 Cover, first printing | |
| Author | Ezra Pound |
|---|---|
| Country | Italy |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry collection |
| Publisher | A. Antonini |
Publication date | July 1908 |
| Media type | Print (softcover) |
A Lume Spento (translated by the author as With Tapers Quenched [1] ) is a 1908 poetry collection by Ezra Pound. Self-published in Venice, it was his first collection.
Ezra Pound (1885–1972) studied Romance languages and literature, including French, Italian, Provençal and Spanish, at the University of Pennsylvania and Hamilton College. In these studies Pound—long interested in poetry—had gained an interest in turn-of-the-century English poetry. [2]
Pound dedicated A Lume Spento to Philadelphia artist William Brooke Smith, one of his friends, who had recently died of tuberculosis. [3] The two had met in 1901–02, and Smith—an avid reader—introduced Pound to the works of English decadents such as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. The title of the work is an allusion to the third canto of Dante's Purgatory , [4] [5] where it occurs in the speech of Manfred, King of Sicily, as he describes the treatment his excommunicated corpse has endured, exhumed, and discarded without light along the banks of the river Verde. [6] The procession of priests with unlit tapers is similar to the imagery in the practice of "bell, book and candle", but Manfred remains optimistic that "by their curse we are not so destroy'd, / But that the eternal love may turn, while hope / Retains her verdant blossom...". [7] Critic Hugh Witemeyer wrote that, overall, the implication is that Smith had led an unorthodox life like that of Manfred. [5]
The collection was initially meant to be titled La Fraisne ("The Ash Tree"). Although this title was not kept, the poem of the same name was presented second in the collection. [8]
A Lume Spento consists of 45 poems. [9]
A Lume Spento is replete with allusions to works which had influenced Pound, including Provençal and late Victorian literatures. Pound adopts Robert Browning's technique of dramatic monologues, and as such he "appears to speak in the voices of historical or legendary figures". [5] These figures, Witemeyer writes, reflect the spiritualism common in the period, in which the different personae Pound adapts are considered "mediumistic channelings" of the deceased. [5]
In his biography of Pound, David A. Moody argues that the collection demonstrated an implicit challenge to the "crepuscular spirit" prevalent in contemporary literature, one which has drawn little attention yet can be found in certain poems and the collection's arrangement. [8] He notes a progression in which persons who let their passion get the best of them are, implicitly, relegated to a Dantean Hell. In two of the poems ("Famam Librosque Cano" and "Scriptor Ignotus"), he writes, Pound appears to be questioning his own poetry, yet also showing unbound pride at his ability. This last poem, according to Moody, is the culmination of this progression and challenge: "If 'La Fraisne' represented the lowest state of being, then in 'Scriptor Ignotus' we have the poet himself as aspiring to the most exalted state of his poetic soul". [10]
After completing the poems, Pound attempted to find an American company to publish them. He thought that it would impress publisher Thomas Bird Mosher, but was mistaken; Mosher refused to acknowledge the then-unknown poet. [9] Unsuccessful with finding an American publisher, by February 1908 had left for Europe, first arriving in Gibraltar, then moving to Venice, Italy. [4] It is in this latter city that Pound ultimately self-published A Lume Spento in July 1908, with the printer A. Antonini. [4]
Upon arriving in Venice, Pound had only $80 to his name; $8 of this was spent printing A Lume Spento. [11] Paper for this first printing was reportedly left over from the Venetian press's recent history of the church, and Pound supervised the printing process himself. [3] Only 150 copies were printed. [5] Pound was not confident of the quality of the work and considered dumping the proofs into a canal, [12] later writing in Canto LXXVI :
shd/I chuck the lot into the tide-water?
Le Bozze "A Lume Spento"/
and by the column of Todero
shd/I shift to the other side. [13]
In August, Pound moved to London, and by the end of the year he had persuaded the bookseller Elkin Mathews to display the collection. [14] By October 1908, Pound's work had begun to receive critical commentary, both in the press and amongst the writing community. In a review of A Lume Spento, the London Evening Standard called it "wild and haunting stuff, absolutely poetic, original, imaginative, passionate, and spiritual". [4] Later reception has been mixed. Moody writes that there is evidence of "some real mastery of rhythm and rhyme" in the work, [9] but the quality of the poems drops dramatically as the collection continues. [15]
Although Pound continued to seek an American publisher for A Lume Spento, he was unsuccessful. [5] He published his second collection, A Quinzaine for this Yule , in December 1908. [14] Pound's main poems from A Lume Spento were reprinted in his 1909 collection Personae; [3] this collection begins with the same motto A Lume Spento ends, "Make strong old dreams lest this our world lose heart". [16] Some more poems were included in later collections. [3] A Lume Spento was first republished in full in 1965, as part of A Lume Spento and Other Early Poems, then again in 1976 as part of Collected Early Poems. [5]
Dante Alighieri, most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante, was an Italian poet, writer, and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
The Divine Comedy is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of Western literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem, The Cantos.
Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism is sometimes viewed as "a succession of creative moments" rather than a continuous or sustained period of development. The French academic René Taupin remarked that "it is more accurate to consider Imagism not as a doctrine, nor even as a poetic school, but as the association of a few poets who were for a certain time in agreement on a small number of important principles".
Hilda Doolittle was an American modernist poet, novelist, and memoirist who wrote under the name H.D. throughout her life. Her career began in 1911 after she moved to London and co-founded the avant-garde Imagist group of poets with American expatriate poet and critic Ezra Pound. During this early period, her minimalist free verse poems depicting Classical motifs drew international attention. Eventually distancing herself from the Imagist movement, she experimented with a wider variety of forms, including fiction, memoir, and verse drama. Reflecting the trauma she experienced in London during the Blitz, H.D.'s poetic style from World War II until her death pivoted towards complex long poems on esoteric and pacifist themes.
Bertran de Born was a baron from the Limousin in France, and one of the major Occitan troubadours of the 12th-13th century. He composed love songs (cansos) but was better known for his political songs (sirventes). He was involved in revolts against Richard I and then Phillip II. He married twice and had five children. In his final years, he became a monk.
The canto is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry.
The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a canto. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date from 1922 onwards. It is a book-length work, widely considered to present formidable difficulties to the reader. Strong claims have been made for it as the most significant work of modernist poetry of the twentieth century. As in Pound's prose writing, the themes of economics, governance and culture are integral to its content.
Vanna is a given name that first appeared in recorded European history circa 1294. The Italian medieval feminine name originated in Tuscany, and is particular to Florence, Italy.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Ripostes of Ezra Pound is a collection of 25 poems by the American poet Ezra Pound, submitted to Swift and Co. in London in February 1912, and published by them in October that year. It was published in the United States in July 1913 by Small, Maynard and Co of Boston.
The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important English language poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruelest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", "These fragments I have shored against my ruins" and the Sanskrit mantra "Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata" and "Shantih shantih shantih".
Bonagiunta Orbicciani, also called Bonaggiunta and Urbicciani, was an Italian poet of the Tuscan School, which drew on the work of the Sicilian School. His main occupation was as a judge and notary. Fewer than forty of his poems survive.
Cathay (1915) is a collection of classical Chinese poetry translated into English by modernist poet Ezra Pound based on Ernest Fenollosa's notes that came into Pound's possession in 1913. At first Pound used the notes to translate Noh plays and then to translate Chinese poetry to English, despite a complete lack of knowledge of the Chinese language. The volume's 15 poems are seen less as strict translations and more as new pieces in their own right; and, in his bold translations of works from a language he was unfamiliar with, Pound set the stage for modernist translations.
William Brooke Smith was an American painter and friend of Ezra Pound. His death from tuberculosis greatly affected Pound, who dedicated his first poetry collection, A Lume Spento, to Smith.
The Spirit of Romance is a 1910 book of literary criticism by the poet Ezra Pound. It is based on lectures he delivered at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London between 1908 and 1909 and deals with a variety of European literatures. As with Pound's later, unfinished poem The Cantos, the book follows "a pattern, at once historical and atemporal, of cultural beginnings and rebeginnings".
A Quinzaine for this Yule is a collection of poetry by Ezra Pound.
Harriet Zinnes was an American poet, fiction writer, translator, art critic, literary scholar and professor. She is associated with poets such as Karl Shapiro, Delmore Schwartz, and Allen Ginsberg, and the writer Anaïs Nin.
The Vienna Café was a coffee house and restaurant at 24–28 New Oxford Street, London. Located opposite Mudie's Lending Library and near the British Museum Reading Room in Bloomsbury, it became known in the early 20th century as a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. Regular visitors included Ezra Pound, H. G. Wells, and W. B. Yeats.