Modernist Literature - Introduction

Introduction

In the 1880s a strand of thinking began to assert that it was necessary to push aside previous norms entirely, instead of merely revising past knowledge in light of contemporary techniques. Influential in the early days of Modernism were the theories of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), and Ernst Mach (1838–1916). Mach argued, beginning in the 1880s with The Science of Mechanics (1883), that the mind had a fundamental structure, and that subjective experience was based on the interplay of parts of the mind. Freud's first major work was Studies on Hysteria (with Josef Breuer) (1895). According to Freud's ideas, all subjective reality was based on the play of basic drives and instincts, through which the outside world was perceived. As a philosopher of science Ernst Mach was a major influence on logical positivism, and through his criticism of Isaac Newton, a forerunner of Einstein's theory of relativity. According to these ideas of Mach, the relations of objects in nature were not guaranteed but known only through a sort of mental shorthand. This represented a break with the past, in that previously it was believed that external and absolute reality could impress itself, as it was, on an individual, as, for example, in John Locke's (1632–1704) empiricism, which saw the mind beginning as a tabula rasa (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690). Freud's description of subjective states, involving an unconscious mind full of primal impulses, and counterbalancing self-imposed restrictions, was combined by Carl Jung (1875–1961) with the idea of the collective unconscious, with which the conscious mind fought or embraced. While Charles Darwin's work remade the aristotelian concept of "man, the animal" in the public mind, Jung suggested that human impulses toward breaking social norms were not the product of childishness, or ignorance, but rather derived from the essential nature of the human animal.

Friedrich Nietzsche was another major precursor of modernism with a philosophy in which psychological drives, specifically the 'Will to power', were more important than facts, or things. Henri Bergson (1859–1941), on the other hand, emphasized the difference between scientific, clock time and the direct, subjective, human experience of time His work on time and consciousness "had a great influence on twentieth-century novelists," especially those modernists who used the stream of consciousness technique, such as Dorothy Richardson, Pointed Roofs (1915), James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) and Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927). Also important in Bergson's philosophy was the idea of élan vital, the life force, which "brings about the creative evolution of everything" His philosophy also placed a high value on intuition, though without rejecting the importance of the intellect. These various thinkers were united by a distrust of Victorian positivism and certainty. Modernism as a literary movement can be seen also, as a reaction to industrialization, urbanization and new technologies.

Important literary precursors of Modernism were: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–81) (Crime and Punishment (1866), The Brothers Karamazov (1880)); Walt Whitman (1819–92) (Leaves of Grass) (1855–91); Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) (Les Fleurs du mal), Rimbaud (1854–91) (Illuminations, 1874); August Strindberg (1849–1912), especially his later plays, including, the trilogy To Damascus 1898–1901, A Dream Play (1902), The Ghost Sonata (1907).

At the beginning some modernists fostered a utopian spirit, stimulated by innovations in anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political theory, physics and psychoanalysis. The poets of the Imagist movement, founded by Ezra Pound in 1912 were characterized by this positive spirit, rejecting the sentiment and discursiveness typical of Romantic and Victorian periods for poetry that favoured a precision of imagery and clear, sharp language.This idealism, however, ended, with the outbreak of World War I, and writers created more cynical works that reflected a prevailing sense of disillusionment. Many modernist writers also shared a mistrust of institutions of power such as government and religion, and rejected the notion of absolute truths. Later modernist works, such as T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922), were increasingly self-aware, introspective, and often explored the darker aspects of human nature.

The term modernism covers a number of related, and overlapping, artistic and literary movements, including Imagism, Symbolism, Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and Dada.