The definition of "modernism" is a troubling one, although perhaps a useless one as well. Indeed, most attempts at defining an historical period, a cultural situation, end up sounding reductive, inaccurate, or not very helpful. For instance, "loss of values" is often presented as a particularly modern problem. But it isn't peculiar to, say, the last 150 years. "Values" have been dropping like flies ever since the late mideval period, and artists have been confronting that for just as long (Read Chaucer. Read Shakespeare. Read Donne. Read Pope). "Anxieties over mass culture" is another one. But that isn't unique, either. Sir Robert Burton's 17th century Anatomy of Melancholy spends a tremendous amount of time bemoaning the fact that there are "too many books to read," and that one's eyes get wearied from running over endless pages.
Clearly, such generalizations aren't going to get you very far.
But they can point to the fact that while the problems are the same, how a particular time responds to the problems differ. And here is a generalization about modernism, particularly modernist narrative, that I've been mulling over and think may have some use. Namely, modernist authors are faced with the problem of not being able to assent to culture/society as such; for them, culture isn't just a generally good or inescapable thing with some problems that need to be fixed. It is, instead, something that simply cannot be affirmed. And, as a writer, this is a major crisis, for writing is always a collective activity.
Of course, there have always been cultural critics, satirists, etc. But the critic's position towards the culture being satirized breaks down into roughly two ways: 1) The satire is proving that the culture isn't living up to its values, to which the satirist himself assents. My impression of Pope and Swift, tho vague, would put them into this camp. They have no problem with their class position, the overall hierarchies, the large structures. But they also see vices and follies that can be playfully pointed out.
2) The criticism is offering an alternative. Rousseau is a great example of this. While he would reject civilization in part, he has no qualms about affirming the value of honest living/happy savage and/or practical compromise. See, for example, his Letter on the Theater.
In either case, the writer is offering something. Modernists, however, felt as if these grounds had been denied them. Flaubert was clearly bourgeoisie, but he could not assent to bourgeois values, culture, society. Nor could he turn to any viable alternative from which to speak. The dominant culture as such was percieved to be bankrupt. Such bankruptcy has major consequences for narrative form. What values are "heroic," if a story is supposed to have a hero? What are villanous? On what grounds can one establish narrative authority? What constitutes a narrative "situation"? These are aesthetic questions which come out of a larger position toward culture. Consequently, what makes modernist literature unique is the artistic tactics it uses to negotiate this problem.
Flaubert, cited as one of the major figures of early modernism, relies on irony in Madame Bovary. Clearly, irony is not unique to modernism. However, it was employed in particular ways by modernist writers. For one thing, it allows one to speak without really meaning it. If there are no grounds upon which to stand, perhaps the best one can do is leave one's statements in a constant abeyance. Thus, the narrator, who is a fleeting, disappearing figure (in the first chapter, he is a schoolmate of Chas. Bovary, but by the third chapter he has disappeared completely, sucked up by an impersonal narrative voice), passes judgment by making us aware that characters do not say what they mean, and, in fact, neither does the narrator. Emma's romantic fantasies, conveyed in effluvient, sentimentalized language by the narrative voice, are mocked precisely because the rest of the story does not allow us to take them seriously. The narrator cannot come out and say "Emma is delusional" (what would be the grounds?)--instead, he allows the story to make Emma look delusional. This is not realism--it is carefully crafted narrative intervention which mocks without laughing, which makes fun without cracking a joke.
One example: The famous "agricultural show" scene, in which Rudolphe, who we have been told has decided to "have" Emma, although he worries about getting "rid of her later" (137), is attempting to seduce her while they are listening to a local politician praise the new agricultural technologies. Flaubert places Rudolphe's words and the politicians right next to each other, revealing the vapidity of both. As the politician praises the farmers' "respect for law and the fulfillment of duty," Rudolphe replies to Emma,
"Always duty. I'm fed up with those words. They're a bunch of old fogies in flannel waistcoats, bigoted old ladies with foot warmers and beads, who keep singing into our ears, 'Duty! Duty' Our duty is to discern the great and cherish the beautiful and not to accept all those conventions of society with the ignominies it imposes on us." (148)
Since we already know that Rudolphe's speeches are simply a ruse to try to get Emma in bed, as the politician's are an attempt to attract support, the cultural narrative of "Duty" looks to be as much empty rhetoric as Rudolphe's "counter-cultural" libertinism. The narrator dissolves both rhetorical stances, indeed, all rhetorical stances as the novel unfolds, leaving nothing behind.
Such rhetorical dissolution of all ethical, ideological, and philosophical positions through irony tends toward another clearly modernist aesthetic goal, namely the "pure" art. Perhaps best articulated in a later essay by Clement Greenberg, the idea is that the "avant-garde" (read modern art in this context) takes as its content the medium itself--all other art, art with a separated "content," is kitsch. The desire to find and practice "pure" art, "pure" poetry, and to write the "pure" novel is characteristically modern. The thesis I am offering is that the move to the "pure" aesthetic process is also an effort to ground a type of knowledge. When culture fails, when science seems incomplete, when you can't even trust yourself (more on this below), then perhaps the discipline and practice of art will offer you some knowledge about the world. Eliot called this continual sacrifice of the self.
But there are other tactics as well. Conrad, an early modernist, wrote in a mode known as literary impressionism: the world painted through the phenomenological experience of the self. One tactic of this writing is called delayed recognition: the character relates an experience he cannot understand, only to identify it later. Two famous examples from Heart of Darkness : Marlow, who is narrating to his companions after the fact, says that he found a book in an abandoned hut with notes written in "cipher," which amazes him. Later, he finds out that the "cipher" is actually Russian. Further down the river, he is puzzled by "little sticks flying through the air," only to realize that they are "Arrows!" In both instances, Marlow the narrator (not your everyday sailor, the framing narrator tells us) adopts an impressionists style: he knows at the telling of the tale that he is dealing with Russian and arrows, but he chooses to relate the immediate sensation as directly as possible.
On its surface, impressionism seems to stem out of a certain trust in personal experience as a way of encountering reality. If we can't trust culture, perhaps all we have is ourselves. But, if that is true, Heart of Darkness systematically undermines that trust, even as it uses impressionist techniques to narrate it. Throughout the novella, Marlow constantly reminds us that the world is a mysterious place, that even when one is there things feel "unreal." Moreover, the theme of madness runs throughout the text, an internal change that dramatically effects one's ability to interpret and see what is going on around one. And, of course, the famous Mr. Kurtz is the absolute "impressionist," one who has "kicked the earth from his feet" in a completely self-enclosed interpretive framework. Like Flaubert, Marlow ruthlessly criticizes colonial ideology (those who are claiming to be "emmisaries of light") as well as the one who positions himself against the colonialists, Mr. Kurtz. [The final claim may seem strange, as most readings would say that Kurtz is the uber-colonialist. However, it is clear that Kurtz is outside the umbrella of the culture, which is why Marlow is fascinated by him. Kurtz's methods are "unsound," and all of his fellow agents hate him. Marlow says that while he was lumped with Kurtz by these unsavories, at least he was able to "choose" his nightmare.]
It is no surprise that, in the world where he cannot trust neither ideology nor himself, the most assuring thing Marlow finds is work. Throughout the novel, he praises good work being done, and he values the conceptual clarity he finds when engaged in a task. The modernist artist, seeking after the "pure" art, adopts a similar position. Only in the task of poetry can clarity be found, after all other things have failed. But more on work in my paper on Moby-Dick, which, along with Heart of Darkness and Madame Bovary, is the third crucial early modernist text.
Posted by pjaussen at April 19, 2007 11:23 AM