At Home in Time This page intentionally left blank At Home in Time Forms of Neo-Augustanism in Modern English Poetry PATRICK DEANE McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo © McGill-Queen's University Press 1994 ISBN 0-7735-1215-2 Legal deposit third quarter 1994 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in the United States on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding has also been received from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Western Ontario and from Foundation Western. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Deane, Patrick At home in time: forms of neo-Augustanism in modern English poetry Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1215-2 i. English poetry - 2Oth century - History and criticism, i. Title. FR6oi.D42 1994 821'.9109 094-900466-9 Typeset in Palatino 10/12 by Caractera production graphique, Quebec City Acknowledgments are due to the following publishers and individuals who have kindly granted permission for the inclusion of material in this book: Bloodaxe Books Ltd., for permission to reprint material from V. by Tony Harrison (Bloodaxe 1989), and from Tony Harrison edited by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe 1991). Carcanet Press Ltd., for permission to quote from In Two Minds: Guesses at Other Writers by C.H. Sisson (1990). Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd., Sydney, for permission to reprint the work of A.D. Hope from The Age of Reason (1985) and Dunciad Minor (1970). David R. Godine, Publisher, for permission to reprint lines from Poems and Epistles by John Fuller, copyright John Fuller 1973. Faber and Faber Ltd., for permission to quote from The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot (1969); from New Year Letter (1941), For the Time Being (1945), and Collected Poems (1991) by W.H. Auden; from Selected Poems 1964-1983 (1986) by Douglas Dunn; and from the Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice (1966), and Autumn Journal (1939) by Louis MacNeice. Harcourt Brace and Co., for permission to reprint excerpts from "The Waste Land" in Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace & Company, copyright © 1964,1963 by T.S. Eliot; and from "Burnt Norton" in Four Quartets, copyright 1943 by T.S. Eliot and renewed 1973 by Esme Valerie Eliot. London Magazine Editions, for permission to reprint lines from Six Epistles to Eva Hesse by Donald Davie (1970). Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd., for permission to reprint lines from Epistles to Several Persons by John Fuller (1973) Oxford University Press, for permission to quote from Collected Poems (1985) and The Way of a World (1969) by Charles Tomlinson. Peters Fraser & Dunlop Group Ltd., for permission to reprint lines from "Letter to John Fuller"in The Memory of War and Children in Exile: Poems 1968-1983 by James Fenton (1983). Random House, Inc., for permission to reprint excerpts from Collected Poems (1991) by W.H. Auden: "Ode to Terminus/'copyright © 1968 by W.H. Auden; "In Memory of W.B. Yeats/'copyright © 1940 and renewed 1968 by W.H. Auden; from "The Sea and the Mirror,"copyright © 1944 by W.H. Auden; from "New Year Letter/'copyright © 1941 and renewed 1969 by W.H. Auden. Tony Harrison, for permission to quote from Tony Harrison/Selected Poems (1987). University of California Press, for permission to quote from French Symbolist Poetry (1958) translated by C.F. Maclntyre, copyright © 1958 The Regents of the University of California. For Sheila, Petra, and Colin This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Forms of Neoclassicism: Modern Continuities and Discontinuities 3 1 Eliot's Classicism, Pound's Symbolism, and the Drafts of The Waste Land 31 2 The Reader in W.H. Auden's "New Year Letter" 56 3 Louis MacNeice and the Lesson of Autumn Journal 78 4 A.D. Hope: A Poetics and Poetry of "Counter- Revolution" 121 5 Donald Davie's Quarrel with Modernism in Six Epistles to Eva Hesse 161 Conclusion: World Enough, and Time: Recent Negotiations between Poetry and History 203 Notes 225 Works Cited 231 Index 249 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments My wife, Sheila, has given me not only support and encouragement, but also the kind of perspicacious and concrete advice only an astute colleague can provide. William Blissett and Don McKay will, I hope, be pleased to know how persistently I feel the influence of their (very different) examples as critics and readers of poetry. I am also grateful to the following people who have read parts of the manuscript, offered suggestions, or been helpful in some other way: Stephen Adams, Sue Desmond, Michael Groden, Gerald Harnett, Michael Kirkham, Thomas Tausky, Thomas Whitaker, and Lisa Zeitz. The list should certainly include members of my 1992 graduate seminar, with whom I discussed many of these texts and ideas, and whose inde- pendence of mind was for me a spur to self-scrutiny. During the early stages of research I benefited greatly from the assistance of Kevin McGuirk and John Rupert. At McGill-Queen's University Press in Montreal, Peter Blaney's enthusiasm for the project has seemed as unwavering as his grasp of its premises has been firm and shrewd, and I thank him very much for that. Judy Williams and Joan McGil- vray have been helpful in a host of practical ways. I am indebted to the Government of Ontario for the John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature, which I received in 1988, and which enabled me to begin research for this book. Work at that stage was also facilitated by Thomas J. Collins, Provost in the University of Western Ontario, who generously provided me with relief from teaching. Thanks are also due to James M. Good, Dean of Arts, and