MODERNISM (FROM POETRYFOUNDATION.ORG)

“A broadly defined multinational cultural movement (or series of movements) that took hold in the late 19th century and reached its most radical peak on the eve of World War I. It grew out of the philosophical, scientific, political, and ideological shifts that followed the Industrial Revolution, up to World War I and its aftermath. For artists and writers, the Modernist project was a re-evaluation of the assumptions and aesthetic values of their predecessors. It evolved from the Romantic rejection of Enlightenment positivism and faith in reason. Modernist writers broke with Romantic pieties and clichés (such as the notion of the Sublime) and became self-consciously skeptical of language and its claims on coherence. In the early 20th century, novelists such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf (and, later, Joseph Conrad) experimented with shifts in time and narrative points of view. While living in Paris before the war, Gertrude Stein explored the possibilities of creating literary works that broke with conventional syntactical and referential practices. Ezra Pound vowed to “make it new” and “break the pentameter,” while T.S. Eliot wrote ”The Waste Land” in the shadow of World War I. Shortly after “The Waste Land” was published in 1922, it became the archetypical Modernist text, rife with allusions, linguistic fragments, and mixed registers and languages. Other poets most often associated with Modernism include H.D., W.H. Auden, Hart Crane, William Butler Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. Modernism also generated many smaller movements; see also Acmeism, Dada, Free verse, Futurism, Imagism,Objectivism, Postmodernism, and Surrealism.”

MODERNISM (FROM POETS.ORG)

“English novelist Virginia Woolf declared that human nature underwent a fundamental change ‘on or about December 1910.’ The statement testifies to the modern writer’s fervent desire to break with the past, rejecting literary traditions that seemed outmoded and diction that seemed too genteel to suit an era of technological breakthroughs and global violence.”

GRAPPLING WITH MODERNIST POETRY

“Modernist poetry often is difficult for students to analyze and understand. A primary reason students feel a bit disoriented when reading a modernist poem is that the speaker himself is uncertain about his or her own ontological bearings. Indeed, the speaker of modernist poems characteristically wrestles with the fundamental question of “self,” often feeling fragmented and alienated from the world around him. In other words, a coherent speaker with a clear sense of himself/herself is hard to find in modernist poetry, often leaving students confused and ‘lost.’

Such ontological feelings of fragmentation and alienation, which often led to a more pessimistic and bleak outlook on life as manifested in representative modernist poems such as T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” were prompted by fundamental and far-reaching historical, social, cultural, and economic changes in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The rise of cities; profound technological changes in transportation, architecture, and engineering; a rising population that engendered crowds and chaos in public spaces; and a growing sense of mass markets often made individuals feel less individual and more alienated, fragmented, and at a loss in their daily worlds. World War I (WWI), moreover, contributed to a more modern local and world view.” (“Introduction to Modernist Poetry” from Edsitement.neh.gov)

MODERNISM: INFLUENCES AND RELATED MOVEMENTS

-Acmeism

-Cubism

-Constructivism

-Dada

-Futurism

-Imagism

-Surrealism

ACMEISM (FROM POETRY.ORG)

I beg you be logical in the design and structure of yourwork, in syntax . . . be a skillful builder, both in smallthings and in the whole . . . love words, as Flaubertdid, exercise economy in your means, thrift in the useof words, precision and authenticity—then you willdiscover the secret of a wonderful thing: beautyclarity.—Mikhail Kuzmin, 1910

“Although written previous to the inception of acmeism in 1912, Kuzman’s address has often been perceived as the manifesto for acmeism. He calls for fellow poets to seek beauty in the natural and physical world around them—to be industrious in language and vision in order to reflect the realness of the subject.

Acmeism, a school in modern Russian poetry, formed after fracturing away from symbolism—then the dominant school of the Russian literary scene, which often used words as symbols to express high romanticism in the prophetic and portentousness of the beyond. To the acmeist, the role of the poet was not to be an oracle or a diviner but a skilled worker. The acmeists revolted against symbolism’s vagueness and attempts to privilege emotional suggestion over clarity and vivid sensory images.”

CONSTRUCTIVISM (FROM THEARTSTORY.ORG)

“Constructivism was the last and most influential modern art movement to flourish in Russia in the 20th century. It evolved just as the Bolsheviks came to power in the October Revolution of 1917, and initially it acted as a lightning rod for the hopes and ideas of many of the most advanced Russian artists who supported the revolution's goals. It borrowed ideas fromCubism, Suprematism and Futurism, but at its heart was an entirely new approach to making objects, one which sought to abolish the traditional artistic concern with composition, and replace it with 'construction.' Constructivism called for a careful technical analysis of modern materials, and it was hoped that this investigation would eventually yield ideas that could be put to use in mass production, serving the ends of a modern, Communist society. Ultimately, however, the movement foundered in trying to make the transition from the artist's studio to the factory. Some continued to insist on the value of abstract, analytical work, and the value of art per se; these artists had a major impact on spreading Constructivism throughout Europe. “

CUBISM (FROM THEARTSTORY.ORG)

"The goal I proposed myself in making cubism? To paint and nothing more... with a method linked only to my thought.. Neither the good nor the true; neither the useful nor the useless.“ –Pablo Picasso

"Cubism is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view."

The artists abandoned perspective, which had been used to depict space since the Renaissance, and they also turned away from the realistic modeling of figures.

Cubists explored open form, piercing figures and objects by letting the space flow through them, blending background into foreground, and showing objects from various angles. Some historians have argued that these innovations represent a response to the changing experience of space, movement, and time in the modern world. This first phase of the movement was called Analytic Cubism.

In the second phase of Cubism, Synthetic Cubists explored the use of non-art materials as abstract signs. Their use of newspaper would lead later historians to argue that, instead of being concerned above all with form, the artists were also acutely aware of current events, particularly WWI.

Cubism paved the way for non-representational art by putting new emphasis on the unity between a depicted scene and the surface of the canvas. These experiments would be taken up by the likes of Piet Mondrian, who continued to explore their use of the grid, abstract system of signs, and shallow space.

DADA (FROM THEARTSTORY.ORG)

“Dada was an artistic and literary movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland. It arose as a reaction to World War I and the nationalism that many thought had led to the war. Influenced by other avant-garde movements - Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Expressionism - its output was wildly diverse, ranging from performance art to poetry, photography, sculpture, painting, and collage. Dada's aesthetic, marked by its mockery of materialistic and nationalistic attitudes, proved a powerful influence on artists in many cities, including Berlin, Hanover, Paris, New York, and Cologne, all of which generated their own groups. The movement dissipated with the establishment of Surrealism.

Dada was the first conceptual art movement where the focus of the artists was not on crafting aesthetically pleasing objects but on making works that often upended bourgeois sensibilities and that generated difficult questions about society, the role of the artist, and the purpose of art.

So intent were members of Dada on opposing all norms of bourgeois culture that the group was barely in favor of itself: "Dada is anti-Dada," they often cried. The group's founding in the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich was appropriate: the Cabaret was named after the eighteenth century French satirist, Voltaire, whose novella Candide mocked the idiocies of his society. As Hugo Ball, one of the founders of both the Cabaret and Dada wrote, "This is our Candide against the times."

Artists like Hans Arp were intent on incorporating chance into the creation of works of art. This went against all norms of traditional art production whereby a work was meticulously planned and completed. The introduction of chance was a way for Dadaists to challenge artistic norms and to question the role of the artist in the artistic process.

Dada artists are known for their use of readymade objects - everyday objects that could be bought and presented as art with little manipulation by the artist. The use of the readymade forced questions about artistic creativity and the very definition of art and its purpose in society.

FUTURISM (FROM THEARTSTORY.ORG)

“The most important Italian avant-garde art movement of the 20th century, Futurism celebrated advanced technology and urban modernity. Committed to the new, its members wished to destroy older forms of culture and to demonstrate the beauty of modern life - the beauty of the machine, speed, violence and change. Although the movement did foster some architecture, most of its adherents were artists who worked in traditional media such as painting and sculpture, and in an eclectic range of styles inspired by Post-Impressionism. Nevertheless, they were interested in embracing popular media and new technologies to communicate their ideas. Their enthusiasm for modernity and the machine ultimately led them to celebrate the arrival of the First World War. By its end the group was largely spent as an important avant-garde, though it continued through the 1920s, and, during that time several of its members went on to embrace Fascism, making Futurism the only twentieth century avant-garde to have embraced far right politics.”

IMAGISM (FROM POETS.ORG)

“The movement sprang from ideas developed by T. E. Hulme, who—as early as 1908—was proposing to the Poets’ Club in London a poetry based on absolutely accurate presentation of its subject with no excess verbiage. The first tenet of the imagist manifesto was ‘To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.’

Imagism was a reaction against the flabby abstract language and “careless thinking” of Georgian romanticism. Imagist poetry aimed to replace muddy abstractions with exactness of observed detail, apt metaphors, and economy of language. For example, Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” started from a glimpse of beautiful faces in a dark subway and elevated that perception into a crisp vision by finding an intensified equivalent image. The metaphor provokes a sharp, intuitive discovery in order to get at the essence of life.

Pound’s definition of the image was ‘that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.’ Pound defined the tenets of imagist poetry as:

I. Direct treatment of the ‘thing,’ whether subjective or objective.II. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.III. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the

metronome.”

In a Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound, 1885 - 1972)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

SURREALISM (FROM THEARTSTORY.ORG)

"Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life."

The Surrealist artists sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Disdaining rationalism and literary realism, and powerfully influenced by psychoanalysis, the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed the power of the imagination, weighting it down with taboos. Influenced also by Karl Marx, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur on revolution. Their emphasis on the power of personal imagination puts them in the tradition of Romanticism, but unlike their forbears, they believed that revelations could be found on the street and in everyday life. The Surrealist impulse to tap the unconscious mind, and their interests in myth and primitivism, went on to shape many later movements, and the style remains influential to this today.

André Breton defined Surrealism as "psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought." What Breton is proposing is that artists bypass reason and rationality by accessing their unconscious mind. In practice, these techniques became known as automatism or automatic writing, which allowed artists to forgo conscious thought and embrace chance when creating art.

The work of Sigmund Freud was profoundly influential for Surrealists, particularly his book, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). Freud legitimized the importance of dreams and the unconscious as valid revelations of human emotion and desires; his exposure of the complex and repressed inner worlds of sexuality, desire, and violence provided a theoretical basis for much of Surrealism.

Surrealist imagery is probably the most recognizable element of the movement, yet it is also the most elusive to categorize and define. Each artist relied on their own recurring motifs arisen through their dreams or/and unconscious mind. At its basic, the imagery is outlandish, perplexing, and even uncanny, as it is meant to jolt the viewer out of their comforting assumptions. Nature, however, is the most frequent imagery: Max Ernst was obsessed with birds and had a bird alter ego, Salvador Dalí's works often include ants or eggs, and Joan Miró relied strongly on vague biomorphic imagery.

AMERICAN MODERNISTS: EZRA POUND (1885-1972)The Coming of War: Actaon

An image of Lethe,

and the fields

Full of faint light

but golden,

Gray cliffs,

and beneath them

A sea Harsher than granite,

unstill, never ceasing;

High forms

with the movement of gods,

Perilous aspect;

And one said:

“This is Actæon.”

Actaeon of golden greaves!

Over fair meadows,

Over the cool face of that field,

Unstill, ever moving,

Host of an ancient people,

The silent cortège.

“Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry.” (“Ezra Pound,” from Poets.org)

AMERICAN MODERNISTS: GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1946)

Tender Buttons [Milk]

A white egg and a colored pan and a cabbage showing settlement,

a constant increase.

A cold in a nose, a single cold nose makes an excuse. Two are

more necessary.

All the goods are stolen, all the blisters are in the cup.

Cooking, cooking is the recognition between sudden and nearly

sudden very little and all large holes.

A real pint, one that is open and closed and in the middle is so

bad.

Tender colds, seen eye holders, all work, the best of change, the

meaning, the dark red, all this and bitten, really bitten.

Guessing again and golfing again and the best men, the very best

men.

AMERICAN MODERNISTS: MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972)

Silence

My father used to say,

“Superior people never make long visits,

have to be shown Longfellow’s grave

or the glass flowers at Harvard.

Self-reliant like the cat—

that takes its prey to privacy,

the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth—

they sometimes enjoy solitude,

and can be robbed of speech by speech

which has delighted them.

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;

not in silence, but restraint.”

Nor was he insincere in saying, “Make my house your inn.”

Inns are not residences.

AMERICAN MODERNISTS: WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955)

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

AMERICAN MODERNISTS: WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963)

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

The Great Figure

Among the rainand lightsI saw the figure 5in goldon a redfiretruckmovingtenseunheededto gong clangssiren howlsand wheels rumblingthrough the dark city.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much dependsupon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens

AMERICAN MODERNISTS: E.E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962)

Buffalo Bill ’s

Buffalo Bill ’sdefunct

who used toride a watersmooth-silver

stallionand break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesushe was a handsome man

and what i want to know ishow do you like your blueeyed boyMister Death

old age sticksold age sticksup KeepOffsigns)&youth yanks themdown(oldagecries NoTres)&(pas)youth laughs(singold agescolds Forbidden StopMustn’t Don’t&)youth goesright ongrowing old

T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965): “IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY JUST WHAT I MEAN!”

-Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888.

-Attended Harvard University, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and later pursued his PhD in philosophy after a year at the Sorbonne in Paris.

-Moved to London and married Vivienne Haigh-Wood; worked in London as a teacher, then a banker, before becoming a writer and critic. He became a British citizen in 1927.

-“With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot’s reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world.”

-“His poems in many respects articulated the disillusionment of a younger post–World War I generation with the values and conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era.”

-Along with being a writer and critic, Eliot became the director of a publishing firm. T.S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.

-Eliot remarried in 1956 to Valerie Fletcher after a short and unhappy first marriage, which ended in 1933.

-Died on January 4, 1965, in London.

From Poets.org (“T.S. Eliot”)

OPENING LINES FROM “THE WASTELAND” (ELIOT)

“April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain…”

FROM “THE WASTELAND” (ELIOT)

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust...”

OPENING LINES FROM “THE LOVESONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK” (ELIOT)

“Let us go then, you and I,When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherized upon a table;Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question…Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”Let us go and make our visit...”

FROM “THE LOVESONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK” (ELIOT)

“And indeed there will be timeFor the yellow smoke that slides along the street,Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;There will be time to murder and create,And time for all the works and days of handsThat lift and drop a question on your plate;Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea...”

FROM “THE LOVESONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK” (ELIOT)

“And indeed there will be timeTo wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”Time to turn back and descend the stair,With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]Do I dareDisturb the universe?In a minute there is timeFor decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse…”

W.B. YEATS (1865-1939): “THINGS FALL APART; THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD”

-William Butler Yeats was Born in Dublin, Ireland, on June 13, 1865. Born into the Anglo-Irish landowning class, he was involved with the Celtic Revival, a movement against the cultural influences of English rule in Ireland during the Victorian era.

-He published his first work in 1885; during this time he also became interested in mysticism and occultism. Later he belonged to a group known as the Golden Dawn, a secret society that practiced ritual magic.

-As a young man, Yeats fell in love with an Irish nationalist named Maud Gonne; he courted her for nearly 3 decades, although they never married and she had children with another man.

-He befriended English decadent poet Lionel Johnson, and in 1890 they helped found the Rhymers' Club, a group of London poets who met to read and discuss their poems. The Rhymers placed a very high value on subjectivity, craftsmanship and sophisticated aestheticism.

-During the entire first decade of the 20th century, Yeats was active in the management of the Abbey Theatre company, choosing plays, hiring and firing actors and managers, and arranging tours for the company. At this time he also wrote ten plays, and thesimple, direct style of dialogue required for the stage also became an important consideration in his poems.

-He married Georgianna Hyde-Lees in 1917. He and Georgie engaged in the psychic phenomenon of “automatic writing”, in which her hand and pen presumably served as unconscious instruments for the spirit world to send information. Yeats and his wife held more than 400 sessions of automatic writing, producing nearly 4000 pages that Yeats avidly and patiently studied and organized. From these sessions Yeats formulated theories about life and history.

-Yeats was deeply involved in politics in Ireland and with his Irish heritage; he wrote many poems based on Irish legends, Irishfolklore, and Irish ballads and songs. In 1922, Yeats accepted a six-year appointment as a senator in the Irish Free State, and moved to Dublin after living for 30 years in London. It was such a chaotic and violent time that the government provided armed sentries at his door. As senator, Yeats considered himself a representative of order amid the chaotic new nation's slow progress toward stability.

-W. B. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923 "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.“ W.H. Auden assigned Yeats the high praise of having written "some of the most beautiful poetry" of modern times.

-From Poetryfoundation.org

YEATS AND MODERNISM

“Throughout his last years, Yeats's creative imagination remained very much his own, isolated to a remarkable degree from the successive fashions of modern poetry despite his extensive contacts with other poets. Literary modernism held no inherent attraction for him except perhaps in its general association with youthful vigor. He admired a wide range of traditional English poetry and drama, and he simply was unconcerned that, during the last two decades of his life, his preference for using rhyme and strict stanza forms would set him apart from the vogue of modern poetry. Yeats's allegiance to poetic tradition did not extend, however, to what he considered an often obscure, overly learned use of literary and cultural traditions by T. S. Eliotand Pound. Yeats deplored the tremendous enthusiasm among younger poets for Eliot's The Waste Land, published in 1922. Disdaining [what he viewed as] Eliot's flat rhythms and cold, dry mood, Yeats wanted all art to be full of energy.”

-From Poetryfoundation.org

W.H. AUDEN (1907-1973):“THE WORDS OF THE DEAD ARE MODIFIED IN THE GUTS OF THE LIVING”

-Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907.

-He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, William

Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse.

-“…he has been admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and an ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form; the incorporation in his work of popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech; and also for the vast range

of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information.”

-He visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil war, and in 1939 moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen.

-His beliefs changed radically between his youthful career in England, when he was an ardent advocate of socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central preoccupation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians.

-A prolific writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic.

-W. H. Auden served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973, and divided most of the second half of his life between residences in New York City and Austria. He died in Vienna on September 29, 1973.

From Poets.org (“W.H. Auden”)