Spring and All (4 page)

Of course S. is the most conspicuous example desirable of the falseness of this very thing.

He holds no mirror up to nature but with his imagination rivals nature’s composition with his own.

He himself become “nature” — continuing “its” marvels — if you will

I am often diverted with a recital which I have made for myself concerning Shakespeare: he was a comparatively uninformed man, quite according to the orthodox tradition, who lived from first to last a life of amusing regularity and simplicity, a house and wife in the suburbs, delightful children, a girl at court (whom he really never confused with his writing) and a café life which gave him with the freshness of discovery, the information upon which his imagination fed. London was full of the concentrates of science and adventure. He saw at “The
Mermaid” everything he knew. He was not conspicuous there except for his spirits.

His form was presented to him by Marlow, his stories were the common talk of his associates or else some compiler set them before him. His types were particularly quickened with life about him.

Feeling the force of life, in his peculiar intelligence, the great dome of his head, he had no need of anything but writing material to relieve himself of his thoughts. His very lack of scientific training loosened his power. He was unencumbered.

For S. to pretend to knowledge would have been ridiculous — no escape there — but that he possessed knowledge, and extraordinary knowledge, of the affairs which concerned him, as they concerned the others about him, was self-apparent to him. It was not apparent to the others.

His actual power was PURELY of the imagination. Not permitted to speak as W.S., in fact peculiarly barred from speaking so because of his lack of information, learning, not being able to rival his fellows in scientific training or adventure and at the same time being keen enough, imaginative enough, to know that there is no escape except in perfection, in excellence, in technical excellence — his buoyancy
of imagination raised him NOT TO COPY them, not to holding the mirror up to them but to equal, to surpass them as a creator of knowledge, as a vigorous, living force above their heads.

His escape was not simulated but real. Hamlet no doubt was written about at the middle of his life.

He speaks authoritatively through invention, through characters, through design. The objects of his world were real to him because he could use them and use them with understanding to make his inventions —

The imagination is a —

The vermiculations of modern criticism of S. particularly amuse when the attempt is made to force the role of a Solon upon the creator of Richard 3d.

So I come again to my present day gyrations.

So it is with the other classics: their meaning and worth can only be studied and understood in the imagination — that which begot them only can give them life again, re-enkindle their perfection —

useless to study by rote or scientific research — Useful for certain understanding to corroborate the imagination —

Yes, Anatole was a fool when he said: It is a lie. — That is it. If the actor simulates life it
is
a lie. But — but why continue without an audience?

The reason people marvel at works of art and say: How in Christ’s name did he do it? — is that they know nothing of the physiology of the nervous system and have never in their experience witnessed the larger processes of the imagination.

It is a step over from the profitless engagements of the arithmetical.

XII

The red paper box

hinged with cloth

is lined

inside and out

with imitation

leather

It is the sun

the table

with dinner

on it for

these are the same —

Its twoinch trays

have engineers

that convey glue

to airplanes

or for old ladies

that darn socks

paper clips

and red elastics —

What is the end

to insects

that suck gummed

labels?

for this is eternity

through its

dial we discover

transparent tissue

on a spool

But the stars

are round

cardboard with

a tin edge

and a ring

to fasten them

to a trunk

for the vacation —

XIII

Crustaceous

wedge

of sweaty kitchens

on rock

overtopping

thrusts of the sea

Waves of steel

from

swarming backstreets

shell

of coral

inventing

electricity —

Lights

speckle

El Greco

lakes

in renaissance

twilight

with triphammers

which pulverize

nitrogen

of old pastures

to dodge

motorcars

with arms and legs —

The agregate

is untamed

encapsulating

irritants

but

of agonized spires

knits

peace

where bridge stanchions

rest

certainly

piercing

left ventricles

with long

sunburnt fingers

XIV

Of death

the barber

the barber

talked to me

cutting my

life with

sleep to trim

my hair —

It’s just

a moment

he said, we die

every night —

And of

the newest

ways to grow

hair on

bald death —

I told him

of the quartz

lamp

and of old men

with third

sets of teeth

to the cue

of an old man

who said

at the door —

Sunshine today!

for which

death shaves

him twice

a week

XV

The decay of cathedrals

is efflorescent

through the phenomenal

growth of movie houses

whose catholicity is

progress since

destruction and creation

are simultaneous

without sacrifice

of even the smallest

detail even to the

volcanic organ whose

woe is translatable

to joy if light becomes

darkness and darkness

light, as it will —

But scism which seems

adamant is diverted

from the perpendicular

by simply rotating the object

cleaving away the root of

disaster which it

seemed to foster. Thus

the movies are a moral force

Nightly the crowds

with the closeness and

universality of sand

witness the selfspittle

which used to be drowned

in incense and intoned

over by the supple jointed

imagination of inoffensiveness

backed by biblical

rigidity made into passion plays

upon the altar to

attract the dynamic mob

whose female relative

sweeping grass Tolstoi

saw injected into

the Russian nobility

It is rarely understood how such plays as Shakespeare’s were written — or in fact how any work of value has been written, the practical bearing of which is that only as the work was produced, in that way alone can it be understood

Fruitless for the academic tapeworm to hoard its excrementa is books. The cage —

The most of all writing has not even begun in the province from which alone it can draw sustenance.

There is not life in the stuff because it tries to be “like” life.

First must come the transposition of the faculties to the only world of reality that men know: the world of the imagination, wholly our own. From this world alone does the work gain power, its soil the only one whose chemistry is perfect to the purpose.

The exaltation men feel before a work of art is the feeling of reality they draw from it. It sets them up, places a value upon experience — (said that half a dozen times already)

XVI

O tongue

licking

the sore on

her netherlip

O toppled belly

O passionate cotton

stuck with

matted hair

elysian slobber

from her mouth

upon

the folded handkerchief

I can’t die

— moaned the old

jaundiced woman

rolling her

saffron eyeballs

I can’t die

I can’t die

XVII

Our orchestra

is the cat’s nuts —

Banjo jazz

with a nickelplated

amplifier to

soothe

the savage beast —

Get the rythm

That sheet stuff

’s a lot a cheese.

Man

gimme the key

and lemme loose —

I make ’em crazy

with my harmonies —

Shoot it Jimmy

Nobody

Nobody else

but me —

They can’t copy it

XVIII

The pure products of

America go crazy —

mountain folk from Kentucky

or the ribbed north end of

Jersey

with its isolate lakes and

valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves

old names

and promiscuity between

devil-may-care men who have taken

to railroading

out of sheer lust of adventure —

and young slatterns, bathed

in filth

from Monday to Saturday

to be tricked out that night

with gauds

from imaginations which have no

peasant traditions to give them

character

but flutter and flaunt

sheer rags — succumbing without

emotion

save numbed terror

under some hedge of choke-cherry

or viburnum —

which they cannot express —

Unless it be that marriage

perhaps

with a dash of Indian blood

will throw up a girl so desolate

so hemmed round

with disease or murder

that she’ll be rescued by an

agent —

reared by the state and

sent out at fifteen to work in

some hard pressed

house in the suburbs —

some doctor’s family, some Elsie —

voluptuous water

expressing with broken

brain the truth about us —

her great

ungainly hips and flopping breasts

addressed to cheap

jewelry

and rich young men with fine eyes

as if the earth under our feet

were

an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners

destined

to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains

after deer

going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September

Somehow

it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that

something

is given off

No one

to witness

and adjust, no one to drive the car

or better: prose has to do with the fact of an emotion; poetry has to do with the dynamisation of emotion into a separate form. This is the force of imagination.

prose: statement of facts concerning emotions, intellectua states, data of all sorts — technical expositions, jargon, of all sorts — fictional and other —

poetry: new form dealt with as a reality in itself.

The form of prose is the accuracy of its subject matter-how best to expose the multiform phases of its material

the form of poetry is related to the movements of the imagination revealed in words — or whatever it may be —

the cleavage is complete

Why should I go further than I am able? Is it not enough for you that I am perfect?

The cleavage goes through all the phases of experience. It is the jump from prose to the process of imagination that is the next great leap of the intelligence — from the simulations of present experience to the facts of the imagination —

the greatest characteristic of the present age is that it is stale — stale as literature —

To enter a new world, and have there freedom of movement and newness.

I mean that there will always be prose painting, representative work, clever as may be in revealing new phases of emotional research presented on the surface.

But the jump from that to Cezanne or back to certain of the primitives is the impossible.

The primitives are not back in some remote age — they are not BEHIND experience. Work which bridges the gap between the rigidities of vulgar experience and the imagination is rare. It is new, immediate — It is so because it is actual, always real. It is experience dynamized into reality.

Time does not move. Only ignorance and stupidity move. Intelligence (force, power) stands still with time and forces change about itself — sifting the world for permanence, in the drift of nonentity.

Pio Baroja interested me once —

Baroja leaving the medical profession, some not important inspectors work in the north of Spain, opened a bakery in Madrid.

The isolation he speaks of, as a member of the so called intellectual class, influenced him to abandon his position and engage himself, as far as possible, in the intricacies of the design patterned by the social class — He sees no interest in isolation —

These gestures are the effort for self preservation or the preservation of some quality held in high esteem —

Here it seems to be that a man, starved in imagination, changes his milieu so that his food may be richer — The social class, without the power of expression, lives upon imaginative values.

I mean only to emphasize the split that goes down through the abstractions of art to the everyday exercises of the most primitive types —

there is a sharp division — the energizing force of imagination on one side — and the acquisitive — PROGRESSIVE force of the lump on the other