Ezra Pound's collection of eighteen poems Hugh Selwyn Mauberley were intended by the poet to expose critics who misread him. "He wanted to show the reader the difference between the critical ideas that Pound rejected and those to which he adhered," says Jo Brantley Berryman.
"Pound is always adamant that Mauberley is a fictitious character and a distinct persona," alleges Peter Brooker. Brooker quotes Pound writing to Felix Schelling, and saying: "Of course, I am no more Mauberley than Eliot is Prufrock." However, Berryman is confident that the first section of poems, including the "E.P. Ode" are spoken by the persona of Mauberley, while the latter poems, including "Medallion" are Pound's own views. It takes great discipline for a poet to separate so precisely these disparate characters in one work and into two distinct divisions, each of several poems.
Who is the Singer in "Medallion?"
Medallion is the final poem in the second sequence of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. Peter Brooker explains "Medallion" appears to be an attempt at the "image", and an example of "the sculpture of rhyme." Therefore, Brooker decides, the success of the poem in these terms is helpful in deciding whether the poem is Pound's or Mauberley's. Even so, although Brooker points out one or two examples of "failure," he does not come to a definitive conclusion.
In Jo Brantley Berryman's view, this final poem "Medallion" is entirely Pound, writing as himself, with his own views and personal beliefs. Berryman describes the singer in "Medallion" as follows: "The singer in "Medallion" presents only a rigid, unresponsive pose, a frozen, forbidding face. Sterile and stern." Berryman goes on to express surprise at how critics have, for several decades, agreed that "Medallion" belongs to Mauberley. She believes the opposite is true.
A Connection with James Joyce
Berryman describes the poem as "Pound's concept of beauty," and unites it with its source, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This beauty is by its very nature, pure, non-sensual and non-erotic. "The trouble with the caressable, the physically attractive elements in art, Pound explains, is that they cannot continue to please solely on the basis of their erotic quality," says Berryman. Pound says that "stimulativeness" weakens with familiarity, and this is a common-sense truth most people would understand. Berryman explains that Pound is not averse to the erotic, but he is realistic about its limitations, for example "The caressable is always a substitute... it cannot be translated out of one culture into another."
Berryman quotes from Gaudier-Brzeska's specific examples: large buttocks in Persia, fatness in India (more money = more wife) and the fact that "Twenty years ago the ideal was one with large hips and bosom. Today, the ideal is more svelte."
Pound's tastes move away from the classical and caressable, and towards a universal criteria which is "...not dependent on provincial preferences or superficial appearances." As a result of this, he becomes more widely aware and his aesthetic theory is expressed by the singer in "Medallion" who idealises beauty. This idealisation is linked with a discussion in the last chapter of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
A Sense of Immortality in Pound's Aesthetics
The allusion in the first line of the poem to Luini, the Lombard painter of religious frescoes, conveys Pound's great admiration for the artist and the poet's desire to emulate the painterly image in poetry. Pound seeks to capture the softness, texture and colour of Luini's technique and transform it into poetry. "Luini in porcelain" conveys a sense of immortality, but not the slightest sense of emotion. This, according to Berryman, indicates that it is Pound who is speaking, for these images represent his ideas about aesthetics, and Berryman's conviction that these are clearly Pound's ideals, are persuasive. "Her glazed porcelain portrait remains as the artist's vision of a living moment caught in art," says Berryman.
The contrast of the poem to its companion poem,Envoi is distinctive, the former being animated and passionate, while "Medallion" is somewhat cold in its precision of detail. No doubt, critics will continue to argue about the blurring between the real Ezra Pound and the poet's mask.
Sources:
"Affirmations," Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, New York, 1970.
Circe's Craft, Jo Brantley Berryman, UMI Research Press, Michigan, 1983.
"A Student's Guide to the Selected Poems of Ezra Pound," Peter Brooker, Faber & Faber, London, 1979.
"Hugh Selwyn Mauberley," Ezra Pound, Selected Poems, Faber & Faber, London, 1975.
Janet Cameron - MA. Cert.Ed. is a retired university lecturer and author of twelve books, women's short fiction and a magazine column.
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