I.

The question is being asked, re-asked and debated, What is Imagism? The fact that this question is constantly raised anew proves that it is not an academic one. For if we are to see clearly the underlying principles of the new poetry, and to understand the relationship of the group which call themselves the Imagists to those principles, we must first disassociate Imagism, strictly speaking, from all that body of verse now being produced in the free-verse forms. As a critic not long ago pointed out, vers libre and Imagism are not to be confused. Vers libre can be produced and has been produced which is not Imagistic, but realistic, symbolistic, or merely dull. Imagism is an attitude of mind which can appear just as well under the guise of metre and rhyme, or prose, as in verse itself. What, then, is Imagism?

Briefly, the doctrine we call Imagism has four cardinal points or principles. The first of these concerns presentation of the subject. The Imagist aims to present his subject as an image; that is to say, he presents the sum-total of the emotions in any given subject in such a way that the reader experiences the self-same emotions from them. To do this it is necessary for the Imagist to regard his subject-matter from its most imaginative aspect, and to present it visually. For the reader, not having experienced the emotion which moved the author to create his poem, is incapable of grasping that emotion save through a direct and complete appeal to his imagination through his higher senses of sight and hearing. By stimulating these senses, through appropriate choice of words, the Imagist aims to arouse the reader to such a pitch that the reader re-creates imaginatively for himself the emotional complex which gave birth to the poem. Imagism is, therefore, first of all a means of arousing the emotions through the imagination. The Imagists must therefore be sharply distinguished from the realistic school, and also from the symbolists of the nineteenth century, from which latter they have, in some sense, derived. Through the constant insistence on emotion as the underlying essence of poetry, the Imagists approach closely to the Elizabethans of the sixteenth and the early romantics of the nineteenth century.

The second principle of Imagism concerns style. The Imagists desire to accomplish that renovation of the English language which is always periodically necessary if good poetry is to continue to be created in it. The Imagists have certain prejudices against inversions, clichés, journalese, highfalutin bombast, literary jargon, messy padding with adjectives. Each word must be an exact word, that is to say the sole word necessary for its particular place and purpose in the poem. This careful consideration for style relates the Imagists to the classicists of the eighteenth century, who undoubtedly rescued the English language from the absurdities of the “metaphysical” school. The Imagists also insist on it as a useful check to too great an exuberance of imagination.

The third principle of Imagism concerns form. The rhythmical form of the poem should not be a mere empty pattern, but should follow, as far as possible, the ebb and flow of the emotion throughout the poem. It should be an integral part of the poem itself, as indissoluble from it as the substance of the words themselves. Therefore the Imagists hold that the theory and practice of vers libre is necessary, although they do not go so far as to demand it in every case, or to say that rhyme and metre have not their uses. In their desire to create a full emotional range of rhythmical nuances, inclusive of both rhyme and metre as well as freer rhythmical figures, the Imagists derive direct from the first great romantic poets of England—Blake and Coleridge.

The last principle of Imagism concerns the attitude of the artist to life. The artist should realize that if he is not to be the slave of life he must not attempt to be its judge. He must not obtrude his petty personal judgments and vanities between the reader and the subject he writes about. He must not, in short, moralise about life, or gush over it, or make others feel anything else except what he has felt about it. In this respect the Imagist poets are in very firm reaction against the sentimental and pious optimism of the mid-nineteenth century, against the equally sentimental and fallacious aestheticism of the eighties and nineties, and—it may be added—against a good deal of the wishy-washy suggestiveness and sex-obsession that seems to be getting the upper hand of so many writers of today. The Imagist does not weight the balance, either for “morality” or “immorality”: he states, and lets the reader draw his own conclusion.

With these four principles in mind, we may now ask ourselves how the Imagists have carried them into practice. For practice is, after all, the supreme test of any theory of art. There are signs that Imagism is getting itself taken more seriously, not as a mere passing fad, but as something that has at least established certain guide-posts and land-marks for future poets, who wish to renew the traditions of good writing. I maintain that it has done more. It has permitted three poets, at least, to start from the same principles and to produce among them a very respectable body of poetry, which in each case is filled with the individual flavour of the personality who wrote it. That the Imagist principles should display such applicability and elasticity is, I maintain, very remarkable. We shall now see who these three poets are.