modernism

AN EXAMINATION OF HALCYONIC LITERATURE1

An Examination of Halcyonic Literature

Victoria Cruz, Alex P. Mendez, Richard Allende, Cristan Gutierrez, Solomon

Planet Halcyon

Shock established the Modernist period. A great shock humanity faced was World War I,

which ran from 1914 to 1918 (Rahn, 2016). People were truly horrified; they could not possibly

imagine what the world was heading towards; it was chaos without cohesion. The horrifying

events of World War I paralyzed many people, forcing them to question the future of humanity:

What was becoming of the world?

The Modernist Period was also an instinctive reaction against the Victorian culture and

aesthetic views, which had ruled for most of the nineteenth-century. Breaking off from tradition

is the fundamental constant of the Modernist view, just like us breaking off from planet Earth,

starting anew and leaving a lot behind. Modernists began rejecting traditional beliefs, embracing

moral relativism, or the belief that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some

particular standpoint. They concluded that truth is subjective, and that opened up an emphasis on

the person, as opposed to the previous collective focus. Planet Halcyon wants to encapture the

focus of the individual from the Modernist period and embed it deeply in our culture, because it

is very important that our population is self-aware and not afraid to explore themselves deeply.

Furthermore, Modernists felt as if everything that could ever be said had been said. Twentieth-

century artists felt that the nineteenth-century ways would just lead them to a dead-end of all

sorts, the same way humanity led itself to a dead-end here on Earth. Therefore, to create

something new, they had to use new forms of writing, which means that the period lent itself to

experimental and avant-garde styles previously unseen (Modernism).


The logical conclusion of wars and chaos was a pervasive mood of ambivalence,

alienation, and disillusionment. The effect of those feelings gave rise to an existentialist reaction,

a new way of looking at things. Existentialists saw the duel between Rationalists and Empiricists,

which had governed most of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, as an argument fought on the

same side. They had neglected one question: What does it mean to be an individual in this

world? Existentialists shifted the focus off of unifying the universe and instead took an interest in

the tiny individual. The first thing they did was acknowledge the irrationality of the world.

Rather than spending time finding a rationale, they focused on the irrationality, the senselessness,

and the uncertainty. You’re born into a cruel and uncertain world, without choosing to be born,

of course. There had always been a non-existent force pushing them to make sense of the world,

only to have their progress, competence, everything, taken away by another senseless curtain

fall: death. Why allow that non-existent force to rob you in such a way? They concluded that the

idea that the world is irrational shouldn't be frightening. Instead, you should rejoice, it’s

liberating. But for it to be liberating, you must understand that if reality is without meaning or

purpose, you have all the freedom in the world. It does not mean that there is no hate, oppression,

or wrong-doings, it simply means that as a human species, we have the special quality of free

will. If humanity is to start anew, it should live freely, aware of its pointless fate, but living as if

it could die at any moment.

Existence before essence is the base of Halcyon’s philosophy. Our philosophy is about

rejoicing in the acknowledgment that nothing has inherent meaning, and everything good in the

world relies on the uniqueness of the human experience. You decide for yourself, but first, you

have to exist. You’re born, and then you live. Life is valuable because it has an end, and because

the only meaning is the individual’s meaning. Modernism text is perfect for our journey to


finding a new home: it allows for transformations of the significance of individual human life.

Moving the human species from planet Earth to somewhere quite unknown is breaking off from

tradition, just like modernism. It’s finding the individual’s place, and it’s asking, “what is

becoming of the world?” Modernist writers faced a dead-end, just like humans on Earth have

encountered, and they did a good job recovering. Maybe if we take their work along, we will do

just the same.


References

Rahn, J. (2011). Modernism. Retrieved from

http://www.online-literature.com/periods/modernism.php

Modernism. (2016). Retrieved from https://faculty.unlv.edu/kirschen/handouts/modernism.html

modernism

Documents