“Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” by Ezra Pound: A Critical Analysis

(Life and Contacts)

               “Vocat aestus in umbram” 
                                                          Nemesianus Ec. IV.

E. P. ODE POUR L’ÉLECTION DE SON SÉPULCHRE

For 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In a half savage country, out of date;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:

“Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie

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 l’an trentiesme

De son eage; the case presents

No adjunct to the Muses’ diadem.

The 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!

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.

The 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.

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 kalon

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.

A bright Apollo,

tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon,

What god, man, or hero

Shall I place a tin wreath upon?

These 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

There 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.

YEUX GLAUQUES

Gladstone 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

Painters and adulterers.

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.

The thin, clear gaze, the same

Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin’d face,

Questing and passive ….

“Ah, poor Jenny’s case” …

Bewildered that a world

Shows no surprise

At her last maquero’s

Adulteries.

“SIENA MI FE’, DISFECEMI MAREMMA'”

Among the pickled foetuses and bottled bones,

Engaged in perfecting the catalogue,

I found the last scion of the

Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.

For two hours he talked of Gallifet;

Of Dowson; of the Rhymers’ Club;

Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died

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,” 

M. Verog, out of step with the decade,

Detached from his contemporaries,

Neglected by the young,

Because of these reveries.

BRENNEBAUM

The 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.”

In 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.

Beneath the sagging roof

The stylist has taken shelter,

Unpaid, uncelebrated,

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.

XI

“Conservatrix of Milésien”

Habits of mind and feeling,

Possibly. But in Ealing

With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen?

No, “Milésian” is an exaggeration.

No instinct has survived in her

Older than those her grandmother

Told her would fit her station.

“Daphne 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,

Also, in the case of revolution,

A possible friend and comforter.

       *        *        *        *

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.

                       Envoi (1919)

Go, 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.

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,

Siftings on siftings in oblivion,

Till change hath broken down

All things save Beauty alone.

🔷 1. Alienation from Modern Society

In “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”, Ezra Pound portrays the profound alienation of the artist from modern society, highlighting his inability to resonate with a changing world. The poem opens with “For three years, out of key with his time,” which immediately positions the protagonist as disconnected from the cultural and temporal currents surrounding him. This alienation intensifies as the speaker laments the decay of aesthetic ideals and laments the rise of “the age” which “demanded an image / Of its accelerated grimace.” The phrase underscores how modernity, with its superficiality and haste, leaves no room for classical beauty or thoughtful creation. Pound presents Mauberley (a semi-autobiographical figure) as a tragic embodiment of this misfit artist, whose devotion to art finds no home in an industrial, utilitarian culture.

---

🟨 2. Decay of Art and Aesthetic Values

Ezra Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” fiercely critiques the decline of aesthetic standards in modern art and literature. The speaker mocks contemporary art forms, calling them a “prose kinema” and not “the sculpture of rhyme,” suggesting that artistry has been replaced by mechanized and mass-produced entertainment. This shift is symbolized through the replacement of “Sappho’s barbitos” with the “pianola”—a move from lyrical, personal expression to mechanical reproduction. In naming Flaubert as “his true Penelope,” Pound pays homage to literary fidelity while contrasting it with the ephemeral nature of modern fame. The poem thus mourns a lost era of refined, painstakingly crafted art, displaced by consumer-driven mediocrity.

---

🟥 3. The Futility and Horror of War

War emerges in “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” as a devastating and senseless force that destroys youth and culture, particularly in Sections IV and V. Pound writes of the soldiers who “walked eye-deep in hell / believing in old men’s lies,” only to return to “old lies and new infamy.” These lines convey deep bitterness at the betrayal of idealistic soldiers by a corrupt political and social system. The use of ironic Latin—”non dulce non et decor”—satirizes Horace’s famous line, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” reinforcing the poet’s rejection of glorified nationalism. This theme not only critiques war’s physical destruction but also the spiritual and moral degradation it spreads across generations.

---

💠 4. The Failure of the Artist in the Modern World

In “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”, Ezra Pound depicts the artist’s tragic failure to influence or thrive in a modern world increasingly indifferent to genuine creativity. The titular figure “passed from men’s memory,” and the poem laments that he was “unpaid, uncelebrated,” a victim of a society that chooses “a knave or an eunuch” to rule over it. This critique extends to literary culture, where Pound portrays corrupt figures like Mr. Nixon advising to “Butter reviewers” and abandon poetry for profit. The envoi, “Go, dumb-born book,” reflects both hope and despair—an appeal to posterity and a recognition of present futility. Mauberley’s failure symbolizes the modern poet’s struggle against commercialization, vulgarity, and irrelevance.

🔷 1. How does Ezra Pound portray the role of the artist in a changing modern world?

In “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”, Ezra Pound portrays the artist as an outsider in an era that no longer values depth, craft, or aesthetic dedication. The poem opens with the assertion that the protagonist is “out of key with his time,” establishing a conflict between timeless artistic ideals and the temporal vulgarities of modernity. The age, the poet laments, “demanded an image / Of its accelerated grimace,” preferring superficial, mechanized representations to carefully honed expression. Through this lens, the artist is alienated and increasingly irrelevant, “unpaid, uncelebrated,” retreating into obscurity. This criticism is both personal and universal—an expression of Pound’s disillusionment with how modern life undermines the seriousness and value of artistic labor.

---

🟨 2. In what ways does the poem reflect a critique of war and its aftermath?

Ezra Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” offers a scathing indictment of World War I and the cultural forces that justified it. In Section IV, he describes soldiers who “walked eye-deep in hell / believing in old men’s lies,” drawing attention to the blind idealism that led them to the trenches. The Latin phrase “Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor” reverses Horace’s noble sentiment, exposing the irony of dying for a failing civilization. Rather than honoring the dead in conventional heroic terms, Pound exposes the grotesque reality behind their sacrifice: “For two gross of broken statues, / For a few thousand battered books.” Through these bitter reflections, the poem mourns not only the lives lost but the cultural decay and deception that facilitated such destruction.

---

🟥 3. What does Pound suggest about the cultural decline of the West in this poem?

In “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”, Pound laments what he sees as the catastrophic decline of Western cultural values, a theme rendered through irony, classical allusion, and critique of mass society. The lines “The pianola ‘replaces’ / Sappho’s barbitos” and “Christ follows Dionysus” signify a tragic shift from authentic, sacred beauty to mechanical entertainment and moral sterility. Where once high art and mythic resonance shaped civilization, now, “a tawdry cheapness / Shall reign throughout our days.” This decline is not merely aesthetic but also spiritual and intellectual, as the modern world commodifies what was once revered. Pound constructs a poetic world where tradition has eroded, and with it, the meaning and value of culture itself.

---

🌟 4. How does Pound utilize form and structure to mirror the thematic fragmentation of modernity?

The formal structure of “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” mirrors the disjointed, fractured experience of modernity that Ezra Pound seeks to portray. Rather than presenting a cohesive narrative, the poem is composed of thematically linked yet formally disjointed segments, oscillating between autobiographical reflection, social critique, and classical homage. Enjambment and abrupt tonal shifts underscore the cultural fragmentation at the heart of the poem. For example, transitions between scenes like “walked eye-deep in hell” and the businesslike cynicism of “Butter reviewers” reflect the collapse of moral and aesthetic coherence. This fragmentation is deliberate—Pound uses it to embody the disorientation of the postwar world and the breakdown of meaningful artistic and cultural continuity.

🔷 “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot
Both poems explore the alienation and fragmentation of the modern individual in a disillusioned, mechanized world.

---

🟨 “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen
Like Pound’s poem, it bitterly critiques the glorification of war and reveals the horrific reality faced by soldiers during World War I.

---

🟥 “September 1, 1939” by W. H. Auden
This poem, like Pound’s, reflects on historical and cultural failure, addressing the anxieties of a collapsing civilization on the eve of war.

---

🌟 “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot
Fragmented in form and rich in literary allusion, this modernist masterpiece parallels Pound’s themes of cultural decline and spiritual desolation.

---

💠 “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare” by Ben Jonson
Though written centuries earlier, this elegiac poem shares Pound’s blend of literary homage and critique of contemporary artistic values.