What is Modernism?

What is Modernism?

 By: Sally Atef.

“The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It’s the atomic age!” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

What is modernism? When did it start? How has the human character changed? What were the factors which caused the change? Who are the pioneers of Modernism?  Figure1 Modernism

Modernism as a term:

    Modernism has a problematic nature as a term. There is a wide range of definitions given to it. To mention some of them, Silvio Gaggi (1989) defined it as: a rejection of mimesis as the major principle of art and an elevation of formalist or expressionist ideas to primary aesthetic principles. Martin Gray (1997) takes to mean: A label that distinguishes some characteristics of twentieth-century writing, in so far as it differs from the literary conventions inherited from the nineteenth century.     

 In short, modernism is an umbrella term under which other movements are included in such as Surrealism and Absurdism. Modernism is not a school which is interested in human nature but also new and radical techniques like Virginia Woolf’s hermaphrodite in which there is no sequence in events and radical narrative technique.

       One of the modern techniques which appeared is the shift from external to internal reality. In the nineteenth century writers portrayed the external reality as Charles Dickens (1812-1870) who wrote about social reality in London. In his novels he describes different types of unpleasant people and places.

        Another style is what is known as “interior monologue”, a style created by James Joyce (1882-1941). It is also known as inner voice. This style of writing allows the reader to move inside the minds of the characters, rebelling against traditional rules of description, speech and even punctuation.     

Its start:

      Modernism has no clear cut agreement of its beginning. Some believe that it began with the French revolution (1789). Henry Meschonnic suggests that modernism started with what Sartre called the generation of 1850.   Some confirms that it started at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some see that it was a rebellion against the conditions and traditions of the nineteenth century in concepts of man and universe in Psychology, Social life, Painting, Literature and all terms of life. Critics believe it started in the nineteenth century as Virginia Woolf  stated in her essay "Mr. Bennet and Mrs.Brown"confirmed that on or about December,1910, human character changed. Figure2 Virginia Woolf

What kind of change?

      It can be seen in what T.S Eliot (1888-1965) portrayed man as a heap of broken image in the waste land (1922). It is a 434-line poem. Sibyl’s predicament mirrors what Eliot sees as his own: He lives in a culture that has decayed and withered but will not expire, and he is forced to live with reminders of its former glory.

     

The factors that caused these changes:  

 figure3 Sigmund Freud

1-            The discoveries of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) in psychology when he declared that there is an important part in the human character are unknown, or what is called unconsciousness. That increased the mystery of the human character. He also confirmed that many of man’s behavior come from a dark area. He stated “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.” so the image of man is not a complete one .As a result man has a feeling of loss and confusion as in a surrealistic picture. A great example for it is Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), a novel that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, and it is commonly thought to be a response to ,’s Ulysses (1922). Woolf (1882-1941) committed suicide after a German incursion against her home in London in 1941.

2-            The new discoveries and Charles Darwin (1809-1982) and his theories about human rising. He assured that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors.

3-The first and second world wars and the destructions the caused as they were shocks for thinkers to see blood shed allover Europe. Thinkers thought that Europe was not a place where they could live. They also found that the whole world is an anarchic place and it seemed to have no limits. When the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens visited the battlefields of north-eastern France in July 1917 he described the strange interaction of man and nature he had witnessed. ‘What humanity can endure and suffer is beyond belief’, he told his wife, ‘the battlefields — the obliteration of all human endeavor and achievement and the human achievement of destruction is bettered by the poppies and wild flowers that are as friendly to an unexploded shell as they are to the leg of a garden seat in Surrey.’ 

 figure4 the second world war destruction

3-            Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) and the absurd theatre and the lack of understanding and communication between man and himself, the others, and his society. Man became no longer the great creature. 

 figure5Samuel Beckett

Its pioneers:

        Jeremy Hawthorn said that writers as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Franz Kafka and Albert Camus should be considered the pioneers of modernism. To sum up, we can classify modernists to three groups:

First, modern novelists: e.g. Fyodor Dostovsky, Theodore Dreiser, Dos Passos, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway. 

Second, modern poets: e.g. T.S Eliot, Thomas Hardy, W.B Yeats and Ezra Pound.

Third, modern dramatists: e.g. Oscar Wild, George Bernard Shaw, W.B Yeats and Sean O'casey.