The Intellectual Development of T. E. Hulme

The Intellectual Development of T. E. Huhne K. E. CSENGERI One might easily get the impression from critics and literary historians that the Englishman T. E. Hulme (1883-1917) is best considered an early influence on Pound and Eliot rather than an author in his own right. His writings, if we follow these critics, are in something of a muddle. It is my claim that the muddle is elsewhere; that Hulme's work can be divided, without any strain or distortion, into three clearly defined periods; and that his writings, when seen in this light, present an unambiguous development towards a philosophical position that is both clear and cogent.1 Hulme's intellectual life developed as follows: (i) 1906-1909, a period of philosophic "nominalism" and an interest in writing poetry; (ii) 19091912 , Bergsonian philosophy and metaphysics; and (iii) 1912-1917, the period of his interest in classicism, German aesthetics, and the visual arts. Though there is some overlapping of these interests (in, for example, "Romanticism and Classicism," which contains elements from both his Bergson and classical periods), these divisions are clear if one reads Hulme's works in chronological order. One of the obstacles to a clear understanding of Hulme's development has been Herbert Read's haphazard editing of the posthumous selection of essays, Speculations (1924). For not only are the essays in that book not dated, but the chronological order is mostly backwards. It is easy to see how readers who do not check the chronology of the writings for themselves might be led to think that Hulme's enthusiasm for classicism came at the same time as, or even before, his enthusiasm for Bergson. It is only by reading the essays in their proper sequence that his intellectual development can be properly established. I Hulme's first philosophic stance was a sort of "nominalism." We see it in his two earliest works, "Cinders" and "Notes on Language and Style." Hulme seems to have developed his view of the world as a plurality which no single theory could comprehend during a trip to Canada in 1906-1907, after his unsuccessful university career at Cambridge and London.2 "The flats of Canada," he wrote, "are incomprehen- Csengeri: The Intellectual Development of T. E. Hulme sible on any single theory."3 And again: "Travel is education in cinders. . . . The road leading over the prairie, at dusk, with the half-breed."4 These notes and others expressing this idea are recorded in "Cinders," an assortment of observations on the nature of truth, knowledge, the world and language. Though begun about 1906-07, and added to in the years following, they were never published in Hulme's lifetime; after his death, Herbert Read collected and published them, first in the London weekly journal, The New Age, in 1922, and two years later in Speculations .6 Altogether they present a consistent nominalistic view of the world: "There is a difficulty in finding a comprehensive scheme of the cosmos, because there is none. The cosmos is only organised in parts; the rest is cinders" {SP, 220). He said that men were forever inventing theories to unify the world. The mythologists, for example, made it a woman or elephant. The scientists later made fun of the mythologists, but they themselves turned the world into the likeness of a mechanical toy. He insisted that these theories of the world, "which satisfy and are then thrown away, one after the other, develop not as successive approximations to the truth, but like successive thirsts, to be satisfied at the moment, and not evolving to one great Universal Thirst" (SP, 229). He thought, however, that these analogies had a practical purpose: they helped us along and gave us a feeling of power over the chaos. The danger lay in thinking they showed us the truth. Language, according to Hulme, had become a disease: "Symbols are picked out and believed to be realities," when they are in fact "merely counters ... to be moved about on a board for the convenience of the players" (SP, 218). Language was merely a "manufactured chess-board laid on a cinder-heap" (SP, 219), "a kind of gossamer web, woven between the real things...