CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
5771
Partner Institution:
Simon Fraser University
Source Collection Label:
Reading in BC Collection
Sub Series:
Reading in BC Collection
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
George Bowering English 414 Lecture 4 at SFU on September 18, 1973 #663
Title Source:
cassette and j-card
Title Note:
On J-card: English 414 Lecture 4 Sept. 18, 1973; Imagism continued; biography of H.D.; influence of Freud; influence of classicism
Language:
English
Production Context:
Classroom recording
Genre:
Speeches: Talks
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
Rights:
Copyright Not Evaluated (CNE)
CREATORS
Name:
Bowering, George
Dates:
1935-
Role:
"Speaker"
CONTRIBUTORS
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Image:
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Cassette
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/8 inch
Generations:
Second generation from Reel-to-Reel
Sound Quality:
Excellent
Physical Condition:
Excellent
Other Physical Description:
Black and white clear jewel case with J-card
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
Channel Field:
Stereo
Sample Rate:
44.1 kHz
Duration:
T00:30:20
Size:
36.1 MB
Bitrate:
32 bit
Encoding:
WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files
Channel Field:
Stereo
Sample Rate:
44.1 kHz
Duration:
T00:30:17
Size:
35.2 MB
Bitrate:
32 bit
Encoding:
WAV for master files and .MP3 for online files
Dates
Date:
1973-09-18
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
J-card
LOCATION
Address:
8888 University Dr, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
Venue:
Simon Fraser University
Latitude:
49.2784
Longitude:
-122.9231
CONTENT
Contents:
Side
Track
No.
Comments
One
000
003
Tape begins
005
Bowering begins with page 63 of ABC of Reading by J.G. Fletcher
008
Discusses the principles that are presented in this chapter. (i.e. 1 – Incompetence will show in the use of too many words). Bowering sees this book as a good demonstration of what it asks for itself
017
As Pound notes, the principles that are set here are common to all poetry not just Imagist. The principles that Hume, Pound, Fletcher, etc. set are not an invention of imagism
0027
“Archaeological dig” of classicism especially for H.D.
0029
Poetic images and dream images. Hume and Freud. Pound and H.D.
0052
Imagist poetry was sculpture just coming over into speech. Sculpture, like dreams cannot be discussed in terms of meaning save as you attend to its physical properties
0062
Bowering recommends Pratt’s book on the Imagist poem, particularly the section on Pound’s “Station and the Metro”. “The making of that poem is almost a short history on the making of the Imagist movement”
0071
Imagism, Bowering says, is a funny thing to have happened in the 20th century. Why should it show up in the 20th Century except as a response to the death of Romantic poetry in the hands of Swinbourne and company
0077
Discussion of images in Romantic poetry at its height (Coleridge and Shelley). Images are not fixed. They are always in motion, in flight
0098
Constant flux picked up by American Poets. The prime images in Whitman, for example, are images of things in motion
0105
The beginning of the 19th C. perspective akin to 20th C. notion in physics: impossible to distinguish between matter and energy. To carry (or impose) the image of matter that is not in motion is to impose a false image. And yet, the imagist poem suggest that there are absolute unchanging, eternal realities (with Pound it is rhythm)
0117
H.D.’s setting of ancient Greece for the modern mind is one of stasis. She uses “timeless” setting
0124
What do we make of this?
0128
Freud (not a political radical, says Bowering) offers a suggestion, a clue as William James did to G. Stein (another conservative) : there is a common bank of images and a common bank of symbols, that we can share
0145
The mind is a flower pot, says Bowering, and the flower is the same as the one that grew in Greece. A yellow orchid in H.D.’s instance
0149
H.D.’s novel Palimpsest is discussed as an example of H.D.’s method
0184
Imagists especially H.D. used experiences over and over again (“spiral”). A sense that she is hovering over the experiences getting different views, similar to the effect of walking by a Cezanne canvas
0190
She is loyal in terms of detail to each of these times, but there is the sense that time hasn’t happened between them. The images know of no boundary called time
0206
Shared memory (archetypes). For Freud all images are automatically symbols as soon as people become aware of them (this is echoed by Hume)
0216
Shelley – I, she, he, it, etc. are simply different words denoting the same thing. Yeats as discussed by Unterraker is presented as an example: “No symbol has a meaning”
0225
Implication(s) of this discussed. Word-as-sign is the only exception but as soon as associations are made it becomes a symbol
0232
Imagists provide exactly what the Freudian analysts did. Images are shared images. What H.D. is looking for according to Robert Duncan, is what the words can offer her. Because for H.D. words offer the unknown, they are not tools as for rationalist poets
0253
“What the words conceal” is the quality of words that H.D. is looking for in her poems. She is not using words to do this, the words are using her. Bowering likens this to dreams and psychoanalysis
0274
Presents Herbert Read’s discussion/demonstration of the difference between a sign and an image and a metaphor and symbol. Discussed in terms of psychoanalysis
0297
The difference between bad imagist poem and good imagist poem. If the poet cannot resist hinting at the “meaning” of an image this is not an imagist poem. This is connected to the example of a patient undergoing psychoanalysis
0301
H.D.’s “Oread” closest to the most perfect imagist poem. Ironically, if patient/reader is asked to find out meaning rather than having one imposed upon her by analyst/poet then s/he is likely to come much closer to “intended” or “shared” meaning, says Bowering. He gives examples (similes, as well as metaphors)
0324
T.S. Eliot is quoted (from Preludes) on the experience that the writer/reader of imagist poem has
0337
How are imagist procedures used to make a long poem or a novel? Pound is quoted (on the haiku & noh play) : “its unity consists in one image”
0356
Bowering presents another view “an aggregate of images” that would lead to Pound’s discovery of ideograms
0362
Pound’s definition of periplume (?) is given because none other is available
0373
Pratt’s remarks on the long poems of Pound, Williams & Eliot “aggregate imagist poems set in a mosaic pattern around a dominant image” such as The Wasteland, Bowering likens these to certain early 205h C. paintings
0380
The effect of instantaneous perception is discussed
0393
The isolation of images from their surroundings is more pronounced in 20th C. paintings “unclouded by rhetoric”
0421
Solicits questions from students. Explains relation between psychoanalysis and imagism briefly
0467
Launches into H.D. discussion. Mentions key things. Recommends Tribute to Freud and other biographies and autobiographies – Ezra Pound, Williams, Hemingway
0504
Begins with particulars of H.D.’s life
0517
Description by H.D. in Tribute to Freud of her experience as a child being the only living daughter
0542
What her experience as being “only one in a world of twos” means (two things); First, (that she is) an outsider without balance and secondly, a rich interior life
0566
Bowering discusses further H.D.’s feelings of isolation and estrangement
0575
Discusses H.D.’s time at Bryn Mawr with Pound, Williams and Moore
0581
Discusses two visions H.D. had: A childhood vision in which she sees a glowing block with a picture of a serpent and a thistle. Years later she sees a ring in the Louvre which has these images on it. Bowering connects this to collective unconscious (i.e. that images re (re)discovered or (re)membered not invented by individuals
0617
H.D.’s search for real and healing images
0635
Explains the peculiarly 20th C. view of art: Fragments to be gathered and reconstructed. This “archaeological” approach is connected to collective unconscious
0700
Decides to end lecture
0712
Recording ends
Two
Blank
Notes:
SFU BC Readings formatting
NOTES
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