The Modern World that gradually emerged in the early 20th century became a favorite theme for many poets and writers. In the many poems, essays, and novels of artists, the reader can see the changes that the modern world brought, the effects of these changes and how the society perceived everything. What made each of these works a literary piece, maybe we cannot tell. However, Ezra Pound seems to have understood the dark side of the modern world. In his poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, he takes the form of a persona to relate to us the modern world and how it affected artists and their works. His criticism of the ugly side of the contemporary world refers to the ugliness of the war and the destruction that came not just during but also after the first world war. In this sense, the poem reflects on how poetry should be a recovery of the ‘dead art’ and on the aftermath and effects of the First World War.
The poem is structured in the modern style to emphasize the recovery of poetry and the importance of aesthetics and art. Pound was dissatisfied by the swiftly modernizing world that placed less significance on art and beauty. Therefore, he was determined on celebrating art, literature, and beauty in his poetry. In the poem Pound is critical of the mass culture and says artists of the modern day are too concerned with the capitalist system built into society that they are not able to produce great art. In other words, Pound thinks that the artists are working for something that is worthless, which is sales and profit only. In the poem Pound talks about art and culture of the modern world and argues that artists of the modern age do not know the history of art and therefore cannot produce art with real beauty and expression. In the lines,
The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace (21-24)
Pound uses the Mauberley persona as he attempts to recover poetry to its ideal by looking for the aesthetic and beauty lost in the modern world. However, Pound shows the reader that the modern world is not up for the beautiful and the sublime, instead, the modern is all about the fragmented, the ugly, torn apart and destroyed. Here we see the footsteps of the aftermath and effects of the first world war approaching.
World War I seems to be an overall theme throughout the poem, it is also a reason for the poem. Pound, who criticizes the modern society for being expressionless, ‘ugly’ and focused on the sale-profit system, suggests that the war was a reason for this inspirited and lost form of poetry. In the lines, “These fought in any case, And some believing, pro-Domo, in any case…” (61-62) Pound talks about people who are fighting ‘in any case’ which means that people fought for the things they believed despite something. However, at first glance, the reader does not understand that Pound is talking about the Great War, i.e., World War I, though people from Pound’s time would have instantly understood the reference since he wrote the poem two years after the war. If we empathize with Pound, we could read the lines as soldiers fighting for a world that has no worth, the modern world that is dead, has no beauty or no artist that aims for the beauty in poetry. ‘pro Domo’ is in Latin and can be translated as ‘for home’; therefore, Pound says that soldiers of the war fought long and hard for their nation and out of love for their homelands, in other words, they were patriots and had maternal reasons. However, what Pound seems to be saying that soldier who fought for the home that they thought was valuable and worth sacrificing their life is worthless because of the modern system that has turned everything into the ugly routine capitalistic life. These lines also show the effects of the war, because through Pound’s criticism we can see that love for homeland, nation, fighting for a specific belief are all lost after the war, which was destructive not just for the cities, but also for the emotional and psychological consciousness of the individuals.
Pound talks about the reasons soldiers join the army to fight in the war when he says in the lines,
Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later… (63-68)
Pound says that some had no idea what they were doing others joined because they were weak, wanted adventure, to prove themselves brave, etc. The last line shows why Pound stated these lines; he tries to explain that all the reasons soldiers had for joining the army ended in disappointment when they saw the destruction and death of the war. The aftermath of the war according to Pound, was just as destructive as the war itself. It destroyed not only the hope and dreams of soldiers and civilians but also the beauty of poetry and the aesthetic understanding of artists.
In line 70, Pound references the Latin phrase, “Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria mori,” which translate to, ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.’ However, what Pound means that the soldiers did fight for their country, but it was not sweet, good, nor fitting because for Pound there is nothing good being at war that he likens to being in the “eye-deep in hell.” Moreover, being at war is nothing glorious when the “old men lie” making the soldier believe that he is fighting for a cause. Once again we see Pound’s criticism of the modern age and society, which he reflects to be deceitful and arbitrary. The soldiers who fought in the war, according to Pound, came home not only destroyed morally and emotionally but also to the modern world that was not real and what the soldiers would anticipate it to be. In this new world Pound says that there is a lot of “usury age-old and age-thick” and “liars in public places.” Pound again refers to the modern world which the society basis on the sale-profit system and nothing beautiful has value. All these, the reader can assume to be the effects of the war, since war changed the emotional and rational consciousness of the society.
The poem deals with the issue of the modern world directly while also evaluating the transformation and condition of poetry and also on how to recover the ‘great art’ from a world that is in dispute and is a mass massacre-both regarding society, poetry, and artist. As Pound uses the persona of Mauberley, he critiques the capitalist system and its effects on the community. The system has changed the minds and soul of the people; the war has destroyed the will to search for the beauty in poetry and the belief that the history of art is essential to produce great poetry. Because of the transformation, the artists no longer have the necessary basis to create a work of art that is beautiful and glorious. In a way, Pound says that poetry died, not by a weapon during the war, but the changing understanding of the society after the war.