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Jaguar
for Billy Mills
GAUDIER-BRZESKA VORTEX
...The PALEOLITHIC VORTEX resulted in the decoration of the Dordogne caverns.
Early stone-age man disputed the earth with animals.
His livelihood depended on the hazards of the hunt -- his greatest victory the domestication of a few species...
Early stone-age man disputed the earth with animals.
His livelihood depended on the hazards of the hunt -- his greatest victory the domestication of a few species...
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: GAUDIER-BRZESKA VORTEX from Blast (1914)
Eland
Ezra Pound: On the Drawings of Gaudier-Brzeska
The development seems to have been as follows: Heterogeneous period before 1912. Pastel, etchings, etc., 1912. Drawings done in full influence of the theory that painting, or at least drawing, "is calligraphy."
The stags seem to be from the end of this period and one notices the effect of the widening pen-strokes.
1913 roughly speaking seems to have been the year for the drawings, of nudes and animals, in the thin even line, vide the wolf...
A Wolf
The animal drawings with thicker line seem to have been done, for the most part, about the end of 1912...
The stags, and the animals done in their manner, were, I should think, done while he was enthused by the drawings in the Dordogne caverns and "Fonts-de-Gaume."
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
Puma I
Tiger
The development seems to have been as follows: Heterogeneous period before 1912. Pastel, etchings, etc., 1912. Drawings done in full influence of the theory that painting, or at least drawing, "is calligraphy."
The stags seem to be from the end of this period and one notices the effect of the widening pen-strokes.
1913 roughly speaking seems to have been the year for the drawings, of nudes and animals, in the thin even line, vide the wolf...
A Wolf
The stags, and the animals done in their manner, were, I should think, done while he was enthused by the drawings in the Dordogne caverns and "Fonts-de-Gaume."
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
Puma I
The image is not an idea. It is a radiant node or cluster; it is what I can, and must perforce, call a VORTEX, from which, and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)Tiger
Even in this vicinage I don't know that we understood Gaudier-Brzeska's "Vortex"...
Ezra Pound: A Postscript (from The Egoist, 1934) in Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (Revised edition, 1960)
Lion
Lion
There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.
Ezra Pound: from Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920), remembering Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, killed in France, July 1915
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.
Ezra Pound: from Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (1920), remembering Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, killed in France, July 1915
Vulture III
It is part of the war waste... A great spirit has been among us, and a great artist is gone.
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
A Dog
The Return
See, they return; ah, see the tentative
............Movements, and the slow feet,
.........The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
.........Wavering!
See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
......................and half turn back;
These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
..............................Inviolable.
Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
............................. sniffing the trace of air!
Haie! Haie!
........These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
......................pallid the leash-men!
Ezra Pound: from Ripostes (1912)
Leopard I
I said in the preface to my Guido Cavalcanti that I believed in an absolute rhythm. I believe that every emotion and every phase of emotion has some toneless phrase, some rhythm-phrase to express it... To hold a like belief in a sort of permanent metaphor is, as I understand it, "symbolism" in its profounder sense. It is not necessarily a belief in a permanent world, but it is a belief in that direction... In the "search for oneself," in the search for "sincere self-expression," one gropes, one finds some seeming verity... [In] this search for the real I made poems like "The Return," which is an objective reality and has a complicated sort of significance, like... Mr. Brzeska's "Boy with a Coney." [Such] poems are impersonal, and that fact brings us back to what I said about absolute metaphor. They are Imagisme, they fall in with the new pictures and the new sculpture.
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
Eagle
Studies of Birds
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
A Dog
The Return
See, they return; ah, see the tentative
............Movements, and the slow feet,
.........The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
.........Wavering!
See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
......................and half turn back;
These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe,"
..............................Inviolable.
Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
............................. sniffing the trace of air!
Haie! Haie!
........These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
......................pallid the leash-men!
Ezra Pound: from Ripostes (1912)
Leopard I
I said in the preface to my Guido Cavalcanti that I believed in an absolute rhythm. I believe that every emotion and every phase of emotion has some toneless phrase, some rhythm-phrase to express it... To hold a like belief in a sort of permanent metaphor is, as I understand it, "symbolism" in its profounder sense. It is not necessarily a belief in a permanent world, but it is a belief in that direction... In the "search for oneself," in the search for "sincere self-expression," one gropes, one finds some seeming verity... [In] this search for the real I made poems like "The Return," which is an objective reality and has a complicated sort of significance, like... Mr. Brzeska's "Boy with a Coney." [Such] poems are impersonal, and that fact brings us back to what I said about absolute metaphor. They are Imagisme, they fall in with the new pictures and the new sculpture.
Ezra Pound: from Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916)
Eagle
Studies of Birds
Self-Portrait, 1913 (Southampton Online)
In 1912-1913 the artist Gaudier-Brzeska, then living in London, was given passes to the Regents Park Zoo by a patron; the life-study drawings in this post were for the most part done there, on weekend visits.
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), all drawings c. 1912-1913 (Tate Collection)
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