Abstract
Certain European and Asian philosophical concerns germane to poetic craft, death, rape of innocence, and unrequited love formulate an equation of classical mythology and culturalistic politics operative in the imagistic poetry of Ezra Pound and Taufiq Rafat. The theoretical underpinnings of Lowell (1915) regarding imagistic poetry, having a striking bearing on establishing this parallelism of classical mythology and cultural contexture, serve as the centerpiece of discussion here. This paper presents a comparative critique on the eight selected poems from Pound’s poetry collections Ripostes of Ezra Pound (1912) and Lustra of Ezra Pound (1916), and Rafat’s Arrival of the Monsoon: Collected Poems (1947-1978) and Half Moon: Poems (1979-1983). The imagistic theory of poetry aspires to use run-of-the-mill diction that is liberated from the strict observance of structural prosody to ensure the objectivity of the commonplace experience fashioned in laconism. The presentation of concrete images carries a suggestive tone. The present analysis advances through close scrutiny of Pound’s and Rafat’s poetry for natural rhythm cadences maneuvered through verse libre, freedom from the choice of subject matter, employment of concrete imagery, common speech and hard word, and concentration.Pound archeologizes the classical tradition of poetry and aspires to ‘make it new’ to construct a universal identity. The classical tradition includes the poetics of ancient Greek, Provencal, Chinese, and Anglo-Saxon poets. On the other hand, Rafat constructs a national identity maneuvered through modern style and thematic dimensions. As its ultimate objective, this inquiry aspires to bring into play the culturalist atmosphere and thematic import to pursue the universal strains and symbiotic collaborationsin the works of artists like Pound and Rafat that comparative literature and critique crave to accomplish as their agenda.
Asim Aqeel, , Saba Rasheed, , Ayesha Perveen. (2018) The Equation of Classical Mythology and Culturalist Politics in the Poetry of Ezra Pound and Taufiq Rafat: An Imagistic Critique, The ELF Annual Research Journal, Volume 20, Issue 1.
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