modren poets & poetry

8/10/2019 Modren Poets & Poetry

1/4


2/4

originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations

ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often

private) rather than description

world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental statesthemes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view

use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal

cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter

estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms

maintenance of a wary intellectual independence

artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness

search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness

exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional

work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them

cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized

open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection

involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

The Shock of the NewOne feature above all is striking in Modernism: experimentation, change for the sake of change, a need

to be constantly at the cutting edge in technique and thought. {7} "Make it new" said Pound. Perhaps

this was understandable in a society itself changing rapidly. The First World War shattered many beliefsin peaceful progress, international cooperation, the superiority of the European civilizations. It also

outlawed a high-minded and heroic vocabulary: "gallant, manly, vanquish, fate", etc. could afterwards

only be used in an ironic or jocular way. {8} But more fundamental was the nineteenth century growth

in city life, in industrial employment, in universal literacy, in the power of mass patronage and the

vote. Science and society could evolve and innovate, so why not art?

Is incessant change to be welcomed, and should art reflect such change? Perhaps a stronger argument

could be made for stability, some inner anchor of belief and shared assumptions as society moved

beyond its familiar landmarks. Well known are the disorientating and debilitating effects of the stress

involved, in animals and humans. {9} Man is above all a social animal, and it may be that the media

hype and advertising of contemporary life is purposely shallow to fulfill that need for shared

experience.

In its desire to retain intellectual ascendancy, art overlooked one crucial distinction.Sciencetests,improves and builds, but does not wantonly tear down. Extensive modification of established

conceptions is difficult, and starting afresh in the manner of the modernist artist would be

unthinkable. There is simply too much to know and master, and the scientific community insists on

certain apprenticeships and procedures. Originality is not prized in the way commonly supposed.

And does art represent its time? Not in any simple way. Very different artworks may originate in the

same society at the same time those of Hals and Rembrandt, for example. Art history naturally

wishes to draw everything into its study but neither the appearance of great artists nor the direction of

artistic trends seems predictable, any more than history is, and for similar reasons. Everything depends
http://www.textetc.com/theory/truth-in-science.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/truth-in-science.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/truth-in-science.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/truth-in-science.html


3/4

on the starting assumptions: what counts as important, and how that is assessed. Much the same can be

said of economic theory. {10} The necessary are not the sufficient causes: certain factors may need to

be present but they are not themselves sufficient to effect change.

The Always UnconventionalNo less than other practices, art begets art, with sometimes only a nodding acquaintance with the

larger world it purports to represent or serve. Much writing and painting from the early nineteenth-

century days of Romanticism was frankly escapist, preferring the solitude of nature or the inner world

of contemplation to the mundane business of socializing and earning a living. No doubt the shallow

optimism, humbug and economic exploitation of the industrial revolution was very unattractive, but so

then was rural poverty. Excepting the Georgians and some of the Auden generation, few poets of the

last hundred years had first hand experience of the social issues of the day, and there are large areas

of contemporary life even now that are not squarely treated: the world of work, public service,

cultural differences, sexual experience. Either the literary prototypes do not exist, or writers would

have to give up an individualist viewpoint and "dig out the facts" i.e. write something closer to

journalism. {11}

The Ever IndividualBut the burning issues of the day pass and are soon forgotten. Art prides itself on its more fundamental

qualities. If they did not have the time, training or intellectual powers to understand the contemporary

world, artists would look for some shorter path to their subject matter. Hence the championing of the

artist's viewpoint, on a vision unmediated by social understanding. Hence the appeal to (if not the

understanding of )psychiatry,mythologyandlinguisticsto assert that artistic creations do

not representreality but in some sense embodyreality. Poems should not express anything but

themselves. They should simply be. {12}

Many techniques were used todistancelanguage from its common uses, and assert its primary, self-

validating status. And since proficiency in science and business requires a long, practical training,

literature also insisted on study courses: a good deal needs to be swallowed before the student's eyes

are opened to the possible excellences of contemporary writing. Maybe these are invisible to the

general public, or even to rival sects, but that is not a drawback. Art is not for the profane majority,

and its boundaries are carefully patrolled. Art may employ populist material or techniques, but it

cannot be populist itself. Art is outspokenly useless.

All this comes at a cost. Writers in a free society may surely please themselves, securing what public

they can, but there is something curious, if not perverse, in making work opaque with private allusion,

obscure mythology, and misunderstood scraps of philosophy, and in the same breath complaining that

the work does not sell. Professional writing is a very hard business, and even the moderately successful

novelist needs to turn out a supplementary one or two thousand words per week as journalist or

reviewer. The founders of Modernism had small private incomes, found patrons or begged. Dedicated

writers today resort to part-time employment that is not too physically or mentally demanding, but the

restricting viewpoints can be to their own and society's disadvantage.

Elitist Intellectualism

But Modernist writers and their commentators do not regard the narrowly individual outlook a

shortcoming, quite the opposite. Nineteenth-century realism was tainted with commerce and the

circulating libraries. Twentieth-century realism all too blatantly takes the form of TV soaps and

blockbuster novels. God forbid that the modern writer should obey the first tenet of art, and portray

something of the world in clearer and more generous contours. That would mean actually experiencing

the hard world as it is for most of its inhabitants, of living like everybody else.
http://www.textetc.com/theory/freud.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/freud.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/freud.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/religious-perspectives.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/religious-perspectives.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/religious-perspectives.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/linguistics.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/linguistics.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/linguistics.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/formalists.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/formalists.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/formalists.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/formalists.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/linguistics.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/religious-perspectives.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/freud.html


4/4

The intellect has its demands and pleasures, but the Modernists do not generally live such a life, which

requires university tenure or independent wealth. Their learning tends to be fragmentary, with ideas

serving ulterior purposes, one of which is social distinction. There is a persistent strain of intellectual

snobbery in Modernism sometimes breaking out in racism and contempt for the masses, sometimes

retreating to arcane philosophy: idealism, existentialism, Poststructuralism. {13} Modernists are an

aristocracy of the intellect. The cerebral is preferred. Modern dramatists and novelists may appeal to

mythology, but their understanding is intellectualized: work is not crafted to evoke the primal forces

unleashed in plays by Euripides or Racine, but shaped by concepts that serve for plot and structure.

Representatives

Poets belonging to the 'high Modernist' phase include:

Ezra Pound: e.g. Hugh Selwyn Mauberly{14}

T.S. Eliot: e.g. Waste Land{15}

Wallace Stevens: e.g. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird{16}

Conclusions

Modernism evolved by various routes. From Symbolism it took allusiveness in style and an interest in

rarefied mental states. From Realism it borrowed an urban setting, and a willingness to break taboos.

And from Romanticism came an artist-centred view, and retreat into irrationalism and hallucinations.

Even its founding fathers did not long remain Modernists. Pound espoused doctrinaire right-wing views.

Eliot became a religious convert. Joyce's late work verged on the surrealistic. Lewis quarrelled with

everyone.

No one would willingly lose the best that has been written in the last hundred years, but earlier doubts

are coming home to roost. Modernism's ruthless self-promotion creates intellectual castes that cut

themselves off from the hopes and joys of everyday life. The poetry can be built on the flimsiest of

foundations:Freudianpsychiatry,verbal cleverness,individualismrun riot,anti-realism,over-emphasis

on theirrational.The concepts themselves are fraudulent, and the supporting myths too small and self-

admiring to show man in his fullest nature. Sales of early Modernist works were laughably small, and itwas largely after the Second World War, when the disciples of Modernism rose to positions of influence

in the academic and publishing worlds, that Modernism came the lingua franca of the educated classes.

The older generation of readers gradually died out. Literature for them was connoisseurship, a lifetime

of deepening familiarity with authors who couldn't be analyzed in critical theory, or packed into three-

year undergraduate courses.
http://www.textetc.com/theory/freud.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/freud.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/freud.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/derrida.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/derrida.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/derrida.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/nietzsche.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/nietzsche.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/nietzsche.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/foucault.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/foucault.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/foucault.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/lacan.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/lacan.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/lacan.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/lacan.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/foucault.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/nietzsche.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/derrida.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/theory/freud.html

modren poets & poetry

Documents