Page 26 - Studio International - April 1967

Pound's instructions for its visual design. It is ''new sense of design'— the visual arrangement IN A STATION OF THE METRO
this spatially operative version which seems a of words, phrases and lines as an intrinsic part
`forgotten' experiment in modern verse archi- of a poem's communication. One seeks this The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
tectonics and in the 'new' aesthetic of form. source in Cummings and Carlos Williams, Petals on a wet, black bough. 12
Although the notion for 'masses in relation' but due credit should go to Ezra Pound. By
Here we have his familiar 'hokku-like
in 'The Garret' poem rests upon observing a 1913 it would seem Pound accomplished such
sentence'; but the poem has lost its visual
sense of pattern in the manuscript copy, this a composition by selective spacings between
''rhythmic system'. In assessing this less we
is not the case with 'Metro'. That poem has words and phrases—a possible equation be-
might conjecture whether Ezra Pound 'dis-
Pound's directions to substantiate its printed tween 'arrangement' in a poem and 'pattern'
carded' a most experimental ''vorticist' poem,
appearance. in a visual design. Visual design in the or ignored it for the attractions of Japanese
Had Pound apprehended the rudiments of a structure of a poem is a key, I believe, to the
hokku and the Chinese ideogram. It seems he
''rhythmic system' which registered in the eye organization of the Cantos; arrangement as
remembered his more visual version of
as well as on the ear, and so bring a 'new ''form' integrally relates to coveying that
''Metro' when in 1962 he remarked: Word-
manner of organization' into poetry? The poem's expansive meaning. The design of
cism from my angle was a renewal of the
currency of such practice is now evident: this ''Metro' presents the design of the Cantos in
sense of construction... was an attempt to
last summer at Arlington-Une exhibition delicate miniature. How odd, then, that in
revive the sense of form.' 13
q
(Bibury, Glos.), at ARNOLFINI GALLERY subsequent printings of his 'Metro' poem,
(Bristol), and earlier at the I.C.A. (London) editors choose to cite the earlier version,
exhibition, 'Between Poetry and Painting'. without selective spacings, and therefore far 12 Personae, 1926, p. 119, and subsequent editions.
Numerous poems in The New Writing in the less expressive of Pound's 'new sense of 13 Donald Hall, 'Ezra Pound: An Interview',
U.S.A. (Penguin Books, 1967) illustrate this form' : Paris Review, 28 (Summer-Fall 1962), pp. 28-31.
Correspondence Tantra Art (December 1966 issue), since I have had an Nolde's Party card
interest in this development in Indian thought and Dear Sir,
Tantric Art —`glib comparisons with religion for some years. I am still rather appalled by Frank Whitford calls Emil Nolde in his article
modern art' the mixture of ignorance, floundering quotations, and (January issue 'An expressionist master') a 'Nazi'.
glib comparisons with modern art works passed off
Dear Sir, This must be an error and I hope you will print an
I am greatly enjoying your 'new look', large pages, as a critical discussion of an unusual publication. apology to the memory of a painter who has suffered
lavish illustrations, and wide reporting. So the follow- Coomaraswamy must have turned over in his grave. greatly, whose work was ridiculed by the Nazi
ing comment is not to be taken as dispraise of your And Timothy Leary's 'experience' with LSD-25 regime. Advise Mr Whitford to read the wonderful
work. brought in to elucidate religious art! I do not think book on Emil Nolde by Werner Hoffmann! And then
I was rather looking forward to your review article on (nor do I believe you do) the discussion of a work of retract.
meditational diagrams to be incompatible with a
Yours faithfully,
background of relevant information possessed by D. Philippsen
73 years ago say, Giuseppe Tucci, Herbert V. Guenther, or others. Ilkeston
To leave the whole matter with some merely visual Derby
parallels between these paintings and contemporary
ones is to do a service neither to these Indian works
nor to the moderns, considering the very different sets Frank Whitford writes:
of presuppositions that constitute their respective From a professional point of view Nolde suffered
backgrounds. more at the hands of the Nazis than, say, any other
You may be interested to see how Ananda Coomaras- German painter: no fewer than 1,000 of his Works
wamy put the same point in a little piece he did on were condemned as degenerate and confiscated
'Symbolism' some years ago (Dictionary of World from collections. There is a profound irony in this.
Literature, Philosophical Library, 1953): '...there is Nolde had become a member of the Nazi party in the
no more common error than to attribute to an indi- same year as Hitler. After the Nazi art policy had got
vidual "poetic imagination" the use of what are really under way Nolde never ceased in his efforts to regain
the traditional symbols and technical terms of a official favour. He wrote letters to Goebbels pointing
spiritual language that transcends all confusions of out his early membership of the party and even went
tongues and is not peculiar to any one time or place. to Vienna to see Baldur von Schirach, a relative of his
The traditional symbols, in other words, are not wife, to persuade him to intercede with Hitler on his
"conventional" but "given" with the ideas to which behalf. The documents relating to this are by now too
they correspond; there is, accordingly, a distinction well known to need listing here, although it might be
between le symbolisme qui salt and le symbolisme as well to mention a letter of 12.7.1937 from the artist
In art...the critics are of two kinds—the literary man qui cherche, the former the universal language of to the President of the Prussian Academy of Art (in
with an artistic taste and the artist with a literary taste. tradition, the latter that of the individual and self- the archive of the Akademie der Künste, West Berlin)
expressive poets who are sometimes called Sym- in which he says: 'When the German National
The first class is very wide, extending from those
bolists.' (p. 405). Socialist Party was founded in North Schleswig I
gentlemen who make a speciality of art criticism, to
those who combine it with the records of race meetings Whether or not we might be able to agree on the became a member', and also Hans Fehr's book Emil
presence of such a 'universal language of tradition' Nolde—Ein Buch der Freundschaft, Cologne, 1957, in
and police courts. The art specialist is he who, not
being so born, is desirous of making himself an art I think we would agree on the desirability of attempt- which the same point is made even clearer. It is an
critic out of the ordinary material of man, and to that ing to understand graphic creations in the particular interesting, if depressing exercise to compare the
context of their production. two versions of Nolde's autobiography (Volume II)
end he frequents the art clubs and coteries, and
Cordially yours, Jahre der Kämpfe, the first edition published during
nourishes himself upon the brains of artists.
Erling Eng the Third Reich, the second after the war, and to
Lexington notice how frequent defamatory remarks about the
The May issue Kentucky Jews are either reversed or deleted, I go into this now
The May issue of Studio International will include a U.S.A. not to attack the reputation of a considerable painter
major article on Vasarely by Jean Clay; Robert but to emphasize the importance of racialism in
Hughes on Procktor; and Norbert Lynton on Schlem- Nolde's theory of art which, after all said and done,
mer. was central to his achievement.