Hugh Selwyn Mauberley Principles Quotes

Mauberley is kind of like Odysseus, in the sense that both of them are searching for some sense of "home." But instead of looking for "home" in a loyal wife, Mauberley looks for a sense of home in the beautiful writing of French novelist Gustave Flaubert.

A bunch of young men ran off to get slaughtered in World War I, and why? Because they believed they were fighting to defend a great country. Sure, they should have plenty of principles. But Pound thinks they all ran off to die for something not worth fighting for.

Okay, so there was this book published before Pound was born, and it was a translation of all these old Persian poems that Pound thought were really beautiful. The problem is that no one really paid any attention to the book until a celebrity writer gave it his stamp of approval. For Pound, this is just another terrible example of how good art doesn't speak to people in the modern world. Only marketing does.

There are still plenty of great artists in the modern world. The problem is that they all have to suffer in obscurity and poverty because nobody appreciates how great they are. People just want Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, and no one cares about truly great writing. Pound finds this pretty despicable, but he also knows that there's not much he can do about it.

For Pound, one principle remains unchanging, and that's the inherent value of beauty. In these lines especially, he says that time eventually destroys all things, like buildings, cars, and even human beings. But the one thing that isn't broken down by change is beauty.