Editing Imagism (section)

==Pre-Imagism==
The origins of Imagism are to be found in two poems, ''Autumn'' and ''A City Sunset'' by [[T. E. Hulme]].<ref>Brooker (1996), p. 48</ref> These were published in January 1909 by the [[Poets' Club]] in London in a booklet called ''For Christmas MDCCCCVIII''. Hulme was a student of mathematics and philosophy; he had been involved in setting up the club in 1908 and was its first secretary. Around the end of 1908, he presented his paper ''[[A Lecture on Modern Poetry]]'' at one of the club's meetings.<ref>McGuinness (1998), xii.</ref> Writing in [[A. R. Orage]]'s magazine ''[[The New Age]]'', the poet and critic [[F. S. Flint]] (a champion of free verse and modern French poetry) was highly critical of the club and its publications.<ref>Crunden (1993), 271</ref>

From the ensuing debate, Hulme and Flint became close friends. In 1909, Hulme left the Poets' Club and started meeting with Flint and other poets in a new group which Hulme referred to as the "Secession Club"; they met at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in London's [[Soho]]<ref>Williams (2002), p. 16</ref> to discuss plans to reform contemporary poetry through free verse and the ''[[waka (poetry)|tanka]]'' and [[haiku]] and through the removal of all unnecessary verbiage from poems. The interest in [[Japanese poetry|Japanese verse forms]] can be contextualized by the late [[Victorian era|Victorian]] and [[Edwardian era|Edwardian]] revival of [[Chinoiserie]] and [[Japonism]]<ref>Kita (2000), p. 179</ref> as witnessed in the 1890s vogue for [[William Anderson (collector)|William Anderson]]'s Japanese prints donated to the [[British Museum]] as well as in the influence of [[Woodblock printing in Japan|woodblock prints]] on paintings by [[Claude Monet|Monet]], [[Edgar Degas|Degas]] and [[Vincent van Gogh|van Gogh]].<ref>Kita (2000), pp. 179–180</ref> Direct literary models were available from a number of sources, including [[F. V. Dickins]]'s 1866 ''Hyak nin is'shiu, or, Stanzas by a Century of Poets, Being Japanese Lyrical Odes'', the first English-language version of the ''[[Hyakunin Isshū]]'',<ref>Ewick, David. "[https://www.academia.edu/36167740/Strange_Attractors_Ezra_Pound_and_the_Invention_of_Japan_II Strange Attractors: Ezra Pound and the Invention of Japan, II]". ''Essays and Studies in British and American Literature'', Tokyo Woman's Christian University, 2018</ref> a 13th-century anthology of 100 waka, the early 20th-century critical writings and poems of [[Sadakichi Hartmann]], and contemporary French-language translations.<ref>Kita (2000), p. 180</ref>

The American poet Ezra Pound was introduced to the group in April 1909 and found their ideas close to his own.<ref>Moody (2007), pp. 180, 222</ref> In particular, Pound's studies of early European vernacular poetry had led him to an admiration of the condensed, direct expression that he detected in the writings of [[Arnaut Daniel]], [[Dante]], and [[Guido Cavalcanti]], amongst others. For example, in his 1911–12 series of essays ''[[I gather the limbs of Osiris]]'', Pound writes of Daniel's line "pensar de lieis m'es repaus" ("it rests me to think of her"), from the [[canzone]] ''En breu brizara'l temps braus'': "You cannot get statement simpler than that, or clearer, or less rhetorical".<ref>Cookson (1975), p. 43</ref> These criteria—directness, clarity and lack of [[rhetoric]]—were to be amongst the defining qualities of Imagist poetry. Through his friendship with [[Laurence Binyon]], Pound had already developed an interest in [[Japanese art]] by examining ''[[Nishiki-e]]'' prints at the British Museum, and he quickly became absorbed in the study of Japanese verse forms.<ref>Arrowsmith, Rupert Richard (2011). ''Modernism and the Museum: Asian, African and Pacific Art and the London Avant Garde''. Oxford University Press, pp. 103–164. {{ISBN|978-0-19-959369-9}}. Also see Arrowsmith, Rupert Richard (2011). [http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modernism-modernity/summary/v018/18.1.arrowsmith.html "The Transcultural Roots of Modernism: Imagist Poetry, Japanese Visual Culture, and the Western Museum System]". ''[[Modernism/modernity]]'' 18:1, pp. 27–42; and {{cite video|url=http://vimeo.com/arrowsmith/cosmopolitanism-and-modernism |title=Cosmopolitanism and Modernism: How Asian Visual Culture Shaped Early Twentieth Century Art and Literature in London |publisher=[[London University School of Advanced Study]] |date=March 2012}}</ref>

In a 1915 article in ''[[La France (French newspaper)|La France]]'', French critic [[Remy de Gourmont]] described the Imagists as descendants of the French [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolists]].<ref>Preface to ''Some Imagist Poets'' (1916). Constable and Company.</ref> Pound emphasised that influence in a 1928 letter to the French critic and translator [[René Taupin]]. He pointed out that Hulme was indebted to the Symbolist tradition, via [[W. B. Yeats]], [[Arthur Symons]] and the [[Rhymers' Club]] generation of British poets and [[Stéphane Mallarmé|Mallarmé]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Woon-Ping Chin Holaday |date=Summer 1978 |title=From Ezra Pound to Maxine Hong Kingston: Expressions of Chinese Thought in American Literature |journal=MELUS  |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=15–24|doi=10.2307/467456 |jstor=467456 }}</ref> Taupin concluded in his 1929 study that however great the divergence of technique and language "between the image of the Imagist and the 'symbol' of the Symbolists[,] there is a difference only of precision".<ref name="taupin"/> In 1915, Pound edited the poetry of another 1890s poet, [[Lionel Johnson]]. In his introduction, he wrote

{{poemquote|No one has written purer imagism than [Johnson] has, in the line
Clear lie the fields, and fade into blue air,
It has a beauty like the Chinese.<ref>Ming, Xie (1998), p. 80</ref>}}