Editing Modernism (section)

== Modernism, Romanticism, Philosophy and Symbol ==
[[Literary modernism]] is often summed up in a line from [[W. B. Yeats]]: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" (in '[[The Second Coming (poem)|The Second Coming]]').<ref>James Longenbach, for instance, quotes these words and says, 'What line could feel more central to our received notions of modernism?' in his chapter, 'Modern Poetry' in David Holdeman and Ben Levitas, ''W.B. Yeats in Context'', (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), p.327. Longenbach quotes Cynthia Ozik, who said, 'That [i.e. this line], we used to think, was the whole of Modernism.... Now we know better, and also in a way worse. Yeats hardly foresaw how our dissolutions would surpass his own'. See Cynthia Ozick, 'The Muse, Postmodernism and Homeless', ''New York Times Book Review'', 18 January 1987.</ref> Modernists often search for a [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] 'centre' but experience its collapse.<ref>According to the ''Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy'', Lyotard claims that 'Modern art is emblematic of a sublime sensibility, that is, a sensibility that there is something non-presentable demanding to be put into sensible form and yet overwhelms all attempts to do so'. See section 2 ('The Postmodern Condition') of the article on 'Postmodernism' at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/#5.</ref> ([[Postmodernism]], by way of contrast, celebrates that collapse, exposing the failure of metaphysics, such as [[Jacques Derrida]]'s [[deconstruction]] of metaphysical claims.)<ref>See section 5 ('Deconstruction') in 'Postmodernism', ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/#5.</ref>

Philosophically, the collapse of metaphysics can be traced back to the Scottish philosopher [[David Hume]] (1711–1776), who argued that we never actually perceive one event causing another. We only experience the '[[constant conjunction]]' of events, and do not perceive a metaphysical 'cause'. Similarly, Hume argued that we never know the self as object, only the self as subject, and we are thus blind to our true natures.<ref>Hume says, 'For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception'. See ''[[A Treatise of Human Nature]]'', Book I.iv, section 6.</ref> Moreover, if we only 'know' through sensory experience—such as sight, touch and feeling—then we cannot 'know' and neither can we make metaphysical claims.

Thus, modernism can be driven emotionally by the desire for metaphysical truths, while understanding their impossibility. Some modernist novels, for instance, feature characters like Marlow in ''[[Heart of Darkness]]'' or Nick Carraway in ''[[The Great Gatsby]]'' who believe that they have encountered some great truth about nature or character, truths that the novels themselves treat ironically while offering more mundane explanations.<ref>Daphne Erdinast- Vulcan explores Conrad's relation to Modernism, Romanticism and metaphysics in ''Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper'', Oxford: OUP, 1991. David Lynn describes Nick Carraway as "A synthesis of disparate impulses whose roots lie in nineteenth-century Romanticism and Realism[.] Nick's heroism is borne out in his assuming responsibility for Gatsby and in the act of narration." See 'Within and Without: Nick Carraway', in: ''The Hero's Tale'', chapter 4, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989.</ref> Similarly, many poems of [[Wallace Stevens]] convey a struggle with the sense of nature's significance, falling under two headings: poems in which the speaker denies that nature has meaning, only for nature to loom up by the end of the poem; and poems in which the speaker claims nature has meaning, only for that meaning to collapse by the end of the poem.

Modernism often rejects nineteenth century [[realism (arts)|realism]], ''if'' the latter is understood as focusing on the embodiment of meaning within a naturalistic representation.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Nochlin |first=Linda |date=1973-09-01 |title=From the Archives: The Realist Criminal and the Abstract Law |url=https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/the-realist-criminal-and-the-abstract-law-63236/ |access-date=2025-01-06 |website=ARTnews.com |language=en-US}}</ref> At the same time, some modernists aim at a more 'real' realism, one that is uncentered. Picasso's proto-cubist painting, [[Les Demoiselles d'Avignon]] of 1907 (see picture above), does not present its subjects from a single point of view (that of a single viewer), but instead presents a flat, two-dimensional [[picture plane]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Paris, June-July 1907 |url=https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79766 |access-date=2025-01-06 |website=The Museum of Modern Art |language=en}}</ref> 'The Poet' of 1911 is similarly decentred, presenting the body from multiple points of view. As the [[Peggy Guggenheim Collection]] website puts it, 'Picasso presents multiple views of each object, as if he had moved around it, and synthesizes them into a single compound image'.<ref>The painting is in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. See: https://www.guggenheim-venice.it/en/art/works/the-poet/.</ref>

Modernism, with its sense that 'things fall apart,' can be seen as the [[apotheosis]] of [[romanticism]], if romanticism is the (often frustrated) quest for metaphysical truths about character, nature, a [[Conceptions of God|higher power]] and meaning in the world.<ref>Schlegel, as an early German romantic, declared, "Only when striving toward truth and knowledge can a spirit be called a philosophical spirit". [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetics-19th-romantic/ See '19th Century Romantic Aesthetics' in ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'']. The idea of romanticism as an internalised quest is a commonplace. Harold Bloom, for instance, has written extensively on Romanticism as 'The Internalisation of Quest-Romance' in ''Romanticism and Consciousness'', New York: Norton, 1970, pp.3–24.</ref> Modernism often yearns for a romantic or metaphysical centre, but later finds its collapse.<ref>{{Cite web |date=1967-11-01 |title=The Culture of Modernism |url=https://www.commentary.org/articles/irving-howe/the-culture-of-modernism/ |access-date=2025-01-06 |website=Commentary Magazine |language=en-US}}</ref>

This distinction between modernism and romanticism extends to their respective treatments of 'symbol'. The romantics at times see an essential relation (the 'ground') between the symbol (or the 'vehicle', in [[I.A. Richards]]'s terms)<ref>I.A. Richards, ''The Philosophy of Rhetoric'', (Oxford University Press: New York and London, 1936). Technically, Richards applies the terms 'vehicle' and 'tenor' to metaphor rather than symbol.</ref> and its 'tenor' (its meaning)—for example in Coleridge's description of nature as 'that eternal language which thy God / Utters'.<ref>S.T. Coleridge, 'Frost at Midnight', https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43986/frost-at-midnight. On Coleridge, see Nicholas Reid, ''Coleridge, Form and Symbol'' (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp.1–7.</ref> But while some romantics may have perceived nature and its symbols as God's language, for other romantic theorists it remains inscrutable. As [[Goethe]] (not himself a romantic) said, ‘the idea [or meaning] remains eternally and infinitely active and inaccessible in the image’.<ref>Quoted by Nicholas Halmi in ''The Genealogy of the Romantic Symbol'' (Oxford: OUP, 2007), p.1.</ref> This was extended in modernist theory which, drawing on its [[Symbolism (arts)|symbolist]] precursors, often emphasizes the inscrutability and failure of symbol and metaphor. For example, Wallace Stevens seeks and fails to find meaning in nature, even if he at times seems to sense such a meaning. As such, symbolists and modernists at times adopt a [[mysticism|mystical]] approach to suggest a non-rational sense of meaning.<ref>Arthur Symons introduced the mystical aspect of Symbolism in his 1899 book, ''[[The Symbolist Movement in Literature]]'', https://archive.org/details/symbolistmovemen00symouoft.</ref>

For these reasons, modernist metaphors may be unnatural, as for instance in T.S. Eliot's description of an evening 'spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table'.<ref>[[T.S. Eliot]], 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock. Seamus Perry notes 'The play between the belated romanticism of an evening 'spread out against the sky' and the incongruous modernity of 'a patient etherised upon a table' in 'A close reading of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock', on the British Library's website, https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/a-close-reading-of-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230807052739/https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/a-close-reading-of-the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock |date=7 August 2023 }}.</ref> Similarly, for many later modernist poets nature is unnaturalized and at times mechanized, as for example in Stephen Oliver's image of the moon busily 'hoisting' itself into consciousness.<ref>Stephen Oliver, ''Cranial Bunker'' (Canberra: Greywacke Press, 2023), p.27.</ref>