Some Notes on Modernism

Stephen Vicchio

Spring 1995

 

I.                    Introduction

 

In the final two decades of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, the mechanical model of the universe that had dominated the Western outlook since Newton had begun to be dethroned. Along with it, also fell the Enlightenment view of the primacy of the human intellect, as well as the belief in the intrinsic goodness of human beings. As these philosophical values were rejected, so too were the aesthetic rules that had governed the arts since the Renaissance. This rejection of the traditional artistic forms and themes, as well as the rejection of the primacy of the human intellect, gave rise to a new intellectual movement, Modernism.

 

II.                  The Sources of Modernism

 

One of the intellectual sources of this break with the Enlightenment view of human nature was the work of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Although Freud agreed with the philosophes that civilization was largely an accomplishment of reason, and that science held the best promise for the advancement of civilization, he also was fully aware of the massive power and influence of nonrational drives. Indeed, Freud held that human beings are not fundamentally rational at all. Rather, human action and though is primarily governed by powerful inner forces hidden beneath consciousness. These instinctual drives, rather than reason, constitute the greater part of the mind. Perhaps Freud’s greatest achievement was to explore the world of the unconscious with the tools of the scientist and the temperament and sensitivity of a poet.

 

At the same time Freud was breaking with the Enlightenment view of human nature, a number of Western artists and writers also began to rebel against traditional forms of artistic and literary expression. In fact, it is significant that many of the early Modernist writers knew Freud and/or his work. These experiments in both form and content, then, were often influenced by the Austrian’s ideas. Freud is indisputably one of the greatest influences in early Modernism.

 

A second, and earlier influence on the Modernists was Romanticism. Like the Romantics, the Modernists subjected the dominant cultural styles and themes to searching criticism. But even more than Romanticism, Modernism aspired to a new level of introspection--- a deeper understanding of the nature and capacities of the self. More than their Romantic predecessors, Modernist painters and writers abandoned conventional literary and artistic modes and experimented with what they saw as completely new ways of expression.

 

 

One of the consequences of this bold venture is what intellectual historian Irving Howe has called “the breakup of the traditional unity and continuity of Western culture.” [Irving Howe, The Idea of Modern Literature and the Arts, (1967) p. 16.]

 

Like Freud, modernist painters and writers went beyond the level of appearance to a deeper, more profound reality in the human psyche. In Europe, the greatest Modernist wrioters of the day included Josef Conrad, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Franz Kafka.

 

Each of these writers in his way explored the inner life. Each dealt in his fiction with individuals who, in one way or another, are at odds with, or cut off from, the values and expectations of their day. Each depicts the anguish of characters burdened with guilt and often torn by internal struggle. Each in his own fashion explores the power of the irrational and the primitive in each of us.

 

A third major source for the Modernist movement were developments in physics at the end of the 19th century and the very beginning of the 20th. Until the closing years of the 19th century, Newton’s model of the universe was unquestioned. Newton’s system could be explained in five relatively simple principles:

 

1.       Time, matter and space are objectively real: they exist independent of the observer.

2.       The best metaphor for understanding the universe is that of a giant machine whose parts obey strict laws of cause and effect.

3.       The atom, indivisible and solid, was the basic unit of all matter.

4.       Heated bodies emit energy in continuous waves.

5.       The universe is a closed, deterministic system. In principle, it is possible to gain complete knowledge of the workings of the physical universe.

 

Between 1890 and 1927 this model of the universe was completely shattered and replaced by another. The discovery of x-rays by Konrad Roentgen in 1895, of radioactivity by Henri Bequerel in 1896, of the electron by J.J. Thomson in 1897, all led gradually to the abandonment of the atom as the basic unit of reality. Rathern than being like a billiard ball (the metaphor for the atom Newton preferred in his Principia), the atom now was thought to consist of a nucleus of tightly compacted protons separted from orbiting electrons by space.

 

By 1900, Max Planck had proposed a quantum theory of mechanics. Plank’s theory suggested that a warm body does not radiate energy in a continuous, unbroken stream, but in periodic spurts he called quanta. Five years later, Albert Einstein proved Planck’s original theory by showing that all forms of radiant energy (e-rays, light, heat, etc.) moved through space in discontinuous packets or quanta. In 1913 Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, applied Planck’s theory to the interior of the atom, and discovered that Newton’s laws could not explain the movement of the electrons orbiting the nucleus.

 

Discoveries that followed made it clear that the nature of the atom was fundamentally elusive and unpredictable by conventional Newtonian means. By 1927 Werner Heisenberg had shown that it is impossible to determine at one and the same time both the speed of an electron and its position. Thus in the small scale world of the atom, and the cosmic-scale of the universe we enter worlds of uncertainty and indeterminacy.

 

Those writers imbued with the Modernist spirit also tended to acknowledge the importance of the observer. They understood that reality can be understood in many ways, with a multiplicity of reference points. They also understood the importance of creativity and the imagination in constructing views of reality. The Modernist poet, Gottfried Benn went so far as to write, “There is no outer reality; there is only inner human consciousness, constantly building, modifying, rebuilding, new worlds out of its own creativity.” (quoted in Howe, p.15.]

 

The Modernists, whether they were writers, sculptors, or painters, were concerned less with the reality of objects in themselves than they were with the perceiver’s experience of objects. Daniel Bell makes this point clear when he writes about the nature of Modernist painting:

 

                        Modernism… denies the primacy of outside reality, as given. It seeks either to rearrange that reality, or to retreat to the self’s interior, to private experience as the source of its concerns and aesthetic preoccupations. There is an emphasis on the self as the touchstone of understanding, and on the activity of the knower rather than the character of the object as the source of knowledge… Thus one discerns the intentions of modern painting… to break up ordered space… to bridge the distance between the object and spectator, to thrust itself on the viewer and establish itself immediately by impact. [Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), pp. 110-112]

 

III.                Modernism and the Arts

 

Perhaps the two most important composers in the modernist genre are Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) and Arnold Schoenberg. Both experimented with modernist elements and themes in their music, including primitive rhythms and atonal dissonance. In Fact, when Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring was first performed in Paris in the spring of 1913, the theatre audience rioted in protest.

 

Stravinsky’s ballet struck a blow against middle class, industrial civilization, a civilization he thought placed too much emphasis on reason, organization, clarity, and stability. Stravinsky exalted fantasy, passion, the bizarre and mysterious. Modernist music was most popular just before and after World War One, but the clearest expression of Modernist sentiments was to be found in painting.

 

The roots of the Modernist movement in painting can be found in the Post-Impressionists. They attempted to make art a vivid and emotional experience, while producing personal impressions or reality, rather than direct representation. Of the many great Post-Impressionists, four stand out for me: Paul Cezanne (1839-1906); Paul Gaughin (1848-1903); Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890); and Edvard Munch (1863-1944).

 

When he painted objects in a group, Cezanne deliberately distorted the perspective, subordinating the appearance of an object to the requirements of the whole painting. Cezanne also tried to demonstrate that an object may be seen quite differently among a group of other objects than it is when it is seen alone.

 

Paul Gaughin searched for new forms of beauty and new ways of expressing the beautiful. He took as his subjects the people of the Marquessa Islands and Tahiti, while discovering in the art of these people much to be admired and even imitated. In the process he discovered that art did not have to depend on the skilled craftsmanship for its power. Very simple, even primitive techniques could produce very moving art.

 

Vincent Van Gogh, the son of a Dutch Reform pastor, was a lonely tortured and impetuous soul for most of his adult life. By the mid-1880’s he had come under the influence of the French Impressionists. In a conscious effort to launch new experiments in the use of color Van Gogh left Paris for the Mediterranean countryside, where he hoped to capture sunlight, sky, and earth in new ways. IN Public Garden at Arles, for example, the colors of the path, the trees and the sky are far more intense and pure than the way they would appear to the rest of us. Van Gogh was virtually unknown in his own lifetime, but his work became very influential, almost immediately after his death in 1890.

 

One of the greatest Modernist painters to be influenced by Van Gogh was Edvard Munch. Munch adopted Van Gogh’s technique of using simple lines and extraordinarily vivid color. IN The Dance of Life, for example, Munch uses simple composition and intense color to explore the unexpressed sexual tension talked about by Freud and others in the same period. In the most famous of Munch’s paintings, The Scream, Munch distorts the face, sky, ground, and water, all to convey a feeling of abject terror.

 

IV.                Modernist Literature

In literature Modernism was chiefly an early to mid-20th century movement. As in painting and music, Modernist literature represented a conscious break with the past. The writers of Modernist literature repudiated both traditional forms as well as subject matter in service to a distinctively contemporary mode of expression.

 

Originally, Modernist writers were animated by a radical and sometimes utopian spirit stimulated by new ideas in anthropology, political science, physics, and psychology, particularly psychoanalysis. IN addition to the writers mentioned in section II, this new exuberance can be seen in the works of Ezra Pound and the other Imagist poets. The outbreak of World War One, however, had a sobering effect o the Modernist poets and novelists. Post war Modernism was much bleaker in outlook. T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland can be seen as a kind of Modernist anthem for the period immediately after the Great War. It reflects the prevailing sense of fragmentation and disillusionment brought on by the war. Ironically, as we have seen, Conrad is a sense saw it coming. Although Conrad is technically to numbered among the early Modernists, his vision extended beyond his time to the bloody half century that was to come.

 

Later Modernist writers were far less optimistic than their earlier counterparts. They stressed increasing self-awareness, introspection, and an openness to the unconscious. But all of this was tempered by a realization of the darker, blighted instincts to which human beings are often prone. In this group I would place Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. While writing the novel, which was published in 1924, Mann also wrote a series of essays on Nietzsche, Freud and others, making explicit the connection between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and Modernist literature.

 

The strangest and most interesting Modernist writer was a man who wrote just before and immediately after the First World War, Franz Kafka. Kafka, an obedient, gulit ridden child, was born into a middle class Jewish family. In 1906 he received a doctorate in law and then spent the rest of his short life working as a workman’s compensation adjustor.

IN 1923, Kafka went to Berlin to devote himself to writing, but his stay was cut short by the deterioration of his health due to T.B. He reluctantly published a few stories during his lifetime, but misgivings about his work caused Kafka before his death to instruct his literary executor, Max Brod to destroy all his letters and unpublished manuscripts. Brod disregarded his instructions and published The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926), Amerika (a927) and a collection of short stories, The Great Wall of China in 1932.