vividly present in the turn to discipline and the subsequent rejection of
all humanist art; the complete self-determination of the poet and the
poem.
Hulme begins with a rejection of Romanticism, which he defines as
Rousseau’s belief that man is a creature of unlimited potential held back
by social convention. To this he opposes Classicism, which holds that
‘man is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal whose nature is
absolutely constant’, and ‘it is only by tradition and organisation that
anything decent can be got out of him’.^65 Romanticism is a false religion,
which has appropriated the divine realm of infinity for the human, and
blurred fundamental boundaries: ‘the concepts that are right and proper
in their own sphere are spread over, and so mess up, falsify and blur
the clear outlines of human experience’ ( 62 ). This messing up and
blurring is also exactly the trouble with Romantic poetry. It is vague in
its outlook because it is so concerned with the infinite, whereas Classicism
is concerned with ‘the earthly and definite’. But ‘so much has romanti-
cism debauched us, that, without some form of vagueness, we deny the
highest’ ( 66 ), he laments; ‘particularly in Germany, the land where
theories of aesthetics were first created, the romantic aesthetes collated
all beauty to an impression of the infinite involved in our being in
absolute spirit... it is quite obvious to anyone who holds this kind of
theory that any poetry which confines itself to the finite can never be of
the highest kind’ ( 68 ). Hulme’s remedy is a sense of limit, ‘small, dry
things’, expressed with accuracy: ‘the great aim is accurate, precise and
definite description’ ( 68 ).
The fact that Hulme is arguing for earthly finitude from a theological
standpoint indicates, of course, that being accurate and down-to-earth has
just as much metaphysics behind it as being vague and infinite: accuracy is
no more a goal in itself than infinity. And despite his disparagement of
Hegel, the progress of Spirit is very much in evidence as Hulme con-
tinues, for Hegel’s goal of self-determination and autonomy is where
Hulme’s accuracy now unexpectedly leads. Precise description involves
language, and ‘language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it
expresses never the exact thing but a compromise – that which is common
to you, me and everybody’ ( 68 ). Regardless of thisa prioriimpossibility,
Hulme then says that precise description is possible but must involve a
wrestling with language’s conventions, like an architect bending an ap-
proximately curved piece of wood to get ‘the exact curve that he sees
whether it be an object or an idea in the mind’ ( 69 ). Accuracy, he sums
up, is
Inside and outside modernism 35