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12 · Introduction Towards the most sophisticated caves, Towards the least guardian-angel household chores! [‘Petition’, p. 407] One of the issues that underlie some of his wilder poems is that of abortion. He saw that no woman could be sexually liberated in the mores of that period without a fairly relaxed attitude to it as a form of contraception and reputation protection. Most of the reforms he wanted would depend on the development of contraception and the economic liberation of women. These convictions lead him to a major difference from Pound and Eliot, for he uses a consistent approach to imagery: the sun and its setting represent mindless generation, the inevitable result of evolution, and its inexorable corollary of death. Cathedrals and rosace windows frequently stand in for the sun as do girls’ eyes. The moon is used to represent the detached attitude of mind of those who escape the sun’s influence; the wind represents the need for love, particularly when thwarted; the sea, especially in its submarine aspects, represents the lapsing back and allowing oneself to be swept along by the movement of the universe. This brings us to a second part of his theme: that universes evolve just as do species, and death is a mere recycling of the unique to make another. Thus since there can be no afterlife we must live a more fulfilled life on our own little stewpot, the earth, in our own little corner of the heavens. We must console one another.⁴ (He is closer to Hardy than to Pound and Eliot in this and several other respects.) In his own right then, Laforgue is important; perhaps more so today in bearing witness to the historical development of the idea of women’s liberation – not to mention the illustrating of how easy it was to slip back into outdated attitudes. Secondly, in his resolute, unwilling acceptance that it is to life on earth that we must look for our only happiness and fulfilment, a timely reminder when all sorts of fringe, revivalist religions are trying to bind the mind again. Let ⁴ For the stewpot image see the last verse of ‘Open Sea’ (p. 197) and verse 4 of ‘Petty Miseries of August’ (p. 325). The reference to ‘our corner’ occurs in the penultimate verse of ‘The Good Apostle’ (p. 307). The reference to consoling each other may best be seen in ‘Complaint of a Certain Sunday’ (p. 65). Laforgue is often close to Hardy in wanting Someone to blame.
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Introduction · 13 Pound have the last word here, the final remark on the poet in his 1918 selection: ‘Laforgue is incontrovertible.’ (The Little Review, February 1918.) Lastly one reads Laforgue with a sense of tragic loss, as one reads Owen and Keats, for he died young and with much promise unfulfilled. But he needs no pathos from me: in the Last Poems he is a master of a Heinian pathos: It’s so fresh here, so fresh the air; Oh, and if at this very time, She, too, is strolling by the woods somewhere To drown her plight In the wedding of the lunar light ! . . . (She so likes a late stroll !) She’ll have forgotten her stole; She’ll take sick, seeing the beauty of the time! Oh, I don’t want to hear that cough from you! Oh! I beg you, take care of yourself, please! [‘Moon Solo’, pp. 419‒21] His influence on Pound and Eliot can be seen in several clear areas, though it would take much more than an introduction to determine how superficial or essential that influence was. First, he had developed some of the finest vers libre just prior to the times when Pound and Eliot wished to break the hold of the Miltonic pentameter. Secondly, his dominant mode of expression was ironic. Thirdly, he was a master technician, trying to extend his means of expression to include, through his technique of intercutting, the contemporary idiom, science, the city, and multiple ambivalences of feeling. (A technique now so widespread his originality is obscured.) Fourthly, there was simply much in his material that would have attracted the American pair at this time. He was anti-church – Pound, amusingly, shares his distaste for church bells.⁵ He was also against the hard-dying cult of the woman-goddess. His mental furniture included evolution and physiology as Wordsworth’s included idealism, daffodils and images of mountains. He was, in sum, a poet of the city. ⁵ Oddly enough, however, Pound cuts a reference to church bells from his version of ‘Pierrots’ (Scène courte mais typique), p. 214.

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12 · Introduction

Towards the most sophisticated caves, Towards the least guardian-angel household chores!

[‘Petition’, p. 407]

One of the issues that underlie some of his wilder poems is that of abortion. He saw that no woman could be sexually liberated in the mores of that period without a fairly relaxed attitude to it as a form of contraception and reputation protection. Most of the reforms he wanted would depend on the development of contraception and the economic liberation of women.

These convictions lead him to a major difference from Pound and Eliot, for he uses a consistent approach to imagery: the sun and its setting represent mindless generation, the inevitable result of evolution, and its inexorable corollary of death. Cathedrals and rosace windows frequently stand in for the sun as do girls’ eyes. The moon is used to represent the detached attitude of mind of those who escape the sun’s influence; the wind represents the need for love, particularly when thwarted; the sea, especially in its submarine aspects, represents the lapsing back and allowing oneself to be swept along by the movement of the universe.

This brings us to a second part of his theme: that universes evolve just as do species, and death is a mere recycling of the unique to make another. Thus since there can be no afterlife we must live a more fulfilled life on our own little stewpot, the earth, in our own little corner of the heavens. We must console one another.⁴ (He is closer to Hardy than to Pound and Eliot in this and several other respects.)

In his own right then, Laforgue is important; perhaps more so today in bearing witness to the historical development of the idea of women’s liberation – not to mention the illustrating of how easy it was to slip back into outdated attitudes. Secondly, in his resolute, unwilling acceptance that it is to life on earth that we must look for our only happiness and fulfilment, a timely reminder when all sorts of fringe, revivalist religions are trying to bind the mind again. Let

⁴ For the stewpot image see the last verse of ‘Open Sea’ (p. 197) and verse 4 of ‘Petty Miseries of August’ (p. 325). The reference to ‘our corner’ occurs in the penultimate verse of ‘The Good Apostle’ (p. 307). The reference to consoling each other may best be seen in ‘Complaint of a Certain Sunday’ (p. 65). Laforgue is often close to Hardy in wanting Someone to blame.

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