Introductory Notes on Modernism The Words "Modern," "Modernism," etc. MODERN originates in late Latin (6th c.) with the meaning "current," "of the moment." It retains this meaning at first when it comes in to English in the mid-16th c. It soon begins to be used, however, in drawing distinctions from "ancient" and "medieval." MODERN = "of or pertaining to the present, distinguished from the remote past." Also: "newfasioned," "not obsolete." MODERNIST and MODERNITY also coined by early 17th c. MODERNISM coined by 18th c., used to mean "newfashioned," generally with derogatory intent. E.g., MODERNISM = an anachronistic-sounding choice of wording in the translation of an old text. By this time, all forms of word could be used disparagingly. In the 19th c. the words undergo a rehabilitation by their usage in association with technical innovation and "progress," now valorized. On the term "avant-garde": = "the most advanced part of an army," the "vanguard." Term's military use in English goes back to the Middle Ages. Application to artistic innovation a 19th c. phenomenon. Oddly militaristic metaphor, of course; implies that art is a matter of struggle, conquest, progress. Does use of the term imply a nostalgia for action and effectiveness in the non-artistic world? (Hence the coincidence of avant-gardism and Aestheticism, and their complex relation with the marginalization and commodification of art.) Defining Modernism Some stock definitions of Modernism or the Avant-Garde: 1. The Literature Anthology Definition: Modernism is literature from about 1900 to 1945, marked by a lot of weird, innovative, anti-traditional stuff. A tradition of innovation. 2. T.S. Eliot's Definition: Modernism is literature confronting the meaninglessness and anarchy of contemporary life by imposing an aesthetically arrived-at order on experience (cf. Yeats and Pound). 3. Gyorgy Lukacs's Definition: Modernism is literature reflecting the fragmented viewpoints of contemporary individuals in the grip of advanced capitalism, mistakenly offering that fragmentation, ambiguity, and mystery as the ultimate human truth. In reality, the ultimate human truth lies in exploitative economic relations, i.e., in class struggle, regardless of how this situation may be cloaked as a "normal" or "natural" or "inevitable" condition. 4. Fascist view: Modernism is the literature of a degenerate culture that has fallen away from the classical virtues of strength, heroism, loyalty, and unadorned truth, most likely due to the influence of inherently degenerate races (like the Jews) or because of the value-free, hedonistic atmosphere of free- market capitalism. 5. Paul De Man's Definition: Modernism is a generative strategy for literature that consists of a strategic break with rationalized literary history in order to regain the ability to act freely and spontaneously (i.e., to create literary history). This has always existed; the characteristics of modernism (obscurity, non- refentialiality) are present in the literature of all periods. 6. New Critical Definition (and really a deifinition for all literature): Modernism is literature (especially poetry) that exhibits paradox/irony, reconciling opposites; is alogical, indirect, oblique in expressing ideas, unlike scientific language; employs metaphors that function integrally with the work as a whole; is immune to complete paraphrase, the only adequate paraphrase to a poem being the poem itself; functions as a mechanism producing specific results in the reader; is not fully referable to the conscious intentions of the writer. [This approximates symbolist dogma with the vestiges of metaphysics stripped away.] Robinson's Working Understanding of Modernism: Cultural response to an unprecendented pace of change in the material world: disappearance of traditional lifestyles and economies, rise of industrial capitalism and its attendant social characteristics (ascendency of bourgeois values, primacy of money in social relations, class mobility), wholesale urbanization, technological innovation ("progress"). Artistic response to the destabilization of cultural reference points (religion, politics, art in the grip of the market). Whole notion of tradition as a reference point replaced by an expectation, and ultimately valorization, of change. Major Historical Events: -- WW I, followed by complete redrawing of European map (1914-18 and after) -- Rise of Communism (1917) -- Rise of Fascism (beginning 1920s in Italy, Germany) -- Economic crises (1921, 1929-33) -- Stalinism (1928-56, especially Socialist Realism, codified at the Soviet Writer's Congress of 1934) -- WW II (1939-45) -- The Cold War (1948-1989) Representative intellectual bearings: Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud; in sum, the decline of religion, rise science, and fascination with the irrational in human experience. Social / Political Situation in Europe --- -- Universal suffrage increasingly in effect -- Universal public education increasingly in effect -- Devastation caused by WW I (material, psychological: disillusionment with 19th c. notion of progress) -- Technology on the march: the automobile, the telephone, the airplane, improved weaponry, radio communication, ferro-concrete, misc. electrical appliances -- Rise of modern mass communications, advertising, radio -- Economic instability (culminating in depression) -- Visible decline of the old Empires (British, Austrian, Russian, Ottoman). Eclipse by America. Revolution in the Arts: PAINTING -- Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Expressionism In general: wholesale rejection of classical, institutional, and market norms; departure from depiction of static "objective reality;" radical temporalism; spatialized temporality; critique of rationality; interest in the irrational, unconscious mind, dreams, etc.; interest in non-Western art. MUSIC -- Various degrees of chromaticism culminating in atonality. Musical impressionism (Debussey). Invention of 12-tone serialism (Schoenberg) as alternative ordering principle to tonality and harmony. Experiments in rhythm (Stravinsky). LITERATURE -- Various reactions to the materialism of bourgeois society and culture. Class and alienation: market catering to lower-class mass market, artists aspiring to more complex things. Density, difficulty, hermeticism. In part a reactionary phenomenon: literature deliberately difficult, abstruse, symbolic, "experimental" in order to distinguish it from popular writing -- hence the frequent charge of elitism against Modernist writers. Language treated as material, as stuff (like pigments and canvas in painting). Hence an emphasis not only on meaning, but also appearance, pure sound, etc. Attention to, self-consciousness about linguistic surface as something other than just musical: wit, pun, ambiguity, complexity of metaphor and image. Likewise, in narrative, emphasis on style, viewpoint, etc. Rejection of traditional forms, ostentatious violation of artistic taboos, pretenses, commonplaces. Experimentalism (oddly scientistic metaphor, that). Impersonality, pretense of narrative or poetic objectivity, derived from Flaubert and from the Symbolists. Obsession with creating poetic theories, aesthetic systems, substitute mythologies, self- contained symbolic worlds; often combined with a counter-movement, the urge to revivify the old myth and symbol systems (cf. Yeats, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Lawrence, Woolf -- different versions all) Thematic and performative confrontations with meaninglessness, absurdity, existential Angst (Eliot, Woolf, Kafka). Spatialization of the temporal in narrative. Emphasis on the city, the machine -- techno- pastoral. Involvement of many artists in radical political movements, notably communism and fascism (especially the Italian variety). Note especially the fascist or quasi-fascist spirit afflicting the British "High Moderns" (Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Lawrence, Lewis). Anticipation of secular apocalypse (Yeats, Mayakovsky). Conundrums of Modernism 1. Once a tradition of perpetual innovation is established, how can it be escaped? 2. Is anything possible after Modernism that is not also Modernism? 3. Is it possible to advance beyond Modernism without being the latest avant garde? 4. What is the status of literature written contemporaneously with avant garde works, that is not avant garde? 5. Can art be said to progress or advance? 6. What are the artistic and political implications of pronouncing oneself radically outside literary history, of being a totalized, fulfilled present? (Glimmers of fascist essentialism here.) 7. If the Modernist manifestoes are regarded as symbolist poems or as performative gestures, what are they saying? (Note the mixed response to the course poster.) 8. What is to be made of the place of political (especially fascist) ideology at the root of the avante garde? Is this just a coincidence? (See the "Working Understanding," above: confronted with radical uncertainty and rapid change, people may be equally likely to reach toward the far right or far left in search for a new, stabilizing, clarifying world view. But this doesn't explain the centrality of fascism per se.)