Ezra Pounds Material Girl - Literature Essay Samples

In Portrait dune Femme, Ezra Pound examines the fragmented nature of the modern woman; cluttered with culture and accumulated intellect, her character exhibits mere parts of a whole that is both inscrutable and alluringly fascinating. Contrasting one feminine archetype, the radiant goddess, the mystifying siren, Pounds urban lady struggles to configure her identity within the swirling exoticism of art, beauty, knowledge, and elegance. Through brilliant use of extended metaphor, Pound presents the reader with the ladys ephemeral character; as his femme figuratively embodies the intellectual bric-a-brac of civilization, she thus personifies a static basin for the social currents of the modern world. Pounds poem thematically sustains one conclusive identification of this modern woman as our Sargasso Sea (Selected Poems of Ezra Pound, page 16 [line 1]). The author taints conventional imagery; in an ironic contrast to the oceans typical life-giving symbolism, this females stationary lifel essness parallels a select depository of the North Atlantic. Dense with floating, brown seaweed, she is a sterile collection of lifes acquisitions.Pound openly defines his leading lady as a person made of parts; at the onset, he points to the disparity between the womans intellect and her individuality: Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea (1). As the speaker addresses the lady primarily with regard to her supposed intelligence, the opening line introduces the thematic impenetrability of the woman whose inner self remains ambiguous beneath the superficial luster of her minds assorted possessions. Ironically, Pound subsequently lessens the status of both the ladys knowledge and her internal character, as each remains sedentary in a fast-paced, evolving environment. Pounds setting relegates his femme to inertia, as her urban surroundings display actions typically associated with nature: London has swept about you this score years (2). She, with a full mind, remains nonetheless inact ive, embodying the still backwaters of civilization. A lifeless Sargasso Sea, she becomes the dense residue of the commercial world: And bright ships left you this or that in fee (3). In totality, the ladys only visible unity lies in her tangible and intangible acquisitions; she reflects plainly ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things (4). Strange spars of knowledge (5) are only fleetingly articulated and Pounds femme leads a life lacking profundity, in perpetual debt to the fees of a fragmented existence.Pounds vignette of the cultured woman presents her uncertain existence in its entirety, diagnosing the inevitability of her incomplete and secondary significance. The murky waters of the womans mind glimmer temporarily as societys bright ships come and go, yet her dim reality deeply entrenches itself in her bleak subservience to greater and lesser minds. The speaker puts forth, Great minds have sought you lacking someone else. / You have been second always (6-7). Despite her sop histicated alliances, the lady is nevertheless unfulfilled. However, a certain aspect of her intrinsic subordination is resolved: Tragical? / No (7-8). Although Pounds femme falls short of intellectual glory, the fragments of her life make up her saving grace from the usual thing (8); as Pounds modern setting guarantees no spiritual fulfillment for its inhabitants, this cultured environment of art and sensibilities offers a makeshift escape from the dullness of mediocrity. The femme fears a man not only dulling (9) but averagewith one thought less each year (10), such that Pound foreshadows his ladys own deterioration through her misdirected association between intellect and worth. While the woman castigates the average mans deficient thought, her own accumulation provides nothing for her sense of self. Not only does she richly pay (13) for her external acquisitions, but what endures are merely dregs of her identity, strange woods half sodden (26).As sweeping oceans and bright ships on the horizon invite the modern notion of travel and commerce, so does the author invite the reader to examine the resulting lifestyle beyond its foremost material gains. Strewn with dimmed wares of price (5), the lady remains perpetually lacking, for one interest gained takes strange gain away (15). Pounds woman floats at the surface of a sea-hoard of deciduous things (25), with fleeting thoughts leaving her head just as new thoughts form. Her internal composition is so utterly varying and overly complex that she never fits a corner or shows use (20). In full, her world is the slow float of differing light and deep (27). The temporary promise of new brighter stuff (26) serves the lady no lasting purpose, nor gives her any interior momentum with which to live. The ladys attraction to strange spars of knowledge parallels her own admittedly alluring qualities to onlookers and those expectedly participating in her way of life; the material and intellectual acquisitions of Pounds fem me may be tarnished (22) and gaudy (22), but prove to be consistently intriguing to human nature in their rarity.Pounds satirical choice to title his depiction of the Londoner in French implies the seemingly cosmopolitan nature of the femme herself. The social benefit of her great store (24) of riches is the alluring faade it provides. While internally impoverished in the eyes of Pounds speaker, the lady still possesses the glitter of trophies fished up (16) and all are drawn to the wonderful old work (22) that she appears to be. Yet this meager advantage proves to be another fact that leads nowhere (17), and her breadth of knowledge and sophistication leave her no trajectory from murky containment in the Sargasso Sea. London sweeps about this femme; ships come and go, leaving her behind. Her gaudy findings and imported material goods suggest her internal deficiencies, for her refined modernity masks an individual lacking the fulfillment of experience. No current moves Pounds lady, and this femme is doomed to a stagnant existence amidst flickering surface lights, in a slow float above uncharted depth.With a portrait of one woman, Pound presents a paradox of modern society: with the quickening pace of urbanization, his femme remains bogged down upon the loom of days (21), stalemate between the strangeness of new innovations and the tarnished remnants of an antiquated time. Thirsty for a sense of belonging in a shifting world, she waits hours, where something might have floated up (12), and yet obtains nothing thats quite [her] own (29). Pound characterizes the woman as a projection of modern society; just as the time has passed for a poems female to encompass purity and grace, Pounds leading lady simultaneously seeks to extricate her meaning between the luster of the imminent age and the quaint memory of a simpler time. The extended metaphor of the Sargasso Sea in Portrait dune Femme wholly unifies Pounds overarching examination of the changing world. His ladys association with the lethargic waters of the Sargasso Sea is but a point of comparison for the contemporary situation. Beneath the transitory flashes of differing light, Pound cautions the common person to look before he leaps into the deep abyss of individuality: No! there is nothing! In the whole and all, / Nothing thats quite your own. / Yet this is you (28-30). Pounds poetic assessment of one muddled female spirit fully evades misogyny in that his deliberate stray from literary archetypes expands his message to all modern individuals. As this femme strains to determine her position in the world, so do all who suffer ennui, anxiety, and identity crises inside the fragile framework of todays chaotic acceleration. Nevertheless, as Pounds lady moves to construct her identity with collective tidbits of new and old, the speaker directs her away from fleeting acquisitions and focuses on an instinctively ignored truth: Yet this is you.