Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In Ezra Pound's poem "Ortus," the speaker grapples with the complexities of love, identity, and the creative process. "How have I laboured?" the poem begins, a question that evokes both the toil involved in love and in artistic creation. The elements referred to could be the fundamental aspects of personality or the raw materials of art-both are apt for the dual themes of love and creativity that run through the poem.

The object of the speaker's labor is described as "beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid," yet "she has no name, and no place." This can be seen as a metaphor for the elusive nature of both love and artistic inspiration. They are both omnipresent and ungraspable, just as the sunlight can be seen but not held. The idea that "she has no name and no place" indicates that she has not yet been defined, neither by herself nor by the speaker's labor.

The speaker has endeavored "to bring her soul into separation," as though she is yet a part of the greater unconscious, the "elements unborn." There is an urge to give form to what is formless, to bring the abstract into the concrete-much like the creative impulse that compels an artist to create a work of art. He confesses, "I have loved a stream and a shadow," underlining the insubstantial, ever-changing nature of what he loves. It is as though the woman he loves is a muse that inspires but remains elusive, never fully partaking in life as a defined individual.

The most compelling part of the poem is the closing stanza, where the speaker implores, "I beseech you enter your life. / I beseech you learn to say 'I,' / When I question you; / For you are no part, but a whole, / No portion, but a being." This plea serves both as an invocation for the muse to enter the realm of reality and as a wish for the loved one to recognize her own individuality. The lines suggest a yearning for a more reciprocal relationship, where the beloved is not just an object of inspiration or adoration but an autonomous individual. The call for the loved one to say "I" implies a want for acknowledgment, a response, a dialogic relationship. It also seems to encourage the loved one to recognize her own potential, to become a "whole" rather than a part of someone else's emotional or creative landscape.

In "Ortus," Ezra Pound explores the nuanced relationship between the artist and the muse, the lover and the beloved. The poem is a meditation on the struggles and the ethical implications of trying to capture, define, or own something-or someone-so inherently fluid and indefinable. At its core, it examines the tension between love and freedom, between creation and independence, evoking the eternal challenges that these dichotomies pose.

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