Editor’s Note: In response to many requests for information regarding Imagism and the Imagistes, we publish this note by Mr. Flint, supplementing it with further exemplification by Mr. Pound. It will be seen from these that Imagism is not necessarily associated with Hellenic subjects, or with vers libre as a prescribed form.
Some curiosity has been aroused concerning Imagisme, and as I was unable to find anything definite about it in print, I sought out an imagiste, with intent to discover whether the group itself knew anything about the “movement.” I gleaned these facts.
The imagistes admitted that they were contemporaries of the Post Impressionists and the Futurists; but they had nothing in common with these schools. They had not published a manifesto. They were not a revolutionary school; their only endeavor was to write in accordance with the best tradition, as they found it in the best writers of all time,—in Sappho, Catullus, Villon. They seemed to be absolutely intolerant of all poetry that was not written in such endeavor, ignorance of the best tradition forming no excuse. They had a few rules, drawn up for their own satisfaction only, and they had not published them. They were:
- Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective.
- To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation.
- As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of a musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.
By these standards they judged all poetry, and found most of it wanting. They held also a certain ‘Doctrine of the Image,’ which they had not committed to writing; they said that it did not concern the public, and would provoke useless discussion.
The devices whereby they persuaded approaching poetasters to attend their instruction were:
- They showed him his own thought already splendidly expressed in some classic (and the school musters altogether a most formidable erudition).
- They re-wrote his verses before his eyes, using about ten words to his fifty.
Even their opponents admit of them—ruefully—“At least they do keep bad poets from writing!”
I found among them an earnestness that is amazing to one accustomed to the usual London air of poetic dilettantism. They consider that Art is all science, all religion, philosophy and metaphysic. It is true that snobisme may be urged against them; but it is at least snobisme in its most dynamic form, with a great deal of sound sense and energy behind it; and they are stricter with themselves than with any outsider.
F. S. Flint
Poetry, March 2013, pp. 198-200