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IV
IN RETROSPECT, the furor over the literary movement known
as Imagism seems excessive only if we forget that it represented a
courageous revival of vers libre. Free verse opened the gates to all
sorts of outpourings, but it was a healthy reaction against the Victorian
metronome.
Imagism, as did its Poundian successor, Vorticism, had its origins
in the personality of Thomas Edward Hulme, a youthful
London intellectual who once had walked across Canada for the
exercise. Hulme started a Poetry Club in 1908 with a government
clerk, F. S. Flint. They advanced some of the principles which
would later be known as Imagist, but the other members of the
club proved to be too stodgy, and they withdrew. Hulme and Flint
started another club the following year, which met weekly, and in
1910, Hulme inaugurated his brilliant "Tuesdays" at 67 Frith Street.
Most of the "bright young men" of London were to be found
there until 1914, when Hulme went off to the war. He stood up
when everyone else was ducking, and a direct hit by a high explosive
shell blew him to bits. Wyndham Lewis relates that they
were unable to find any remains. Richard Aldington used this event
as the basis for his first successful book, the novel Death of a
Hero (1929).
Pound printed some of Hulme's poems as an appendix to his vol-
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