Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism [Paperback]

James Longenbach (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195066626 | ISBN-13: 978-0195066623 | Publication Date: January 17, 1991

Although readers of modern literature have always known about the collaboration of W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound, the crucial winters these poets spent living together in Stone Cottage in Sussex (1913-1916) have remained a mystery. Working from a large base of previously unpublished material, James Longenbach presents for the first time the untold story of these three winters. Inside the secret world of Stone Cottage, Pound's Imagist poems were inextricably linked to Yeats's studies in spiritualism and magic, and early drafts of The Cantos reveal that the poem began in response to the same esoteric texts that shaped Yeats's visionary system. At the same time, Yeats's autobiographies and Noh-style plays took shape with Pound's assistance. Having retreated to Sussex to escape the flurry of wartime London, both poets tracked the progress of the Great War and in response wrote poems--some unpublished until now--that directly address the poet's political function. More than the story of a literary friendship, Stone Cottage explores the Pound-Yeats connection within the larger context of modern literature and culture, illuminating work that ranks with the greatest achievements of modernism.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Longenbach's taut and lucid study argues that, in flight from the bourgeois state of mind, William Butler Yeats and young Ezra Pound spent the three winters of 19131916 in seminal collaborative reading and writing at Stone Cottage, Sussex. These sessions not only shaped their future careers, but established the obscurist and elitist tone of modernist literature and culture. In contrast, Casillo is at times strained in his somewhat obtrusively documented study focusing on Pound's career in Italy in the 1930s and 1940s. He argues that the poet's increasingly rabid anti-Semitism was not simply an unfortunate personal quirk, but the result of his complex and contradictory personality and beliefs and, as such, at the very heart of his Cantos. His support of Fascism stemmed from the belief that it would establish fixity and order in a West that was slipping into social, political, and spiritual chaos. Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, Mo.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Longenbach engages in some fine historiography....Establish[es] him as one of his generation's closest students of poetic modernism, a critic whose patched histories we can look forward to reading with pleasure in the coming years."--Modern Language Quarterly

"An excellent study of early modernist poetry."--Vincent Quinn, Brooklyn College

"Has already revised our sense of modernist literature and will endure to prove one of the seminal texts of the history of modernism."--Paideuma

"Longenbach's account of the relation between Pound and Yeats, during and after the Stone Cottage winters, is far more detailed and intimate than any previous version....Contains much detail of interest...including several hitherto unpublished poems and fragments by Pound and by Yeats."--The New York Review of Books

"Longenbach has gone back to the day-to-day records of Pound and Yeats during what were perhaps the crucial years of modernism--the years when Pound was drafting his first set of Cantos and Yeats was remaking his early style. What he's found is extraordinary: a record of spiritualist interest and experimentation that will force all of us to reconsider our understanding of the Cantos and rethink the rationale of modernism. That along with the group of unpublished works Longenbach has unearthed and his picture of Pound and Yeats at work (which takes us well beyond Ellmann's Eminent Domain) add up to an unusually valuable piece of work."--Ronald Bush, California Institute of Technology

"In its judiciousness, humaneness and gracefully borne learning [the book] calls to mind the late Richard Ellmann at the height of his powers. It is at once an imposing piece of research, a fundamental contribution to the study of early modernism, and a deftly told narrative that abounds in pathos, irony, and outright comedy. This book will permanently and radically alter the received wisdom about Pound's relation to Yeats."--Frederick Crews, University of California, Berkeley

"Literary criticism of the highest order....Longenbach means not only to revalue the roots of modernism but the way in which such evaluations should be made."--Virginia Quarterly Review

"A refreshingly empirical and substantive contribution....His study consolidates between hard covers, and with vastly more information, insights into the Pound-Yeats relationship that have been appearing piecemeal here and there for a decade or so."--The Kenyon Review

"Throws genuine light on the history of modernism....Provid[es] a fascinating account of the creative dialogue and collaboration between the two poets....An elegantly argued revision of modernist history."--Times Literary Supplement

"An excellent contribution to what is already known about a great literary friendship."--Choice

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 17, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195066626
• ISBN-13: 978-0195066623
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,610,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, January 23, 2005

By 

Shawn Sturgeon (Decatur, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism (Paperback)

This is a terrific exploration of the association between Pound and Yeats at Stone Cottage in the mid teens. Longenbach examines the relationship between the elder and younger poet--Pound's imitation and adulation of Yeats, and Yeat's willingness to explore the various impulses that result from his association with Pound's energy and combativeness--with a thoroughness that is illuminating. In many respects, I found this to be one of the best interpretations of many of the subsequent energies of High Modernism (its hermeticism, the sense of exile, of expulsion from the "garden" of the pre-Great War world)that I've read. The influence of Yeat's interest in the occult on Pound is also rather revealing, and I found myself rereading the Cantos is a slightly different light afterwards. Two small criticisms: Longenbach rather neglects the influence of Dorothy Pound on the relationship between the two poets, although he notes her early Cubist paintings and makes a brief examination of her relationship with Pound. Although one cannot fault Longenbach for maintaining his tight focus on the two poets, one cannot disregard the impact that ia visual artist might have on two such polymathic artists. I personally think this was a missed opportunity, and I hope Longenbach will add new material on the trio in future editions. The second niggling criticism is the author's tendancy to repeat himself in "touchstone" sentences throughout the work--one has the sense that Longenbach is working his sources a bit too hard and substituting clarity for nuance in such moments. Regarding the use of this study with accompanying texts, one is best served by the new Library of America edition of Pound, Poems and Translations, the standard New Directions edition of the Cantos, as well as the Finneran edition of Yeats. Longenbach examines enough previously unpublished texts of Pound that the Library of America edition is indispensible. In short, I think this is an excellent secondary text for incipient PhDs and poets, and Longenbach should be praised for his remarkable study of these important Modernist poets.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, January 4, 2005

By 

Shawn Sturgeon (Decatur, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism (Hardcover)

This is a terrific exploration of the association between Pound and Yeats at Stone Cottage in the mid teens. Longenbach examines the relationship between the elder and younger poet--Pound's imitation and adulation of Yeats, and Yeat's willingness to explore the various impulses that result from his association with Pound's energy and combativeness--with a thoroughness that is illuminating. In many respects, I found this to be one of the best interpretations of many of the subsequent energies of High Modernism (its hermeticism, the sense of exile, of expulsion from the "garden" of the pre-Great War world)that I've read. The influence of Yeat's interest in the occult on Pound is also rather revealing, and I found myself rereading the Cantos is a slightly different light afterwards. Two small criticisms: Longenbach rather neglects the influence of Dorothy Pound on the relationship between the two poets, although he notes her early Cubist paintings and makes a brief examination of her relationship with Pound. Although one cannot fault Longenbach for maintaining his tight focus on the two poets, one cannot disregard the impact that ia visual artist might have on two such polymathic artists. I personally think this was a missed opportunity, and I hope Longenbach will add new material on the trio in future editions. The second niggling criticism is the author's tendancy to repeat himself in "touchstone" sentences throughout the work--one has the sense that Longenbach is working his sources a bit too hard and substituting clarity for nuance in such moments. Regarding the use of this study with accompanying texts, one is best served by the new Library of America edition of Pound, Poems and Translations, the standard New Directions edition of the Cantos, as well as the Finneran edition of Yeats. Longenbach examines enough previously unpublished texts of Pound that the LOA edition is indispensible. In short, I think this is an excellent secondary text for incipient PhDs and poets, and Longenbach should be praised for his remarkable study of these important Modernist poets.