Andrew's Wiki
Hell Gate

Content

• It’s a story of Hell, like Dante and Milton, but the imagery is war, so it’s as if it’s during war-time, during a march towards the front lines
  • War is the gate of hell, but all the talk of “everlasting” and “eternal” forms of war makes it sound like war is the natural condition of man
• The speaker sees the sentry, who is someone he used to know, kill Satan (this is the “traitor” and “revolted” and “mutineer” imagery: of suicide), and they both leave Hell b/c of friendship

Form

• Seven stanzas of wildly diff length: 12, 8, 24, 20, 22, 8, 10
• “Fire” becomes not only nature imagery (cf Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux) but her a part of human: the sentry against the “sunset” like horizon of war is illuminated, surrounded by hell
• Pound wrote parody of Housman, “Mr. Housman’s Message,” with refrain, “Oh woe, woe, etc.”
  • “We shall all die soon / Therefore let us act as if we were / dead already”
  • This is perhaps the only poem that doesn’t correspond to Pound’s critique