The Spatial Imagination of David Jones

Abstract

As do most writers, the modern British painter and poet David Jones imagines space. But because he is a visual artist he also imagines spatially. He does this to the extent of giving his poetry intrinsic, unifying structure-which is the rarest kind of literary form. This achievement is immensely important for the literature of the twentieth century because of its bearing on the central critical debate over the apparent disunity of the modern long poem (from Whitman through Pound) in contrast to the obvious unity of the traditional long poem (from Homer through Milton). As far as I am aware, David Jones is the only modernist who has written poetry that is long and aesthetically whole.' After demonstrating how he does this, I will suggest why he alone among modern poets was able to do it. But let me first attempt to clarify what I mean by spatial form and structure. The basic modes of cognition are temporal and spatial. Consequently, literary form is either primarily temporal or primarily spatial. Because literature is apprehended temporally, its form is usually temporal. Temporal form can be musical, as in most poetry, or logical and psychological, as in plotted narrative. In memory and imagination, temporal form can be metaphorically spatialized so that its elements are appreciated simultaneously as in the viewing of a painting. This transformation is usually an incidental aid to analysis. But a literary