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Jaguar
for Billy Mills
GAUDIER-BRZESKA VORTEX
...The PALEOLITHIC VORTEX resulted in the decoration of the Dordogne caverns.
Early stone-age man disputed the earth with animals.
His livelihood depended on the hazards of the hunt -- his greatest victory the domestication of a few species...
Early stone-age man disputed the earth with animals.
His livelihood depended on the hazards of the hunt -- his greatest victory the domestication of a few species...
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: GAUDIER-BRZESKA VORTEX from Blast (1914)
Eland
Ezra Pound: On the Drawings of Gaudier-Brzeska
The development seems to have been as follows: Heterogeneous period before 1912. Pastel, etchings, etc., 1912. Drawings done in full influence of the theory that painting, or at least drawing, "is calligraphy."
The stags seem to be from the end of this period and one notices the effect of the widening pen-strokes.
1913 roughly speaking seems to have been the year for the drawings, of nudes and animals, in the thin even line, vide the wolf...
A Wolf
The animal drawings with thicker line seem to have been done, for the most part, about the end of 1912...
The stags, and the animals done in their manner, were, I should think, done while he was enthused by the drawings in the Dordogne caverns and "Fonts-de-Gaume."
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
Puma I
Tiger
The development seems to have been as follows: Heterogeneous period before 1912. Pastel, etchings, etc., 1912. Drawings done in full influence of the theory that painting, or at least drawing, "is calligraphy."
The stags seem to be from the end of this period and one notices the effect of the widening pen-strokes.
1913 roughly speaking seems to have been the year for the drawings, of nudes and animals, in the thin even line, vide the wolf...
A Wolf
The stags, and the animals done in their manner, were, I should think, done while he was enthused by the drawings in the Dordogne caverns and "Fonts-de-Gaume."
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
Puma I
The image is not an idea. It is a radiant node or cluster; it is what I can, and must perforce, call a VORTEX, from which, and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)Tiger
Even in this vicinage I don't know that we understood Gaudier-Brzeska's "Vortex"...
Ezra Pound: A Postscript (from The Egoist, 1934) in Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (Revised edition, 1960)
Lion
Lion
There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.
Ezra Pound: from Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920), remembering Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, killed in France, July 1915
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.
Ezra Pound: from Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920), remembering Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, killed in France, July 1915
Vulture III
It is part of the war waste... A great spirit has been among us, and a great artist is gone.
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
A Dog
The Return
See, they return; ah, see the tentative
............Movements, and the slow feet,
.........The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
.........Wavering!
See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
......................and half turn back;
These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
..............................Inviolable.
Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
............................. sniffing the trace of air!
Haie! Haie!
........These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
......................pallid the leash-men!
Ezra Pound: from Ripostes (1912)
Leopard I
I said in the preface to my Guido Cavalcanti that I believed in an absolute rhythm. I believe that every emotion and every phase of emotion has some toneless phrase, some rhythm-phrase to express it... To hold a like belief in a sort of permanent metaphor is, as I understand it, "symbolism" in its profounder sense. It is not necessarily a belief in a permanent world, but it is a belief in that direction... In the "search for oneself," in the search for "sincere self-expression," one gropes, one finds some seeming verity... [In] this search for the real I made poems like "The Return," which is an objective reality and has a complicated sort of significance, like... Mr. Brzeska's "Boy with a Coney." [Such] poems are impersonal, and that fact brings us back to what I said about absolute metaphor. They are Imagisme, they fall in with the new pictures and the new sculpture.
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
Eagle
Studies of Birds
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
A Dog
The Return
See, they return; ah, see the tentative
............Movements, and the slow feet,
.........The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
.........Wavering!
See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
......................and half turn back;
These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
..............................Inviolable.
Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
............................. sniffing the trace of air!
Haie! Haie!
........These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
......................pallid the leash-men!
Ezra Pound: from Ripostes (1912)
Leopard I
I said in the preface to my Guido Cavalcanti that I believed in an absolute rhythm. I believe that every emotion and every phase of emotion has some toneless phrase, some rhythm-phrase to express it... To hold a like belief in a sort of permanent metaphor is, as I understand it, "symbolism" in its profounder sense. It is not necessarily a belief in a permanent world, but it is a belief in that direction... In the "search for oneself," in the search for "sincere self-expression," one gropes, one finds some seeming verity... [In] this search for the real I made poems like "The Return," which is an objective reality and has a complicated sort of significance, like... Mr. Brzeska's "Boy with a Coney." [Such] poems are impersonal, and that fact brings us back to what I said about absolute metaphor. They are Imagisme, they fall in with the new pictures and the new sculpture.
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
Eagle
Studies of Birds
Self-Portrait, 1913 (Southampton Online)
In 1912-1913 the artist Gaudier-Brzeska, then living in London, was given passes to the Regents Park Zoo by a patron; the life-study drawings in this post were for the most part done there, on weekend visits.
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), all drawings c. 1912-1913 (Tate Collection)
16 comments:
The Return is one of my very favourite poems, Tom. Thanks for the dedication.
I have brought the great ball of crystal;
............................Who can lift it?
Can you enter the great acorn of light?
Tom,
"The image is not an idea." Thanks for this -- I was just thinking of Gaudier-Brzeska's drawing of Pound yesterday (on the cover of Personae, and the computer 'scrambling' of it that Ann Tardos did for cover image of Jackson Mac Low's Words nd Ends from Ez, (which I published with Avenue B in the late 80s), probably thinking of that because of your jaguar yesterday. . . .
8.18
light coming into fog above still black
ridge, red-tailed hawk calling in right
foreground, no sound of wave in channel
such form that in every such
dimension, that contact
given results, assumption of
systems described, that
grey-white of fog reflected in channel,
circular green pine on tip of sandspit
oh dear, what WAS I thinking (black panther). . . .
Billy,
thanks for the inspiration,
Steve,
likewise,
light coming into fog above still black
ridge, red-tailed hawk calling in right
foreground, no sound of wave in channel,
Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is paradise.
Today would be a good day to enter the great acorn of light... though here it's surgery day for A., alas not inside a great ball of crystal.
Tom, may all go well with the surgery, and thanks for these great posts.
Yes, very, very good luck to A. and you. Today's post is inspiring and intersects (as often happens) with things that have been on my mind and helps get me further down the road. I don't know how you do it, but I'm very grateful that you do.
Thank you Michael and Curtis, the company much appreciated.
To feel oneself inside another being, the potential for empathy or in-feeling across species into another livingness, or a living otherness (babble...), something like that is what I see in these Gaudier-Brzeska drawings.
TC:
Chinese tombs have etchings of horses and animals that are akin to G-B's work.
2nd, working on an homage to Ed in the form of long piece re:fur trade in the NWest Territory. It's intended as a gateway drug for YA students to help them drink from the water. Wd be interested in tlking to you about it, even with Mercury blooming in retrograde.
Ol'friend,
George Schricker
Yest, Tom, good luck to A. And a motto for this blog:
"In the gloom the gold gathers the light against it"
The Irish poet Brian Coffey had, in his poem Advent, a nod to EP:
Unquiet house it is darkness solid like what wake-light once showed shadows pressing.
From tumbled citadel one stared at air shaped by walls
Tom,
The fog is back, Gaudier-Brzeska is still here, Pound never left -- hope all health is good. . . .
8.19
light coming into fog against invisible
ridge, black shapes of leaves on branch
in foreground, sound of wave in channel
landscape when he was twenty,
emphasized tonal values
and scale, as content itself,
where at any one moment
grey-white of fog reflected in channel,
cormorant flapping across toward ridge
Billy and Steve,
Thank you for the illumination, helpful in present passages of obscurity ("time passes/in the dark..."):
grey-white of fog reflected in channel,
In the gloom the gold gathers the light against it...
But to affirm the gold thread in the pattern
(Torcello)
.
A little light, like a rushlight...
George,
Ed and I made a trip to Seattle once, and of course that was a part of the earth he knew well from his years in the Skagit Valley; but as to specific conversation about the NW Coast Fur Trade, all that I can recall are his written comments of a later epoch, when I wrote my fur trade book and he contributed the introduction: of which a few pertinent paragraphs may be found here:
Empire of Skin
In the night, remembering all that glimmers in the gloom of the weave may as easily prove fool's gold, still the thread unravels, toward a bridge over worlds...
Tom,
Playing ketch-UP ball here & ordered your book. Scrambling bk into Dorn after long hiatus writing children's songs and teaching storytelling. Hrd into your exquisite book on both Dorn and Olson. The Dorn connection is at once both more ephemeral and more concrete. As a performer, I used to do a one-man (rather surreal) enactment of Gunslinger & absorbed the form. This piece is not driven by the D's (or your's)level of erudition. As an homage meant for Young Adults, it duplicates the form: IIII four books & an interlude. You may consider it a bastardization, although I assure you I mean it with the sincerest intent. The idea is to get into the classrooms with it. Title:Goodbye to the Animal People. Means well.
Thanks for posting this Tom. The line is that place, around which everything else develops its reason.
Leigh,
Your comment is resonant with this work and also with your own practise, yes -- as too with Pound's 1916 account of what Gaudier had been up to in 1912-1913:
Drawings done in full influence of the theory that painting, or at least drawing, "is calligraphy."
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