The Egoist
Remembering avant-garde individualism.
At a used bookstore in Ogunquit I discovered and purchased a slender volume of poems by H.D. I didn’t know of her. She was an associate, lover, and briefly, fiancée of Ezra Pound. She was a key figure in the development of Imagism, the poetic movement of the early 20th century that sought to blow away some of the fog of Romanticism. A bisexual Moravian Grecophile born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1886, she expatriated to Europe and produced an exquisite body of literature, including the granite-dense “Flute Song” from 1924:1
Little scavenger away,
touch not the door,
beat not the portal down,
cross not the sill,
silent until
my song, bright and shrill,
breathes out its lay.Little scavenger avaunt,
tempt me with jeer and taunt,
yet you will wait to-day;
for it were surely ill
to mock and shout and revel;
it were more fit to tell
with flutes and calathes,
your mother’s praise.
Rabbit-holing on H.D. brought me to a publication called The Egoist, where she was an associate editor for a portion of its five-year run.
The Egoist (subtitled An Individualist Review) was a London literary magazine published from 1914 to 1919, during which time it published important early modernist poetry and fiction. In its manifesto, it claimed to “recognise no taboos,” and published a number of controversial works, such as parts of Ulysses. Today, it is considered “England's most important Modernist periodical.”
The Egoist was founded by Dora Marsden as a successor to her feminist magazine The New Freewoman, but was changed, under the influence of Ezra Pound, into a literary magazine.
Chasing down said manifesto brought up this gem, by Harriet Shaw Weaver:
All things then are purely individual. The “nature” which things are supposed to have are the inverted appearances of our own potentialities in regard to them; how far we are able to mold them to our heart’s desire; create them in uniformity with our purposes, that is.
Individualism gets a bad rap these days. I counter that what passes for individualism in current times is not nearly extreme enough. Giants of individualism used to walk among us. To them we owe feminism and modernism, and exquisite art. We should aspire to be egoists on their mighty scale.
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During the week of June 26 we will begin the Asynchonous Studio Book Club reading of Anne Truitt’s Yield. Obtain your copy soon.
Great little piece, and true enough about a seeming dearth of individualism in these times. I say seeming because it's probably out there, but we live in a very noisey time indeed.
Individualism is not the thing. What's wanted, even desperately wanted, is to be certifiably and conspicuously fashionable--correctly fashionable, of course. I suppose it's understandable, as it is easier to go along and conform than make one's own way with what one really is. Too many are too weak or insecure or simply cynically opportunistic, so they can't or won't be themselves and opt to follow the prescribed and approved recipe or formula. This has always happened, but not always as virulently and oppressively as now, because now it is not so much about fashion as about power.