T. E. Hulme

Thomas Ernest Hulme (September 16, 1883 – September 28, 1917) was an English writer, critic and poet who, through his writings on art, literature and politics, had a notable influence upon modernism, especially the Imagist poetic form.

In the light of absolute values (religious or ethical) man himself is judged to be limited or imperfect, while he can occasionally accomplish acts which partake of perfection, he, himself can never be perfect.

Quotes

There is nothing to do but keep on.

The artist tries to see what there is to be interested in... He has not created something, he has seen something.

• Literature, like memory, selects only the vivid patches.
  • As quoted in Notes of T E Hulme, Imagism & Imagists (1931) by Glenn Hughes

• There is nothing to do but keep on.
  • From Trenches: St. Eloi

• All emotions are the ore from which poetry may be sifted.
  • Essay on Contemporary American Poetry, in Poetry & Drama (1914), edited by Harold Munro, Vol II

• Old houses were scaffolding once
  and workmen whistling.
  • As quoted in Images (1960), edited by Alun R. Jones

Lecture on Modern Poetry (1914)

• The unit of significance in the poem is not the word but the phrase or sentence...a poet should consider the effect of the whole poem, not its local felicities.

• My objection to metre is that it enables people to write verse with no poetic inspiration.

• There were certain impressions I wanted to fix. I read verse models but none seemed to suitably express that kind of impression..until I came to read French vers libre which seemed to eactly fitr the case.

Speculations (Essays, 1924)

• It is a delicate & difficult art fitting rhythm to an idea...communicating momentary phases in a poet's mind.

• The artist tries to see what there is to be interested in... He has not created something, he has seen something.

• A poem is good if it contains a new analogy and startles the reader out of the habit of treating words as counters.

• The prose writer drags meaning along with a rope, the poet makes it stand out and hit you.

• In the light of absolute values (religious or ethical) man himself is judged to be limited or imperfect, while he can occasionally accomplish acts which partake of perfection, he, himself can never be perfect.
• Here is the root of all romanticism: that man, the individual, is an infinite reservoir of possibilities; and if you can so rearrange society by the destruction of oppressive order then these possibilities will have a chance and you will het Progress. One can define the classical quite clearly as the exact opposite to this. Man is an extraordinary fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and organization that anything decent can be got out of him.
• A number of abstract ideas, of which we are as a matter of fact unconscious. We do not see them, but we see other things through them.

Notes on Language and Style (1929)

• Poetry is no more, no less than a mosaic of words, so great exactness is required for each one.

• If literature (realistic) did really resemble life, it would be interminable, dreary, commonplace eating and dressing, buttoning, with here and there a patch of vividness. Life is composed of exquisite moments and the rest is shadows of them.

• Thought is prior to language and consists in the simultaneous presentation to the mind of two different images.