Modernism in Literature: A Rebellion Against Tradition
Modernism (1900-1930)
Rather than an artistic style, modernism was a rebellious state of mind that questioned all artistic, scientific, social, and moral conventions. Modernists questioned all accepted systems: political, social, and religious paradigms; the arts, especially the Academy.
Forces that Shaped Modernism:
- Technology (invention of the motorcar and the aeroplane)
- New philosophical and scientific paradigms (F.H. Bradley, Albert Einstein)
- New psychological paradigms (Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, Henri Bergson)
Technology and new science generated optimism, created dynamic industrial and urban growth, accelerated the way life is experienced, and reduced distances through new communication and transportation systems.
Modernist Literature
Internationalism:
The experience of migration marked the modernist movement. Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway lived in Paris; T.S. Eliot in London; James Joyce in Zurich, Trieste, and Paris; etc.
Early Antecedents:
- Henry James and Flaubert in fiction
- Avant-garde movements in the visual arts (cubism, futurism) subverted the conventions that had governed works of art. If the avant-garde had treated traditional moral and aesthetic values with suspicion, the First World War rendered concepts such as truth, goodness, beauty, and progress highly problematic.
- Suspension of Aristotelian conception of art as imitation of external reality (art as a mirror). Presentation of a de-familiarized reality. Aesthetic values such as clarity and unity of effect lose currency in favor of a style that seeks to represent the disordered and fragmented quality of modern experience.
- Fragmentation and collage as central artistic devices. Lamentation for a world that seemed futile, illogical, and meaningless.
Characteristics Between Pre-Modern and Modern World:
- Pre-modern: Ordered, hierarchical, meaningful, stable, faith and clear sense of identity
- Modern world: Incoherent, dynamic, absurd, unstable, loss of faith and confused sense of identity
Temporality:
The passage of time, traditionally represented in a linear fashion, changes to capture the fluctuations of the mind. Chronological time is often combined with a more subjective representation.
Ezra Pound
An American expatriate and a major figure in Anglo-American modernist poetry. He was responsible for advancing the literary careers of many writers and poets (James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Ernest Hemingway). He acted as editor in journals that were pivotal in bringing modernist poetry to fruition. The founder of Imagism.
Imagist poetry was devoted to “clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images” (as in the poem “In a Metro Station”).
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.“
Minimalist designs in poetry.
Ernest Hemingway
Born into a strict, Protestant family in 1899. Famous and well-accomplished author (49 short stories and over 10 novels). Nobel Prize winner. Avid hunter and fisher. Considered a hero of WWI. Went to Spain to report on the Civil War. Committed suicide in Idaho (1961). Used the experiences of his life to create literary masterpieces during the Modernism Era.
- Born Ernest Miller Hemingway on July 21st, 1899.
- Grew up in Oak Park, Illinois – upper-middle-class. Father was a doctor and mother was a singer.
- The community had a large Protestant population. Hemingway about his community: “Wide lawns and narrow minds.”
- Enjoyed hunting and fishing – outdoor experiences that instilled in him a lifelong passion for adventure.
- Strained relationship with his mother.
Professional Life:
Wrote forty-nine short stories and published six best-selling novels:
- The Sun Also Rises
- A Farewell To Arms
- For Whom The Bell Tolls
- The Old Man and The Sea
- To Have and Have Not
- A Moveable Feast
After WWI Hemingway went to Paris to work as a reporter. In Paris, he was introduced to Gertrude Stein who served as his mentor and later introduced him to the “Parisian Modern Movement” (Stein, Ezra Pound, H.D., Fitzgerald…). This was the beginning of the American expatriate circle known as the Lost Generation. His other influential mentor was Ezra Pound, the founder of Imagism. Hemingway’s first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923), was published in Paris.
In Paris:
These relationships and the long nights provided inspiration for Hemingway’s first successful novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926). The novel was semi-autobiographical, following a group of expatriate Americans as they traveled around Europe. That year saw the publication of Men Without Women, a collection of short stories.
World War I:
Hemingway’s next success was the heavily autobiographical success, A Farewell To Arms. The book details the romance between an American soldier and a British nurse.
Hemingway’s Writing
1) Iceberg Principle:
“I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it underwater…:” His sentences only give one small bit of the meaning. The rest is implied. One must go beneath the surface to understand the full meaning of his writing.
2) Code Hero:
Hemingway’s ideal hero is individualist and free-willed. He is a man who never shows emotions, as showing emotions and having a commitment to women is a sign of weakness.
Qualities such as bravery, being adventuresome, and traveling often also define the Code Hero.
According to this code, a man is defined by will, pride, and endurance: the pride of knowing that one has done one’s best, the will to face defeat or victory with equal stoicism, and the endurance to accept pain, even loss – when the loss cannot be avoided.
3) Economical Style:
- Rejected big words as being false to experience. Concrete, direct, specific, common-found words.
- Spare, economical sentences (usually cutting adjectives).
- He also employed a technique by which he left out essential information of the story in the belief that omission can sometimes strengthen the plot of the novel or the story.