Symbols & theories

Question 1

The rose

Answer 1

The 4 central petals are the four elements (fire, water, earth and air). The conjunction of rose and cross (the fifth element or quintessence) presents the unity between oppositions. It’s a symbol of unification between natural beauty and spiritual beauty.

Question 2

Phases of the moon

Answer 2

The human soul passes through 28 phases. 1st phase - objective state of infancy. 15th phase - the subjectivity of maturity. And then sinks back to “second childhood” in phase 28 and dies. And then goes around again. In phases 1 and 15 the soul takes on the form of a spirit.

Question 3

Will and Mask

Answer 3

The first pair of contraries from the Four Faculties of the human mind and soul. Will (Ego) is the first matter of personality, the basic choice which determines the individual’s phase. The Mask is Will’s opposite, the image of what we wish to become. There are true and false masks, and Will may choose the wrong one.

Question 4

Creative mind and Body of fate

Answer 4

The second pair of contraries from the Four Faculties of the human mind and soul. The Creative Mind is the mind that is consciously constructive, the part which acts on external events. It may be true or false. The Body of Fate (reality) is the physical and mental environment. If any reality exists outside of us it is part of the Body of Fate.

Question 5

The gyre

Answer 5

The spiral, gyre, whirling cone - Two cones that are imagined as interpenetrating, whirling around inside one another, one subjective, the other objective. They can represent other contraries such as beauty and truth, values and facts, quality and quantity, the living and the dead. Man or movement moves from the left to the right and then back - when one end of the cone is at its biggest expansion, the countermovement towards the other cone begins. Eg. Objectivity in Christ’s time and subjectivity in the Renaissance

Question 6

Mythopoeic technique

Answer 6

De-mythifies myth and mythifies reality. The myth is made more functional in reality and poetry is made more impersonal. The mythopoeic technique is the reanimation of myth through parallel and contrast which creates a dramatic situation in the poem.

Question 7

Objective Correlative

Answer 7

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is through the objective correlative - a set of objects, a situation or an event which shall be the formula of that particular emotion, so when the external facts are given the emotion is evoked.

Question 8

Pound’s imagistic tenets

Answer 8

1. Rhythm: corresponding in poetry to the emotion that is to be expressed
2. Symbols: the symbolic function must be unobtrusive
3. Technique: one shouldn’t be a slave to it, it could be an impediment to the writer
4. Form: free verse as opposed to metrically bound, a poem as fluid as water

Question 9

Flint’s tenets

Answer 9

1. Direct treatment of the objective/subjective thing
2. Use no words that do not contribute to the presentation
3. Poetry should be written in the natural music of language

Question 10

Vorticism

Answer 10

Pound created it after abandoning Imagism. “The image is not an idea, but a cluster which I call vortex, from, through and into which ideas are always rustling”. The vortex is defined as the point of maximum energy - energy creates a pattern. It disowned Futurism because it denied tradition.