The subject of this intelligent biography was among the founders of the Modern movement in British art before the first world war, and a leading formulator of what he considered to be its principles.
A philosopher/aesthetician, he was a friend of Epstein, Wyndham Lewis, Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, and was thought a great poet by the young T. S. Eliot. Ezra Pound published Hulme’s five short poems at the end of one of his own books, entitling them The Collected Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme. A joke, of course, but they consist of the pictorial, of images; publicist Pound borrowed a word from the French and founded the Imagist school.
Hulme published no book in his lifetime and his scattered papers were put together in the 1920s by Herbert Read under the title Speculations.
What Hulme was against he makes clear: Romanticism (‘split religion’), the Englightenment (Goethe, ‘lasting and devastating stupidity’), Rousseau (‘decay’), Humanism and the idea of inevitable ‘progress’.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in