Reading the Landor section in Pound’s ABC of Reading, which Clive mentioned, I find a lot to like in Landor’s “lapidary style” (as Pound puts it). Also, he’s witty:
Epithalamium
XXXXWeep Venus, and ye
XXXXAdorable Three
Who Venus for ever environ.
XXXXPounds, shillings, and pence
XXXXAnd shrewd sober sense
Have clapt the strait waistcoat on * * *
XXXXOff Mainot and Turk
XXXXWith pistol and dirk,
Nor palace nor pinnace set fire on
XXXXThe cord's fatal jerk
XXXXHas done its last work
And the noose is now slipped upon * * *
(I don't know why Landor puts asterisks after the poem, but they’re his not Pound’s—I checked the collection it is from, Gebir, Count Julian and Other Poems.)
Pound writes: “Landor, the man of letters, usually invoked as model of the ‘lapidary style’ or of the ‘well-turned verse’. The effect of his severe classical studies never deserts him, and the cantabile quality never wholly deserts the verses of his shorter poems, even when they are manifestly inscribed. . . . A man preferring ‘a manner of writing’ to the living language, runs considerable danger if he have not a culture as thorough as Landor’s, and a great part of Landor’s longer poems are still inaccessible because the languag eis so far removed from any speech ever used anywhere. . . . Landor: 80 per cent retrospective, though this mustn’t be taken to mean that he wasn’t driving piles into the mud, and preparing foundations—which have been largely unused by his successors.”
As often with Pound, I only get some of what he is saying. (There is a lot more in the section on Landor, much of which seems more like Pound's notes to himself than shared literary criticism.) With the “lapidary” part, I’m on board, but then P. says Landor was a model more should have followed, despite his language being “so far removed from any speech ever used anywhere, yet Pound himself pushed for language closer to speech, less artificial etc. Does anyone here understand this (apparent) contradiction?
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