البـــــوابـــة
thought I'd move this topic started in the "Should we eliminate this group" into its own.
I've
always understood modernism to be characterized, in many but not all
ways, by a fundamental loss of faith in the institutions that had, up
until WWI or so, been the most important aspects of human existence.
The
modernists replaced this void with a focus and faith on and in the
"individual." So you get the classic modernist characters Bloom,
Marcel, and Ulrich.
This loss of faith in traditions created a
vast amount of room for the experimentation in both form and content
that resulted in one of the most fruitful eras of human creation.
Virtually all of my experience with modernism is with literature, so I'm interested to see how art and music fit in.flag abuse
Oct 8, 2006, 5:07pm (top)Message 2: A_musing
You
raise the question of literature as compared to art and music. So when
and where is the leading edge of modernism, in art, music or
literature? I think that has much to do with just what we think the
modernists are rejecting or defining themselves against.
Certainly,
one early marker in art is the "Salon of the Refused" in 1863, which is
one of the best dates for the birth of impressionism. By this time,
photographic images show technology impinging on art as never before
and modern warfare rears its ugly head in the American Civil War. The
Symbolist Manifesto is in 1886, and by that time there is not only a
full-fledged anti-Academy movement in France, but the movement is even
large enough to be splintering.
Are we willing to call any
earlier literary figures modernists, or do we cede that the first
modernists are the painters. Perhaps Baudelaire, whose Flowers of Evil was published in 1857?) could qualify as a modernist? I don't think any of the American's of the time could qualify - though Poe would become a favorite of many of them.
Message edited by its author, Oct 8, 2006, 7:08pm.
flag abuse
Oct 8, 2006, 6:41pm (top)Message 3: prophetandmistress
I
don't know much about Baudelaire, but the thought of Poe as a modernist
is intriquing. It seems there are a number of Amercian authors in the
middle of the 19th century who I haven't heard of being associated with
any particular movement, Poe among them. Given the individualistic
nature of their work, I'm thinking Leaves of Grass and Moby Dick in particular, it might be fair to apocryphally describe them as pre-modern.
And
thanks for the info on the beginnings of the visual arts contribution
to the movement. Is there a particular artist or work that can be
described as archetypal for modernism, in the same way that Ulysses is often considered the archetypal modernist novel?
flag abuse
Oct 8, 2006, 7:20pm (top)Message 4: A_musing
I think the works that would be the poster children for modernism in the visual arts would be Les Demoiseles d'Avignon and Guernica by Picasso, The Scream by Edvard Munch, The Persistance of Memory by Salvadore Dali or the Fountain by Marcel Duchamp.
I wouldn't include impressionist works, which were just too early in
the development of modernism to become the kind of archetype that Ulysses (or The Wasteland ) would be for literature. I'm sure there are others that can be added, just as there are with literature.
flag abuse
Oct 8, 2006, 10:56pm (top)Message 5: Eurydice
Thank
you both. While I can't, yet, contribute even a useful question, this
does overlap the edges of my minimal knowledge; so it's both coherent,
and gratefully read.
I look forward to more 'eavesdropping'....
flag abuse
Oct 14, 2006, 1:25pm (top)Message 6: A_musing
If anyone has an interest in Baudelaire, check out http://fleursdumal.org, which has both all the poems from Flowers of Evil and multiple translations of them over the years (see, for example, http://fleursdumal.org/poem/101 ). Great stuff.
flag abuse
Oct 18, 2006, 9:53am (top)Message 7: prophetandmistress
Thanks
for the Baudelaire resource A_musing. It's an amazing website. I've
never read any Baudelaire before and now I have the opportunity to (and
in multiple translations with links to further resources) without
having to spring for a book.
flag abuse
Nov 1, 2006, 4:45am (top)Message 8: plumpesdenken
Marshall Berman in All That is Solid Melts Into Air discusses Baudelaire's courage and originality: "If we had to nominate a first modernist, Baudelaire would surely be the man."
flag abuse
Nov 1, 2006, 10:05pm (top)Message 9: Hera
Pound
and Eliot were deeply influenced by Baudelaire, so his place as a
'Modern' was written from the start. It's obvious in Pound's earlier
work and Eliot quotes and alludes to him throughout The Wasteland.
Although it's received wisdom that WWI was the crucible for modernism, Joyce's Dubliners was written well before that time. Gerard Manley Hopkins'
poetry is an obvious precursor of the 'fractured' language of Modernist
literature and the layered perspectives of cubism in painting. Whistler's paintings with their 'abstract' titles also paved the way for artists like Mondrian.
The
more I read Modernist poets, the more I see their indebtedness to
Japanese and Chinese poetry - sparse language, taut structure and
imagism. The visual arts, music and literature were deeply entwined
movements, as the diaries of writers and artists show (the Vorticists
made this explicit).
Of course the War made an enormous impact on the philosophy and style of poets and writers: one only has to see the change in Wilfred Owen's poetry, for example. The seeds of change were already there, however, before the War began.
flag abuse
Nov 2, 2006, 10:29am (top)Message 10: prophetandmistress
I've
always understood WWI as a clear and convinient sign post for
modernism. Of course, movements don't move like timlines and have fluid
beginnings and endings. With WWI (even WWI is a fluid point as it
lasted more than a day and affected people in different timeframes), I
think you can say that modernism had definitely started and was the
major arts, literary, and intellectual movement of the time. I think
its also a fair question to ask just how much the actual war affected
the artists who were driving modernism. Would Ulysses have been written without it? Some signs point to yes some to no.
What Chinese and Japanese poets do you refer to? Do you know how much of those poets Pound and the gang actually read?
flag abuse
Nov 2, 2006, 10:53am (top)Message 11: A_musing
I
have no comprehension of how one could use a date as late as WWI for
modernism -- it would exclude some of the painting world's icons, such
as The Scream (1893) and L'Demoiseles d'Avignon (1907).
I've seen the birth of Cubism lauded as a break date, but that ignores The Scream and company.
Historically,
it may all just be that there is a real but questionable bias for
finding the gilded age to be stiff, staid, and traditional. Indeed,
those stuffed shirts who way back in the 20th century created all this
received wisdom may just have underestimated the 19th century as a
whole.
Message edited by its author, Nov 2, 2006, 10:58am.
flag abuse
Nov 3, 2006, 2:54am (top)Message 12: plumpesdenken
Yes
the beginnings are a matter of traces surely. (I'd be interested in
learning how WWI enabled the writing of Ulysses?). Some date it at 1922
with the publication of Ulysses and The Waste Land. The famous quote
from Virginia Woolf marking the beginning of modernism very precisely
-- "on or about December 1910 human character changed" -- probably
throws into relief the fraught nature of too precise determination of
modernism's origins.
flag abuse
Nov 3, 2006, 10:26am (top)Message 13: A_musing
Is the literary side of modernism particularly important, enough so to date it from a poem and a novel?
I'd
suggest modernism has a history as a world-view and as an art movement
(or collection of art movements), with the visual artists at the
leading edge of the art movement (and at the leading edge of the
world-view, too).
Someone up above suggests Moby Dick
as a notable pre-modern writing - the more I think of it, the more it
shows a lot of the distinctive characterists of modernist writing 75
years later. Think of the chapter on definitions and the use of
symbolism and images. Setting aside Joyce's unique personal style, what
separates Moby Dick from, say, Mann's Faustus that would make Mann more of a modernist?
Message edited by its author, Nov 3, 2006, 10:31am.
flag abuse
Jul 7, 2007, 7:00pm (top)Message 14: artstar25 First Message
I'm
not sure if anyone still reads these, but I feel like there has been
many authors left out of this discussion of modernism. Nightwood by
Djuna barnes, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, The Good Soldier by Ford Madox
Ford.. I could go on. Some of the things that I think really describe
Modernism are:
A. The attempt to break the normal linear story line of the Victorian novel.
B. The new self-reflexive aspect of the novels. There was more focus on the books making.
C. The attempt to break gender-roles.
I could go on for a while, but these are things I find key to the era of Modernism.
does anyone even read these anymore...
flag abuse
Jul 9, 2007, 9:53am (top)Message 15: A_musing
I'm not sure anyone else does read them, though I at least clicked back.
I'm
not sure about your (C) - maybe for some, like Virginia Woolf, but much
less for Eliot. There were plenty of reactionary, traditionalist
modernists, from some of the Futurists to Pound. Non-modernists like
Shaw and Ibsen had waged a more fulsom attack on gender roles than many
of the modernists ever did.
I think the break from the linear is important, for poets as well as novelists, and that self-reflective thing is huge.
Message edited by its author, Jul 9, 2007, 9:53am.
flag abuse
Sep 22, 2007, 7:00am (top)Message 16: Blaise
Did you mean read the posts or read the books? Never give up on the readers!
I
have The Good Soldier (unread) on my shelves and was about to give it
away when I realised it was commonly listed on all those great books of
the world lists so now I've retrieved it from my give away pile so I
can see what the fuss is about. I'd be glad to be fore enlightened
about why it is significant. I've read Orlando, hadn't hear of
Nightwood before but if someone mounts a convincing case I might give
it a go.
I'm in the middle of reading Ulysses- although it's my
3rd book at the moment- which is the one I have to return to between
the other two and also late at night if I can't sleep, so give me a
year and I might get through it. I also really love the Russian (art)
futurists - See also my post on the group Futurism-Futurismo. I'll
happily discuss Malevich and Lebedev et al with anyone.
Are
there any other modernist authors this group could name? Only so I can
work out whether I've read them. And when do you all think the
modernists end? Were they replaced by another movement? Don't tell me
I've been reading post modernists? What about Italo Svevo, "Confessions
of Zeno"? Was he a modernist? And John Fowles esp the French
Lieutenant's Woman with its alternative endings, 1969- is it still
modernist or are the 1960s stretching it?
flag abuse
Sep 23, 2007, 11:44am (top)Message 17: A_musing
Nightwood
is an odd and puzzling work that is a quick read when you're in a bit
of funky mood. It's some combination of brilliant and bizzare, modern
and retro, and not quite like many other works. It is short but quite
turgid in places. I'm not quite sure how to describe. I have to reread
it again (I stumbled on a first edition about a year or two ago, and
plan to crack that spine!). It is loved, hated, and belittled by
different readers - no way to know what you'll think until you pick it
up.
If you like the Russian futurists, you might want to pick up At the Stray Dog Cabaret,
a recent collection that covers a bunch of the Russian modernist poets
(not particularly futuristically oriented, but their influence is felt)
through the first half of the 20th century.
Some of my favorite in the modernist vein or with modernist influence are Nathaniel West, Samuel Becket, Luis Pirandello, Heinrich Boll, Paul Eluard and Paul Nizan. But there are probably arguments as to how much all of them any one of them fits in as a modernist.
flag abuse
Sep 26, 2007, 8:18am (top)Message 18: mrsradcliffe
I've
just found this group; I studied modernism at undergrad and a little
for my intro to postgrad - I'm thinking currently about continuing with
an MSt in modernism.
I find Modernism one of the most difficult
points in history, art and culture to discuss as it was so
self-consciously reactionary - on the one hand embracing a unity of the
new, and on the other realising that there is no such thing as 'unity'
and 'art' and 'culture' and breaking down what these terms mean,
embracing the fractured nature of art and life.
The modernist novel
in general terms questions the needs of literature; should literature
just tell stories, should it not question reality? Novels like To the lighthouse are jarred I think for that reason. One of my favourite novel (which I also found very hard to read) is The Waves
because I find it fascinating how the stream of conscious narrative
allows each character to question who they are and how their character
took on this form. Identity and the nature of how we form an identity
is such a mystery, it's very interesting for this to be explored.
I
enjoy the fragmentation, the gaps, the loss - such is life. Thus one
could in some ways view modernism as more 'real' than the lives that
realism intended to portray.
Sorry not sure if I made any sense! I
also don't have much experience outside of literature and am looking
forward to learning more in this group.
I've
always understood modernism to be characterized, in many but not all
ways, by a fundamental loss of faith in the institutions that had, up
until WWI or so, been the most important aspects of human existence.
The
modernists replaced this void with a focus and faith on and in the
"individual." So you get the classic modernist characters Bloom,
Marcel, and Ulrich.
This loss of faith in traditions created a
vast amount of room for the experimentation in both form and content
that resulted in one of the most fruitful eras of human creation.
Virtually all of my experience with modernism is with literature, so I'm interested to see how art and music fit in.flag abuse
Oct 8, 2006, 5:07pm (top)Message 2: A_musing
You
raise the question of literature as compared to art and music. So when
and where is the leading edge of modernism, in art, music or
literature? I think that has much to do with just what we think the
modernists are rejecting or defining themselves against.
Certainly,
one early marker in art is the "Salon of the Refused" in 1863, which is
one of the best dates for the birth of impressionism. By this time,
photographic images show technology impinging on art as never before
and modern warfare rears its ugly head in the American Civil War. The
Symbolist Manifesto is in 1886, and by that time there is not only a
full-fledged anti-Academy movement in France, but the movement is even
large enough to be splintering.
Are we willing to call any
earlier literary figures modernists, or do we cede that the first
modernists are the painters. Perhaps Baudelaire, whose Flowers of Evil was published in 1857?) could qualify as a modernist? I don't think any of the American's of the time could qualify - though Poe would become a favorite of many of them.
Message edited by its author, Oct 8, 2006, 7:08pm.
flag abuse
Oct 8, 2006, 6:41pm (top)Message 3: prophetandmistress
I
don't know much about Baudelaire, but the thought of Poe as a modernist
is intriquing. It seems there are a number of Amercian authors in the
middle of the 19th century who I haven't heard of being associated with
any particular movement, Poe among them. Given the individualistic
nature of their work, I'm thinking Leaves of Grass and Moby Dick in particular, it might be fair to apocryphally describe them as pre-modern.
And
thanks for the info on the beginnings of the visual arts contribution
to the movement. Is there a particular artist or work that can be
described as archetypal for modernism, in the same way that Ulysses is often considered the archetypal modernist novel?
flag abuse
Oct 8, 2006, 7:20pm (top)Message 4: A_musing
I think the works that would be the poster children for modernism in the visual arts would be Les Demoiseles d'Avignon and Guernica by Picasso, The Scream by Edvard Munch, The Persistance of Memory by Salvadore Dali or the Fountain by Marcel Duchamp.
I wouldn't include impressionist works, which were just too early in
the development of modernism to become the kind of archetype that Ulysses (or The Wasteland ) would be for literature. I'm sure there are others that can be added, just as there are with literature.
flag abuse
Oct 8, 2006, 10:56pm (top)Message 5: Eurydice
Thank
you both. While I can't, yet, contribute even a useful question, this
does overlap the edges of my minimal knowledge; so it's both coherent,
and gratefully read.
I look forward to more 'eavesdropping'....
flag abuse
Oct 14, 2006, 1:25pm (top)Message 6: A_musing
If anyone has an interest in Baudelaire, check out http://fleursdumal.org, which has both all the poems from Flowers of Evil and multiple translations of them over the years (see, for example, http://fleursdumal.org/poem/101 ). Great stuff.
flag abuse
Oct 18, 2006, 9:53am (top)Message 7: prophetandmistress
Thanks
for the Baudelaire resource A_musing. It's an amazing website. I've
never read any Baudelaire before and now I have the opportunity to (and
in multiple translations with links to further resources) without
having to spring for a book.
flag abuse
Nov 1, 2006, 4:45am (top)Message 8: plumpesdenken
Marshall Berman in All That is Solid Melts Into Air discusses Baudelaire's courage and originality: "If we had to nominate a first modernist, Baudelaire would surely be the man."
flag abuse
Nov 1, 2006, 10:05pm (top)Message 9: Hera
Pound
and Eliot were deeply influenced by Baudelaire, so his place as a
'Modern' was written from the start. It's obvious in Pound's earlier
work and Eliot quotes and alludes to him throughout The Wasteland.
Although it's received wisdom that WWI was the crucible for modernism, Joyce's Dubliners was written well before that time. Gerard Manley Hopkins'
poetry is an obvious precursor of the 'fractured' language of Modernist
literature and the layered perspectives of cubism in painting. Whistler's paintings with their 'abstract' titles also paved the way for artists like Mondrian.
The
more I read Modernist poets, the more I see their indebtedness to
Japanese and Chinese poetry - sparse language, taut structure and
imagism. The visual arts, music and literature were deeply entwined
movements, as the diaries of writers and artists show (the Vorticists
made this explicit).
Of course the War made an enormous impact on the philosophy and style of poets and writers: one only has to see the change in Wilfred Owen's poetry, for example. The seeds of change were already there, however, before the War began.
flag abuse
Nov 2, 2006, 10:29am (top)Message 10: prophetandmistress
I've
always understood WWI as a clear and convinient sign post for
modernism. Of course, movements don't move like timlines and have fluid
beginnings and endings. With WWI (even WWI is a fluid point as it
lasted more than a day and affected people in different timeframes), I
think you can say that modernism had definitely started and was the
major arts, literary, and intellectual movement of the time. I think
its also a fair question to ask just how much the actual war affected
the artists who were driving modernism. Would Ulysses have been written without it? Some signs point to yes some to no.
What Chinese and Japanese poets do you refer to? Do you know how much of those poets Pound and the gang actually read?
flag abuse
Nov 2, 2006, 10:53am (top)Message 11: A_musing
I
have no comprehension of how one could use a date as late as WWI for
modernism -- it would exclude some of the painting world's icons, such
as The Scream (1893) and L'Demoiseles d'Avignon (1907).
I've seen the birth of Cubism lauded as a break date, but that ignores The Scream and company.
Historically,
it may all just be that there is a real but questionable bias for
finding the gilded age to be stiff, staid, and traditional. Indeed,
those stuffed shirts who way back in the 20th century created all this
received wisdom may just have underestimated the 19th century as a
whole.
Message edited by its author, Nov 2, 2006, 10:58am.
flag abuse
Nov 3, 2006, 2:54am (top)Message 12: plumpesdenken
Yes
the beginnings are a matter of traces surely. (I'd be interested in
learning how WWI enabled the writing of Ulysses?). Some date it at 1922
with the publication of Ulysses and The Waste Land. The famous quote
from Virginia Woolf marking the beginning of modernism very precisely
-- "on or about December 1910 human character changed" -- probably
throws into relief the fraught nature of too precise determination of
modernism's origins.
flag abuse
Nov 3, 2006, 10:26am (top)Message 13: A_musing
Is the literary side of modernism particularly important, enough so to date it from a poem and a novel?
I'd
suggest modernism has a history as a world-view and as an art movement
(or collection of art movements), with the visual artists at the
leading edge of the art movement (and at the leading edge of the
world-view, too).
Someone up above suggests Moby Dick
as a notable pre-modern writing - the more I think of it, the more it
shows a lot of the distinctive characterists of modernist writing 75
years later. Think of the chapter on definitions and the use of
symbolism and images. Setting aside Joyce's unique personal style, what
separates Moby Dick from, say, Mann's Faustus that would make Mann more of a modernist?
Message edited by its author, Nov 3, 2006, 10:31am.
flag abuse
Jul 7, 2007, 7:00pm (top)Message 14: artstar25 First Message
I'm
not sure if anyone still reads these, but I feel like there has been
many authors left out of this discussion of modernism. Nightwood by
Djuna barnes, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, The Good Soldier by Ford Madox
Ford.. I could go on. Some of the things that I think really describe
Modernism are:
A. The attempt to break the normal linear story line of the Victorian novel.
B. The new self-reflexive aspect of the novels. There was more focus on the books making.
C. The attempt to break gender-roles.
I could go on for a while, but these are things I find key to the era of Modernism.
does anyone even read these anymore...
flag abuse
Jul 9, 2007, 9:53am (top)Message 15: A_musing
I'm not sure anyone else does read them, though I at least clicked back.
I'm
not sure about your (C) - maybe for some, like Virginia Woolf, but much
less for Eliot. There were plenty of reactionary, traditionalist
modernists, from some of the Futurists to Pound. Non-modernists like
Shaw and Ibsen had waged a more fulsom attack on gender roles than many
of the modernists ever did.
I think the break from the linear is important, for poets as well as novelists, and that self-reflective thing is huge.
Message edited by its author, Jul 9, 2007, 9:53am.
flag abuse
Sep 22, 2007, 7:00am (top)Message 16: Blaise
Did you mean read the posts or read the books? Never give up on the readers!
I
have The Good Soldier (unread) on my shelves and was about to give it
away when I realised it was commonly listed on all those great books of
the world lists so now I've retrieved it from my give away pile so I
can see what the fuss is about. I'd be glad to be fore enlightened
about why it is significant. I've read Orlando, hadn't hear of
Nightwood before but if someone mounts a convincing case I might give
it a go.
I'm in the middle of reading Ulysses- although it's my
3rd book at the moment- which is the one I have to return to between
the other two and also late at night if I can't sleep, so give me a
year and I might get through it. I also really love the Russian (art)
futurists - See also my post on the group Futurism-Futurismo. I'll
happily discuss Malevich and Lebedev et al with anyone.
Are
there any other modernist authors this group could name? Only so I can
work out whether I've read them. And when do you all think the
modernists end? Were they replaced by another movement? Don't tell me
I've been reading post modernists? What about Italo Svevo, "Confessions
of Zeno"? Was he a modernist? And John Fowles esp the French
Lieutenant's Woman with its alternative endings, 1969- is it still
modernist or are the 1960s stretching it?
flag abuse
Sep 23, 2007, 11:44am (top)Message 17: A_musing
Nightwood
is an odd and puzzling work that is a quick read when you're in a bit
of funky mood. It's some combination of brilliant and bizzare, modern
and retro, and not quite like many other works. It is short but quite
turgid in places. I'm not quite sure how to describe. I have to reread
it again (I stumbled on a first edition about a year or two ago, and
plan to crack that spine!). It is loved, hated, and belittled by
different readers - no way to know what you'll think until you pick it
up.
If you like the Russian futurists, you might want to pick up At the Stray Dog Cabaret,
a recent collection that covers a bunch of the Russian modernist poets
(not particularly futuristically oriented, but their influence is felt)
through the first half of the 20th century.
Some of my favorite in the modernist vein or with modernist influence are Nathaniel West, Samuel Becket, Luis Pirandello, Heinrich Boll, Paul Eluard and Paul Nizan. But there are probably arguments as to how much all of them any one of them fits in as a modernist.
flag abuse
Sep 26, 2007, 8:18am (top)Message 18: mrsradcliffe
I've
just found this group; I studied modernism at undergrad and a little
for my intro to postgrad - I'm thinking currently about continuing with
an MSt in modernism.
I find Modernism one of the most difficult
points in history, art and culture to discuss as it was so
self-consciously reactionary - on the one hand embracing a unity of the
new, and on the other realising that there is no such thing as 'unity'
and 'art' and 'culture' and breaking down what these terms mean,
embracing the fractured nature of art and life.
The modernist novel
in general terms questions the needs of literature; should literature
just tell stories, should it not question reality? Novels like To the lighthouse are jarred I think for that reason. One of my favourite novel (which I also found very hard to read) is The Waves
because I find it fascinating how the stream of conscious narrative
allows each character to question who they are and how their character
took on this form. Identity and the nature of how we form an identity
is such a mystery, it's very interesting for this to be explored.
I
enjoy the fragmentation, the gaps, the loss - such is life. Thus one
could in some ways view modernism as more 'real' than the lives that
realism intended to portray.
Sorry not sure if I made any sense! I
also don't have much experience outside of literature and am looking
forward to learning more in this group.
