T. E. Hulme

Thomas Ernest Hulme (16 September 1883 – 28 September 1917) was an English writer, who during his informal tenure from 1909 as critic for "The New Age", edited by A. R. Orage, exerted a notable influence on London modernism.

He is known also as a poet, but wrote little: "The Complete Poetical Works of T.E. Hulme" was published in "The New Age" in 1912, at which point it consisted of five poems. He does have the claim to have been the original Imagist poet; and to have formulated with clarity the manifesto. This had a direct effect on Ezra Pound. He also influenced T. S. Eliot through his critical writings, in which he famously distinguished between Romanticism--a style informed by a belief in the infinite in man and nature, famously characterized by Hulme as "spilt religion"--and Classicism, a mode of art stressing human finitude, formal restraint, concrete imagery, and, in Hulme's words, "dry hardness". [Hulme, T.E. "Romanticism and Classicism." "Selected Writings." Ed. Patrick McGuinness. New York: Routledge, 2003. 68-83.]

Hulme also had a major impact on Wyndham Lewis (quite literally, in terms of their competition for Kate Lechmere). In art he championed Jacob Epstein, and David Bomberg, and was a friend of Gaudier-Brzeska, as well as being in at the birth of Lewis's literary magazine "BLAST" and vorticism.

Early life

He was born at Gratton Hall, Endon, Staffordshire, the son of Thomas and Mary Hulme. He was educated at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School and St John's College, Cambridge from 1902; he read mathematics, but was sent down in 1904 (after Boat Race night and rowdyism — he was thrown out of Cambridge another time in a scandal involving a Roedean girl).

He tried to pick up the threads of his studies at University College, London. He then travelled to Canada, roughing it. He also spent time in Brussels, acquiring languages.

Proto-modernist

From about 1907 he was interested in philosophy, translating Henri Bergson, and sitting in on lectures in Cambridge. He also translated Georges Sorel's "Reflections on Violence". The most important influence on his thought appears to have been first Bergson, and later Wilhelm Worringer (1881-1965), German art historian and critic; and in particular his "Abstraktion und Einfühlung" ("Abstraction and Empathy", 1908). These he synthesized with his own muscular proto-modernism and intense combativeness. Hulme also at this time developed an interest in poetry, not sustained longer than a few years in fact. He was made secretary of "The Poets' Club", formal and attended by establishment figures (Edmund Gosse and Henry Newbolt); here he encountered Pound, and F. S. Flint, a poetic follower. In late 1908 he delivered his paper "A Lecture on Modern Poetry" to the club. Robert Frost met Hulme in 1913, and was influenced by his ideas. [Hoffman, Tyler: "Robert Frost and the Politics of Poetry," page 54. University Press of New England, 2001. ISBN 1-58465-150-4] Hulme's extremely robust, and in many ways indefensible, approach to life did combine with a more outgoing nature than some.

His politics were conservative, and he moved towards a far-right position. He had contact in 1911 with Pierre Lasserre, associated with "Action Française". This can be seen as presaging the 'tough-minded' attitudes that would permanently mar the reputations of Lewis and Pound.

World War I

Hulme volunteered as an artilleryman in 1914, and served with the Royal Marine Artillery in France and Belgium. He kept up his writing for "The New Age", with 'War Notes', written as "North Staffs", and 'A Notebook' containing some of his most organised critical writing. He was wounded in 1916. Back at the front in 1917 he was killed by a shell at Oostduinkerke near Nieuwpoort, in West Flanders.

ee also

*"A Lecture on Modern Poetry"

Works

*Georges Sorel, "The Ethics of Violence." Reflections on Violence (1912) translator
*Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art (1924) edited by Herbert Read
*Notes on Language and Style (1929)
*T. E. Hulme, The collected writings (1996, OUP) edited by Karen Csengeri
*Selected writings (2003, Fyfield Books)

References

*"The Life and Opinions of T. E. Hulme" (1960) Alun Jones,
*"T. E. Hulme" (1982, Carcanet Press reprint) Michael Roberts
*"The Short Sharp Life of T. E. Hulme" (2002) Robert Ferguson

Notes