Beyond the border of language: Literary manipulation

Abstract

Ezra Pound is unequivocally one of the most significant literary figures of the twentieth century. In this paper, I argue that Ezra Pound in the selected poems contributed to the evolution of artistic expression through the experimentation of the theme of exile. His motto ‘make it new’ is effectively employed to navigate through the labyrinth of the exiled voice and to transmute its original ‘impulse’ through the act of translation or the embodied persona. The selected poems for this paper namely: The Seafarer, The Canto I, Cino and Piere Vidal Old forecast the distinctive approach which is derived from Pound’s extensive engagement with literary texts but more importantly emphasize that the spirit of their speakers mediates the text itself which he translates from other languages. Therefore, time via the prism of memory (two entangled areas in the modernist technique of stream of consciousness) become unpunctuated yet fragmented and these poems explore a temporal relationship between embracing, yet half-remembered, history and alienated individual consciousness in the modern world. Therefore, Pound through the selected poems attempts to use exile on different scales in The Seafarer, The Canto I, Cino and Piere Vidal Old. Therefore, Pound creates impactful poetry from both his own experience of 'exile' as well as his extensive knowledge of classical literatures and historical figures which allow for the expansion on the concept of ‘exile’.