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Notes on North American literature III
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UNIT 3 : MODERNIST POETRY1.-AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERNISM
Modernism is a more international movement. There is a different conception of
space. A time of development. Train stations were conceived by many artists and
thinkers as a new type of cathedral, a new force. The expansion affected the human
conception of speed as people could travel faster than before. It introduces the sense
of motion. The same happens with cars, a new understanding of space and time.
“The term modernism refers to the radical shift in aesthetic and cultural sensibilities
evident in the art and literature of the post-World War One period. The ordered,
stable and inherently meaningful world view of the nineteenth century could not,
wrote T.S. Eliot, accord with ‘the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is
contemporary history.’.. Rejecting nineteenthcentury optimism, [modernists]
presented a profoundly pessimistic picture of a culture in disarray.”
Modernism was one of the cultural effects of the First World War; it brings
disillusionment in Western institutions which were not able to prevent the war from
taking place.
Modernism can be said to apply temporally speaking to a long period, from 1900 to
1940. It can be defined as a revolutionary movement encompassing all of the creative
arts that had its roots in the 1890s, a transitional period during which artists and
writers sought to liberate themselves from the constraints and polite conventions we
associate with Victorianism. It was a reaction against the previous generation, they
saw the Victorian period as being dominated by constraints, moral aesthetics, wanted
to create something which represented the new reality, and they wanted to break
free.
The first cultural consequence of this pessimistic view was the proliferation of non-
realistic art and literature – the irruption of the fantastic, the unreal, and the uncanny.
Rejection of realism, it affects literature but also plastic arts.
2.-MODERNIST POETRY AND THE NEW AESTHETIC
,Modernism was largely brought about by the convergence of several factors:
- The devastation caused in Europe after World War I, when the most enlightened and
advanced nations on the earth came together to kill each other in staggering numbers.
Unthinkable how the most civilized countries in the world engaged in a war which
broke everything and led to the loss of faith in institutions and protecting people.
Democracy was questioned.
- The wholesale urbanization and industrialization that took place during the
nineteenth century.
- The fragmentation of belief in the unified individual that occurred as the result of the
work of several scientists and philosophers.
Modernist poetry developed as there was a need for a new poetry, and it enjoyed an
important boost because of the emergence and publication of important magazines
and journals such as Poetry. A Magazine of Verse (Ezra Pound, Robert Frost ...), and by
the growth of a new criticism which relied in the organic unity, a new emphasis on the
analysis of the formal elements of the elements, with authors such as T. S. Elliot.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNIST POETRY
It is characterized by a wide variety of things, themes, forms and moods, but there are
some common features. The first one is a re-evaluation of the role of the artist in the
modern role (seeker and provider of order. Life was chaotic and since it was chaotic
the poet had an important task which was to provide meaning and order to the chaotic
reality).
There is also an exposure and openness to international art and literature (highly
international movement, all modernist poets travelled to Europe, some of them even
became long-life ex-patriates), a need to find fresh models of expression for the
changing expression from the self to the word (relation between the individual and the
world = own of the central elements); interest in theories of the human psyche ; new
understanding of experience as fluid and complex. Ezra Pound ,T.S Elliot, Robert
Frost…
THE AIM OF POETRY
Poetry has a clear aim for some poets. Ezra Pound thought that literature was
undergoing a very bad moment (Tin Age = is the worst of the phases, it is the poorest
and decadent, the end of the cycle). New poets should improve its condition by
subscribing to a series of principles:
, 1) The poet as savior of the race: The development of the new kind of literature
should have its beginning in moral definition. (Writers had to free their selves in order
to order to develop their talent because the artist was morally and culturally the
saviour of the race).
2) The poet has to communicate with total accuracy the idea or emotion (The effects of
the Great War)(art was a moral question and its morality depended on accuracy.
Morality and technique are therefore two fundamental issues and related issues in
Pound’s poetical theory. This is connected to the understanding of language and its
uses).
3) For Pound good writing is the result of control, accuracy and discipline in the means
of communication. The writer must say “just what he means. He says it with complete
clarity and simplicity. He uses the smallest possible number of words.”
In general terms, modernist writers believed in the power of the artist to impose order
on the chaos and disorientation of modern life. They didn’t seek beauty in their
poetry, what they wanted to achieve was some momentary clarification that the poetic
composition could provide. Art replaces politics and religion:
The order does not end in the arts,
The order shall come and pass through them.
The state is too idle, the decrepit church is too idle,
The arts alone can transmit this.
They alone cling fast to the gods.
(Ezra Pound, “From Chebar” 1913)
The arts seem to be the only means to find or impose some sense of order. The
institutions weren’t correct.
The aim of poetry has different purposes according to the author: 1) representation of
the origins of emotions, “not ideas about the thing but the thing itself” Wallace
Stevens. They pursuit the origins of emotions; 2) Another major poet was Robert Frost
who explained: Poetic meaning and revelation as a transitory and private
(not eternal and collective) state:
“The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom [...] It begins in
delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it
runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life - not necessarily a
great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay
against confusion.” (Robert Frost, “The Figure a Poem Makes” 1939, in NAAL).
, A poem begins in delight but it ends in wisdom, something must be learnt when
reading a poem, the poetic meaning is transitory and private. The ideas was that
poetry had to be specific, ephemeral … its aim cannot be permanent (ideas and
meanings); 3) Eliot’s impersonal theory of poetry says “There is a great deal, in the
writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is
usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious and conscious where he ought to
be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him 'personal.' Poetry is not a turning loose
of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but
an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and
emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things”.
Poetry should not convey the poets emotions, it has to reveal the speakers emotions
but in transforming them in poetry. The poet’s role is to act as a catalyst that enables
the diffusion of object in the poem. In order to escape from something you have to
have it, a poet has to have personality in order to escape from it.
US modernist poetry can be describes as having an International style. There are
different sources of inspirations which include metaphysical poets (John Donne, …
turns an abstract idea to a concrete image), French symbolism, radical American poets
of the later 19th c. (Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, their use of free verse), and
some influences of European, Asian and African rhythms and forms.
Within the trend of US modernist poetry we can distinguish between two different
groups: “native” poets of American modernism such as Robert Frost and William
Carlos Williams, who were concerned in American scenes and the poetry was easy to
understand. The other group are the more international/elitist poets who travelled
more to other countries and eventually became ex-patriates, this included T. S. Eliot,
Ezra Pound, H.D., Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens.
There are three main innovation features. The first one is the use of A NEW TONE AND
SUBJECTS: juxtaposed images in order to establish ironic contrasts, they started using
different tones. They also used what can be considered NEW RHYTHMS: free verse,
rhythmic variety, repetition of words (breaking the conventions of Victorian poetry
which were conformed by the formal ones). Used new imaginative variations,
experiments with length of lines, cadence, and stress patterns.
The absence of rhyme was replaced by the repetition of words in order to create
musicality. Finally, they wanted to create A NEW LANGUAGE OF POETRY, they rebelled
against the conservative poetic language of previous generations of poets and wanted
to create something which adapted to the new reality (use of concretion and common
speech, conceits, images) MAKE IT NEW . Because of the effects of the use of
propaganda, they reacted against the rhetorical and abstract images and preferred
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