TE Hulme: Images at Play

I sometimes wonder why I don't come across more appreciation of and commentary on the Imagist poet TE Hulme (1883-1917). The answer is probably that he wrote only a small number of poems (around 25), and just a few were published during his lifetime. He is probably better known as a literary critic and a philosopher.

He established the Poets' Club and the School of Images (the latter including Ezra Pound), both of which explored new directions in English poetry. Hulme had a colourful life and was known as a strong (not always appreciated) personality. He died in World War I, in West Flanders, blown up by a shell he didn't see coming (those around him did, and threw themselves to the ground.) He was 34.

TE Hulme isn't exactly a household name. He has always seemed to me to occupy a particular niche. It is thought that if he had lived, he could have become one of the most influential literary figures of the century, but he didn't have a chance beyond what he accomplished before his death. I just love his poems.

Most of Hulme's poems were only a few lines long. I love short poetry (my own poems average about 10-14 lines - more than 20 lines is a long poem for me) and I don't think it gets enough credit. A poem leaving a lasting impression in six or twelve lines may stay with a reader forever. Hulme's poems are clear-eyed, balanced between warmth and dispassion, wistfully playful and very precise. I can't ask for much more in a poem.


AUTUMN (TE Hulme)


A touch of cold in the Autumn night - 
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.


'Autumn' reminds me a little of Tolkien, to the extent that I wonder if the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings might have been influenced by it. Perhaps because of that, it makes me think of much of the writing I enjoyed as a child: a mix of comfort, adventure and a slight eeriness.


THE EMBANKMENT (TE Hulme)

(The Fantasia of a Fallen Gentleman on a Cold, Bitter Night)


Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth's the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.


'The Embankment' is especially evocative to me as it's a part of London I know well. The 'flash of gold heels' seems to spark, an irony considering the man's search for warmth. It's a whimsical, sad and (again) faintly eerie poem, and it always makes me think of how there are still so many homeless people looking for shelter around Waterloo and Embankment.

Hulme isn't really known as a "war poet", despite his dates and his death. But he left this poem on a return to England from the front. It was probably transcribed (edited?) by Ezra Pound, but there seems little doubt as to its authorship. The final lines leave me stunned. Indeed, the 'mind is a corridor' under trauma. He said it perfectly.


TRENCHES: ST ELOI (TE Hulme)

(Abbreviated from the Conversation of Mr TEH)


Over the flat slopes of St Eloi
A wide wall of sand bags.
Night, 
In the silence desultory men
Pottering over small fires, cleaning their mess-tins:
To and fro, from the lines,
Men walk as on Piccadilly,
Making paths in the dark,
Through scattered dead horses,
Over a dead Belgian's belly.

The Germans have rockets. The English have no rockets.
Behind the line, cannon, hidden, lying back miles.
Beyond the line, chaos:

My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are corridors.
Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on.

"Where I Will Heal Me Of My Grievous Wound": Arthuriana In My Life

from THE PASSING OF ARTHUR (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)


 And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seëst--if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)--
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound."


Everything in my life has always seemed to lead on to something else. I suppose that's probably so normal as to seem trite (or not), but to me even random events tend to seem teleological, or at least part of a pattern.

I was always fascinated by medievalism as a child. My brother and I preferred the Legos which built knights and castles to the "town" and "space" versions (those were simpler times); we played at knights and read Tolkien, Ivanhoe and Knight Crusader. My brother did his MA thesis on Robin Hood. I've since moved on to Gladiator, but it's much the same thing. Somewhere in there, King Arthur was bound to emerge as a major obsession, which happened in my late teens.

17-22 was quite a critical age for me, and I developed such a passion for Arthuriana that I seriously considered doing an English MA with an Arthurian focus. I didn't, but it would have been an interesting path. I did a mini-thesis for my BA on Merlin, and had a short story on Bedivere and the Questing Beast published. Also, judging by my bookshelves in my parents' house, I seem to have collected pretty much every modern Arthurian retelling going - those that aren't on the shelves I borrowed from the library. While I also collected and read a lot of the original medieval tales, I tended to find them harder going. Unfortunately, quite a lot of the modern works were a bit too much in the bodice-ripping romance vein or were influenced by neo-paganism, neither of which are remotely my cup of tea. It was actually quite hard to find really good, well-written Arthurian novels. Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment) was very significant for me, and I also loved Rosemary Sutcliff's books - her more traditional retellings (The Sword and the Circle, The Light Beyond the Forest, The Road to Camlann) when I was younger, and her adult novel Sword at Sunset when I was older. Gillian Bradshaw's novels were great too. As much as I like the idea of retelling old stories, though, a lot of the novels were rather forgettable.

I did like Tennyson very much, but I read relatively little Arthurian poetry that made a really big impression. Edwin Muir's poem 'Merlin', quoted at the start of one of Mary Stewart's novels, was beautiful and moving:


O Merlin in your crystal cave
Deep in the diamond of the day
Will there ever be a singer
Whose music will smooth away
The furrow drawn by Adam's finger
Across the memory and the wave?


I also read Edwin Arlington Robinson's excellent long poems, and some of Charles Williams's strange Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of Summer Stars, and other short poems here and there. But there might just be a world of Arthurian poetry out there for me to discover, still.

I have often told people that Sherlock Holmes was a major reason why I ended up moving to London, or that he at least helped me to develop an obsession with all things English. To a certain extent, I could say the same about Arthuriana, though it was a later passion in my life than Holmes. In 2002 I went to the International Arthurian Society conference in Bangor, Wales, and although I really did want to go, it was partly a pretext to get my European (er, British Isles) adventure started. It had also led me broadly to an interest in English and Welsh mythology.

By the time I moved to London seven years ago, Arthuriana had really receded in my life. Sherlock Holmes seems to have stuck around more intensively, especially of late, with the new BBC series to enthrall me. Holmes is more alive to me in London. I've only really walked in the steps of Arthur in Wales, and that as though in a dream. There are so many Arthurs and Merlins and so many places where they could have lived or not lived. Still, Arthur never went away. I went up to Liverpool a few years ago specifically to see Burne-Jones's The Beguiling of Merlin in Port Sunlight, and I was not disappointed. I've chosen it as the logo of sorts for this blog. Then, in 2009 or 2010 (not sure which) I had a wonderful experience with the painting above, Burne-Jones's The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon.

The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon has been the Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico for a long time, and I thought it was unlikely that I would ever see it. I'd like to visit Puerto Rico, but it is not high on my list. I was therefore totally astounded and delighted when I learned one day that the painting was in London, though only for a year. It was on loan from its home gallery while the gallery underwent renovation. At the time, I was working in Pimlico, and the painting was only around the corner at Tate Britain. Already feeling stunned about the whole thing, I went round to see it one day.

I remember walking through the familiar rooms of Tate Britain with a sense of purpose and slipping into the room where The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon was displayed. I sat down and just stared at it. I was overcome with the kind of shock and delight that sometimes takes me in artistic experiences - especially those which aren't just artistic experiences, but are tied up with so much else in my life. The painting is enormous (the picture above is only a detail from it) and extremely beautiful; classically Burne-Jones, with luminous colours and figures looking like angels. I got up and walked around to look more closely at the details - the flowers, the folds in the robes - and then sat down and stared again.

I went back to see it two or three more times before it went back to Puerto Rico, though I now wish I'd seen it even more. The experience still amazes me to think of, as I just never thought this was a painting I would lay eyes on and certainly not in London (for one thing, it seemed much to big to travel!). Seeing this painting confirmed to me, as well, that nothing and no-one ever leaves the pattern - old obsessions, artistic passions, people and places - even if they seem to be a part of my past.

Beowulf through Seamus Heaney: "Fate goes ever as fate must"

Excerpt from BEOWULF (trans. Seamus Heaney)


The above link contains an excerpt from the opening of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, as well as an interview with Heaney on the work.

I should probably admit that I don't think I have read Beowulf from start to finish, even Seamus Heaney's translation, which was published in 1999 and was hugely successful. It has, however, intertwined with my life in various ways and I have read large sections of it, and I promise that I will sit down and read it from cover to cover one of these days...

I have been a Tolkien aficionado for a long time, and in some of his works he made liberal use of the typical alliterative style of Old English poetry, as well as its heroic, violent subject matter. I remember my brother studying the work, presumably when he was in high school, and recording a home-made radio play of the confrontation between Beowulf and Grendel's mother (impressive high-pitched screeches). Later, I studied portions of it in translation, and later looked a little bit at the original language in university. My Medieval Studies professor (a cool young guy who referred to Charlemagne as "Big Chuck") had a grasp of Old English and read from it to us. I have to admit that there is something about Old English that I find very stirring (for more information, see my long obsessions with heroes, medievalism, and yes...Manly Men.)

The first time I visited England was in 1997, with my family, while I was at university. This was before the new British Library had been built, and the manuscripts now displayed in the BL could be viewed in the British Museum. The British Museum, and particularly the manuscript displays, were a dream come true for me, but my brother and I were very disappointed that Beowulf and (I think) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight were both not on display when we were in London. Of course, these ancient and precious manuscripts are not constantly on display, as the displays are rotated periodically for restoration work and presumably to give the manuscripts a rest from the light. I have subsequently seen Beowulf several times, though, and I am always pleased if I happen to be at the British Library and find that it is on display.

One of the things that makes this work so extraordinary is that the original exists in only this single manuscript, dating back to the late tenth or early eleventh century. The history of its ownership has been traced back to the sixteenth century. I just find it amazing that it survived. There is something about old manuscripts which thrills me deeply - it is as though the authors, or at least transcribers who lived a lot closer to the time of the authors, are standing there and speaking to me face to face, hundreds or thousands of years falling away.

Seamus Heaney seems like the perfect poet to tackle Beowulf - his language is consistently resonant, internally rhythmic, deeply tied to history and ancestry, aware of the metaphoric and psychological power in nature and in man-made objects. As an Irish poet, he is also well placed to bring out the conflict and the dance between paganism and Christianity (overseen by the dark, constant shadow of fate or "wyrd") which runs throughout the poem and which also weaves through the history of the British Isles.

Beowulf is essential for anyone interested in the development of the English language - pick up the bilingual edition translated by Heaney, and thrill to the familiar words and phrases which occasionally leap out of what seems to be a forest of Germanic words. It is also a gem of the so-called "Dark Ages", an insight into the mind of medieval man, and an artifact which tells anyone who is a native English speaker or from a northern European background a little bit about where they came from.