T. E. Hulme | |
|---|---|
 Hulme in 1912 | |
| Born | Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883-09-16)16 September 1883 Endon,Staffordshire, United Kingdom |
| Died | 28 September 1917(1917-09-28) (aged 34) Oostduinkerke,West Flanders, Belgium |
| Resting place | Coxyde Military Cemetery [nl] |
| Pen name | North Staffs |
| Occupation |
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| Alma mater | |
| Years active | 1907–1917 |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom |
| Branch | |
| Years of service | 1914–1917 |
| Rank | Lieutenant |
| Unit | |
| Battles / wars | |
Thomas Ernest Hulme (/hjuːm/; 16 September 1883 – 28 September 1917) was an English critic and poet who, through his writings on art, literature and politics, had a notable influence uponmodernism.[1] He was an aesthetic philosopher and thefather of imagism.[2]
Thomas Ernest Hulme — called "Ernest" by his family — was born at Gratton Hall,Endon,Staffordshire, the son of Thomas Hulme and Mary, née Young. Thomas attempted farming, but "the life proved too strenuous" for him; when his son was still young the family relocated to a house on Endon Bank, and Thomas went into business for a time as an auctioneer and sales agent before starting up a ceramics transfer business operating from a factory inNewcastle-under-Lyme. Thomas was "a remote and hard man" with an "explosive temper", but it was Mary Hulme that was "the disciplinarian in the family... a spirited, independent woman with a good sense of humour and a command of repartee." Thomas Hulme's father, also Thomas, who lived at nearby Dunwood Hall, was a successful pawnbroker whose death in 1884 "left his family well provided for". The Hulmes were wealthy; they "had chauffeurs and gardeners at Endon Bank, but the family had regional accents rather than Oxbridge accents and there was more social mixing across the classes than was common in the cities."[3]
Hulme was educated atNewcastle-under-Lyme High School and, from 1902,St John's College, Cambridge, where he read mathematics, but was sent down in 1904 after rowdy behaviour onBoat Race night.[4] He was thrown out of Cambridge a second time after a scandal involving aRoedean girl. He returned to his studies atUniversity College London, before travelling aroundCanada and spending time inBrussels acquiring languages.
From about 1907 Hulme became interested inphilosophy,[5] translating works byHenri Bergson[6] and sitting in on lectures at Cambridge. He translatedGeorges Sorel'sReflections on Violence. The most important influences on his thought were Bergson, who asserted that 'human experience is relative, but religious and ethical values are absolute'[7] and, later,Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965), German art historian and critic – in particular hisAbstraktion und Einfühlung (Abstraction and Empathy, 1908).[8] Hulme was influenced byRemy de Gourmont's aristocratic concept of art and his studies of sensibility and style.[9] From 1909 Hulme contributed critical articles toThe New Age, edited byA. R. Orage.
Hulme developed an interest in poetry[10] and wrote a small number of poems. He was made secretary of thePoets' Club, attended by such establishment figures asEdmund Gosse andHenry Newbolt. There he encounteredEzra Pound andF. S. Flint.[11] In late 1908 Hulme delivered his paperA Lecture on Modern Poetry to the club. Hulme's poems "Autumn" and "A City Sunset", both published in 1909 in a Poets' Club anthology,[12] have the distinction of being the firstImagist poems.[13] A further five poems were published inThe New Age in 1912 asThe Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme.[14] Despite this misleading title, Hulme in fact wrote about 25 poems totalling some 260 lines, of which the majority were possibly written between 1908 and 1910.[15]Robert Frost met Hulme in 1913 and was influenced by his ideas.[16] The publisher of the book 'Ripostes' (to which Pound appended the 'complete' poetical works of T. E. Hulme) spoke in that book of Hulme 'the meta-physician, who achieves great rhythmical beauty in curious verse-forms.'[17]
In his critical writings Hulme distinguished betweenRomanticism,[18] a style informed by a belief in the infinite in man and nature, characterised by Hulme as "spilt religion", andClassicism, a mode of art stressing human finitude, formal restraint, concrete imagery and, in Hulme's words, "dry hardness".[19][20] Similar views were later expressed byT. S. Eliot.[21] Hulme's ideas had a major effect onWyndham Lewis and for a time the two were friends, later coming to blows overKate Lechmere, Lewis coming off the worse during this encounter which ended when Hulme hung Lewis upside down by the cuffs of his trousers from the railings of Great Ormond Street.[22] He championed the art ofJacob Epstein andDavid Bomberg, was a friend ofGaudier-Brzeska, and was in on the debut of Lewis'sliterary magazineBLAST andvorticism.
Hulme's politics were conservative, and he moved further to the right after 1911 as a result of contact withPierre Lasserre, who was associated withAction Française.
Hulme volunteered as an artilleryman in 1914 and served with theHonourable Artillery Company and later theRoyal Marine Artillery in France and Belgium. He kept up his writing forThe New Age. Notable publications during this period for that magazine were "War Notes", written under the pen name "North Staffs", and "A Notebook", which contains some of his most organised critical writing. Originally starting as aprivate,[23] Hulme eventually became alieutenant.[24] He was wounded in 1916.
Back at the front in 1917, he was killed by a shell atOostduinkerke nearNieuwpoort, inWest Flanders.
[...] On 28 September 1917, four days after his thirty-fourth birthday, Hulme suffered a direct hit from a large shell which literally blew him to pieces. Apparently absorbed in some thought of his own he had failed to hear it coming and remained standing while those around threw themselves flat on the ground. What was left of him was buried in the Military Cemetery atKoksijde, West-Vlaanderen, in Belgium where—no doubt for want of space—he is described simply as 'One of theWar poets'."[25]
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