chintavan's blog

Modernist poems analysis 1.) ‘The Embankment‘ - T. E. Hulme Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy, In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement. Now see I That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy. Oh, God, make small The old star-eaten blanket of the sky, That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie. Probably the most striking trait of the poem is the very intense use of alliterations: fantasia, fallen, finesse of fiddles, found, the flashes… In other words, that musical quality (the  melopoeia , in Pound’s terms) that results from the softness of the sound of ‘f’. The soft rhythm redirects our attention to the poem: the music of the ‘f’ not only resembles the music of fiddles, it also highlights them reinforcing the image. The effect of softness is very similar to  Joyce’s  “the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling” in the final paragraph of  The Dead . 2.) "Darkness" - Joseph Campbell Darkness ...