic view, is a small matter. His romanticism implied no defect in observation of the things that he wanted to observe; it w a s not the romanticism of those who dream because they are t o o lazy or too fearful to face the fact; it issues, rather, f r o m the imperative insistence of an ideal which tormented him. H e w a s possessed by the vision of an ideal society; he saw (not fancied) the relations between the m e m b e r s of such a society. A n d n o one, in the end, has ever been m o r e aware . . . of the disparity between possibility and fact.'3"

Alongside his condemnations of the Old World, there persisted into his final years the image of Europe as he had once apprehended it in the Galerie d'Apollon, a place of beauty and art and power. In 1909 he referred to the sum of European artistic endeavor as "the record of man's most comprehensive sacrifice to organized beauty.'" 11 In The Sense of the Past, which he was planning to take up again in 1915 after having abandoned it years before, he had created a hero who, while moving about his old London house, feels "he had never yet so wetted his lips at the founts of romance."" 1 But these sentiments seem based largely on the survivals of the European past; perhaps it was only such survivals that made the European present worth preserving for the aging James. Ferner N u h n , in The Wind Blew from the East (New Y o r k , 1942), has m a d e m u c h of the e n c h a n t m e n t generated by place in J a m e s ' s work. In The Pilgrimage of Henry James (New Y o r k , 1925), V a n Wyck Brooks speaks of James's d o u b l e vision of E u r o p e . ,3 "T. S. Eliot, " A Prediction in Regard to T h r e e English A u t h o r s , " Vanity Fair, X X I (Feb., 1924), 29. Eliot's italics. ,3 ' The American Essays of Henry James, ed. Leon Edel ( N e w Y o r k , 1956), p. 126. " ' J a m e s , Novels and Tales, X X V I , 55.

304

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

II Ezra Pound has distinguished between the American "émigrés" to Europe of James's generation, and those of his own day, referring to the former group as "Passionate Pilgrims," while characterizing the latter as "enquirers. He does not really expand on this distinction, which he only makes in passing, but the difference in the two terms themselves implies that Pound and his contemporaries approached Europe in less of a romantic haze than did the people of James's day—they came not with great expectations, but with tentative hopes, "to find something, to learn, possibly to conserve. . . .'"" Yet other passages in Pound suggest that he was not very far removed from being a "Passionate Pilgrim" himself. In his essay on James, where he draws the distinction between the two generations of expatriates, he also says that "putting aside a few simple adventures, sentimental, phallic, Nimrodic, the remaining great adventure is precisely the approach to the Metropolis; for the provincial of our race the specific approach to London. . . .'"3i Pound is not separating himself in this respect f r o m the "provincial" of his race, for he goes on to speak of feeling a "purely personal, selfish, unliterary sense of intimacy'" 1 " with the description James gives in The Middle Years of coming to London in 1869, a description depicting that event as a joyous, overwhelming experience which presented the novelist with the city of his dreams.131 That Pound had a comparable reaction to London Ezra Pound, Literary (New York, 1954), p. 82. 134 Ibid.

Essays

of Ezra

Pound,

ed. T. S. Eliot

"'Ibid., p. 331.

,3

" Ibid., p. 332. See my earlier discussion of James in this chapter.

131

THE FAILURE O F EUROPE

305

is indicated not only by his identification with James here, but by a letter he wrote many years after leaving England, in which he looked back to the days of his friendship with T. E. Hulme, Ford Madox Ford, and Yeats, saying "Of course for those years London was Strand Magazine romance to young foreigner [sic].'"" He certainly seemed to think so when, in February of 1909, he reported to William Carlos Williams from London that he was "falling into the crowd that does things here. London, deah old Lundon [sic], is the place for poesy.'"28 (These sentiments could only have been confirmed later that year, when his Personae was published and very well received.) Thus, at least for a while, Pound succumbed to the Anglophilia he later came to say justified his expatriation." 0 Pound's affection for London apparently continued for some years. In 1913 he wrote a description of that city which could easily have come from the pen of Henry James : . . . London is a great . . . picture-book, and its pages are of infinite variety. There is no week without some new thing of interest, no fortnight in which some new and interesting personality is not whirled up against one. . . . These people come bringing you particles of knowledge and gossip, wearing you away little by little, filing against your salients.'" This last image is especially Jamesian. But characteristically, m Ezra Pound, The Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. D. D. Paige (New York, 1950), p. 297. Pound's nostalgia for that period is evident in The Pisan Cantos. 1W Pound, Letters, p. 7. In 1963, Pound said that he went to London "because I thought Yeats knew more about poetry than anybody else." See "Ezra Pound," interview by Donald Hall, in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series (New York, 1963), p. 47. See Chapter 1. Ezra Pound, "Through Alien Eyes, IV" New Age, XII (Feb. 6, 1913), 324.

306

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

Pound did not regard London primarily as the huge container of variety and experience it had been for James, but more as a center of art, the gathering place for writers that America lacked. Pound too could think of London as being "the capital of the world," but added immediately, "and 'Art is a matter of capitals.' He wrote to Amy Lowell in 1914: "I don't see why you shouldn't live half the year in London. After all it's the only sane place for any one to live if they've any pretense to letters.'"" Five years later he told his father in a letter written from London that "If anyone in America did do anything good, he, she or it would come here.'"" But by the time Pound made this declaration, and even before he had encouraged Miss Lowell to come abroad, he had registered his disgust with the literary situation in London. And a few months after telling his father that anything or anybody good in America would come to England, he answered those who talked of his contempt for this country by saying he had been "much more drastic'"" in his condemnation of England; he had certainly been as drastic. Having asserted the leadership of London as a literary center, he had been forced to do fierce battle to make the city what he originally thought it already was. Pound's complaints against the English were very similar to those he had lodged against his homeland; he sometimes berated both countries in the same breath (and just as he had done with the United States, he continued to voice his dissatisfaction with Great Britain after leaving that country). If America suffered from a dearth of good poetry, so too did England. As early as 1913, he had found Yeats the only Pound, Letters, p. 41. P o u n d seems to be quoting himself here. '"/bid., p. 33. ' " T o H o m e r P o u n d , Jan. 10, 1919, Paige typescript, no. 512. '"Ezra Pound, "Avis," The Little Review. VI ( M a y , 1919), 69.

THE FAILURE O F

EUROPE

307

poet in London "worthy of serious study,""" and, apparently responding to her suggestion, told Harriet Monroe that there was "no earthly reason why Poetry shouldn't 'reach England.' 'England' is dead as mutton.'"" The expatriate who had attacked America for its paucity of first-rate art, could here think of this country as manning a cultural lifeline to England. (In 1929 he was to claim that "All the developments in English verse since 1910 are due almost wholly to Americans.""") He discovered that he hadn't escaped provinciality by coming abroad, that the British were as averse as the Americans to comparing their work with that of the French, that they had not yet accepted a worldstandard of literature." 8 He was particularly annoyed at the lack of technical discussion about poetry that he found among his London colleagues; if he had thought American poets dismally deficient in their concern with the art of poetry, he came to think this true of the British as well. Like James, he decried the amateur spirit in which the English approached the writing of serious literature, their vagueness about matters of technique and craftsmanship. He characterized England in his essay on James as "a country in love with amateurs . . . where the incompetent have such beautiful manners, and personalities so fragile and charming, that one cannot bear to injure their feelings by the introduction of competent criticism. . . . "15° But obviously, Pound could bear to injure their feelings. ""Ezra Pound, "Status Rerum," Poetry, I (January, 1913), 123. "' Pound, Letters, p. 24. Pound's italics. "'' Pound, Literary Essays, p. 34. ""See Ezra Pound, "T. S. Eliot," Poetry, X (August, 1917), 268, and Pound, Letters, pp. 24-25. 150 Pound. Literary Essays, p. 371. Stephen Spender has said that "the attitude of literary London to men like D . H. Lawrence and Ezra Pound, who took writing, and life, too seriously, was that they were 'bores,' and rather embarrassing." In effect. Spender's portrayal

308

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

In general, the English literary establishment made no better impression on Pound than did its American counterpart. Looking back to his arrival in England, he said that he found "a greater darkness in the British 'serious press' than had obtained on the banks of the Schuylkill." 5' When in 1918 he predicted that many American publications would continue to be "mental poison" for the writer, he went on to say that in this respect America would not differ from E n g l a n d . L i k e those in America, England's official "organs" suffered from "time-lag"; they desired literature "as it was before Flaubert.'" 53 An English magazine that Pound did admire was unsuccessful. For a while, one of his close friends, Ford Madox Ford, edited The English Review, but the magazine lost money, and when it changed hands Ford was dismissed. Pound, according to an unpublished biography, was intimately acquainted with the magazine's difficulties, and "must have found in Ford's financial failure . . . evidence of British phillistinism [sic], . . .'"" But Pound did not have to go even as far as Ford for such evidence; penury began at home. He reported his "gatereceipts" for the year beginning Nov. 1, 1914, as "42 quid of English literary life today, suggests that the gentility Pound found so irritating continues to exist ; those English writers w h o have "arrived" f o r m a kind of c o z y L o n d o n club where the members, in their reviews of each other's work, make efforts "to avoid pressing a public obligation to tell the truth which might offend against the invisible laws of personal relations." See Stephen Spender, "Literary L o n d o n : Tight Little Isle," New York Times Book Review (August 28, 1960), 1. 151 P o u n d , Literary Essays, p. 17. 's" Ezra P o u n d , "What A m e r i c a Has to Live D o w n , II," New Age, X X I I I (August 29, 1918), 281. Ezra P o u n d , " T h a m e s Morasses," Poetry, X V I I (March, 1921), 326. See also P o u n d , Literary Essays, p. 17. 1M John H a m i l t o n Edwards, "A Critical Biography of Ezra P o u n d : 1885-1922," unpublished dissertation. University of California, 1952, p. 104.

T H E FAILURE O F E U R O P E

309

10 s.," and said that ". . . Orage's 4 guineas a month thereafter wuz the SINEWS, by gob the sinooz.'"" It was probably with such facts in mind that Pound repeatedly pictured the British literary establishment as resisting any attempt to challenge its standards, and punishing financially those who, like himself, attempted such a challenge.15* Whereas James looked at English critical standards simply as expressions of an inadequate taste, Pound claimed to see behind them vested publishing interests intent on self-protection. For example, he claimed being told that Macmillan and Company's assets were derived from Palgrave's Golden Treasury, and that the anthology he proposed as its replacement could therefore not be published.'" Much of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley comes out of Pound's animus against the British literary establishment; the remarks I have been citing may be taken as the prose background to that poem. In Mauberley, Pound sets Έ . Ρ . , " who takes Flaubert as his model, and "the stylist," supposedly based on Ford, against a successful author who advises the flattering of reviewers, against a literary hostess interested primarily in social-climbing, against a milieu that has a taste for the mediocre and little appreciation of the striving for verbal perfection. At times the poem condemns the entire modern world, but concentrates in particular on the English s c e n e Pound said that Mauberley was "distinctly a farewell to London. . . Five years after his departure from England, Pound brought out Cantos X I V - X V , the so-called "Hell Cantos." In his hell, intended as a modern equivalent of Dante's 155 Pound, Letters, p. 259. Orage was editor of the New English Weekly. '"See e.g., Pound, Literary Essays, pp. 17-18, and 357-358. '"Ibid., p. 18. "'Ezra Pound, Personae (New York, n.d.), p. 185.

310

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

Inferno, he says there are "many English.'"* Several years later, he describes these cantos as being "specifically L O N D O N , the state of English mind in 1919 and 1920.'"" The cantos themselves do not indicate that they are as exclusively populated by the English as all that, but they do contain several specific references to the British. What had once been an anger directed primarily against literary England, widens out here to include usurers (though Pound had sounded that theme in Mauberley too), monopolists, Fabians, conservatives, newspaper publishers, churchmen, and the "murderers" of an Irish leader in the Easter 1916 rebellion." 1 Among the writings of Pound, a man full of hatred, there is nothing more virulent than the uncontrolled outpourings of these cantos (as a diatribe against the British, Mauberley seems mild by comparison). The intensity of the writing here is perhaps a measure of how high Pound's hopes for England had originally been and how deeply disappointed he had become with that country. Pound continued his attacks on British institutions into the 1930's and 40's. His series of verses in the New English Weekly, appearing under the heading of "Poems of Alfred Venison,'"" depicted the British papers as continually lying to the public, and the British government as inept and in bondage to bankers and munitions-makers. In 1934, he said that the state of religion in England was sufficient justification for believing in the "general decadence" of a country which merited no pity, since it seemed to like the "mental ' " E z r a P o u n d , The Cantos of Ezra Pound ( N e w York, 1948), C a n t o X I V , p. 62. P o u n d , Letters, p. 239. "" See C a n t o s X I V - X V , pp. 6 1 - 6 6 . ""These p o e m s are reprinted in Personae, pp. 2 5 7 - 2 7 3 . "Venison" is of course a take-off on "Tennyson."

THE FAILURE O F E U R O P E

311

163

squalor" purveyed by its newspapers. The following year he claimed that between the United States and Britain, there was nothing to choose. "We have a common shame. . . . We Americans tolerated the infamy of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover . . . you English have put up with MacDonald and Simlin. We deserve every skunk deal we have had.'"" The Pisan Cantos (1948) continue to make known Pound's contempt for Britain's political leaders. "Oh to be in England now that Winston's out . . ." he says in that work,'" but does not seem very confident that Churchill's successor, Clement Attlee, will prove more to his liking.1" He asserts that the BBC is simply a mouthpiece of the government; he had said the same thing of English newspapers years before. He detects a vast conspiracy in England (this is probably an extension of his earlier sense of vested publishing interests there), involving the government, the banks and the mass media, a conspiracy directed to the making of profits for the few at the expense of the many. We find no equivalent for this in James's dissatisfaction with England, not because James did not believe in such conspiracy, but because he simply did not think in these terms; he had little direct interest in the distribution and exercise of a society's political and economic power. As Pound's departure from England in 1920 indicated, he had had his fill of the country by that time, although he still thought he had been right in coming there originally and in urging others to do so. In 1921 he wrote: "Ten years ago I should have advised, and did advise, other American 163 Ezra Pound, in "Letters to the Editor," New English Weekly, V (April 26, 1934), 47-^8. Ezra Pound, Social Credit: An Impact, pamphlet (London 1951), p. 20. '"Canto L X X X , p. 92. "* See Canto L X X I X , p. 64.

312

THREE V O Y A G E R S IN SEARCH OF E U R O P E

writers to come to England for the sake of their work; at the present moment there is no literary reason for my not leaving the country."" 1 Although, as I have shown, he was to attack England on political and economic grounds, his quarrel with the country at the time he left it was largely a literary one, and when he turned to Paris as his new home, he approached it as a literary capital to replace the London that had failed to meet his original expectations. Reading some of his early comments on the achievements of French writers, one wonders why he did not leave England sooner than he did, or why he did not go to Paris originally. In 1913, for example, he said that the important work in poetry during the preceding twenty-five years had been done in Paris." 8 He made even larger claims for the French : If our writers would keep their eye on Paris instead of on London—the London of today or of yesterday—there might be some chance of their doing work that would not be démodé before it gets to the press. Practically the whole development of the English verse-art has been achieved by steals from the French, from Chaucer's time to our own, and the French are always twenty to sixty years in advance."™ In a long essay on French poetry written in 1918, Pound suggested that the minds of two earlier expatriates had been enriched by their contact with the French : "America's part in contemporary culture is based chiefly upon two men familiar with Paris: Whistler and Henry James.'"™ Pound thought of the French not only as the inventors of Pound, "Thames Morasses," 327. Pound's Pound, Letters, p. 158. ""Ezra Pound, "Status Rerum," 123.

italics. See

also

Ezra Pound, "Paris," Poetry, III (October, 1913), 27. Ezra Pound, "A Study in French Poets," Little Review, (Feb., 1918), 3.

IV

French : 1K

THE FAILURE O F EUROPE

313

new literary techniques, but as admirably unfearful hosts to new ideas, ideas that the English would consider "dangerous." In the Paris of the early twenties he found that "certain main questions" were "up for discussion," among them monotheism, economic problems, and the worth of national boundaries and nationalistic feeling."1 Where England seemed "to have amassed all the debris of the war," France had cleared it away and could boast a group of writers "under or about forty years of age, writing without humbug, without jealousy, and without an eye on any market whatsoever."" 1 One could get more facts in the newspapers of Paris than in those of London or America.111 At least in the beginning, the city sustained the image Pound had had of it while in England, "a place where all things could be said quietly and openly, where one would not think of circumlocution and prejudice, where circumlocution and prejudice would . . . [seem] unnatural.'"" Pound's characterization of Paris as "the paradise of artists'"" and his essays on French literature undoubtedly contributed to the reverence for France shown by young writers back in America at this time. Malcolm Cowley tells us that he and his contemporaries read Flaubert and Rémy de Gourmont (both heroes of Pound), and looked on a sojourn in France almost as "a pilgrimage to Holy Land.'"" Pound, like James, was attracted to the French writers as conscientious craftsmen, masters of verbal detail. In his admiration of nineteenth-century French literature, of the m

Ezra P o u n d , "Paris Letter," Dial. L X X I I (January, 1922), 7 4 - 7 5 . ""Ezra P o u n d , "Paris Letter," Dial2 L X X I (October, 1921), 4 5 6 . ' " E z r a Pound, "Paris Letter;· Dial, L X X I V (January, 1923), 86. Ezra Pound, " R é m y de G o u r m o n t , " Poetry, V I I (January, 1916), 200. " ' E z r a P o u n d , "The Island of Paris: A Letter," Dial, LXIX (October, 1920), 406. ""Malcolm C o w l e y , Exiles Return ( N e w Y o r k , 1951), pp. 9 9 - 1 0 2 .

314

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

way Stendhal. Flaubert, Maupassant and the brothers Goncourt created "a style where word and fact cling together,'"" of Laforgue's delicate irony, of the "hardness" of Gautier's verse, Pound was not troubled by their subject matter as James had been. Rather, in his essay on the novelist, Pound clearly separates himself from what he regards as James's excessively fastidious reaction to French literature. He says that James "didn't 'get' Flaubert," that "he was simply and horribly shocked by the literature of his continental forebears and contemporaries,""" that in French Poets and Novelists, James is "constantly balancing over the question of whether or no the characters presented in their works are, or are not, fit persons to be received in the James family back-parlour.'" 18 Pound did not share at all James's admiration of Balzac. His own particular favorite among French writers was Rémy de Gourmont, who was also admired by Amy Lowell, John Gould Fletcher and Richard Aldington."·0 Pound may have been interested in Gourmont's vers libre experiments and in his stress on the visual quality of poetry.,M Also, he found in Gourmont "the conception of love, passion, emotion as an intellectual instigation" that had attracted him to the troubadours.'" 1 But the memory of French achievements in the preceding century and of Gourmont (who had ' " P o u n d , " W h a t A m e r i c a H a s t o Live D o w n , II." 2 8 1 . "" P o u n d , Literary Essays, p. 310. Ibid., p . 3 0 0 . '""See R e n é T a u p i n , " T h e E x a m p l e of R é m y D e G o u r m o n t , " Criterion, X (July, 1931), 6 1 8 - 6 1 9 . In Ezra Pound's Mauberley ( B e r k e l e y , 1955), J o h n J. E s p e y has s h o w n h o w Hugh Selwyn Mauberley d r a w s o n G o u r m o n t ' s w o r k ; see pp. 6 6 - 8 2 o f t h a t b o o k . It s h o u l d a l s o be n o t e d that P o u n d t r a n s l a t e d G o u r m o n t ' s Physique de l'Amour under t h e title o f The Natural Philosophy of Love (New Y o r k , 1922). See Taupin, 618^619. 1,2 P o u n d , Literary Essays, pp. 3 4 3 - 3 4 4 .

THE FAILURE O F EUROPE

315

died in 1915), were not enough to keep Pound in Paris. He was sought out there by young Americans, such as Cowley and Hemingway, but apparently could not find a circle of French writers to whom he could render like homage. Alfred Kreymborg wrote that Pound "seemed ill at ease, even in Paris, although he had been accepted by many of the younger Parisians."" s Looking back on post-war France years after his sojourn there, Pound placed its demise as a cultural center at dates which deny his original expectations at the time he migrated to Paris (although even then he was not entirely hopeful). Thus, distinguishing between James's meetings with his illustrious French contemporaries and his (Pound's) own experiences in Paris, he said: France rose after 1870 and almost disappeared after 1918. I mean to say that anything that cd. have caused Henry James' outburst of devotion to France, anything that cd. have made Paris the focus of human respect and intelligence and of "respect for intelligence" entered a phase of non-being.IM On another occasion he said that Paris was "the centre of Europe . . . f r o m 1830 to 1917.'"" These are two of several brief references to France's cultural "decay" that we get in Pound's writings during the 1930's. As a rule, his attacks on the French were less frequent and less virulent than those on the British, although he did say in 1934 (cf. his remark about French newspapers giving more facts than were obtainable elsewhere) that the French press was " m o r e c o r r u p t " than the English.""" He found the "decline" of the '"'Alfred Kreymborg, Troubadour: An Autobiography (New York, 1925), p. 370. '"Ezra Pound, Guide to Kukhur (Norfolk, n.d.), p. 88. "'Letter to Douglas Macpherson, March 22. 1940, Paige typescript, no. 1841. "" Ezra Pound, "Mr. Eliot's Quandaries," New English Weekly, IV (March 29. 1934), 558.

316

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

once-great Mercure "merely the natural fatigue of men who have grown old, and outlasted their strength. It is not a voluntary stultification or a refusal of information.'"" Early in 1938, he said that France had so recently ceased being the whole hog and centre of European culture that one can't probably offer any suggestions to the Sorbonne, one can only marvel at the laxity and lack of serious criteria that crop up, or that have on occasion cropped up, in particular Sorbonne courses, and publications.'" Pound commiserated with the writers ten to fifteen years younger than Eliot and himself, particularly the writers of France because the sense of intellectual responsibility had been higher and the complete belly-flop and wallow of that country had thereby the greater momentum. Men of Crevel's time [René Crevel] had no local elders whom they could respect. Mr. Eliot and I do remember the existence of venerable and venerated predecessors. Pound had been able to find venerated precursors in Paris but not, with the exception of Jean Cocteau, venerated contemporaries. Thus, two of Europe's great countries had failed Pound, and he turned to Italy, thereby traveling in reverse the Italyto-France-to-England route that Henry James had taken. As with James, no country outside these three ever seems to have figured in Pound's mind as a permanent European home. After graduation from college he had traveled in Spain on a fellowship, but was not drawn back there. He Pound, Literary

Essays,

p. 81.

in 1938, he said that France had so recently ceased being Ezra P o u n d , "For a N e w Paideuma," Criterion, X V I I (January, 1938), 208. 189 Ezra P o u n d , " R e n é Crevel," Criterion, XVIII (January, 1939), 226.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

317

seems never to have liked Germany; the smug Dr. Staub in James's " A Bundle of Letters." who looks f o r w a r d to his country's conquest of Western Europe, struck Pound as an accurate representation of the G e r m a n spirit.' 9 " It is not easy to say precisely what drew Pound to Italy, or rather it is not easy to point to a single overriding motive. In part, his going there appears to have been a concession of his failure to discover or create an art capital in E u r o p e that measured up to his standards, and a consequent decision to withdraw strictly into his own work. Malcolm Cowley reported, on the basis of conversations with P o u n d in Paris, that the poet thought it was time for him to stop doing so much for other men and for literature in general, stop trying to educate the public and simply write. It would take years for him to finish the Cantos; he wanted to write an opera and he had other plans. To carry them out it might be best for him to leave Paris and live on the Mediterranean, far from distractions, in a little town he had discovered.1" Hemingway said of Pound during the period he was making the transition f r o m Paris to R a p a l l o (he traveled back a n d forth between the two places before finally settling down in 1925"'), that "he takes no interest in Italian politics. . . Samuel Putnam, who evidently saw P o u n d in Rapallo, thought of him as having found a haven there : Relieved of the stress of personal encounter and word-ofmouth controversy, he would still carry on the fight—and frequently have the last word—through the medium of the mails; while round about him, in the Tittle Italian village, he '""See Pound, Literary Essays, pp. 297 and 301. Cowley, op. cit., p. 122. 192 See Charles N o r m a n , Ezra Pound, ( N e w Y o r k , 1961), p. 279. '"Ernest H e m i n g w a y , " H o m a g e to Ezra," in An Examination of Ezra Pound, ed. Peter Russell ( N e w York, 1950), p. 75.

318

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH O F EUROPE

h a d g a t h e r e d a circle of his o w n w h i c h g a v e h i m the a d u l a t i o n that, d e s p i t e his b e l l i c o s e t e m p e r a m e n t , he s e e m e d u n a b l e to d o without.1"

These three comments would indicate that Pound wanted only to secure a private retreat in an Italian town whose setting greatly appealed to him, if we judge by his use of it in the Cantos.1" At the same time there is a statement by Pound, made in 1922, which suggests that perhaps he was seeking something more in Italy. He said then, "Is it possible to establish some spot of civilization, or some geographically scattered association of civilized creatures? One is up against this problem in a decadent wallow like London, in an enervated centre like Paris, in a reawakening Italy, in an inchoate America.'"86 "A reawakening Italy"—Pound's comment came only weeks after Mussolini had marched on Rome. In 1926, Pound wrote to Harriet Monroe, "I personally think extremely well of Mussolini.'"" This is one of his earliest explicit references to the Italian ruler, if not his first, but II Duce may quite possibly have been in his mind when he originally decided to settle in Italy. Pound's Jefferson and ¡or Mussolini (1933), a book in which the dictator is praised, uses the phrase "Italian awakening," which recalls his comment of 1922. Looking back, he tells us he hoped to find in Mussolini's Italy, as opposed to other countries, the kind of economic reforms he had become interested in during his London years, reforms that would m Samuel P u t n a m , Paris Was Our Mistress ( N e w Y o r k , 1947), p. 146. 1,5 See John D r u m m o n d , "The Italian B a c k g r o u n d to the C a n t o s , " in Russell, pp. 1 0 0 - 1 1 8 . 186 Ezra P o u n d , "Paris Letter." Dial, L X X I I I ( N o v e m b e r , 1922), 550. 1,1 P o u n d , Letters, p. 205.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

319

do away with alleged government by plutocracy and would provide for an equitable distribution of purchasing power among the populace. One of the chapters in Jefferson and!or Mussolini is entitled "Why Italy?" to which Pound answers "Italy, for the very simple reason that after the great infamy [presumably World War I] there was no other clot of energy in Europe capable of opposing ANY F O R C E W H A T E V E R to the infinite evil of the profiteers and the sellers of men's blood for money.'" 3 ' Pound insisted on "the identity of [the] American Revolution of 1776 with [the] Fascist Revolution. Two chapters in the same war against the usurers. . . In 1944 he said that his efforts over the previous decade so far as the historical process and especially the monetary problem are concerned, have been directed towards establishing a correlation between Fascist economics and the economics of canon law (i.e. Catholic and medieval economics), on the one hand, and, on the other, Major Douglas's Social Credit proposals together with those of Gesell. . . .M0 But if, for Pound, the attraction of Italy lay largely in Mussolini's regime, that attraction was perhaps not as completely separate from his original concern with art, his quest for an art center, as it would at first seem. In the Cantos, Pound displays his admiration for various persons in history and mythology who have attempted to create order out of chaos or nothingness; this creation can take the form of building a city, establishing a legal code or a social ideal, constructing a temple, or writing a poem. One creator of "order" who figures prominently in the Cantos, "" P o u n d , Jefferson and ¡or Mussolini ( L o n d o n , 1935), p. 61. ' " E z r a P o u n d . A Visiting Card, p a m p h l e t ( L o n d o n , 1952), p. 14. T h i s w a s o r i g i n a l l y p u b l i s h e d in 1942. 700 E z r a P o u n d , America, Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War, p a m p h l e t ( L o n d o n , 1951), p. 16. T h i s w a s originally p u b l i s h e d in Venice in 1944.

320

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H OH E U R O P E

is Sigismundo Malatesta. From about 1921 to 1925, that is, during the years preceding his long residence in Italy, P o u n d was at work on a group of cantos that show an interest in Italian history, particularly in the exploits of Malatesta. A m i d all the turbulence of his era, amid the shifting alliances and frequent wars that claimed much of his energy and endangered his life, Sigismundo found time to create an elaborate temple, the T e m p i o Malatestiano, which required extensive management of building materials, artisans and artists. Pound regards Sigismundo himself as an artist, or at least as an art-impresario, a creator of order. In Mussolini. P o u n d seemed to see a potential modern-day Sigismundo (he was to link their names in The Pisan Cantos™). He refers to the T e m p i o in Jefferson and I or Mussolini, a book in which he says that he does not think "any estimate of Mussolini will be valid unless it starts f r o m his passion for construction. T r e a t him as artifex and all the details fall into place. T a k e him as anything save the artist and you will get muddled with c o n t r a d i c t i o n s . ( P o u n d ' s equation here of artists and builders accords with his reference elsewhere in the book to "writers, any kind of constructors. . . ."*") Mussolini then, in P o u n d ' s mind, was an artist-builder as Malatesta h a d been. Furthermore, Pound, in his increasing sympathy toward Mussolini after settling in Italy, may have been identifying with the "artist" as strong man, with a person w h o was potent on a large scale, who could arrange people and things in a desired order, while Pound, for all his zeal and energy, had f o u n d life so intractable; in his capacity as art-impresario, in his efforts to marshal money, talent, publishers and audiences into a program for the maintenance of M1

See Pound, Letters, p. 239. Pound, Jefferson and I or Mussolini, ^ Ibid.. p. 68.

202

p. 34. Pound's italics.

THE FAILURE OF

EUROPE

321

art and artists, he had been unable to overcome what he considered the inertia and stupidity of others, he had been unable to create the art-capital he dreamed of.10' His phenomenal success in recognizing talent and bringing it to the attention of others is probably unparalleled in the history of letters, but his achievements were not enough to make of London or Paris what he wanted. If Pound seemed wilfully blind to the evils of Fascism, if he ignored Mussolini's terroristic methods, if he slurred over the invasion of Ethiopia by saying that "a war in Africa is better than one in Europe" and by claiming that under Mussolini, Italian food consumption had doubled ("Give the guy a break"MS), perhaps it was because Italy represented for him Europe's final hope. He seemed to regard it as the last country in which he could put his faith, as the ultimate proving-ground of his expatriation, or rather, of what his expatriation had become—a quest for a stable society that could boast a heroic tone, supplied by an artist builder, as well as an equitable economic order in which the writer should have his place as much as any other man (Major Douglas' Social Credit plan had originally appealed to Pound because it provided for the artist no less than for the factory-worker).2™ Pound's dream of Italy had to come true— there was no place else to turn. Thus the drama of Europe became for him too subjective: "Any thorough judgment of MUSSOLINI will be in a measure an act of faith, it will depend on what you believe the man means, what you iM Wyndham Lewis once wrote of Pound, "he was never satisfied until everything was organized." Wyndham Lewis, Blasting and Bombardiering (London, 1937), p. 254. Lewis's italics. This response to the Ethiopian invasion is contained in a letter from Pound to W. E. Woodward, July 14, 1935. T h e letter is in the manuscript division of the N e w York Public Library. See Ezra Pound, "Murder By Capital," Criterion, XII, (July, 1933), 585-592.

322

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

believe that he wants to accomplish.""01 How long a way he had come from the American who originally hoped for a Renaissance in the United States that would "make the Italian Renaissance look like a tempest in a teapot!"2"* In an Italy which, according to him, offered greater freedom of expression than England,** Pound continued to write his Cantos. At one point in that work, he says the "Cannibals of Europe are eating one another again.""0 This line occurs in one of a series of cantos where Pound has been quoting from John Adams and Jefferson; it may be an adaptation of a statement in one of Jefferson's letters: "experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe. . . If Pound's line is indeed a paraphrase of Jefferson, it constitutes one of several instances in the poet's writings where he cites earlier, prominent Americans as responding unfavorably to Europe—he invokes a tradition of disenchantment, so to speak, presumably wishing us to think of him as reliving the experience of compatriots who had gone abroad before him. Thus, he cites Charles Francis Adams as claiming to have found no good conversation in London.1" He quotes an American diplomat as saying that the art of political lying is better developed in England than elsewhere."" He asserts that John Adams in his endeavors to secure credit for the United States abroad, "met, and overcame, all the insidiousness of Europe.""" Contemporary Pound, Jefferson andjor Mussolini, p. 33. Pound's italics. Pound, Leiters, p. 10. 105 See Pound, Social Credit: An Impact, p. 19. '""Canto X X X I I , p. 9. J " See Rahv, Discovery of Europe, p. 64. 2,! Canto X L V I I I , p. 34. 211 Canto L X V I I I , p. 144. Pound may be quoting Benjamin Franklin, but the text is not clear on this point. 2H Ezra Pound, An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United Slates, pamphlet ( L o n d o n , 1950), p. 6. 508

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

323

Europe, as portrayed in the Cantos, often elicits a response from Pound as unfavorable as those of his illustrious predecessors. He sees it as infested with financial manipulators, stupid or corrupt rulers, and degenerate aristocrats. Throughout his career, Pound has expressed concern over the failure of Europe's aristocracy, or more specifically, over the failure of Europe to possess a wealthy, enlightened upper class which would furnish responsible rulers and intelligent patrons of art. In 1914, he said "The aristocracy of entail and of title has decayed, the aristocracy of commerce is decaying, the aristocracy of the arts is ready again for its service"215; his Thrones section of the Cantos, published in 1959, contains the lines "aristos are ignorant/plus illiteracy of the ploots [plutocrats!.""" Lady Valentine, the socialclimbing literary hostess in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, is an example of "the aristocracy of entail and title" in Pound's poetry. So too is the Second Baronet in the Cantos, who is quoted as saying to Pound "Thass a funny lookin'buk . . ./ . . . Wu . . . Wu . . . wot you goin' eh to do with ah . . . / . . . ah read-it?'"' 1 So too is the "whoring countess" who declared "Oh yes, there are nobles, still interested in polo/ . . . of course there were nobles.'"" Pound reported that Sir Edwin Elgar, on being introduced to the Princess de Polignac at a concert, opened the conversation "with hoarse whisper: 'Hyperion won.' '"" As for the aristocracy of commerce, Pound has spoken of "great dullness among the quite rich,'"M and has said that the world would never 215

Ezra Pound, "The N e w Scupture," Egoist, I (Feb. 16, 1914), 68. "" Ezra Pound, Thrones: 96-109 de los cantares ( N e w York, 1959), p. 67. '"Canto X X V I I I , p. 139. ""Canto X X X V , p. 23. Pound, Letters, p. 249. Pound, Literary Essays, p. 436.

324

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H OP

EUROPE

be s a f e f o r the artist because " L a b o u r will always desire to kill h i m a n d the p l u t o c r a c y will always want to turn him into a

performing buffoon. . .

He c o n d e m n e d

both

k i n d s of aristocracies in 1922, when he s a i d : " O n e recognizes t h a t there is n o f u n c t i o n i n g c o o r d i n a t e d civilisation in E u r o p e ; d e m o c r a c y h a s signally failed to provide f o r its best writers; aristocratic p a t r o n a g e exists neither in n o u n nor in a d j e c t i v e . . . . T h e rich are, with the rarest

exceptions,

useless.'"" P o u n d distinguished

between his own e x p e c t a t i o n s of

E u r o p e ' s u p p e r classes a n d those possible t o J a m e s . Speaking in 1922 of " t h e last years of c a l a m i t y , " he w o n d e r e d w h e t h e r " t h e t y p e ' g e n t l e m a n ' isn't played o u t , " whether one does not demand some caste debarring that inaction, that mental timidity, that defensiveness, that general nullity so wholly compatible with, and even invited by the gentleman-mould specifications; whether Henry James wasn't the last pilgrim who could honestly seek that 'gentler civilization,' those debating societies of splendid aloofness, 'that five o'clock that never sounded for him on the timepieces of this world. . . .':·3 P o u n d seemed to be suggesting that he h a d to start out f r o m w h e r e J a m e s left off, a n d certainly there are n o gentlemanh e r o e s a m o n g P o u n d ' s m o d e r n characters. But one w o n d e r s w h e t h e r P o u n d actually arrived in E u r o p e already stripped of a n y h o p e f o r the u p p e r classes there, or w h e t h e r he did n o t , a s J a m e s did, u n d e r g o a disillusionment of his own. F o r in 1938 h e said "if H . J . was s h o c k e d at the lack of m a n n e r s a n d m o r a l s h e e n c o u n t e r e d in E u r o p e , the present writer w a s E z r a P o u n d , "Ésopé, F r a n c e and the T r a d e U n i o n . " New Age, X X V (Oct. 23, 1919), 423. ™ E z r a P o u n d , "Credit and the Fine Arts." New Age, X X X ( M a r c h 30, 1922), 284. Ezra P o u n d . "Paris Letter," Dial L X X I I ( F e b r u a r y , 1922), 191.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

325

at least surprised at the analphabetism and rabbity ignorance of letters which quite well dressed English folk offered to his young enquiries. 1908 to Ί 1 P o u n d would not have been surprised at such ignorance had he read his James in time. But even when he did read James he seems to have glossed over the stories like "The Death of the Lion" and "Broken Wings." Had he not, he could never have said what he did of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past: for once at least the precise nuance of the idiocy of top-crusts is recorded, and a future age will know, if it cares, very much what a dinner is like in the upper societies of the world, and will know as even the dear late H.J. never quite told them, the degree of vagueness of these people with regard to literature and art."5 It appears that Pound had to discover this "degree of vagueness" for himself, that he did not come to Europe already equipped with the opinion that no intellectual graces were to be expected of the upper classes per se. The very fact that he chose, for example, to satirize Lady Jane in Mauberley, the very fact that he repeatedly spoke of the inadequacies of the aristocracy, suggests that that inadequacy was a live question for him, that he was haunted by some image of an ideal upper-class that he failed to find not only in the European present but in his explorations of the European past (there he found only isolated individuals). Thus, he said that "History presents no more imbecile a series of spectacles than the conduct of aristocracies. Without whom civilization is impossible.'" 1 ' Perhaps it was this "imbecility" of Europe's upper classes that caused Pound to seek out ideal aristocratic images in the history of his own " ' P o u n d . Guide to Kuichur, pp. 190-191. E z r a P o u n d , " P a r i s L e t t e r , " Dial, L X X I ( O c t o b e r , 1921), 460. "" P o u n d , Impact, p. 218.

326

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

land, and to find them in Jefferson and John Adams; he once spoke of Adams as the founder "of something not unlike a dynasty in A m e r i c a . " P o u n d even liked to think of his own grandfather as a member of a "frontier aristocracy" of physical p r o w e s s . I n his search for an ideal aristocratic image he also turned to the model gentleman defined by Confucius. Pound was hopeful about Italy's future when he settled there, but not because he thought that country had anything to offer in the way of an admirable aristocracy. For it was from Rapallo that he wrote in 1926, "probably no thinking man disbelieves in the need of an aristocracy, only there AINT any to be had; and the quality of the candidates is NOT encouraging.'"" Indeed, there is reason to believe that he eventually came to see Italy, the repository of his final hopes for Europe, as having failed him, thus joining England and France in the catalogue of his disappointments. Her failure did not reside simply in her defeat by the Allied powers in World War II—it was a more terrible kind of failure, one from within. For while the first new group of cantos published after the war, The Pisan Cantos, opens on the note that Mussolini's downfall represented an "enormous tragedy" and the destruction of a great dream,30 there is evidence, some of it in this same collection of cantos, that for Pound the dream had begun to crumble of itself, that he had once again staked his hopes on a European nation that could not fulfill them. We find him saying in Canto LXXVII that "the dog-damn wop, is not, save by exception,/honest "'Letter to K a t u e K i t a s o n o , Oct. 28, 1939, Paige typescript, no. 1795. " ' S e e Pound, Economic Nature of United States, p. 12. "'Letter to H o m e r Pound, March 4. 1926, Paige typescript, no. 809. :J0 C a n t o L X X I V , p. 3.

327

THE FAILURE O F E U R O P E 3

in administration any more than the briton is truthful,'" ' and in Canto LXXX he writes : . . . and as to poor old Benito one had a safety-pin one had a bit of string, one had a button all of them so far beneath him half-baked and amateur or mere scoundrels To sell their country for half a million hoping to cheat more out of the people. . . .ÎJJ

But according to an interview Pound gave in Genoa, in the spring of 1945, even "poor old Benito" had not been beyond reproach. Pound is reported to have said that " 'Mussolini was a very human, imperfect character who lost his head,' " and that " 'Hitler and Mussolini were successful insofar as they followed Confucius, and . . . they failed because they did not follow him more closely.' " 2 " Pound's faith in Confucius remained, but can the same be said for his faith in Europe? In The Pisan Cantos, he seems to be asserting at one point that he has not given up his belief in the possibility of constructing the well-ordered society : "I surrender neither the empire nor the temples/ . . . nor the constitution nor yet the city of Dioce. . . From time to time he reverts to his obsession with the evil effects of banks and usury, the implication being that their elimination will make for a better world. But by and large the didactic strain in these cantos is a subdued one, and Pound's hopefulness has to contend against his image of himself "As a lone 211

Canto LXVII, p. 48. Canto LXXX, pp. 73-74. '"Quoted in Norman, Ezra Pound, op. cit., p. 396. Canto LXXIV, p. 12. The "city of Dioce" is Ecbatana, ancient capital of Media Magna, founded by the legendary king of the Medes, Deioces. It seems to figure in the Cantos as a symbol of Pound's ideal city or state. 1,2

328

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

ant from a broken ant-hill/ from the wreckage of Europe, ego scriptor."' 35 The hope of finding or building a good society has been largely replaced by the vision of a "Paradise" whose nature in itself testifies to the disappearance of that hope. For one thing, it is not a paradise that can be constructed; its elements are scattered and found at random: "Le Paradis N'est pas artificiel/ but spezzato [broken] apparently/ it exists only in fragments unexpected excellent sausage,/ the smell of mint, for example. . . The fragments include not only disparate moments of sensuous felicity, but also his brief perceptions of order or patterning in the process of existence, momentary stayings of the world's flux. But perhaps most of all, the fragments are made up of Pound's kaleidescopic memories— indeed, memory is invoked as the source of The Pisan Cantos: "The Muses are daughters of memory. . . ."ia; Memories of what? Of landscapes and seascapes, of individual lines of poetry, of frescoes and sculptures, of amusing or significant anecdotes, of the good friends of bygone days, of the acts of charity extended to him by his fellow-prisoners at the Pisan Detention Camp where he was imprisoned in 1945. Thus, Pound's Paradise is largely subjective, in the sense that its elements cohere only in their all being the possessions of his particular psyche. They are frankly claimed as significant simply because they have remained with him, held fast by his affection for them; "certain images be formed in the mind/ to remain there. . . ."21"; "nothing matters but the quality/ of the affection—/ . . . that has carved the trace in the mind. . . .":3J ;35 :3T

Canto Canto Canto Canto Canto

LXXVI, LXXIV, LXXIV, LXXIV, LXXVI,

p. p. p. p. p.

36. 16. 23. 24. 35.

T H E FAILURE OF EUROPE

329

So that the external world, with its perpetual upheavals and disappointments, is no longer the would-be location of Pound's ideal city or paradise, a paradise that once was to be erected at least partly through economic reforms. (In a canto published in 1934, Pound, after stating a basic economic assumption of Major Douglas, went on to say "the light became so bright and so blindin'/ in this layer of paradise/ that the mind of man was bewildered.""0) The concern with such reforms is still present in The Pisan Cantos, but this section of Pound's poetry suggests that, by and large, Paradise for him is no longer a proposed public enterprise, but an achieved private possession, though achieved only through having become identified with the images of it in his own mind and the strength of his affections for its constituent parts. Early in these cantos, Pound says "4 times was the city rebuilded . . . / . . . dell'Italia tradita/ now in the mind indestructible . . ." (and on the same page says " . . . the drama is wholly subjective . . .").'" Later, the Cantos read "4 times was the city remade,/now in the heart indestructible. . . That which had been unattainable in actual life now becomes realized merely by being thought of and being loved : " 'How is it far if you think of i t ? " " " and "What thou lovest well remains,/ . . . What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee I . . . First came the seen, then thus the palpable/ Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,/ What thou lovest well is thy true heritage. . . Thus, as James did before him, Pound salvages from a JW

Canto XXXVIII, p. 40. Canto LXXIV, p. 8. Canto LXXVII, p. 43. ""Canto LXXVII, p. 51. This question is repeated in C a n t o L X X I X , p. 66. Canto LXXXI, pp. 98-99.

330

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

Europe that has failed him, those elements of it that he loves, and pieces them together into a personal mosaic, a private paradise.1" Though Pound does this in a more explicit fashion than James, the private worlds of both men acknowledge that they have been wrested from a fallen public world. They are the constructs of two Americans who, having been betrayed by Europe, make out of the fineness it does possess or once possessed, images by which the rest of the Old World stands condemned. ΠΙ Certainly, the writings of T. S. Eliot present us with as damning an indictment of Europe as anything we can find in James or Pound. But because of the sketchiness of the materials available, it is more difficult in Eliot's case to determine how much the Europe that is portrayed in his work differs from the Europe he hoped to live in; whether in encountering the Old World, he came to suffer as acute a disappointment as is evident in James and Pound. Eliot's early interest in Europe seemed to focus on France. While still an undergraduate, he had become drawn to French poetry through his reading of Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature, an event that Eliot considered crucial in shaping his poetic career : I . . . owe Mr. Symons a great debt. But for having read his book I should not, in the year 1908, have heard of Laforgue 2 " The foregoing takes The Pisan Cantos- as the climax of Pound's poetic work. H e has of course published two subsequent volumes of cantos, the Rock-Drill section and Thrones. But to the present writer at least, these are so fragmentary that they do not present any coherent development beyond all the previous cantos, on which they depend heavily in their allusions. As of this writing, The Pisan Cantos should be considered the capstone of Pound's work.

THE FAILURE O F EUROPE

331

and Rimbaud; I should probably not have begun to read Verlaine, and but for reading Verlaine, I should not have heard of Corbière. So the Symons book is one of those which have affected the course of my life/" Grover Smith has shown how Eliot's work draws on nineteenth-century French verse, on Corbière and Laforgue, on Gautier and Baudelaire/' 1 Eliot himself remarked that Laforgue "was the first to teach me how to speak, to teach me the poetic possibilities of my own idiom of speech.'"" From Baudelaire he learned a precedent for the poetical possibilities, never developed by any poet writing in my own language, of the more sordid aspects of the modern metropolis, of the possibility of fusion between the sordidly realistic and the phantasmagoric, the possibility of the juxtaposition of the matter-of-fact and the fantastic. From him, as from Laforgue, I learned that the sort of material that I had, the sort of experience that an adolescent had had, in an industrial city in America, could be the material for poetry; and that the source of new poetry might be found in what had been regarded hitherto as the impossible, the sterile, the intractably unpoetic/" Eliot was also drawn to Baudelaire as a poet w h o had m a d e a personal, independent discovery of Christian truths, w h o conceived of life in terms of Good and Evil, a poet f o r whom damnation was a reality and w h o was man enough to be damned unlike his spiritually hollow contemporaries. 2 " Eliot's estimate of Baudelaire differs sharply f r o m that of Quoted in F. O. Matthiessen, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot (New York, 1947), pp. 27-28. Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays (New York, 1960), passim. ™ T. S. Eliot, "Talk on Dante," Adelphi, XXVII (First Quarter, 1951), 107. m Ibid., 107. :t0 See T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917-1932 (New York, 1932), pp. 337 ff.

332

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

James, who thought the French poet mistook sordidness for evil and failed to see evil as something within himself."' (Pound concurred with James here.25) However, though Eliot's opinion might differ from the novelist's in the case of a particular French artist, he was generally like James in being grateful to the French for supplying Anglo-American writers with models of literary achievement not to be found in their own tradition. And, like Pound, Eliot thought of the French poets as innovators, men who had made " 'discoveries' in verse of which we cannot afford to be ignorant, discoveries which are not merely a concern for French syntax.""53 Evidently, it was Eliot's exposure to French poetry as an undergraduate that determined his choice of Paris as the place in which he would do his first graduate work. A Harvard classmate, W. G. Tinckom-Fernandez, informs us that he himself first heard of the Vers Libre movement, of Paul Fort and Francis Jammes, from Eliot, who was "to go over to the Sorbonne for study and to assess these literary influences. . . Speaking of the "first decade and more" of this century, Eliot stated that "The predominance of Paris was incontestable . . . there was a most exciting variety of ideas.'"55 Eliot may have had Gourmont's critical ideas in mind here, among which was the distinction "between tradition considered as a fact and . . . tradition . . . considered as a choice . . ." and the notion that "it was a tradition not "51 See H e n r y J a m e s . " C h a r l e s Baudelaire." Nation, XXII (April 27, 1876), 280. 252 See P o u n d , Literary Essays, pp. 307-308. J " T . S. Eliot, " C o n t e m p o r a n e a . " Egoist, V ( J u n e - J u l y . 1918). 84. :5< W . G . T i n c k o m - F e r n a n d e z , "T. S. Eliot, Ί 0 , " Harvard Advocate ( D e c e m b e r , 1938), 8. 2M T . S. Eliot. " A C o m m e n t a r y , " Criterion, XIII (April, 1934), 451.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

333

precisely national but rather E u r o p e a n . . ." that was n e e d e d / " T h e centrality of such concerns to "Tradition and the Individual T a l e n t " should be evident f r o m my discussion of that essay in an earlier chapter. T h e "existing variety of ideas" may also refer to the militant traditionalism of Charles M a u r r a s and the Action Française, which called for a France ruled by king and church. I have already pointed to traces of M a u r r a s ' thought in Eliot's royalistclassicist-Anglican declaration; moreover, M a u r r a s ' proposed authoritarian society is of the kind Eliot c a m e to advocate in his own cultural criticism, a matter I shall return to later. Other figures on the Parisian scene caught the young poet's eye. Reminiscing about his student days in Paris, he wrote : Je crois que c'était une bonne fortune exceptionelle, pour un adolescent, de découvrir Paris en l'an 1910. La Nouvelle Revue Française était encore vraiment nouvelle: et les Cahiers de la Quinzaine paraissaient, sous leur austère couverture de papier gris. Je suppose qu'il y a encore des bergsoniens: mais pour avoir vraiment connu la ferveur bergsonienne, il faut être allé, régulièrement, chaque semaine, dans cette salle pleine à craquer où il faisait ses cours, au Collège de France. . . . On avait toujours une chance d'apercevoir Anatole France, le long des quais: et on achetait le dernier livre de Gide ou de Claudel le jour même de sa parution. Tantôt Paris était tout le passé; tantôt tout l'avenir: et ces deux aspects se combinaient en un présent parfait. Si c'est cela (notamment) que la France représente pour moi, peut-être est-ce grâce à un heureux accident du hasard. Mais ce n'est pas un accident qui m'avait conduit à Paris. Depuis plusieurs années, la France représentait surtout, à mes yeux, la poésie."' 3M

Taupin, "Example of R é m y de G o u r m o n t , " 623. This passage is f r o m Eliot's contribution to "What F r a n c e M e a n s to Y o u , " La France Libre, VIII (June 15, 1944), 9 4 - 9 5 . It is quoted by Edward J. H. G r e e n e in his T. S. Eliot Et La France

334

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

H o w s t r o n g l y E l i o t w a s d r a w n t o P a r i s is d e m o n s t r a t e d b y a n i n t e r v i e w h e g a v e in 1 9 5 9 , in w h i c h h e s a i d t h a t had contemplated

becoming

h a d t w o nineteenth-century

a

French

symbolist

poet,

A m e r i c a n s , Stuart Merrill

he as and

Viele-Griffin. I o n l y did that d u r i n g the r o m a n t i c year I s p e n t in Paris a f t e r H a r v a r d . I had at that t i m e the idea of g i v i n g u p E n g l i s h a n d trying to settle d o w n a n d s c r a p e a l o n g in Paris a n d g r a d u a l l y write F r e n c h . But it w o u l d h a v e b e e n a f o o l i s h idea e v e n if I'd b e e n m u c h m o r e bilingual than I e v e r w a s , b e c a u s e , f o r o n e thing, I d o n ' t think that o n e c a n be a bilingual poet. 1 " Whatever attractions Paris m a y have had, Eliot returned t o t h i s c o u n t r y a f t e r a y e a r in t h e F r e n c h c a p i t a l , a n d s t u d i e d at H a r v a r d for three years. W h e n h e w e n t a b r o a d again, in 1 9 1 4 , h e spent the s u m m e r in G e r m a n y , l e a v i n g f o r E n g l a n d w h e n war w a s declared. W h e t h e r or not he w o u l d h a v e g o n e t o B r i t a i n i n a n y e v e n t i s n o t certain,"" b u t E z r a P o u n d

had

(Paris, n.d.), p. 10. T h e s a m e year this r e m i n i s c e n c e a p p e a r e d Eliot w r o t e an i n t r o d u c t i o n t o a collection of F r e n c h p h o t o g r a p h s , in w h i c h he said t h a t t h e pictures "will r e m i n d y o u t h a t t h e F r a n c e y o u loved did n o t die w h e n y o u p a r t e d f r o m h e r . . . ." Eliot, introd u c t i o n to Inoubliable France ( L o n d o n , 1944), n o p a g i n a t i o n . ' " " T h e A r t of P o e t r y : T . S. E l i o t , " interview by D o n a l d H a l l , in Paris Review, X X I ( S p r i n g - S u m m e r , 1959), 56. J ™ A c c o r d i n g to C o n r a d Aiken's Ushant, Eliot's c o m i n g to E n g l a n d seems to h a v e been a n " a c c i d e n t " of t h e w a r . See A i k e n , Ushant ( N e w Y o r k , 1952), p. 202. ( T h r o u g h o u t this b o o k Eliot is r e f e r r e d t o as " t h e Tsetse.") In c o r r e s p o n d e n c e w i t h m e , H a r f o r d W . H . P o w e l J r . h a s suggested t h a t Eliot's e n d i n g u p in E n g l a n d w a s a n y t h i n g but an a c c i d e n t . H e p o i n t s o u t t h a t Eliot e n c o u n t e r e d influences t h a t m a y very well h a v e t u r n e d his t h o u g h t s t o w a r d t h a t c o u n t r y while he w a s still residing here. F o r o n e t h i n g , his b o y h o o d h o m e in Missouri w a s full of English b o o k s . T h e Boston t h a t h e s a w as a y o u n g m a n w a s highly English in t o n e . O n e of his f r i e n d s a t H a r v a r d possessed a very British m a n n e r a n d m a y h a v e b e e n l o o k e d u p o n by Eliot as a p e r s o n t o e m u l a t e . ( P o w e l ' s r e s e a r c h e s h a v e s h o w n t h a t t h e r e w a s a n u n m i s t a k a b l y British e l e m e n t in t h e dress t h a t Eliot affected while at H a r v a r d . ) P o w e l also suggests t h a t Eliot m a y h a v e t h o u g h t his c h a n c e s of being d i s c o v e r e d as a p o e t

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

335

gone to London and Eliot may have been influenced by his example. Tinckom-Fernandez says that the idea of making one's living in London "had come to us in college when we discussed Ezra Pound's case."" Pound's poems had reached Harvard in 1910, and Eliot had been introduced to them by Tinckom-Fernandez. When the latter decided to go to London, Eliot saw him off at Boston. "Thus the idea must have been in his mind during those last years in Cambridge when he was beginning to write with professional ambitions." 1 " Perhaps, as may have been the case with Pound, Eliot was unconsciously swayed by America's Anglophilia and was drawn to England despite his reservations about its then current literary p r o d u c t i o n . T h e r e is also the chance that if he were seeking something antithetical to America, his contact with Maurras' thought might have impelled him toward England; Maurras "spoke of England as being as anti-democratic as it was possible to be. . . .'"M (In 1928 Eliot was to say, "The Action Française insists upon the importance of continuity by the Kingship and hereditary class, upon—what the government of England was, formerly, at least supposed to be. . . Possibly too, Eliot was influenced by the example of Henry James. were better in England than in America, and this could have been a factor contributing to his decision to settle there. Grover Smith mentions, in his analysis of "The L o v e Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," that Eliot once used the signature "T. Steams-Eliot." See G r o v e r Smith, T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays (Chicago, 1960), p. 17. This, along with Powel's observations on Eliot's dress (see Powel's " N o t e s o n the Early L i f e of T. S. Eliot," Master's thesis, Brown University, 1954), indicate a decided attraction to the English in the y o u n g Eliot. Tinckom-Fernandez, op. cit., 47. Ibid., 48. 2,2 See T. S. Eliot, "A Commentary" (April, 1934), 451. Michael Curtis, Three Against the Republic: Sorel, Barres, and Maurras (Princeton, 1959), p. 202. ™ T . S. Eliot, "The Literature of Fascism," Criterion. VIII ( D e c e m b e r , 1928), 289.

336

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

However, there is nothing in Eliot's writings to show that he came to England with anything approaching James's predisposition to be charmed and enchanted. On the contrary, Eliot's initial reaction to life in England was decidedly unfavorable, according to Conrad Aiken, who was in correspondence with him at the time. "Where to live? The letters are full of the question. England was clearly impossible." Aiken quotes Eliot as saying " Ά people which is satisfied with such disgusting food is not civilized.' " :e! At first he detested London but Oxford made him long to be back even there : " Ό Conversation, the staff of life, shall I get any at Oxford?' " " All this is a far cry from the young James's ecstatic response to Britain in 1869, from the pleasure he took then in his exposure to English manners. Moreover, there is almost nothing in Eliot's writings to parallel Pound's original contention that London was the place for poesy. The one notable exception to this that the present writer has been able to find occurs in Eliot's little pamphlet on Pound. He says there, of Pound's Ripostes, "The effect of London is apparent; the author has become a critic of men, surveying them from a consistent and developed point of view. . . But the bulk of Eliot's early remarks on the English literary situation starts out in the vein of the Pound who had already lost his one-time enthusiasm for London. Indeed, Eliot used his fellow-expatriates, ' " C o n r a d A i k e n , " K i n g B o l o a n d O t h e r s , " in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, ed. R i c h a r d M a r c h a n d T a m b i m u t t u ( C h i c a g o , 1949), p. 22. P r e s u m a b l y , t h e italics are Eliot's. "Ibid.. p. 23. T h e r e is s c a t t e r e d e v i d e n c e in Eliot's w r i t i n g s of a f o n d n e s s f o r L o n d o n ' s o l d e r b u i l d i n g s ( a n d a w i s h t o p r e s e r v e t h e m a g a i n s t the a s s a u l t s o f t h e p r e s e n t ) . S e e , e.g., his c o m m e n t o n "the p l e a s a n t e x t e r n a l s of n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y L o n d o n " in an u n t i t l e d r e v i e w . Criterion, V I I I ( A p r i l , 1929), 5 5 3 . " " E l i o t , Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry ( N e w Y o r k , 1917), pp. 1 6 - 1 7 .

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

337

P o u n d a n d J a m e s , as m e a s u r i n g - r o d s of the failures in English literary taste a n d practice. T h u s , in 1918, h e said of P o u n d : there is no tradition in English verse which might have prepared for the general acceptance of his work; and England in 1910 could have been no more ready for him than in 1890; and perhaps there is even less to respond to him in 1918 than in 1910. The absence of leisure, the pressure of political interest have tended to blunt critical discrimination and obscure the truth that only what is well written is good literature. 2 "

Eliot here is the detached American, annoyed that the European country in which he has settled is permitting its absorption in political matters (the war?) to obfuscate true critical standards. He goes on to say that English verse has retained the mentality of the age of Wordsworth and Tennyson, while displaying a technique inferior to that of either of these men. The majority of English poets "have nothing to say to the adult, sophisticated, civilized mind; are quite unaware of its tragedies and ecstasies. To this civilized mind Mr. Pound does make appeal. . . .""" The same year he was delivering himself of these opinions, he made his famous observation about James's "baffling escape from Ideas," about the novelist's possessing "a mind so fine that no idea could violate it," and went on to condemn English writing for its failure to avoid such "violation" : In England ideas run wild and pasture on the emotions; instead of thinking with our feelings (a very different thing) we corrupt our feelings with ideas; we produce the political, the emotional idea, evading sensation and thought. George Meredith (the disciple of Carlyle) was fertile in ideas; his epigrams are a facile substitute for observation and inference. IW

T . S. Eliot. "A N o t e on Ezra Pound," Today, 1918), 3 - 4 . s ™ Ibid., 4.

IV (September.

338

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

Mr. C h e s t e r t o n ' s brain s w a r m s with ideas; I see no e v i d e n c e that it t h i n k s / 1 1

Eliot's writings of 1918 provide yet other examples of his dissatisfaction with the British mind and British art. "No one," he asserted that year, can be so aware of the environment of Stupidity as the Englishman; no other nationality perhaps provides so dense an environment as the English. The intelligent Englishman is more aware of loneliness, has more reserves, than the man of intelligence of any other nation." 2 " Taking issue with an article in the Times Literary Supplement that had come out against professionalism in art, Eliot, echoing James's criticism, contended that "this attitude is so thoroughly British that if it is wrong it is certainly important, and if it wrong in art may provide some clue as to why British Art is no better than it is.'"" Eliot's attacks on English literature continued into the 1920's. Writing for The Dial in 1921, he said simply, "There is in contemporary English literature a very great deal which I cordially detest.'"" A year later, sounding like Pound, he charged that the atmosphere of literary London was pervaded by cowardice and caution, by an implicit belief that English literature was so good as it stood that experimentation would only mean taking unjustified risks. He found "lack of ambition, laziness, and refusal to recognise foreign competition; a tolerance which is no better than torpid indifference. . . Eliot went on to implicate the English middleclass readership in his attack, saying that the English poet "" T . S. Eliot, "On Henry James," in The Question of Henry James, ed. F . W . D u p e e ( N e w York, 1945), p. 110. m Eliot, " ' T a r r , ' " Egoist, V (Sept., 1918), 105. m Eliot (signed "Aptéryx"), "Professional, O r . . ." Egoist, V (April, 1918), 61. 2 " T . S. Eliot, " L o n d o n Letter," Dial, L X X (April, 1921), 448. ™ T . S. Eliot, " L o n d o n Letter," Dial, L X X I I ( M a y , 1922), 510.

THE FAILURE O F E U R O P E

339

took refuge "in just those sentiments, images, and thoughts which render a man least distinguishable from the mob, the respectable mob, the decent middle-class mob."" s The writers gave this public what it wanted, the reviewers confirmed it in its tastes; it had "the Morning Post to tell it that everything new is a symptom of Bolshevism; and the London Mercury to tell it that it is already such an enlightened public that what it does not like cannot be really good.'"' 1 Some years later, Eliot censured the English novel (as well as the American) for failing to display "the moral preoccupation" he found so central in James's writings."" But if the English novel lacked James's moral concern, Eliot's poetry lacked another characteristic of James's writings, which was just as central : the whole dimension of delight in the European setting that informs the novels right up through the unfinished Sense of the Past, to say nothing of the letters, travel essays and the volumes of autobiography. It is significant, for example, that though the first two of the "Preludes" were written at Harvard, the third in Paris, and the fourth on Eliot's return to Cambridge, all of them are suffused by a single atmosphere, that of a gloomy, sordid metropolis. For while Eliot, in the third of these poems, has indeed drawn on Paris, it is hardly the French capital as Lambert Strether apprehended it. Rather, Eliot evokes the drab street-walkers' Paris depicted in CharlesLouis Philippe's Bubu de Montparnasse and Marie Donadieu."' No Gloriani's garden here! "•"¡bid., 511. "'¡bid., 512. !,s S e e T . S. Eliot, "Les Lettres A n g l a i s e s , " La Nouvelle Revue Française, X I V ( M a y 1, 1927), 670. G r o v e r Smith has s h o w n h o w t h e section in q u e s t i o n as well as " R h a p s o d y on a Winter Night" are indebted to Philippe. S e e Smith, op. cit., pp. 2 0 - 2 1 , 23.

340

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

Italy, which so entranced James and which provides much of the lovely terrain of the Cantos, gets into Eliot's poetry as the decaying Venice of "Burbank with a Baedeker : Bleistein with a Cigar," where "rats are underneath the piles," and the wings of the lion of St. Mark are "clipped."ÏM In "Lune de Miel," a crumbling Italian basilica near Ravenna is described as a "Vieille usine désaffectée de Dieu," and for a bug-bitten honeymoon couple from Terre Haute, Indiana, this edifice is simply another item on their itinerary."" The austere beauty of the church is set in a context of disgust. It functions in much the same way as the walls of Magnus Martyr in The Waste Land: the "Inexplicable splendour" of the London church"2 contrasts sharply with the general dreariness of the city, this one, too, infested by rats, its river sweating oil and tar. Moreover, the smoke and fog that permeated the American metropolis of "Prufrock" and "Portrait of a Lady" seem to have descended on Eliot's Old World cities as well. The inhabitants of the Europe depicted by Eliot do not offer any more occasion for delight than do its settings. London, which for James was unrivaled in the sheer quantity and variety of life that it contained, and whose very misery he could see as part of its exhilarating variety, becomes in Eliot an "Unreal City" crowded with the living dead,2"3 where "Weeping, weeping multitudes/ Droop in a hundred A.B.C.'s [tearooms],"2M James depicted European characters he could esteem, and he was able to enjoy even some of those he satirized. To think back on the figures who people T. S. p. 24. 181 Ibid., '"Ibid., 2M Ibid., '"Ibid.,

Eliot, The Complete p. p. p. p.

29. 45. 39. 27.

Poems

and Plays

( N e w York, 1952),

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

341

Eliot's Europe is to realize that he neither esteems nor enjoys the great majority of them. The prostitute of "Rhapsody on a Winter Night," the tourists and cosmopolitans of "Burbank" and "Gerontion," the reactionary editor and ragged girl of "Le Directeur," the typist, clerk and homosexual merchant of The Waste Land as well as the upper-class couple of that poem, Sweeney and his friends in "Sweeney Agonistes," the Monchesneys in The Family Reunion, the Chamberlaynes in The Cocktail Party—all these elicit Eliot's disgust or pity or contempt. The aristocrats in his work come off as badly as anyone. Eliot once spoke of Europe's aristocracy being "gradually" absorbed and destroyed by the middle classes/" but in effect, his works represent the disintegration of that aristocracy as an accomplished fact. The Princess Volupine of "Burbank," for example, is sister to the promiscuous Lady Ringrose of A London Life (and Pound's "whoring countess"). In The Family Reunion, the aristocratic characters are for the most part regarded as fatuous. It is remarked of one member of the family, who never makes it onto the stage because he has been injured in an accident, that "A minor trouble like a concussion/ Cannot make much difference to John."'" In The Confidential Clerk Lady Elizabeth Mulhammer tinkers with spiritualistic fads. The very names of aristocrats alluded to in Eliot's plays but never actually seen, suggest that the people they designate are totally inconsequential: Lady Klootz, Lady Bumpus, Princess Bologolomsky. James used this device in The Awkward Age, referring there to one Sir Digby Dence, who never appears in the action. One suspects that Eliot's unflattering portrait of Europe derives much of its animus from a deep disillusionment with See Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 371. Eliot, Complete Poems, p. 265.

342

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

the Old World, a bitter fall from American innocence, but one hesitates to say so flatly. His response to Van Wyck Brooks's The Wine of the PuritansΓ and of course his expatriation itself, certainly indicate that as a young man he clearly regarded Europe as a better place than America in which to live and work. Also, as we have seen, he did refer to his first experience of Europe as "romantic." But judging by his handling of the European scene in his early poetry, as well as by his initial response to England, he seems to have been incapable, even originally, of seeing the Old World possessed of the glamour it had had for James (and Pound). T o be sure, Eliot's experience of Europe as a permanent residence began just about where James's left off. World War I was a catastrophe which had been spared the novelist until almost the end of his life, whereas Eliot had to confront it just after he had come to Europe to settle. As his friend Wyndham Lewis put it, "With what had [Eliot] been delected, as soon as he had firmly settled himself upon this side Of the water? The spectacle of Europe committing suicide—just that."MS Pound at least had a few years' respite. He was not initially confronted with chaos as was Eliot. "The great war [World War I] came as a surprise," Pound was to say in 1963.2M Interestingly enough, if the war did indeed prove disillusioning to Eliot, the post-war period seemed to generate new illusions, but these too were destroyed. In 1939 he said : T h e period immediately following the war of 1914 is o f t e n spoken of as a time of disillusionment; in s o m e ways and for some people it was rather a period of illusions. Only from about the year 1926 did the features of the post-war world See Chapter 1. Wyndham Lewis, "Early London Environment," in March and Tambimuttu, op. cit., p. 30. 288 See "Ezra Pound," interview by Donald Hall, op. cit., p. 51.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

343

begin clearly to e m e r g e — a n d not o n l y in t h e s p h e r e of politics. F r o m a b o u t that date o n e b e g a n s l o w l y to realize that the intellectual and artistic o u t p u t of the p r e v i o u s s e v e n y e a r s had b e e n rather the last efforts of an o l d w o r l d , t h a n the first struggles of a new/'"0

Perhaps the "new world" Eliot looked for was one saturated with the reactionary ideas of a Maurras. What he got instead, and perhaps this was the real source of his discontent, was a Europe, or at least an England, which in certain ways came to resemble the New World more and more. We might best approach this subject by noting that not only is the element of European glamour, so prominent in James, absent from Eliot's work, but so too is the international theme which James found so compelling. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that that theme is present in atrophied form. In "Mr. Apollinax" (1916), whose title character is supposedly based on Bertrand Russell, Eliot contrasts a European visitor with his American hosts. But while the gentility of the latter may be intended as representative of New England, Mr. Apollinax's ebullience seems to be merely a personal possession and not meant to symbolize "Europe" (although one wonders whether Eliot may not have been thinking here of James's Felix Young in The Europeans, who has something of the quality of "an irresponsible foetus" assigned to Mr. Apollinax).M1 A more significant encounter of American and European in Eliot's poetry occurs in Sweeney Agönistes (1924-25), where Sweeney is now apparently an Englishman (the transformation of the one-time Boston Irishman into a Londoner is itself noteworthy). Sweeney and his friends are visited by two "American gentlemen here on business"—Mr. Klipstein and ^ T. S. Eliot, "Last Words," Criterion, Eliot, Complete Poems, p. 18.

X V I I I (January, 1939), 271.

344

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H OK E U R O P E

Mr. Krumpacker. The names of the latter are obviously meant to designate them as Jews (they may be thought of as cousins to "Chicago Semite Viennese" Bleistein). In light of Eliot's conception of the Jew as the rootless cosmopolitan par excellence, it is significant that these two men, together with the Canadian Sam Wauchope, are immediately on easy terms with the English. The Jamesian theme of international differences is reduced here to Klipstein and Krumpacker (no Adam Verver these!) supposedly finding London a little "too gay" for them.rtr: The final lines of Sweeney Agonistes are recited in unison by English, Canadian and American voices, an international chorus of the damned; that is, of men interested only in animal comforts, cut off from religious belief, and hence, in Eliot's view, plunged into a meaningless existence. Eliot's chief intention in employing characters of different nationalities is undoubtedly to suggest the pervasiveness of the merely secular life in the modern world; he is not primarily interested in the question of national qualities. But Sweeney's having been converted into an Englishman, the fact that the Americans are Jews, the comradery quickly achieved by the characters, all suggest that the national idiosyncrasies which set James's Americans off from his Europeans have no force for Eliot. (The same may be said of The Cocktail Party, where Peter Quilpe, an Englishman, seems to make a painless transition to Hollywood, writing for the movies.) Indeed, the "Americanization" of Europe that James began to speak of about 1890, mostly in terms of what was happening to the upper classes, has reached a generalized, more acute stage in the Old World depicted by Eliot. For him, there is no longer Europe and America; there is only the modern world. The two have come together not only in :9Î

Ibid.,

pp. 7 8 , 79.

THE FAILURE O F EUROPE

345

godlessness, but culturally as well. Reviewing Stephen Leacock's Essays and Literary Studies in 1916, Eliot cited Leacock as seeing "in the chaos of American life only an advanced stage of a disease which menaces Europe; the philosophy of comfort without ideals, the cheap and easy utilitarianism of popular education and the dead level.'"" In 1921, Eliot said that he had to reject the belief that there was any "exact parallel" between English and American life, but found that "there are constant curious resemblances when one has ceased to expect them."" When, in 1922, he criticized the torpidness and cowardice of literary London, he found those qualities being fostered by "universal" conditions, among them "democracy (in the vague habitual sense of the word) . . . and by every proposed economic system, which gives so high a place to Security—whether in the form of gilt-edged bonds or old-age pensions—and so low a place to adventure and contemplation."1*5 In saying that these conditions were universal, Eliot may have well been thinking of America, where, at this time, there was widespread interest both in stock-market investments and in the enactment of measures to give workers some security, e.g., through old-age pensions. He clearly indicated that Europe was displaying an unhappy similarity to America when he said, in 1931 : T . S. Eliot, "Mr. Leacock Serious," New Statesman (July 29, 1916), 405. M T . S. Eliot, "London Letter," Dial. L X X (April, 1921), 450. S. Eliot, " L o n d o n Letter," Dial, L X X I I ( M a y , 1922), 510. It should be noted that in the next issue of the Dial, another Americ a n expatriate, G e o r g e Santayana, said that "the w h o l e world is being Americanized by the t e l e p h o n e , the trolley car, t h e departm e n t store, and the advertising press. A m e r i c a n i s m , apart f r o m the genteel tradition, is simply m o d e r n i s m — p u r e r in A m e r i c a than elsew h e r e because less impeded a n d qualified by survivals of the past." G e o r g e Santayana, "Marginal N o t e s on Civilization in the United States,Dial, L X X I I (June, 1922), 555.

346

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

The American intellectual of to-day has almost no chance of continuous development upon his own soil and in the environment that his ancestors, however humble, helped to form. H e must be an expatriate: either to languish in a provincial university, or abroad, or the most complete expatriation of all, in N e w York. A n d he is merely a more manifest e x a m p l e of what tends to happen in all countries. 1 "

In 1935, he found that the problems of education were "likely to become more, rather than less similar" to those in America,"" and three years later he gloomily foresaw "the further Americanization of Oxford. . . Aside from these statements about the growing together of Europe and America, there are also implicit indications in Eliot that England failed to provide him with as safe a refuge from the United States as he would have liked, a refuge from the land of business, individualism, and "chaotic" social mobility, from the land of the democratic and secular, the experimental and the untraditional at its highest pitch. For Eliot found an England which could propose the demolition of nineteen London churches,™ an England where a clerk could wear his hat with the assurance of a Bradford millionaire (The Waste Land), an England where an aristocrat could be a Socialist and his butler a Conservative (The Confidential Clerk). He found an England many of whose changes seemed motivated by the desire for private profit,3™ an England which prompted him to ask whether society was established around anything more permanent "than a congeries of banks, insurance companies and industries," S. Eliot, "A C o m m e n t a r y , " Criterion, X (April, 1931). 485. Eliot's italics. T. S. Eliot, "A C o m m e n t a r y , " Criterion, XIV (January, 1935), 264. T. S. Eliot, "A C o m m e n t a r y , " Criterion, XVII (Jan., 1938), 258. ' " S e e T . S. Eliot, " L o n d o n Letter,'" Dial, L X X (June, 1921), 691. ""See T. S. Eliot, "A C o m m e n t a r y , " Criterion, XIV (October, 1934), 90.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

347

with no beliefs more essential "than a belief in compound interest and the maintenance of dividends. . . ."*" He also found an England "worm-eaten with Liberalism," that is, with democracy, secularism, a belief in progress, and in experimentation or experience rather than dogma as a source of truth and social well-being.*" Once, quoting Irving Babbitt as objecting to so-called moderns not being modern enough, not being sufficiently critical of all authority, not being " 'sufficiently experimental,' " Eliot wondered "whither all this modernity and experimenting is going to lead."*" It apparently led, among other places, to modern England, for was it not after he had been living in that country for many years that he felt the need to depict a Christian utopia in a book where he complained : "In a negative liberal society you have no agreement as to there being any body of knowledge which any educated person should have acquired at any particular stage : the idea of wisdom disappears, and you get sporadic and unrelated experimentation.'"" This passage is taken from Eliot's Idea of a Christian Society (1940). In considering the increasing similarity of Europe and America that Eliot's work points to, we might remind ourselves of the striking affinities of Idea, as well as other books of his, with the manifesto of the American Southern Agrarians, I'll Take My Stand (1930). The latter work is a diatribe against the alleged evils of industrialism; 301 T . S. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society ( N e w Y o r k , 1940), p. 65. " T . S. Eliot, After Strange Gods ( L o n d o n , 1934), p. 13. In 1924, Eliot h a d d e s i g n a t e d T . E. H u l m e , distinctly a n t i - L i b e r a l in his t h o u g h t s " a solitary figure in this c o u n t r y : his closest affinities a r e in F r a n c e , with C h a r l e s M a u r r a s . . . ." Eliot (signed "Crites"), Criterion, II (April, 1924), 231. H u l m e was a l r e a d y d e a d , killed in W o r l d W a r I. Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 389. Eliot, ¡dea of a Christian Society, p. 41.

348

T H R E E VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

it laments the decay of religion and tradition, the decline of the family, the loss of regional identity, the shoddiness of mass culture; it castigates the abstract quality of the industrial economic system and the increase of centralization and uniformity. It shows a tendency to see the rural areas of the United States as the victims of an ever-increasing and hateful urbanization. In taking these positions, the book is of a piece with After Strange Gods (1934), Idea of a Christian Society, and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). As a matter of fact, early in the lectures he gave at the University of Virginia in 1933, Eliot said that his first impressions of the South had strengthened his sympathy with the contributors to the Agrarian manifesto.*" When he published his Virginia lectures as After Strange Gods, he remarked at one point in the book that thus far he had "only pronounced a few doctrines all of which have been developed by other writers," and cited the work of Allen Tate and his friends as found in I'll Take My Stand,10* That Eliot's social criticism, concerned primarily with the English scene, should espouse ideas put forth by a group of American Southerners, is indeed testimony to a common cultural situation on both sides of the Atlantic. That situation proved a decidedly unhappy one for Eliot."" I have tried to show in an earlier chapter that Eliot's classicist-royalist-Anglican declaration was a "cosmopolitan" construct which at the same time announced his "attachment" to England. However, we should now observe that that statement actually expressed his alienation f/om *" Eliot, After Strange Gods, p. 16. " Ibid., p. 21. ""Writing about E n g l a n d in 1938, Eliot f o u n d that what was w r o n g with agriculture w a s the s a m e thing that was wrong with everything else: "urbanization of mind. . . ." Eliot, "A C o m m e n tary," Criterion, X V I I I (Oct., 1938), 60. Eliot's italics.

THE FAILURE O F E U R O P E

349

an England which was becoming more and more like democratic. secular, atraditional America, and hence, increasingly distant from the ideals he had expressed in his declaration. He was pledging his loyalty to an England that no longer existed or that was dying. His royalism in twentieth-century Britain was preposterous. His Anglicanism placed him at a remove, by his own admission, from those intellectuals he had been closest to. He said in 1931 that "any one who has been moving among intellectual circles and comes to the Church, may experience an odd and rather exhilarating feeling of isolation."30® Moreover, Eliot not only felt that his Anglicanism was cutting him off from his intellectual contemporaries but, on joining the Church, he found it insufficiently dogmatic, relying too much on the "Individual Conscience."1" As for the classicist portion of his declaration, it was apparently meant, at least in part, to accentuate his quarrel with the "anti-traditional" bent of English criticism that he had attacked a decade earlier."0 Thus, the whole of the declaration did not settle him firmly in an existing English culture markedly different from the United States, but rather, amounted to the statement of a personal ideal of English-ness, a pointing-up of his dissatisfaction with England's culture as it stood. He may very well have looked on his stewardship of the Criterion as an opportunity for encouraging changes in England that would bring it closer to his image of what it should have been. But, as Herbert Howarth observes, "The Criterion was driven from the new-Tory constructivism, which had been its star, to the defensive task of undercutting the enemy's position.'"" Some of Eliot's comments in 308

Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 315. Ibid., p. 320. 3,0 Ibid.. p. 3. a " Howarth, Notes on Some Figures Behind 3m

T. S. Eliot, p. 255.

350

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

the magazine, during the 1930's, express distinct pessimism about the possibility of bringing an improved politics to England. Candidates for the new Toryism were merely "deserters from Whiggism and . . . businessmen."" 1 Writing in 1938, Eliot found "no hope either in the Labour Party or in the equally unimaginative dominant section of the Conservative Party. There seems no hope in contemporary politics at all.'"" In the course of the decade, the magazine's focus had shifted from the political to the theological. Reviewing the Criterion's history in its last issue, Eliot wrote : "For myself, a right political philosophy came more and more to imply a right theology—and right economics to depend upon right ethics. . . .'"" Howarth sees the magazine's shift as reflecting Eliot's realization that he could not effect the political changes he had hoped for. Keeping in mind Howarth's view of this shift, we can see Eliot's cultural criticism of the 1940's as an extension of his efforts as editor of the Criterion. For that criticism continues to express his unhappiness with the status quo of England without presenting a viable procedure for transforming it. The principal works in question are Idea ôf a Christian Society (1940) and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). In the first of these books Eliot envisions a state that rests on a foundation of Christian dogma and practice, that is authoritarian in tone, and that has a stable hierarchical Eliot, "A Commentary," Criterion, X (October, 1931), 71. (This remark is cited by Howarth, pp. 255-256.) Just h o w pessimistic Eliot was about the possibility of creating a T o r y party that would satisfy him is further indicated in this same "Commentary." H e c l a i m e d there that the trouble with a recent book was that its author s e e m e d to think of Toryism "as something to be revived, instead of s o m e thing to be invented. There are, and have been Tories ; but it is doubtful whether there has even been any continuous Tory party of which individual Tories have much reason to be proud" (68). m Eliot, "A Commentary," Criterion, X V I I I (Oct., 1938), 60. "•Eliot, "Last Words," Criterion, X V I I I (Jan., 1939), 272.

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

351

social structure with a grouping of devout Christians at the top; the second work looks to a state that is composed of regions with distinct cultural differences, a state where the modern trends toward industrialization, urbanization and uniformity are held in strict check. The clear split between European reality and Eliot's ideals was dramatized by his failure, in both of these books, to speak of the means by which England as it exists is to be transformed into the state that he desired. So far as his ideals are represented by Idea of a Christian Society, that split is further pointed up by his plays. For in these works he has created a spiritual aristocracy, whose members are distinctly separated from the other characters and the everyday world that they represent. Thus, in The Family Reunion, when the guilt-ridden Harry Monchensey is asked to explain the source of his malaise to members of his family, he replies "How can I explain, how can I explain to you?"'" He reminds us here of Sweeney in Sweeney Agonistes, who says to his friends "I've gotta use words when I talk to you,"1" and of Becket in Murder in the Cathedral, who throughout the play occupies a position of isolated superiority, never really communicating with the other characters, saying "Human kind cannot bear very much reality.'"11 Harry speaks of pursuing a life of "worship in the desert . . . thirst and deprivation / A stony sanctuary and a primitive altar/ . . . A care over lives of humble people. . . In The Cocktail Party, the psychiatrist Harcourt-Reilly says "There are several symptoms/ Which must occur together, and to a marked degree,/ To qualify ""Eliot, Ibid., Ibid., "'Ibid.,

Complete p. 83. p. 209. p. 281.

Poems,

p. 234. Italics in original.

352

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

a patient for my sanatorium . . ,"319 and later lets us know that only saints are admitted to that privileged place.*™ One of these is Celia Coplestone, who later dies after pursuing a life given over to the care of humble people. In The Confidential Clerk, Lucasta tells Colby that he has an inner world more real than the external one. "That's why you're different from the rest of us : / You have your secret garden. T o which you can retire/ And lock the gate behind you.'"11 Presumably it is people like these whom Eliot had in mind as the spiritual aristocracy of his ideal society, the "Community of Christians" that would supply spiritual leadership for the community at large. But in their existing society, the society of the plays, these characters are not part of a community but separated from it, and by the standards they set, the rest of the community is not regenerated but stands condemned. We can say then, that with the creation of these characters and with the issuance of his two volumes of cultural criticism, Eliot has given us the equivalent of what we have called James's "imaginary garden"" 5 and of the "paradise" of The Pisan Cantos. That is, he has taken selected elements of Europe as it has been or might be, and created a Utopian image which dramatizes its distance from the actual state of Europe. Each of these three Americans could come to terms with the Old World only by making an imaginary reconstruction of it in the shape of a personal ideal; Eliot simply seems to have begun this process at an earlier stage in his career than James or Pound. R. P. Blackmur is undoubtedly right '"Ibid., p. 352. Italics in original. Ibid., p. 356. T. S. Eliot, The Confidential Clerk ( N e w York, 1954), p. 63. T h e article in which Eliot spoke of James's vision of the ideal society, and of the disparity between that ideal and the actual, was entitled "A Prediction in Regard to Three English Authors." It could well have been called " A Prediction in Regard to Four English Authors." JM

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

353

when he interprets "the spirit unappeased and peregrine/ Between two worlds become much like each other," the spirit referred to in the Four Quartets, as Eliot himself.1'1 What the foregoing pages have tried to show is the repeated suggestion in Eliot's work that Europe had failed him by having become much like America. If James served for Pound and Eliot as an honored predecessor, an American who had gone abroad and produced a body of writing they could admire, so too did the two poets serve as expatriate models for the American writers who migrated to Europe in the 1920's. But as Malcolm Cowley reports in Exile's Return, many of these writers suffered a rapid disillusionment—they found a Europe plagued by economic woes, its intellectuals more demoralized than those at home. Furthermore, the industrial society, the business civilization that these writers were trying to escape, was putting its stamp on Europe™ (something Eliot's work could have told them). In contrast to Pound and Eliot, who acted out the drama of their expatriation to the utmost limits, most of these later writers returned home after a comparatively short stay abroad. Edmund Wilson probably expressed their mood when he wrote in April, 1929, that "Industrially, politically and socially, Europe . . . is becoming more and more like America every day. . . . It is up to American writers to try to make some sense of their American world— for their world is now everybody's world. . . This sense of oneness could only have been confirmed when, less than 3 3 '" See R. P. Blackmur, Form and Value in Modern Poetry ( G a r d e n City, 1957), pp. 181-182. See Cowley, Exile's Return, pp. 9 4 - 9 5 . See also M a t t h e w Josephson, Portrait of the Artist as American ( N e w York, 1930), pp. 295 ff. 35 ' E d m u n d Wilson, The Shores of Light ( N e w Y o r k , 1952), p. 440.

354

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

eight months after Wilson's statement, America and Europe came together in mutual economic collapse. Many writers in the 1930's may have felt as alienated from the United States as they did in the preceding decade, but the terms of the alienation had shifted; the focus was no longer on the life of art and the freedom and cultivation of the individual, but on social and economic reform. Europe may have continued to elicit our writers' homage, but only in the sense that they imported its ideologies to fight for reforms on their home grounds. The spirit of the twenties was firmly put behind, and with it, the expatriate stance as a prevailing gesture of rebellion. We do get a Henry Miller going abroad in that decade, but only to send back, as in Tropic of Cancer, a portrait of the expatriate as lowlife. Thomas Wolfe, initially entranced by Germany, eventually recoiled from its increasing Nazism, recording his disillusionment in You Can't Go Home Again, where he said : "America was young, America was still the New World of mankind's hope, America was not like this old and worn-out Europe which seethed and festered with a thousand deep and uncorrected ancient maladies.'"" A mode of feeling that was anything but alienation characterized much of America's cultural life in the 1930's. That decade saw a renaissance of interest and pride in the American past, in our traditions, customs and regions. (Alfred Kazin has brilliantly surveyed that renaissance in On Native Grounds.) Hart Crane's The Bridge, published at the start of the decade and exhibiting a massive interest in the national past was, in this sense, a prediction of much to come. The difference in mood between the twenties and thirties 3:

' T h o m a s Wolfe, You Cani p. 730.

Go Home

Again

(New Y o r k . 1942),

355

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

can be neatly illustrated by the history of H a r o l d Stearns. A s a y o u n g m a n , he edited a s y m p o s i u m , Civilization United

States,

published

in

1922. A p p a r e n t l y

in the

taking

its

opinions to heart, he fled to E u r o p e even b e f o r e s u b m i t t i n g his own portion of the m a n u s c r i p t . Stearns's s y m p o s i u m h a d brought together a n u m b e r of c o m m e n t a t o r s on the national life ( a m o n g t h e m V a n W y c k B r o o k s a n d H. L . M e n c k e n ) , whose essays, separately conceived, a m o u n t e d t o a unanim o u s indictment of the c u l t u r e of this c o u n t r y . A m e r i c a n business, politics, literature, j o u r n a l i s m a n d f a m i l y life were all sharply criticized, a n d little h o p e was offered f o r the i m p r o v e m e n t of any of t h e m . T h e twenties c a m e to an end, Stearns

returned,

and

eventually

wrote

a

(an earlier b o o k ,

work

called

America·

A Re-appraisal

Rediscovering

America,

served as a k i n d of warm-up). In it, h e s a i d :

At whatever point you touch the complex American life of today you get a sense of new confidence, new pride, and even new hope. It is something deeper than mere economic recovery (for as yet this has been only fragmentary and uncertain) or mere exhaustion with despair. It is a growing awareness that, for all our mistakes, we are not committed to the type of suicidal nationalism—or to the even more murderous class warfare cutting across national boundaries—both of which are holding Europe in a death-vise. It is a dim but growing conviction that our way of life has not yet been tried and found wanting . . . we do not believe that democracy has failed us, but that we have not yet fully explored the democratic way of life.3 7 H e went on t o praise A m e r i c a at t h e e x p e n s e of E u r o p e : Romance has fled Europe in despair and has found a new home in America: Our literature reflects it; our historians are busy with our own colorful traditions; our music is gayer Harold E. Stearns, America: p. 11.

A Re-appraisal

( N e w York, 1937),

356

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

and brighter than E u r o p e ' s plaintive folk s o n g s and n o s t a l g i c military m a r c h e s ; o u r theater and o u r c i n e m a are full of vitality, e v e n if s o m e t i m e s a w k w a r d and n o n e - t o o - s u b t l e ; o u r art is no l o n g e r just d e r i v a t i v e a n d , w h e n w e really wish it to be, o u r architecture is superb; o u r intellectual and scientific life is freer and m o r e fertile than a n y t h i n g o n e c a n find in E u r o p e ; o u r political structure is firmer and healthier; o u r attitude t o w a r d s religion is m o r e tolerant a n d intelligent; o u r social and f a m i l y and s e x u a l life h a s m o r e d i g n i t y yet m o r e flexibility. . .

It appears as though Stearns, in this second passage, is remembering the opinions on divers subjects expressed by the contributors to his 1922 symposium, and is attempting a one-man rebuttal of them. (No wonder that one critic has mistakenly listed America• A Re-appraisal as a "symposium"!) And, in fact, Stearns continues by saying that these statements are not made in "the heckling mood of a generation ago—a mood I shared then and hope I understand now, a healthy mood for all youngsters to go through.'" ÎS Here is the voice of the thirties characteristically condescending to the twenties. Stearns's remark on our " b u s y " historians points up the concern with itself that America was displaying. O n e manifestation of that concern, during the 1930's, was the widespread mood of isolationism, a mood which was nor the exclusive property of reactionaries and which may have affected the literary climate. One prominent writer asserted in 1935 that "of the hell broth that is brewing in E u r o p e we have no need to drink. . . . W e were fools to be sucked in once in a European war, and we should never be sucked in again." T h e author of this was—Hemingway!' 1 0 He K

"Ibid., p p . 18-19. ™ Ibid., p. 19. 330 Q u o t e d in C u s h i n g S t r o u t , The American Image of the Old World ( N e w Y o r k , 1963), p. 205. S t r o u t cites several e x a m p l e s of

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

357

(along with others) eventually was sucked in, as he responded to the tolling bells of the Spanish Civil W a r . But in the meantime,

writers

like

Faulkner

and

Steinbeck

were

d e m o n s t r a t i n g that the American novelist could function as a stay-at-home; the same held true f o r the A m e r i c a n poet as was being proven by R o b e r t Frost. In the years since World War II, expatriation to Europe has not shown any notable signs of revival as a literary strategy. There are several ways to account for this. For one thing, the American writer can now sample Europe more freely than ever before and need not make a long-term commitment to it. Travel is unprecedentedly easy, and it is available to writers through grants from magazines, publishing houses, foundations and government cultural exchanges. The novelist or poet can spend a year or two abroad, comfortably supported by such a grant, and then return to this country, where he is likely to have a teaching job. He may secure additional income from lectures, readings, or contributions to the mass magazines. At any rate, contemporary literary life shares in the general affluence of our society, and the American writer need not feel that he suffers from economic neglect. Pound could complain about starving poets, but they are a vanishing breed in the America of today. Vanished too are other features in the literary life of this country that so angered Pound. The contemporary novelist or poet does not confront an establishment rigidly controlled by "fusty old crocks" offering sullen resistance to the experimental, and capable only of feeble criticism. "Little" magazines, open to young writers, abound. American criticism has acquired great power and sophistication. Much of that A m e r i c a n writers of this p e r i o d w h o t u r n e d their b a c k s o n E u r o p e . S e e p. 193 of his b o o k .

358

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

criticism is being written by teachers in our universities who are themselves creative writers and alert to current developments. Moreover, American writers today enjoy unprecedented freedom of expression. But aside from the presence of a more favorable atmosphere and the availability of a greater affluence, there is another reason why literary artists of today are so much less likely to exchange America for Europe than those of Pound's generation or of the 1920's. Perhaps we can best formulate that reason by turning to the symposium conducted in 1952 by Partisan Review. In that symposium, the magazine's editors posited a distinct shift in the attitude of American intellectuals toward their country, a considerable reduction in the feelings of hostility and separation that had characterized them in the earlier years of the century: "America is no longer the raw and unformed land of promise from which men of superior gifts like James, Santayana, and Eliot departed, seeking in Europe what they found lacking in America." The editors go on to assert that Europe is n o longer regarded as a sanctuary; it n o l o n g e r a s s u r e s that rich e x p e r i e n c e of c u l t u r e w h i c h inspired and justified a criticism of A m e r i c a n life. . . . F o r better o r for w o r s e , m o s t writers n o l o n g e r a c c e p t a l i e n a t i o n a s the artist's f a t e in A m e r i c a ; o n the contrary, they want very m u c h to be a part of A m e r i c a n life. M o r e and m o r e writers h a v e c e a s e d to think of t h e m s e l v e s a s rebels a n d exiles. T h e y n o w b e l i e v e that their values, if they are to be realized at all, m u s t be realized in A m e r i c a and in relation to the actuality of A m e r i c a n life."'

The bulk of the contributors to the symposium agree with these assertions. But even the dissenting voices, those of James Burnham and Norman Mailer, do not say anything Editors, " O u r C o u n t r y a n d X I X ( M a y - J u n e , 1952), 284.

Our Culture,"

Partisan

Review,

THE FAILURE OF EUROPE

359

that would question the relative positions of America and Europe as described by the editors; they do not assert a relationship between the two that would make expatriation seem a logical or desirable undertaking. Burnham declares that we remain a " 'semi-barbarian superstate of the periphery,' " but goes on to say that what has happened since the last generation "is not that American culture has become better . . . but the world much worse. . . .',Μ2 Mailer says that he is in "almost total disagreement with the assumptions" of the symposium, but it becomes clear that his disagreement is confined to indicating his dissatisfaction with certain large features of America's political and economic life; he never mentions Europe as offering any alternative to these. None of the participants in the symposium sees Europe as offering a civilization clearly superior to that of the United States; Europe's primary claim on our attention lies in the glories of its past. In his contribution, Leslie Fiedler goes beyond this and points to a Europe which is "haunted by the idea of A m e r i c a " at the levels of both high culture and mass culture, an Old World which is fascinated both by Moby Dick and Gary Cooper." 3 If anything, Europe's absorption of Ameri"~Ibid„ 291. 332 Ibid., pp. 2 9 4 - 2 9 5 . In an interview, originally published in 1962, Mary McCarthy was asked if "the old problem, the American in Europe" interested her as a novelist. She replied that it did at the time she wrote her story, "The Cicerone" (1946). "But," she continued, "no, not further. For one thing, I don't k n o w whether I cease to feel so much like an American or what ; N e w York is, after all, so Europeanized, and so many of one's friends are European, that the distinction between y o u as an American and the European blurs. A l s o Europe has become so much m o r e Americanized. N o , I no longer see that Jamesian distinction. I mean, I see it in James, a n d 1 could see it even in 1946, but I don't see it any more. I don't feel any more this antithesis of Y o u n g America, Old Europe. I think that's really gone." See Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series, ( N e w York, 1963), 287.

360

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F E U R O P E

can mass culture (which the editors of the symposium see as the prime enemy of the contemporary intellectual) has increased in the decade since Fiedler made his observation. This reverse flow of the cultural stream was presaged by James's work and has been explicitly recorded by Eliot's, and no one (as this chapter tries to show) has testified more to the limitations of Europe as a desirable alternative to the United States than Pound and Eliot. To some extent this testimony has been implicitly given, through the nature of their commitments in the Old World. As the Partisan Review pointed out more than once, the cultural charisma that America now seems possessed of is undoubtedly a function of its economic and military leadership of the West. (For James, Europe was "beauty and art . . . history and fame and power"—the United States today is at least "power.") It is also a function of America's having successfully maintained both its freedom and stability, while Europe was being racked by totalitarianism and upheaval. Pound and Eliot could draw American artists abroad only so long as the virtues of American democracy could be taken for granted, and so long as the two poets presented, first and foremost, the same image that James had, that of the dedicated and brilliant artist. But a blurring in this image of the two developed coincident with the increasing precariousness of democracy in the Western world. Pound and Eliot became spokesmen for that which is more European than American, Eliot championing religious authoritarianism, and Pound the authoritarianism of the secular state. In this, their expatriation became something few American writers today would be willing to follow.

Bibliography The list below includes those writings which are cited in the text or in the footnotes. It also includes relevant primary sources and useful secondary sources which were consulted but which have not been specifically cited. For the reader's convenience, I have not only broken up the bibliography into primary sources and secondary sources, but have also grouped the works of James, Pound and Eliot, respectively, under three separate headings. WORKS

BY H E N R Y

JAMES

The Ambassadors, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1948. The American, New York, Rinehart and Co., 1952. The American Essays, ed. Leon Edel, New York, Vintage Books, 1956. The American Scene, ed. W. H. Auden, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946. The Art of the Novel, ed. R. P. Blackmur, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, n.d. The Art of Travel, ed. Morton D. Zabel, Garden City, Doubleday, 1958. The Aspern Papers, The Spoils of Poynton, ed. R. P. Blackmur, New York, Dell Publishing Co., 1959. 361

362

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F

EUROPE

Autobiography, ed. F. W. Dupee, New York, Criterion Books, 1956. The Bostonians, ed. Irving Howe, New York, The Modern Library, 1956. The Complete Tales of Henry James, ed. Leon Edel, vols. I-VI, New York, J. B. Lippincott, 1962. Embarrassments, London, William Heinemann, 1896. The Europeans, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1920. The Finer Grain, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910. French Poets and Novelists, London, Macmillan, 1878. The Future of the Novel, ed. Leon Edel, New York, Vintage Books, 1956. The Great Short Novels of Henry James, ed. Philip Rahv, New York, Dial Press, 1944. Hawthorne, Ithaca, Great Seal Books, 1956. In the Cage and Other Tales, ed. Morton D. Zabel, Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958. Italian Hours, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1909. The Letters of Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock, 2 vols., New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920. A Little Tour in France, Boston, James R. Osgood, 1885. A London Life, New York, Grove Press, 1957. The Notebooks of Henry James, ed. F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, New York, Oxford, 1947. Notes on Novelists, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914. The Novels and Tales of Henry James, 26 vols., New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907-1917. A Passionate Pilgrim ami Other Tales, Boston, James R. Osgood, 1875. Portraits of Places, New York, Lear Publishers, 1948. The Princess Casamassima, New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1959.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

363

The Question of Our Speech, The Lesson of Balzac: Two Lectures, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1905. The Selected Letters of Henry James, ed. Leon Edel. New York, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955. Selected Short Stories, ed. Quentin Anderson. New York, Rinehart and Co., 1950. The Tragic Muse, London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1948. William Wet more Story and His Friends, 2 vols, in 1, New York, Grove Press, n.d. Within the Rim and Other Essays, London, W. Collins Sons, 1918. Books

Containing

Writings of

James

Brooke, Rupert, Letters from America, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916. Harlow, Virginia. Thomas Sergeant Perry, Durham, Duke University Press, 1950. Matthiessen, F. O., The James Family, New York, Alfred Knopf, 1947. Perry. Ralnh Barton, The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols.. Boston, Little, Brown, 1935. Contributions

to Periodicals

Untitled review of T. Higginson's translation of The oí Epictetus, North American Review, CTI (April. 599-606. Untitled review of TheoDhile Gautier's Tableaux de Nation, XTV (Jan. 25, 1872), 61-62. Untitled review of Ernest Fevdau's Théophile Gautier. American Review. C X I X (Oct.. 1874), 416-423.

Works 1866V Siège. North

364

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F

EUROPE

Untitled article on Frank Duveneck's paintings. Nation, XX (June 3, 1875), 376-377. Untitled note in Nation. X X I (Dec. 30, 1875), 419. Untitled note in Nation. X X V I (May 30. 1878). 357. Untitled review of August Hare's Walks in London. Nation, X X V I (June 20, 1878), 407^108. Untitled letter in Nation, X X V I I I (Feb. 13, 1879), 119. "Adina, Part I," Scribner's Monthly (May, 1874), 33^13 (short story). "Adina, Part II," Scribner's Monthly (June, 1874), 181-191 (short story). "Americans Abroad," Nation. X X V I I (Oct. 3, 1878), 208 209. "At Isella," Galaxy. XII (Aug., 1871), 241 255 (short story). "Charles Baudelaire," Nation. X X I I (April 27, 1876), 279281.

"The Comédie-Française In London," Nation, X X I X (July 31, 1879), 72-73. "Dallas Galbraith," Nation, VII (Oct. 22, 1868), 330-331. "Daumier, Caricaturist," Century Magazine, X X X I X (Jan., 1890). 402-413. "An English Easter," Lippincott's Magazine, XX (July, 1877), 50-60. "An English Winter Watering-Place," Nation, XXVIII (April 3, 1879), 228-229. " A European Summer," Nation, XV (July 4, 1872), 7-9. "Father Lacordaire," Nation. VI (Jan. 16, 1868), 53-55. "Flaubert's Temptation of St. Anthony," Nation, XVIII (June 4, 1874), 365-366. "Gautier's Winter in Russia," Nation, X I X (Nov. 12, 1874), 321-322. "George du Maurier," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, XCV (Sept., 1897), 594-609.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Guy De M a u p a s s a n t . " Harper's 1889), 834-835.

Weekly,

365

X X X I I I (Oct. 19,

"Henry Beyle." Nation, X I X (Sept. 17, 1874), 187 189. " H o m b u r g R e f o r m e d , " Nation, X V I I (Aug. 28, 1873), 143. "Howells's Foregone Conclusion," Nation, X X (Jan. 7, 1875), 12- 13. "In S c o t l a n d - II," Nation, "Iwan Turgéniew," North (April, 1874), 326-356.

X X V I I (Oct. 24. 1878), 254-256. American

Review,

" T h e Journal of the Brothers De G o n c o u r t , " Review, C C L X I (Sept. 1, 1888), 501-520.

CXVIII Fortnightly

" L a k e George," Nation, X I (Aug. 25, 1870), 119-120. "Langel's France Politique Et Sociale," Nation, X X V (Oct. 18, 1877), 244-245. " T h e Letters of Eugenie De G u e r i n , " Nation, III (Sept. 13, 1866), 206-207. " L o n d o n , " Century Magazine, X X X V I I (Nov., 1888), 2 1 9 239. " L o n d o n in the D e a d Season," Nation, X X V I I (Sept. 26, 1878), 193-194. " T h e L o n d o n T h e a t r e s , " Nation, X X V I I I (June 12, 1879), 400-401. " T h e M a n n e r s of American W o m e n , Part I , " Harper's Bazaar, X L I (April, 1907), 355-359. " T h e Manners of American W o m e n , Part I I " Harper's Bazaar, X L I (May, 1907), 453-458. " T h e M a n n e r s of American W o m e n . Part I I I , " Harper's Bazaar, X L I (June, 1907), 537-541. " T h e Manners of American W o m e n . Part I V , " Harper's Bazaar, X L I (July, 1907), 646-651. " M a t i l d a Serao," North American Review, CLXXII (March, 1901), 367 380.

366

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH O F EUROPE

"Modern Women," Nation, VII (Oct. 22, 1868), 332-334. "Mr. Walt Whitman," Nation, I (Nov. 16, 1865), 625-626. "Nadal's Impressions of England," Nation, XXI (Oct. 7, 1875), 232-233. "Newport," Nation, XI (Sept. 15, 1870), 170-172. "The New Year in England," Nation, XXVIII (Jan. 23, 1879), 65-66. "Our Artists in Europe," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, L X X I X (June, 1889), 50-66. "Paris As It Is," New York Daily Tribune (Dec. 25, 1875), 3. "Paris in Election Time," New York Daily Tribune (March 4, 1876), 3. "Paris Revisited," New York Daily Tribune (Dec. 11, 1875), 3. "The Parisian Stage," Nation, XVI (Jan. 9, 1873), 23-24. "Parisian Topics," New York Daily Tribune (Feb. 19, 1876), 3. "Pierre Loti," Fortnightly Review, CCLVII (May 1, 1888), 647-664. "The Present Literary Situation in France," North American Review, C L X I X (Oct., 1899), 488-500. "Professor Masson's Essays," Nation, XX (Feb. 18, 1875), 114-115. "The Reassembling of Parliament," Nation, XXVIII (March 20, 1879), 197-199. "A Roman Holiday," Atlantic Monthly, XXXII (July, 1873), 1-11. "Sainte-Beuve," North American Review, C X X X (Jan., 1880), 51-68. "Sainte-Beuve's Articles," Nation, XX (Feb. 18, 1875), 117-118. "Sainte-Beuve's Portraits," Nation, VI (June 4, 1868), 454455

BIBLIOGRAPHY

367

"Saratoga," Nation, XI (Aug. 11, 1870), 87-89. "The Schonberg-Cotta Family." Nation, I (Sept. 14, 1865), 344-345. "The Science of Criticism," New Review, IV (May, 1891), 398-402. "The Speech of American Women, Part I," Harper's Bazaar, XL (Nov., 1906), 979-982. "The Speech of American Women, Part II," Harper's Bazaar, XL (Dec., 1906), 1103-1107. "The Speech of American Women, Part III," Harper's Bazaar, XLI (Jan., 1907), 17-21. "The Speech of American Women, Part IV," Harper's Bazaar, XLI (Feb., 1907), 113-117. "Taine's English Literature," Atlantic Monthly, XXIX (April, 1872), 4 6 9 ^ 7 2 . "Taine's Italy," Nation, VI (May 7, 1868), 373-375. "Taine's Notes on England," Nation, XIV (Jan. 25, 1872), 58-60. "Versailles As It Is," New York Daily Tribune (Jan. 8, 1876), 2. "William Dean Howells," Harper's Weekly, X X X (June 19, 1886), 394-395. "Winchelsea, Rye, and 'Denis Duval,' " Scribner's Magazine, X X I X (Jan., 1901), 44-53. WORKS

BY EZRA

POUND

ABC of Economics, Norfolk, New Directions, 1939. ABC of Reading, Norfolk, New Directions, n.d. America, Roosevelt and the Causes of the Present War, pamphlet, London, Peter Russell, 1951. The Cantos of Ezra Pound, New York, New Directions, 1948.

368

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F

EUROPE

Ezra Pound: Selected[ Poems, ed. T. S. Eliot, London. Faber and Gwyer, 1928. Gold and Work, pamphlet, London, Peter Russell, 1950. Guide to Kulchur, Norfolk, New Directions, n.d. If This Be Treason, pamphlet, Siena, Tip. Nuova, 1948. Impact, Chicago, Henry Regnery, 1960. An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States, pamphlet, London, Peter Russell. 1950. Jefferson and I or Mussolini, London, Stanley Nott, 1935. The Letters of Ezra Pound, ed. D. D. Paige, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1950. Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. T. S. Eliot, Norfolk, New Directions, 1954. Make It New, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1935. Pavannes and Divisions, New York, Alfred Knopf, 1918. Patria Mia, Chicago. Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1950. Personae: The Collected Poems of Ezra Pound, New York, New Directions, n.d. Section Rock-Drill, 85-95 de los cantares. New Y o r k , New Directions, 1956. Social Credit: An Impact, pamphlet, London, Peter Russell, 1951. The Spirit of Romance, Norfolk, New Directions, n.d. Thrones: 96-109 de los cantares, New York, New Directions, 1959. A Visiting Card, pamphlet, London, Peter Russell. 1952. What is Money For?, pamphlet, London, Peter Russell, 1951. Books edited by

Pound

Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats, town, D u n d r u m , T h e Cuala Press, 1917.

Church-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

369

Translations The Confucian Odes: The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius, New York, New Directions, 1959. Confucius, The Great Digest and Unwobbling Pivot, New York, New Directions, 1951. The Translations of Ezra Pound, New York, New Directions, n.d. Contributions

to Periodicals

Unsigned article (Pound?). "Long Live the Vortex!" Blast, No. 1 (June 20, 1914), 7-8. Untitled note in Little Review, IV (May, 1918), 62. "Affirmations," New Age, XVI (Jan. 7, 1915), 246-247. "Affirmations," New Age, XVI (Jan. 14, 1915), 277-278. "Affirmations," New Age, XVI (Jan. 21, 1915), 311-312. "Affirmations," New Age, XVI (Jan. 28, 1915), 349-350. "Affirmations," New Age, X V I (Feb. 4, 1915), 380-382. "Affirmations," New Age, X V I (Feb. 11, 1915), 4 0 9 ^ 1 1 . "American Chaos, I," New Age, XVII (Sept. 9, 1915), 449. "American Chaos, II," New Age, X V I I (Sept. 16,1915), 471. "The Approach to Paris, VII," New Age (Oct. 16, 1913), XIII, 726-728. "The Audience," Poetry, V (Oct., 1914), 29-30. "Avis," Little Review, VI (May, 1919), 69-70. "Axiomata," New Age, X X V I I I (Jan. 13, 1921), 125-126. "Cambridge Left," Poetry, XLII (Sept., 1933), 353-355. "Correspondence," Poetry, X X X (June, 1927), 174-175. "Correspondence," British Union Quarterly, II (Oct-Dec., 1938), 80-81. "Credit and the Fine Arts," New Age, X X X (March 30, 1922), 284—285.

370

THREE V O Y A G E R S IN SEARCH OF E U R O P E

"D'Artagnan Twenty Years After," Criterion, XVI (July, 1937), 606-617. "Economic Democracy," Little Review, VI (April, 1920), 39-42. "Editorial," Little Review, IV (May, 1917), 3-6. "Ε. E. Cummings Alive," New English Weekly, VI (Dec. 20, 1934), 210-211. "Esopé, France and the Trade Union," New Age, X X V (Oct. 23, 1919), 423-424. "For a New Paideuma," Criterion, XVII (Jan., 1938), 205213. "From Italy" (letter to the editor), New English Weekly, V (May 24, 1934), 143-144. "Hark to Sturge Moore," Poetry, VI (June, 1915), 139-145. "Hudson: Poet Strayed into Science," Little Review, VII (May-June, 1920), 13 17. "I Gather the Limbs of Osiris," New Age, X (Dec. 7, 1911), 130-131. "Indiscretions; or, Revue de Deux Mondes," The New Age, X X V I I (May 27, 1920), 56-57. "Indiscretions; or, Revue de Deux Mondes, II," The New Age, X X V I I (June 3, 1920), 76-77. "Indiscretions; or, Revue de Deux Mondes, III," The New Age, X X V I I (June 10, 1920), 91-92. "Indiscretions; or, Revue de Deux Mondes, IV," The New Age, XXVII (June 17, 1920), 105-106. "Indiscretions; or, Revue de Deux Mondes, V," The New Age, XXVII (June 24, 1920), 124-125. "Indiscretions; or, Revue de Deux Mondes, VIII," The New Age, X X V I I (July 15, 1920), 172-173. "Indiscretions; or, Revue de Deux Mondes, XII," The New Age, X X V I I (Aug. 12, 1920), 236-237.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

371

"The Individual in his Milieu," Criterion, XV (October, 1935), 30-45. "In Explanation," Little Review, V (August, 1918), 5-9. "Irony, Laforgue, and Some Satire," Poetry, XI (Nov.. 1917), 93-98. "The Island of Paris: A Letter," Dial, L X I X (October, 1920), 406-411. "The Island of Paris: A Letter," Dial. L X I X (Dec., 1920), 635-639. "The Jefferson-Adams Correspondence," North American Review, CCXLIV (Winter, 1937-38), 314-324. "Leaving Out Economics," New English Weekly, VI (Jan. 31, 1935), 331-333. "A Letter from London," Little Review, III (April, 1916), 7-8. "Literary Prizes, Poetry, VII (March, 1916), 304-305. "Lucrum Tuum Damnum Publicum Est," Poetry, XLVIII (Aug., 1936), 273-275. "Manifesto," Poetry, XLI (October, 1932), 40-43. "Meditatio," Egoist, III (March 1, 1916), 37-38. "Mr. Eliot's Looseness," New English Weekly, V (May 10, 1934), 95-96. "Mr. Eliot's Mare's Nest," New English Weekly, IV (March 8, 1934), 500. "Mr. Eliot's Quandaries," New English Weekly, IV (March 29, 1934), 558-559. "Mr. Eliot's Solid Merit," New English Weekly, V (July 12, 1934), 297-299. "Mr. Hueffer and the Prose Tradition in Verse," Poetry, IV (June, 1914), 111-120. "Mr. Pound on Prizes," Poetry, XXI (Dec., 1927), 155-159. "Mr. T. S. Eliot's Quandaries" (a letter to the editor), New English Weekly, V (April 26, 1934), 48.

372

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F

EUROPE

" M u r d e r by Capital," Criterion, X I I (July, 1933), 585-592. " T h e New Sculpture," Egoist, I (Feb. 16, 1914). 67-68. " T h e New T h e r a p y , " New Age, X X X (March 16, 1922), 259-260. "Nothing N e w " (letter to the editor), New English IV (Dec. 14, 1933), 215.

Weekly,

" O n Criticism in General," Criterion, I (Jan., 1923). 143156. " A n Open Letter to John Gould Fletcher," Poetry, X L I I I (Feb., 1934), 292. "Paris," Poetry, III (Oct., 1913), 26-30. "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I (Oct., 1921), 456-463. "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I I (Jan., 1922), 73-78. "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I I (Feb., 1922), 187 -192. "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I I (April, 1922), 401-405. "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I I (June, 1922), 623-629. "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I I I (Sept.. 1922), 332-337. "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I I I (Nov., 1922), 549-554. "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I V (Jan., 1923), 85-90. "Paris Letter," Dial, L X X I V (March, 1923), 273-280. " T h e Pleasing Art of Poetry," New Age, X V I I (July 8, 1915), 229-231. "Practical Suggestions," Poetry, X X X I I I (March, 1929), 327-333. " T h e Printing Press Was Invented." Poetry, X L I X (Oct., 1936), 55. " A Problem of (Specifically) Style," New English Weekly, V I (Nov. 22, 1934), 127-128. "Provincialism the Enemy, I," New Age, X X I (July 12, 1917), 244-245. "Provincialism the Enemy, II," New Age, X X I (July 19, 1917), 268-269.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

373

"Provincialism the Enemy, III," New Age, XXI (July 26, 1917), 288- 289. "Provincialism the Enemy. IV," New Age, X X I (Aug. 2, 1917), 308-309. "The Reader Critic," Little Review, IV (Oct., 1917), 37-39. "Rémy de Gourmont," Poetry, VII (Jan., 1916), 197-202. "René Crevel." Criterion, VIII (Jan., 1939), 225-235. "The Revolt of Intelligence," New Age, X X V I (Nov. 13, 1919), 21-22. "The Revolt of Intelligence—II," New Age, X X V I (Dec. 11, 1919), 90-91. "The Revolt of Intelligence—III," New Age, X X V I (Dec. 18, 1919), 106-107. "The Revolt of Intelligence—V," New Age, X X V I (Jan. 8, 1920), 153-154. "The Revolt of Intelligence—VI," New Age, X X V I (Jan. 15, 1920), 176-177. "The Revolt of Intelligence—VIII," New Age, X X V I (March 4, 1920), 287-288. "The Revolt of Intelligence—IX, New Age, X X V I (March 11, 1920), 301-302. "The Revolution Betrayed," British Union Quarterly, II ( J a n - M a r c h , 1938), 36-48. "The Situation," Poetry, X X X V I I I (May, 1931), 95-97. "The State Should Move Like a Dance," British Union Quarterly, II (Oct-Dec., 1938), 43-51. "Status Rerum," Poetry, I (Jan., 1913), 123-127. "Status Rerum—The Second," Poetry, VIII (April, 1916), 38^3. "Studies in Contemporary Mentality," New Age, X X I (Sept. 27. 1917), 464-466. "Studies in Contemporary Mentality," New Age, X X I (Oct. 11, 1917), 505-507.

374

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH O F EUROPE

"Studies in Contemporary Mentality," New Age, XXII (Nov. 1, 1917), 10-11. "Studies in Contemporary Mentality," New Age, XXII (Nov. 8, 1917), 28-30. "Studies in Contemporary Mentality," New Age, XXII (Nov. 15, 1917), 48-49. "Studies in Contemporary Mentality," New Age, XXII (Dec. 27, 1917), 167-168. "Studies in Contemporary Mentality," New Age, XXII (Jan. 3, 1918), 192-195. "Studies in Contemporary Mentality," New Age, XXII (Jan. 10, 1918), 208-209. "A Study in French Poets," Little Review, IV (Feb., 1918). 3-61. "Swinburne Versus Biographers," Poetry, XI (March, 1918), 322-329. "Tagore's Poems," Poetry, I (Dec., 1912), 92-94. "Tariff and Copyright," New Age, XXIII (Sept. 26, 1918), 348-349. "Thames Morasses," Poetry, XVII (March, 1921), 325-329. "Things to be Done," Poetry, IX (March, 1917), 312-314. "This Constant Preaching to the Mob," Poetry, VIII (June, 1916), 144-145. "This Subsidy Business," Poetry, X X X V (Jan., 1930), 212214. "This Super Neutrality," New Age, XVII (Oct. 21, 1915), 595. "Through Alien Eyes, I," New Age, XII (Jan. 16, 1913), 252. "Through Alien Eyes, II," New Age, X I I (Jan. 23, 1913), 275-276. "Through Alien Eyes, IV," New Age, XII (Feb. 6, 1913), 324.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

375

"Time Lag in the American Wilderness," New English Weekly, VI (Dec. 6, 1934), 175. "The Tradition," Poeiry, III (Jan., 1914), 137-141. "T. S. Eliot," Poetry, X (Aug., 1917), 264-271. "Unanimism," Little Review, IV (April, 1918), 26-32. "The U.S. Social Credit Bill" (letter to the editor), New English Weekly, IV (April 5, 1934), 599-600. "Views and Reviews," New English Weekly, IV (Feb. 22, 1934), 451-452. "Vorticism," Fortnightly Review, CII (Sept., 1914), 461 — 471. "What America Has to Live Down, I," New Age, XXIII (Aug. 22, 1918), 266-261. "What America Has to Live Down, II," New Age, XXIII (Aug. 29, 1918), 281-282. "What America Has to Live Down, III," New Age, XXIII (Sept. 5, 1918), 297-298. "What America Has to Live Down, V," New Age, X X I I I (Sept. 12, 1918), 314^315. "What America Has to Live Down, VI," New Age, XXIII (Sept. 19, 1918), 329. "What Price the Muses Now," New English Weekly, V (May 24, 1934), 130-132. "The Yeats Letters," Poetry, XI (Jan., 1918), 223-225. Unpublished

Materials

Typescript copies, made by D. D. Paige, of Pound letters addressed to various correspondents, American Literature Collection, Yale University Library. Letters by Pound to W. E. Woodward, Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library. Unpublished letter to Frederick Manning, Special Collections, U C L A Library.

376

THREE V O Y A G E R S IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

W O R K S BY T . S. Books and

ELIOT

Pamphlets

After Strange Gods, London, Faber and Faber, 1934. American Literature and the American Language, St. Louis, Committee on Publications, Washington University, 1953. The Classics and the Man of Letters, pamphlet, New York, Oxford University Press, 1943. Collected Poems 1909-1962, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963. The Complete Poems and Plays, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1952. The Confidential Clerk, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1954. The Elder Statesman, New York, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959. Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry, pamphlet, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1917. For Lancelot Andrewes, Garden City, Doubleday, Doran, 1929. Idea of a Christian Society, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1940. John Dryden, New York, Terence and Elsa Holliday, 1932. Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1949. On Poetry, pamphlet, Richmond, privately printed, 1947. On Poetry and Poets, New York, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957. Poems Written in Early Youth, Stockholm, privately printed, 1950. Religious Drama: Mediaeval and Modern, pamphlet, New York, House of Books, 1954.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

377

The Rock, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1934. The Sacred Wood, London, Methuen and Co., 1957. Selected Essays 1917-1932, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1932. Selected Prose, ed. John Hay ward, Aylesbury, Penguin Books, 1955. The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, London, Faber and Faber, 1933. The Value and Use of Cathedrals in England To-Day, pamphlet, Chichester, Moore and Tillyer, 1951. Contributions

to Books and

Pamphlets

Untitled article in Irving Babbitt: Man and Teacher, ed. Frederick Manchester and Odell Shepard, New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1941. "Defense of the Islands," (poem), in Britain At War, ed. Monroe Wheeler, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1941. "Experiment in Criticism," in Tradition and Experiment in Present-day Literature, New York, Oxford University Press, 1929. "Introduction" to A Choice of Kipling's Verse, ed. T. S. Eliot, London, Faber and Faber, 1941. "Introduction" to G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire London, Oxford University Press, 1930. "Introduction" to Ezra Pound: Selected Poems, London, Faber and Gwyer, 1928. "Introduction to Inoubliable France, London, Sylvan Press, 1944. "Literature and the Modern World," in America Through the Essay, ed. A. Theodore Johnson and Allen Tate, New York, Oxford University Press, 1940.

378

THREE V O Y A G E R S IN SEARCH OF E U R O P E

"The Nature of Cultural Relations," in Friendship, Progress, Civilization, pamphlet, London. Anglo-Swedish Society. 1943. Nobel Prize Speech in Les Prix Nobel En 1948, Stockholm, P. A. Norstadt and Soner, 1949. "On Henry James," in The Question of Henry James, ed. F. W. Dupee, New York, Henry Holt, 1945. "Preface" to Edgar Ansel Mowrer, This American World, London, Faber and Gwyer, 1928. "Religion Without Humanism," in Humanism and America, ed. Norman Foerster, New York, Farrar and Rinehart, 1930. "Towards a Christian Britain," in The Church Looks Ahead, London, Faber and Faber, 1941. Contributions

to Periodicals

Letter to F. M. Ford, Transatlantic Review, I (Jan., 1924), 95-96. Untitled review of Fashion in Literature, English Review, N.S. no. 5 (Oct., 1931), 634^636. Untitled review of A. T. Balfour's Theism and Humanism, International Journal of Ethics, X X V I (Jan., 1916), 284 289. Untitled review of Clive Bell's Civilization, Criterion, VIII (Sept., 1928), 161-164. Untitled review of Van Wyck Brooks' The Wine of the Puritans, Harvard Advocate, L X X X V I I (May 7, 1909), 80.

Untitled review of James Huneker's Egoists, Harvard Advocate, L X X X V I I I (Oct. 5, 1909), 16. Untitled review, Criterion, VIII (April, 1929), 552-556.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

379

Untitled review of Charles Homer Haskins's The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, Times Literary Supplement (Aug. 11, 1927), 542. Untitled contribution to "What France Means to You," La France Libre, VIII (June 15, 1944), 94-95. "The Action Française, M. Maurras and Mr. Ward," Criterion, VII (March, 1928), 195-203. "The Aims of Education," Measure, II (Dec., 1950), 3-16. "An American Critic," New Statesman (June 24, 1916), 284. "American Critics," Times Literary Supplement (Jan. 10, 1929), 24. "American Literature," Athenaeum (April 25, 1919), 236237. "American Prose," Times Literary Supplement (Sept. 2, 1926), 577. "The Art of Poetry: T. S. Eliot," (interview by Donald Hall), Paris Review, X X I (Spring-Summer, 1959), 47-70. "Books of the Quarter," Criterion, IV (Oct., 1926), 751-757. "Books of the Quarter," Criterion, VIII (Oct., 1928), 161164. "Books of the Quarter, Criterion, X (July, 1931), 768-774. "Building Up the Christian World," Listener, VII (April 6, 1932), 501-502. "Charleston, Hey! H e y ! " Nation & Athenaeum, XL (Jan. 29, 1927), 595. "Christianity and Communism," Listener, VII (March 16, 1932), 382-383. " A Commentary," Criterion, II (April, 1924), 231-235. " A Commentary," Criterion, III (Oct., 1924), 1-5. " A Commentary," Criterion, III (April, 1925), 341-344. " A Commentary," Criterion, V (Jan., 1927), 1-6. " A Commentary," Criterion, VII (March, 1928), 193 194. "A Commentary," Criterion, VIII (Sept., 1928, 161-164.

380

"A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A "A

T H R E E VOYAGERS IN SEARCH O F EUROPE

Commentary," Criterion, VIII (Dec.. 1928), 185-190. Commentary,'· Criterion, IX (Jan., 1930), 181-184. Commentary," Criterion, X (April, 1931), 481-^90. Commentary," Criterion. XI (July, 1932), 676-683. Commentary," Criterion. XII (Oct., 1932), 73-79. Commentary," Criterion, XII (April, 1933), 4 6 8 ^ 7 3 . Commentary," Criterion, XIII (Oct., 1933), 115-120. Commentary," Criterion, XIII (April, 1934), 451-454. Commentary," Criterion, XIV (Oct., 1934), 86-90. Commentary," Criterion, XIV (Jan., 1935), 260-264. Commentary," Criterion, XIV (July, 1935), 610-613. Commentary," Criterion, XV (Jan., 1936), 265-269. Commentary," Criterion, XV (April, 1936), 458-463. Commentary," Criterion, XVI (Oct., 1936), 63-69. Commentary," Criterion, X V I (July, 1937), 666-670. Commentary," Criterion, X V I I (Jan., 1938), 254-259. Commentary." Criterion, X V I I I (Oct., 1938), 58-62. Commentary," New English Weekly, XV (April 27, 1939), 27-28.

"Contemporanea," Egoist, V (June-July, 1918), 84-85. "Criticism in England," Athenaeum (June 13, 1919), 456 457. "Cultural Diversity and European Unity." Review 45, II (Summer, 1945), 61-69. "Disjecta Membra," Egoist, V (April, 1918), 55. "Ezra Pound," Poetry, L X V I I I (Sept., 1946), 326-338. "Gentlemen and Seamen," Harvard Advocate, L X X X V I I (May 25, 1909), 115-116. "Humanist, Artist and Scientist," Athenaeum (Oct. 10, 1919), 1014-15. "Idea of a Literary Review," Criterion, IV (Jan., 1926), 1-6. "Isolated Superiority," Dial, L X X X I V (Jan., 1928), 4-7.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

381

"John Dryden," Times Literary Supplement (June 9, 1921), 361-362. "Last Words," Criterion, XVIII (Jan., 1939), 269-275. "The Letters of J. B. Yeats," Egoist, IV (July, 1917). 89-90. "Lettre d'Angleterre," Nouvelle Revue Française, X V I I I (May 1, 1922), 617 -624. "Lettre d'Angleterre; Le Style Dans La Prose Anglaise Contemporaine," Nouvelle Revue Française, X I X (Dec. 1, 1922), 751-752. "Les Lettres Anglaises," Nouvelle Revue Française, X I V (May 1, 1927), 669-675. "Literature and the American Courts," Egoist, V (March, 1918), 39. "The Literature of Fascism." Criterion, VIII (Dec., 1928), 280-290. "London Letter," Dial, L X X (April, 1921), 448-453. "London Letter," Dial, L X X (June, 1921), 686-691. "London Letter," Dial, L X X I I (May, 1922), 510-513. "London Letter," Dial, L X X I I I (Sept., 1922), 329-331. "The Man Who Was King (story)," Smith Academy Record, VIII (June, 1905), 1-3. "Marianne Moore," Dial, L X X V (Dec., 1923), 594-597. "Medieval Philosophy," Times Literary Supplement (Dec. 12, 1926), 929. "The Method of Mr. Pound," Athenaeum (Oct. 24, 1919), 1065-1066. "Modern Heresies" (letter to the editor), New English Weekly, V (May 3, 1934), 71-72. "Mr. T. S. Eliot's Quandaries" (letter to the editor), New English Weekly, IV (April 12, 1934), 622-623. "Nightwood," Criterion, X V I (pr„ 1937), 4 6 9 ^ 7 4 . " A Note on Ezra Pound," Today, IV (Sept., 1918), 3-9. "Notes," Criterion, I (July, 1923), 421.

382

THREE V O Y A G E R S IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

"Notes on the Way," Time and Tide, XVI (Jan. 5, 1935), 6-7. "Note Sur Mallarmé et Poe," Nouvelle Revue Française, XXVII (July-Dec., 1926), 524-526. "On a Recent Piece of Criticism," Purpose, X (April-June, 1938), 90-94. "The Oxford Conference" (letter to the editor), Church Times, CXVIII (Aug. 6, 1937), 130. "Paul Elmer More," Princeton Alumni Weekly, X X X V I I (Feb. 5, 1937), 373-374. " 'Poet and Saint . . . " ' Dial, L X X X I I (May, 1927), 424431. "A Prediction in Regard to Three English Authors," Vanity Fair, X X I (Feb., 1924), 29, 98. "Professional, Or . . Egoist, V (April, 1918), 61. "Recent Books," Criterion, V (July, 1927), 69-73. "Reflections on Contemporary Poetry," Egoist, IV (Nov., 1917), 151. "Reflections on Contemporary Poetry," Egoist.. VI (July, 1919), 3 9 ^ 0 . "Religion and Science: a Phantom Dilemma," Listener, VII (March 23, 1932), 428-429. "A Sceptical Patrician," Athenaeum (May 23, 1919), 361362. "T. S. Eliot . . . An Interview," Granite Review, X X I V (No. 3, 1962), no pagination. "The Search for Moral Sanctions," Listener, VII (March 30, 1932), 445-446, 480. "Talk on Dante," Adelphi, X X V I I (First Quarter, 1951), 106-114. " 'Tarr,' " Egoist, V (Sept., 1918), 105-106. "Tennyson and Whitman," letter, Nation & Athenaeum, XLI (June 4, 1927), 302.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

383

'The Three Provincialities." Tyro, No. 2, (1922), 11-13. ''Three Reformers," Times Literary Supplement (Nov. 8, 1928), 810. "Turgenev," Egoist, IV (Dec., 1911), 167. "Ulysses, Order and Myth," Dial, L X X V (Nov., 1923), 480 483. "The Unfading Genius of Rudyard Kipling," Kipling Journal, X X V I (March, 1959), 9-12. "Views and Reviews," New English Weekly, XVI (Feb. 15, 1940), 251. "War-Paint and Feathers," Athenaeum, (Oct. 17, 1919), 1036. "Whitman and Tennyson," Nation & Athenaeum, XL (Dec. 18, 1926), 426. "The Writer as Artist," (discussion with Desmond Hawkins), Listener, X X I V (Nov. 28, 1940), 773-774.

SECONDARY

SOURCES

Books Adams, Brooks, The Law of Civilization and Decay, ed. Charles A. Beard, New York, Vintage Books, 1959. Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams, New York, The Modern Library, n.d. Aiken, Conrad, Ushant, New York, Duell, Sloan and Peirce, 1952. Aldington, Richard, Life for Life's Sake, New York, Viking Press, 1941. The American Writer and the European Tradition, ed. Margaret Denny and William H. Gilman, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1950.

384

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN SEARCH OF EUROPE

Babbitt, Irving, Literature and the American College, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1908. , Rousseau and Romanticism, New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1919. Blackmur, R. P., The Lion and the Honeycomb. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1955. Brooks, Van Wyck, The Pilgrimage of Henry James, New York, E. P. Dutton, 1925. , The Wine of the Puritans, London, Sisley's, 1908. A Casebook on Ezra Pound, ed. William Van O'Connor and Edward Stone, New York, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1959. Colum, Mary, Life and the Dream, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday and Co., 1947. Cowley, Malcolm, Exile's Return, New York, Viking Press, 1959. Curtis, Michael, Three Against the Republic: Sorel, Barres, and Maurras, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1959. Dembo, L. S., The Confucian Odes of Ezra Pound: A Critical Appraisal, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1963. Drew, Elizabeth, T. S. Eliot: The Design of His Poetry, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949. Dupee, F. W., Henry James, New York, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956. Edel, Leon, Henry James: The Conquest of London, New York, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1962. , Henry James: The Middle Years, New York, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1962. , Henry James: The Untried Years, New York, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1953. Edwards, John Hamilton and Vasse, William W., Annotated Index to the Cantos of Ezra Pound, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1957.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

385

Edwards, John, A Preliminary Checklist of the Writings of Ezra Pound, New Haven, Kirgo Books, 1953. Emery. Clark, ¡deas Into Action, Coral Gables, University of Miami Press, 1958. Espey, John J., Ezra Pound's Mauberley, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1955. An Examination of Ezra Pound, ed. Peter Russell, New York, New Directions, 1950. Fletcher, John Gould, Life is My Song, New York, Farrar and Rinehart, 1937. Ford, Ford Madox, It Was the Nightingale, London, William Heinemann, 1934. Ford, Ford Madox, Thus to Revisit, London, Chapman and Hall, 1921. Fraser, G. S. Ezra Pound, New York, Grove Press, 1960. Gallup, Donald, T. S. Eliot: A Bibliography, London, Faber and Faber, 1952. Hoffman, Frederick J., The Twenties, New York, Collier Books, 1962. Howarth, Herbert, Notes on Some Figures Behind T. S. Eliot, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1964. Hyman, Stanley Edgar, The Armed Vision, New York, Vintage Books, 1955. I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1930. Josephson, Matthew, Portrait of the Artist as American, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1930. Kar-Baxter, Annette, Henry Miller: Expatriate, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1961. Kenner, Hugh, The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot, New York, McDowell, Obolensky, 1959. , The Poetry of Ezra Pound, Norfolk, New Directions, 1951.

386

THREE VOYAGERS IN SEARCH O F EUROPE

Kreymborg, Alfred, Troubadour: An Autobiography, New York, Boni and Liveright, 1925. The Legend of the Master, ed. Simon Nowell-Smith, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948. Lewis, Wyndham, Blasting and Bombardiering, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1937. Marsh, Sir Edward, A Number of People, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1939. Matthiessen, F. O., The Achievement of T. S. Eliot, New York, Oxford University Press, 1958. , American Renaissance, New York, Oxford University Press, 1949. (ed.), The James Family, New York, Knopf, 1947. Mencken, H. L., A Book of Prefaces, New York, Garden City Publishing Co., 1927. Monroe, Harriet, A Poet's Life, New York, Macmillan, 1938. Motive and Method in the Cantos of Ezra Pound, ed. Lewis Leary, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954. Nagy, N. Christoph de, The Poetry of Ezra Pound: The PreImagist Stage, Bern, A. Francke, 1960. Norman, Charles, Ezra Pound, New York, Macmillan, 1960. Nott, Kathleen, The Emperor's Clothes, Bloomington. Indiana University Press, 1958. Nowell-Smith, Simon, The Legend of the Master, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948. Nuhn, Ferner, The Wind Blew From the East, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1942. Putnam, Samuel, Paris Was Our Mistress, New York, Viking Press, 1947. The Question of Henry James, ed. F. W. Dupee, New York, Henry Holt, 1945.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

387

Rahv, Philip, ed., Discovery of Europe, Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1960. , Image and Idea, Norfolk, New Directions, 1957. Roberts, Morris, Henry James's Criticism, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1929. Santayana, George, Character & Opinion in the United States, Garden City, N.Y., Anchor Books, 1956. Shapiro, Karl, In Defense of Ignorance, New York, Random House, 1960. Smidt, Kristian, Poetry and Belief in the Work of Τ. S. Eliot, Oslo, Jacob Dybward, 1949. Smith, Grover, T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1960. Stearns, Harold E., America: a Re-appraisal, New York, Hillman-Curl, 1937. (ed.), Civilization in the United States, Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1922. Strout, Cushing, The American Image of the Old World, New York, Harper and Row, 1963. T. S. Eliot: A Selected Critique, ed. Leonard Unger, New York, Rinehart and Co., 1948. T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, ed. Richard March and Tambimuttu, Chicago, Regnery, 1949. Τ S. Eliot: A Symposium for his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Neville Braybrooke, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1958. Watts, Harold H., Ezra Pound and the Cantos, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952. Wegelin, Christof, The Image of Europe in Henry James, Dallas, Southern Methodist Press, 1958. Williamson, George, A Reader's Guide to Τ. S. Eliöt, New York, Noonday Press, 1953.

388

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O F

EUROPE

Wolfe, Thomas, You Can't Go Home Again, Garden City, N.Y., Sun Dial Press, 1942. Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series, New York. Viking Press, 1963.

Articles and

Periodicals

Cowley, Malcolm, "Pound Reweighed," Reporter (March 2, 1961), 35-36, 38-40. Cunninghame-Graham, "The Short Story" (letter to the editor), Saturday Review, CVIII (Nov. 27. 1909), 612. Fiedler, Leslie, "Sufficient Unto the Day," Partisan Review, X X I I (Winter, 1955), 118-122. Fontenrose, Joseph, "Propertius and the Roman Career," University of California Publications in Classical Philology, XIII (1949), 371-388. Howells, William Dean (unsigned), "James' Hawthorne," Atlantic Monthly, X L V (Feb., 1880), 282 285. Lewis, Wyndham, "Ezra : The Portrait of a Personality," Quarterly Review of Literature, V (1950), 136-144. "Our Country and Our Culture," (symposium), Partisan Review, XIX (May-June, 1952), 284. Rahv, Philip, "The Myth and the Powerhouse," Partisan Review, XX (Nov.-Dec., 1953), 635 -648. Schwartz, Delmore, "T. S. Eliot as the International Hero," Partisan Review, XII (Spring, 1945), 199-206. Spender, Stephen, "Literary London : A Tight Little Isle," New York Times Book Review (Aug. 28, 1960), 1, 22-23. Taupin, René, "The Example of Rémy De Gourmont," Criterion, X (July, 1931), 614-625. Thibaudet, Albert, "L'Esthétique des Trois Traditions,"

BIBLIOGRAPHY

389

Nouvelle Revue Française, IX (Jan., 1913) 5-42, and IX (March, 1913), 355-393. Time, LV (March 6, 1950), 22-26. Tinckom-Fernandez, W. G., "T. S. Eliot '10," Harvard Advocate (Dec., 1938), 5-8, 47-48. Unpublished

Materials

"The Analyst," Nos. I V i l i , XI, XIII, XVIII, issued by Department of English, Northwestern University (mimeographed). Edwards, John Hamilton, "A Critical Biography of Ezra Pound: 1885-1922," doctoral dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1952. "The Pound Newsletter," issued by Department of English, University of California, at Berkeley. Powel, Jr., H. W. H., "Notes on the Life of T. S. Eliot," Master's thesis, Brown University, 1954.

Index Adams, Brooks, 235η Adams, Charles Francis, 322 Adams, H e n r y , 57, 77, 167, 280 Adams, J o h n , 81-82, 177, 181, 219, 237, 239, 241, 322, 326 Adams, J o h n Quincy, 77, 81, 219 Aeschylus, 230 Aiken, C o n r a d , 152 Aldington, Richard, 164, 314 Anderson, M a r g a r e t , 172 Andrewes, Lancelot, 74, 146 Arnold, M a t t h e w , 28 Attlee, Clement, 311 Austen, Jane. 245

Babbitt, Irving, 70, 71-73, 137, 145, 154, 185, 187n, 243n, 347 Balzac, H o n o r é de, 102, 103, 156, 166, 206, 245, 265, 273, 277 Baruch, B e r n a r d , 178 Baudelaire, Charles, 277, 331-332 Belgion, M o n t g o m e r y , 135 Belloc, Hillaire, 278 Benêt, William Rose, 39 Bergson, Henri, 138, 333 Björnson, Björnsterne, 293 Blackmur, R. P., 42, 79, 352-353 Born, Bertrans de, 179, 219-220, 224, 253 Brooks, V a n Wyck, 54, 55, 56, 169-170, 303n, 342, 355 Browning, R o b e r t , 217, 220

Bryan, William Jennings, 80-81 Burke, E d m u n d , 113 B u r n h a m , James, 358-359 C a m e r o n , J. M., 140-141, 145146 Cavalcanti, G u i d o , 177, 226 Churchill, Winston, 311 Claudel, Paul, 333 C o c t e a u , J e a n , 316 C o l u m , M a r y , 140n, 174n Comstock, A n t h o n y , 47 C o n f u c i u s , 145, 176, 179, 181, 187, 222, 232, 238, 241 C o n r a d , Joseph, 54 Coolidge, Calvin, 311 C o o p e r , J a m e s F e n i m o r e , 191192 Corbière, Tristan, 331 Cowley, M a l c o l m , 235-236, 313, 315, 317, 353 C r a n e , H a r t , 354 Crevel, René, 316 Dante, 156, 157. 179, 219, 226, 245, 252, 264n, 266 D a u d e t , Alphonse, 293 Dickens, Charles, 103 D o n n e , J o h n , 74 Doolittle, Hilda, 58 Douglas, C . H „ 179, 319, 321, 329 D o w s o n , Ernest, 239

392

THKF.K VOYAGF.RS IN S FARC H OF F.TROPF.

Dreiser. T h e o d o r e , 47 D r y d e n . J o h n , 265 D u p e e , F. W.. 299 D u v e n e c k . F r a n k . 22 Edel, Leon, 20, 21, 106, 120. 271. 276n, 284, 291 η E d w a r d s , J o h n H a m i l t o n . 308 Eliot, A n d r e w , 132-133 Eliot, C h a r l e s W „ 70, 71 n, 72 Eliot, Frederick, 69n Eliot, T. S. After Strange Gods, 67, 68, 69, 147, 165, 186-187, 249, 347. 348, 350 American Literature and the American Language, 154n " A t G r a d u a t i o n , " 52 " A u n t H e l e n , " 53, 254 " T h e Boston Evening Transcript," 53 "Burbank With A Baedeker: Bleistein W i t h A C i g a r , " 13, 143, 147, 251, 254, 340, 341, 344 The Cocktail Party, 254, 341, 344, 351-352 The Confidential Clerk, 13, 150, 341, 346, 352 " C o r i o l a n , " 256, 257 "Cousin N a n c y , " 53 " D e f e n s e of the Islands," 139 The Elder Statesman, 13, 149 Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry, 336. The Family Reunion, 13, 341, 351 Four Quartets, 67, 144, 159, 246, 248, 251, 253-254, 256257, 257-258 " G e r o n t i o n , " 143, 145, 147, 251, 253, 254, 260, 261-262, 341 " T h e H o l l o w M e n , " 224, 253, 255 Idea of a Christian Society, 68, 160, 161, 347, 348, 351

" J o u r n e y of the Magi." 253. 262 " L a n d s c a p e s . " 67 " L e Directeur." 341 " T h e Love Song of J. Alfred P r u f r o c k . " 1 3. 155. 253. 340 " L u n e de Miel." 340 " M é l a n g e Adultère de T o u t . " 143, 144 " M r . Apollinax." 53, 343 Murder in the Cathedral, 255256. 261. 264n, 351 Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, 68, 158, 160, 161, 162. 163-164, 187, 252, 262, 348, 350 " O n H e n r y J a m e s , " 12, 155, 157 " P o r t r a i t of a L a d y , " 53, 340 Religious Drama: Mediaeval and Modern, 262 "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," 341 The Rock, 263 " A Song f o r Simeon," 253, 262 "Sweeney Agonistes," 341, 343-344, 351 "Sweeney A m o n g the Nightingales," 250-251 "Sweeney Erect," 250-251 " T r a d i t i o n and the Individual T a l e n t , " 148, 243, 333 The Value and Use of Cathedrals in England Today, 141, 250 The Waste Land, 145, 150, 251, 252-253, 254, 257, 340, 341, 346 Eliot, William Greenleaf, 76n, 141-142 Emerson, Ralph W a l d o , 44, 55, 59, 102, 284 Espey, J o h n J., 12 F a u l k n e r , William, 357 Fenollosa, Ernest, 227

393

INDEX

F ¡edler. Leslie, 180, 359 Fitzgerald. F. Scott. 131 H a u b e r t . Gustave. 274. 277. 313. 314 [-¡etcher. John Gould. 57n. 58. 140n. 170. 171 n, 172. 314 l o r d . Ford Madox, 179. 305. 308 Fort. Paul. 332 France. Anatole, 333 Fraser, G . S., 185, 237, 241 Frost. Robert, 58. 79. 357 Garland. Hamlin, 92 Gautier. Théophile, 314, 331 Gide. André, 333 Gilder, Richard Watson, 39 Glenn, Ε. M., 229 Goethe, J. W. von, 156, 157 Goncourt, brothers, 274, 293, 314 Gosse, Edmund, 88, 293 Gourmont, Rémy de, 313, 332— 333 Harding, Warren G., 311 Harland, Henry, 103 Haskins, Charles Homer, 61 η Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 25, 55, 62, 65, 101-102, 187η, 192, 284 Hemingway, Ernest, 170, 315, 317, 356 Henderson, Alice Corbin, 36 Hillyer, Robert, 40 Homer, 245 Hoover, Herbert, 311 Howarth, Herbert, 53, 76n. 136, 349, 350 Howells, William Dean, 25, 32, 38, 39, 44, 192-193, 194, 207, 294 Hulme, T. E., 75, 138, 305 Jackson, Andrew, 76, 77 James, Henry (father), 128n James, Henry "Adina.' - 270-271

The Ambassadors. 25. 34n. 115-119, 196. 273. 278. 299. 301. 339 The American. 65. 107. 157. 284. 286. 287-288. 290. 291 The American Scene, 25. 26, 27, 28. 30. 31, 32. 44-45. 68 The Aspern Papers, 13. 272n " T h e A u t h o r of Beltraffio," 281

Autobiography, 20, 23, 24, 27, 34, 65. 90. 94-95. 96, 197, 206. 228, 273. 279. 283. 298, 304 The Awkward Age, 204, 299, 341 "The Beast in the Jungle," 13 The Bostoniani, 20, 29, 50, 53, 202, 204 "Broken Wings," 294-295, 325 "A Bundle of Letters," 317 "Crapey Cornelia," 13 Daisy Miller, 28, 284 "The Death of the Lion," 120, 294-295, 325 The Europeans, 106-107, 343 French Poets and Novelists, 205, 277 The Golden Bowl. 65, 83, 111, 119-127, 132, 181, 201, 272, 289-290, 299, 300, 301, 302 Hawthorne, 23, 33, 59, 67, 88, 101-102, 188, 192, 280 An International Episode, 286-287, 288 Italian Hours, 98, 99, 129, 194, 198, 200, 202, 203, 205, 218, 278-279 The Ivory Tower, 27, 204 "The Jolly Corner," 13, 35n Lady Barberina, 201, 288-289 "The Last of the Valerli," 210211, 270, 275 A Little Tour in France, 100, 129, 199-200, 205, 215-216, 222-223 A London Life, 289, 291, 301, 341

394

THREE

VOYAGERS

IN S E A R C H O F

Madame de Mauves, 66, 285286, 287 "The Madonna of the Future," 6n, 64, 271 "The Middle Years," 294 "The Next Time," 294 Notebooks, 91, 115, 198, 204, 272, 289, 291-292, 295, 298 "A Passionate Pilgrim," 197. 211, 281 "The Point of View," 24, 4 8 49, 285n The Portrait of a Lady, 65, 66, 97n, 99, 108-111, 175, 194195, 204, 281, 285, 288, 300 The Princess Cassamassima, 111-114, 115-116, 202, 273, 283-284, 289, 290, 292 "The Real Thing," 2&9, 295 The Reverberator, 29, 204 Roderick Hudson, 25, 64, 104106, 111, 112, 155, 195, 201, 271, 272, 273, 285, 287 The Sense of the Past, 195, 198-199, 200-201, 207, 209210, 211-215, 303, 339 "The Siege of London," 291 The Spoils of Poynton, 122 The Tragic Muse, 197 What Maisie Knew, 13, 291, 299 William Wetmore Story and His Friends, 298, 301 The Wings of the Dove, 13, 51, 65, 195, 290, 292, 299, 300, 301 Within the Rim, 96, 97, 118 James, Robertson, 95 James, "Wilky" (Garth Wilkinson), 95 James, William, 92 Jammes, Francis, 332 Jefferson, Thomas, 81, 82, 177, 179, 181, 219, 239, 241, 326 Johnson, Lionel, 239 Johnson, Samuel, 265 Joyce, James, 43, 230, 251-252

EUROPE

Kazin, Alfred, 354 Keats, John, 240 King, Vernon, 90 Kipling, Rudyard, 41. 158 Kreymborg, Alfred, 315 Laforgue, Jules, 330, 331 Leacock, Stephen, 60, 345 Lewis, W y n d h a m , 168n, 170-171, 175, 321n, 342 Lindsay, Vachel, 58 Lodge, Mrs. Henry Cabot, 91 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 240 Lowell, Amy, 58, 92, 306, 314 Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 44 Maensac, Pierre de, 224 Mailer, N o r m a n , 358-359 Malatesta, Sigismundo, 179, 219, 224, 237, 259, 320 Maritain, Jacques, 138 Masters, Edgar Lee, 58 Marvell, Andrew, 251, 253 Matthiessen, F. O., 13 Maupassant, G u y de, 274, 314 Maurras, Charles, 135-138, 333, 335 McCarthy, Mary, 359 Medici, Alessandro de, 221, 224, 229-230 Medici, Lorenzo de, 221, 224, 229-230 Mencius, 176 Mencken, H. L„ 60, 61, 62, 80, 355 Merrill, Stuart, 334 Miller, Henry, 248n, 354 Milton, John, 149 Monroe, Harriet, 36, 307 Moore, Marianne, 58, 79 More, Paul Elmer, 73- 74, 185 Morley, F. V., 139-140 Morris, William, 222 Mosher, Thomas, 35 Mowrer, Edgar Ansel, 62 Mussolini, Benito, 47, 81, 318322, 327

INDEX

Norman, Charles, 37 Norton, Charles Eliot, 299 Nuhn, Ferner, 134, 303n Odysseus. 174, 217, 229. 230. 236. 253 Ovid. 217, 241

224,

225,

Paige. D. D„ 16n Perry, Thomas Sergeant, 20 Phillipe, Charles-Louis, 339 Phillips, D. G., 45 Poe, Edgar Allan, 61-62, 187n Pound, Ezra A Lume Spento, 35 "Au Salon," 224 Classic Anthology, 188n "Cantico Del Sole," 78 Cantos, 40, 81, 165-166, 176, 178-179, 179-180, 181, 183, 188, 215, 217, 218-219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230-231, 232, 233-234, 235, 236, 237, 238-239, 241, 247, 254, 255, 259, 305n, 309310, 311, 317, 318, 319-320, 322-323, 326-330, 352 Economic Nature of the United States, 326 Gold and Work, 234 Guide to Kulchur, 174, 177, 315, 325 Homage to Sex tus Propertius, 237-238 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, 12, 174-175, 176, 222, 223, 239, 309, 310, 323, 325 Jefferson and / or Mussolini, 318-320, 322 " L ' H o m m e Moyen Sensuel," 37, 39 "Near Perigord," 219-220 Patria Mia, 165, 172 Pavannes and Divisions, 49 Personae, 35 (individual poems in this collection listed separately) "The Plunge," 173

395

"Poems of Alfred Venison," 310 Provença. 35 "Provincia Deserta," 226 Ripostes, 336 "The Seafarer," 173-174, 241 Social Credit: An Impact, 311, 322 The Spirit of Romance, 225226, 228 Powel, Jr., H a r f o r d H „ 334335n Proust, Marcel, 239, 325 Putnam, Samuel, 170n, 317-318 Rahv, Phillip, 193-194, 233, 283n Ransom, John Crowe, 79 Robinson, Edgar Arlington, 58 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 178, 232 Roosevelt, Theodore, 170 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 71, 72, 137 Ruskin, John, 222, 223 Ruth, Babe, 79-80 Sainte-Beuve, Auguste, 239 Sand, George, 274 Sandburg, Carl, 43, 58 Santayana, George, 70, 345n Shakespeare, William, 156, 157, 251 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 240 Smith, Grover, 13n, 260, 331 Sordello, 220-221 Spender, Stephen, 307n Stearns, Harold, 355-356 Steinbeck, John, 357 Stendhal, 129, 314 Stevens, Wallace, 98 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 38, 294 Story, William Wetmore, 101, 271 Symons, Arthur, 329-330 Taine, Hippolyte, 100-101, 274 Tate, Allan, 79

T H R E E V O Y A G E R S IN S E A R C H O K

T a y l o r . B a y a r d , 192 T e m p l e . M i n n y , 120 T e n n y s o n . A l f r e d L o r d . 337 T h o r e a u . H e n r y D a v i d . 55 T i n c k o m - F e r n a n d e z , W . G . . 53. 332, 335 T r i l l i n g , L i o n e l , 85 T u r g e n e v , 104. 1 5 2 - 1 5 3 , 277 T w a i n , M a r k , 58 V a n B u r e n . M a r t i n , 81. 219. 235, 259 V a n D o r e n , M a r k , 61n V a r c h i , B e n e d e t t o , 219, 2 2 1 - 2 2 2 V i e l e - G r i f f i n , F r a n c i s , 334 V i l l o n . F r a n c o i s , 226 Virgil, 177, 251

El'ROFE

W a r e . H e n r y , 69 W h i b i e y . C h a r l e s . 164 Whistler. James MacNeill. 312. W h i t m a n . W a l t . 43. 4 9 - 5 0 , 62, 170. 187n W h i t t i e r , J o h n G r e e n l e a f , 44 W i l d e . R i c h a r d H e n r y , 190 Williams. William Carlos, 144 W i l s o n , E d m u n d , 147, 151. 353 W o l f e . T h o m a s , 354 W o r d s w o r t h , W i l l i a m , 240

79. 59.

79, 154,

Y e a t s , J o h n B u t l e r . 4 7 ^ 8 . 50, 60, 305. 3 0 6 - 3 0 7 Yeats, William Butler. 47 Z o l a , É m i l e , 274, 277