SOURCE: "The Death of Vorticism," in The Little Review, Vol. VI, No. 2, June, 1919, pp. 46-8.

In the following essay, Cournos outlines the effects of World War I on Vorticist art.

—"Where there is no wit, there is insolence." As an example of this truth we have Mr. Ezra Pound. If final proof were wanting that Vorticism is dead, we have him writing about it. We know Mr. Pound's predilection for the dead. The dead, having the misfortune to die before Mr. Pound, cannot defend themselves. And all the while he has been digging his own literary grave.

When a man persistently denies life, life will end by completely denying him. There is Mr. Pound, for whom the five years' destructive war have left no dead, no ruins. Can he have been so dead that the great war should have passed by and over him and left him contemplating...