HUGH SELWTN MAUBERLEY

E.P.

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University of California • Berkeley

Hugh Se/wyn Mauberley

KP.

THE OVIT> 1920

" VOCAT ^ESTUS IN UMBJRAM

^emesianus EC.

H. S. Mauberley

(LIFE AND CONTACTS)

CONTENTS Part I.

PAGE

Ode pour f 'election de son sepulchre 9

II. 10

III. ii

IV. 12

V. 13

Teux Glauques 14 " Siena mi fe , disfecemi Maremma 1 5

*Brennbaum \ 6

£Mr. Nixon 17

X. 18

XL 19

XII. 20

ENVOI

1919

Part II.

1920 (Mauberley)

I. 22

II. 23

III. " The age demanded" 25

IV. 27

V. Medallion 28

THIS is NUMBER

E.P. ODE POUR SELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE

OR three years, out of key with his time, He strove to resuscitate the dead art Of poetry ; to maintain " the sublime " In the old sense. Wrong from the start —

No hardly, but, seeing he had been born

In a half savage country, out of date ;

Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn ;

Capaneus ; trout for factitious bait ;

ap roi Travff , o<r 'eV( T/oo/jf/

Caught in the unstopped ear ;

Giving the rocks small lee-way

The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.

His true Penelope was Flaubert, He fished by obstinate isles ; Observed the elegance of Circe's hair Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.

Unaffected by " the march of events,"

He passed from men's memory in fan trentiesme

De son cage ; the case presents

No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.

10

II.

HE age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modern stage, Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries Of the inward gaze ; Better mendacities

Than the classics in paraphrase !

^mwon. & JTS r*mrfi If A

The " age demanded " chiefly a mould in plaster, Made with no loss of time, A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster Or the "sculpture" of rhyme.

,m ol jron

1 1

III.

HE tea-rose tea-gown, etc. Supplants the mousseline of Cos, The pianola "replaces " Sappho's barbitos.

Christ follows Dionysus, Phallic and ambrosial Made way for macerations <;^ Caliban casts out Ariel.

AII i_- n

All things are a flowing,

Sage Heracleitus says ;

But a tawdry cheapness

Shall reign throughout our days.

Even the Christian beauty Defects — after Samothrace ; "We see TO KaXdv Decreed in the market place.

Faun's flesh is not to us, Nor the saint's vision. We have the press for wafer ; Franchise for circumcision.

All men, in law, are equals. Free of Peisistratus, We choose a knave or an eunuch To rule over us.

O bright Apollo,

TIV avSpa, riv jj/owa, Ttva Oeov,

What god, man, or hero

Shall I place a tin wreath upon !

12

IV.

HESE fought, in any case,

and some believing, pro domo, in any case

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 .

some in fear, learning love of slaughter ;

Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor ". .

walked eye-deep in hell

believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving

came home, home to a lie,

home to many deceits,

home to old lies and new infamy ;

usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before. Young blood and high blood, Fair cheeks, and fine bodies ;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days, hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies.

v,

HERE died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.

H

YEUX GLAUQUES

LADSTONE was still respected, When John Ruskin produced " Kings Treasuries " ; Swinburne And Rossetti still abused.

Foetid Buchanan lifted up his voice When that faun's head of hers

Became a pastime for j

Painters and adulterers.

••JUfi*8 .'5 vvf>/ ' dfeg£& $ moil ;£;':

The Burne-Jones cartons Have preserved her eyes ; Still, at the Tate, they teach Cophetua to rhapsodize ;

Thin like brook-water,

With a vacant gaze.

The English Rubaiyat was still-born

In those days.

• '" or -- T •?' tt-»"" Cl • r '{ \ f ^ - *<

The thin, clear gaze, the same

Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin'd fac

Questing and passive ----

" Ah, poor Jenny's case "...

Bewildered that a world Shows no surprise At her last maquero's Adulteries.

'5

"SIENA MI FE' , DISFECEMI MAREMMA

MONG the pickled foetuses and bottled bones, Engaged in perfecting the catalogue, I found the last scion of the

Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.

T- 1_ t_ . 11 J Cn 11-r <.

For two hours he talked or Gallitet ; Of Dowson ; of the Rhymers' Club ;

T- 1J 1_ T 1_ /T • 1x J' J

Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died

r> c 11- c L- u i • L -3tt

By falling from a high stool in a pub . . .

But showed no trace of alcohol

At the autopsy, privately performed —

Tissue preserved — the pure mind

Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed.

Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels ; Headlam for uplift ; Image impartially imbued With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore and the Church. So spoke the author of " The Dorian Mood ",

_ T_ -)8\ b'nbi-'iLsd

M. Verog, out of step with the decade,

Detached from his contemporaries,

XT 1 J 1 1

Neglected by the young, Because of these reveries.

y:hQ'!U?, on ev/o?!S

i6

BRENNBAUM.

rHE sky-like limpid eyes, The circular infant's face, The stiffness from spats to collar Never relaxing into grace ;

The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years,

Showed only when the daylight fell

Level across the face

Of Brennbaum " The Impeccable ".

'7

MR. NIXON

N the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht

Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer

Dangers of delay. "Consider " Carefully the reviewer.

" I was as poor as you are ;

" When I began I got, of course,

" Advance on royalties, fifty at first ", said Mr. Nixon,

" Follow me, and take a column,

" Even if you have to work free.

" Butter reviewers. From fifty to three hundred

" I rose in eighteen months ;

" The hardest nut I had to crack

" Was Dr. Dundas.

" I never mentioned a man but with the view

" Of selling my own works.

" The tip's a good one, as for literature

*' It gives no man a sinecure."

And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, There's nothing in it.

* * *

Likewise a friend of Bloughram's once advised me : Don't kick against the pricks,

Accept opinion. The " Nineties " tried your game And died, there's nothing in it.

X.

ENEATH the sagging roof The stylist has taken shelter, Unpaid, uncelebrated, &\fc At last from the world's welter

Nature receives him,

With a placid and uneducated mistress

He exercises his talents

And the soil meets his distress.

The haven from sophistications and contentions Leaks through its thatch ; He offers succulent cooking ; The door has a creaking latch.

19

XL

ONSERVATRIX of MU&icn "

Habits of mind and feeling,

Possibly. But in Baling

With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen?

No, " Milesien " is an exaggeration. No instinct has survived in her Older than those her grandmother Told her would fit her station.

20

XII.

APHNE with her thighs in bark Stretches toward me her leafy hands ", — Subjectively. In the stuffed-satin drawing-room I await The Lady Valentine's commands,

Knowing my coat has never been Of precisely the fashion To stimulate, in her, A durable passion ;

Doubtful, somewhat, of the value

Of well-gowned approbation

Of literary effort,

But never of The Lady Valentine's vocation :

Poetry, her border of ideas,

The edge, uncertain, but a means of blending

With other strata

Where the lower and higher have ending ;

A hook to catch the Lady Jane's attention, A modulation toward the theatre,

f _.. ** '"« -^"

Also, in the case of revolution,

A possible friend and comforter.

* ^m^?« wo «s^hli8

* % *

Conduct, on the other hand, the soul

" Which the highest cultures have nourished "

To Fleet St. where

Dr. Johnson flourished ;

Beside this thoroughfare

The sale of half-hose has

Long since superseded the cultivation

Of Pierian roses.

21

ENVOI (1919)

O, dumb -born book,

Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes ;

Hadst thou but song

As thou hast subjects known,

Then were there cause in thee that should condone

Even my faults that heavy upon me lie

And build her glories their longevity.

Tell her that sheds

Such treasure in the air,

Recking naught else but that her graces give

Life to the moment,

I would bid them live

As roses might, in magic amber laid,

Red overwrought with orange and all made

One substance and one colour

Braving time. iafebd Tsrf ry^

Tell her that goes

With song upon her lips

But sings not out the song, nor knows

The maker of it, some other mouth,

May be as fair as hers,

Might, in new ages, gain her worshippers,

When our two dusts with Waller's shall be laid,

Sittings on siftings in oblivion,

Till change hath broken down

All things save Beauty alone.

22

1920

(MAUBERLEY)

I.

URNED from the "eau-forte Par Jaquemart ' To the strait head Of Mcssalina :

&H falrhA

" His true Penelope Was Flaubert ", And his tool The engraver's

Firmness, Not the full smile, His art, but an art In profile ;

Colourless Pier Francesca, Pisanello lacking the skill To forge Achaia.

;. i» / .• . ", ... .r.Ayr iii/'j- - ,

o

, »• «•'

n '-J: , <T O'aoT

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II

" Qu'est ce quils satenf de f amour y €t guest ce quits pettvent comprendre ?

Sils ne comprennent pas la poeste, s'i/s ne sentent pas la musique, quest ce quils peu^ent comprendre de cette pas- ston en comparaison avec laquelle la rose estgrossiere et le parfum des violettes un tonnerre?" CAID ALI

OR three years, diabolus in the scale, He drank ambrosia, All passes, ANANGKE prevails, Came end, at last, to that Arcadia.

He had moved amid her phantasmagoria, Amid her galaxies,

NUKTIS "AGALMA

h£ ns 5ird fi>K c:

Drifted .... drifted precipitate, Asking time to be rid of , . .\ " Of his bewilderment ; to designate His new found orchid.V.'vr:i

To be certain , , . . certain , . .

(Amid serial flowers) , , time for arrangements —

Drifted on

To the final estrangement ;

Unable in the supervening blank ness To sift TO AGATHON from the chaff Until he found his seive . . . Ultimately, his seismograph :

— Given, that is, his urge To convey the relation Of eye-lid and cheek-bone By verbal manifestation ;

To present the series

Of curious heads in medallion—

,1 He had passed, inconscient, full gaze,

The wide-banded irises

And botticellian sprays implied

In their diastasis ;

Which anaesthesis, noted a year late, And weighed, revealed his great affect, (Orchid), mandate Of Eros, a retrospect.

Mouths biting empty air, The still stone dogs, Caught in metamorphosis were, Left him as epilogues.

"THE AGE DEMANDED "

VIDE POEM II. Page 10

OR this agility chance found Him of all men, unfit As the red-beaked steeds of The Cytheraean for a chain-bit.

The glow of porcelain Brought no reforming sense To his perception Of the social inconsequence.

Thus, if her colour

Came against his gaze,

Tempered as if

It were through a perfect glaze

He made no immediate application

Of this to relation of the state

To the individual, the month was more temperate

Because this beauty had been

The coral isle, the lion-coloured sand Burst in upon the porcelain revery : Impetuous troubling Of his imagery.

Mildness, amid the neo-Neitzschean clatter, His sense of graduations, Quite out of place amid Resistance to current exacerbations

Invitation, mere invitation to perceptivity

Gradually led him to the isolation

Which these presents place

Under a more tolerant, perhaps, examination.

26

By constant elimination The manifest universe Yielded an armour Against utter consternation,

A Minoan undulation,

Seen, we admit, amid ambrosial circumstances

Strengthened him against

The discouraging doctrine of chances

And his desire for survival,

Faint in the most strenuous moods,

Became an Olympian apathein

In the presence of selected perceptions.

A pale gold, in the aforesaid pattern, The unexpected palms Destroying, certainly, the artist's urge, Left him delighted with the imaginary Audition of the phantasmal sea-surge,

Incapable of the least ^utterance or composition, Emendation, conservation of the " better tradition", Refinement of medium, elimination of superfluities, August attraction or concentration.

Nothing in brief, but maudlin confession Irresponse to human aggression, Amid the precipitation, down-float Of insubstantial manna Lifting the faint susurrus Of his subjective hosannah.

Ultimate affronts to human redundancies ;

Non-esteem of self-styled " his betters "

Leading, as he well knew,

To his final l

Exclusion from the world of letters.

IV.

^

CATTERED Moluccas Not knowing, day to day, The first days end, in the next noon ; The placid water Unbroken by the Simoon ; ' '

Thick foliage

Placid beneath warm suns,

Tawn fore-shores

Washed in the cobalt of oblivions'^ ;*

r\ ^ r j • •:rr.>85*ic y.c'fu

Or through dawn-mist

The grey and rose Of the juridical Flamingoes ;

r.:\ hH* ih?-^ ^^i^lr^bb (til A iba:-. A consciousness disjunct, Being but this ovcrblotted Series

Of intermittences ;

. . jnemanitayi

Coracle of Pacific voyages, The unforecasted beach : Then on an oar Read this :

"I was

And I no more exist ;

Here drifted

An hedonist "

28

MEDALLION

-""' i-i :°«"f m porcelain !

The grand piano ,^

Utters a profane

Protest with her clear soprano.

The sleek head emerges From the gold-yellow frock As Anadyomene in the opening Pages of Reinach.

Honey-red, closing the face-oval

A basket-work of braids which seem as if they were

Spun in King Minos' hall

From metal, or intractable amber ;

The face-oval beneath the glaze, Bright in its suave bounding-line, as Beneath half-watt rays The eyes turn topaz.

PiOIJJAtlSM

THIS EDITION OF 2OO COPIES IS THE THIRD BOOK OF THE OVID PRESS : WAS PRINTED BY JOHN RODKER : AND COMPLETED APRIL

2 3RD. 1920

OF THIS EDITION^

1 5 Copies on Japan Vellum numbered i- 1 5 & not for sale. 20 Signed copies numbered 1 6- ? c

^ TT ' J ' L J X

joc Unsigned copies numbered 36 -200

J 6 r ^^*uJnr5n3mo^bBnA eA

initials & colophon by S.Wadsworth.

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- PARK GARDENS