Ezra Pound]]> Edited by Richard Aldington]]> Timon of Athens, Wyndham Lewis produced a series of striking Vorticist pieces, including this plate for Act I. Although the proposed edition never materialised, reproductions of Lewis’ works were published instead as a portfolio. Inspired in part by Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism, their bold lines lean towards geometric abstraction. In 2003, the project’s original purpose was realised when LaNana Creek Press (Nacogdoches, Texas) brought together for the first time Shakespeare’s text and Lewis’ images.]]> Wyndham Lewis]]> Blast is the Review of the Great English Vortex, the journal of the short-lived Vorticist art movement. Blast 1 features the movement’s manifesto and work contributed by Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Hueffer (Ford), sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and others, under editor Wyndham Lewis. It employs bold graphic design and inventive typography to arrest the reader’s attention.]]> Edited by Wyndham Lewis]]> Blast 2 is characteristic of Vorticism’s endeavour to capture the energy and urban, industrialised nature of the modern world.]]> Edited by Wyndham Lewis]]> Cover of Blast 3]]> Edited by Wyndham Lewis]]> Ripostes, Pound drew attention to the Imagist movement, developing that style in his own work and appending several poems by T. E. Hulme as examples of this new poetics. He included his translation of the Old English poem ‘The Seafarer,’ upsetting some readers by writing a poem based on his own personal interpretation of the medieval work rather than a literal translation of it.]]> Ezra Pound]]> The Art of Wyndham Lewis]]> Edited by Charles Handley-Read]]> Edited by Charles Handley-Read]]> Cathay.]]> Translated by Ezra Pound]]> Lume Spento (With Tapers Quenched) is Pound’s first collection of poetry; its dramatic lyrics examples of Pound’s early poetic style. The title is a phrase borrowed from Canto III of Dante’s Purgatorio, and the poems reflect Pound’s fascination with the poetry of the troubadours.]]> Ezra Pound]]> Personæ]]> Ezra Pound]]> fin amor (fine or courtly love): this mystic love transcends time and space, making lovers immortal and granting them visionary knowledge.]]> Ezra Pound]]> The Egoist, and Aldington worked with Pound to get Eliot out of his day job so that he could write full-time. Years later, Aldington wrote this lecture on Pound and Eliot. In it, he criticises Eliot for his pessimism and for borrowing from sources without acknowledging them. Here, Aldington discusses Dante and the epigraph in The Waste Land.]]> Richard Aldington]]> The Divine Comedy. He considered Dante’s poetry ‘the one universal school of style’ for writing poetry in any language; no other poet ‘stands so firmly as a model for all poets.’ In Dante’s writing, Eliot found ‘lessons for the present time,’ and he admired the way Dante combined style with spiritual direction. In his own work, Eliot attempted to translate the medieval into the modern in order to renovate, restore, and renew.]]> T. S. Eliot]]> Collected Poems]]> T. S. Eliot]]> Inferno, Dante describes the dark and desolate plain which lies between Hell’s gate and the river Acheron. Upon this plain, the souls of the damned tumultuously wail and cry and futilely chase after a whirling banner; having lived lives devoid of spiritual meaning, they cannot cross into death’s true realms. Drawn from Dante and reflecting the spiritual emptiness of modern existence, Eliot’s hollow men gather in ‘the dead land’ beside the river but cannot cross into ‘death’s other kingdom.’]]> T. S. Eliot]]> The Hollow Men eerily foreshadows the genocide, war, and spiritual emptiness of the twentieth century.’ Heidenheimer’s images are printed from collagraph plates and were ‘conceived as an epitaph for the twentieth century.’]]> T. S. Eliot]]> Faerie Queene to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Attracted to such ‘double-level writing,’ MacNeice believed that ‘The best [works] are written on two or more planes at once.’ In such writing, the author creates an enigmatic narrative world which has a meaningful relationship to our real world.]]> Louis MacNeice]]> Varieties of Parable, MacNeice comments on the metaphorical nature of Muir’s journeys and places and the ‘dream quality’ of his most successful poems.]]> Edwin Muir]]> The Trial, Franz Kafka tackles injustice and bureaucratic labyrinths in his nightmarish story of a man who is arrested and brought to trial for a crime which is never revealed. Kafka’s hero cannot reach the officials responsible for his prosecution, and he is mystified by the absurd Kafkaesque proceedings. The text in this edition was translated by Edwin and Willa Muir.]]> Franz Kafka]]> Waiting for Godot is, in Vivian Mercier’s words, ‘a play in which nothing happens, twice.’ Beckett’s characters often find themselves in situations that will repeat endlessly and have been compared to personified vices and virtues in medieval mystery plays.]]> Samuel Beckett]]> Louis MacNeice]]> Yvain, a twelfth-century romance by Chrétien de Troyes. David’s dangerous quest takes him through strange and magical places and involves ritual tests and a dark tower.]]> John Fowles]]> Mayday as a gift for his girlfriend Helen Baird. Parodying medieval romance, Faulkner follows Sir Galwyn of Arthgyl as he seeks the beautiful girl who appeared to him in a vision during his chapel vigil. With Hunger and Pain as his constant companions, Sir Galwyn’s quest takes him to an enchanted forest. He slays a small dragon, encounters Time and Tristram, and briefly loves Yseult, Elys, and Aelia. This image shows the first page of text from Faulkner’s carefully handcrafted book.]]> William Faulkner]]>