MODERMISM
In this handout, I have included a few more examples of modernist works and
a short discussion of Imagism and Acmeism. I started by including Franz Kafka
whose writings illustrate both a personal and a societal alienation. I also
included works by two Russian Acmeists who deal with creating concrete images.
Lastly, I have included Pound's definition of "Imagism" and a selection of
illustrations by various writers of the period. (rv = my comments)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRANZ KAFKA
"Resolution" (Franz Kafka, Czech) Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir from the German
To lift yourself out of a miserable mood, even if you have to do it by
strength of will, should be easy. I force myself out of my chair, stride round
the table, exercise my head and neck, make my eyes sparkle, tighten the muscles
round them. Defy my own feelings, welcome A. enthusiastically supposing he
comes to see me, amiably tolerate B. in my room, swallow all that is said at
C.'s whatever pain and trouble it may cost me, in long draughts.
Yet even if I manage that, one slip, and a slip cannot be avoided, will
stop the whole process, easy and painful alike, and I will have to shrink back
into my own circle again.
So perhaps the best resource is to meet everything passively, to make
yourself an inert mass, and, if you feel you are being carried away, not let
yourself be lured into taking a single unnecessary step, to stare at other
with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, in short, with your own
hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you, that is, to
enlarge the final peace of the graveyard and let nothing survive save that.
A characteristic movement in such a condition is to run your little finger
along your eyebrows.
----------------
Opening from "Metamorphosis" (Kafka)
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his ben into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it
were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his
dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the
bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely.
------------
Opening from the "Hunger Artist" (Kafka)
During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly
diminished. It used to pay very well to stage such great performances under
one's own management, but today it is quite impossible. We live in a different
world now. At one time the whole town took a lively interest in the hunger
fast; from day to day of his fast the excitement mounted; everybody wanted to
see him at least once a day; there were people who bought season tickets for
the last few days and sat from morning to night in front of his small barred
age; even in the nighttime there were visiting hours when the whole effect was
heightened by torch flares;
---------
Opening from "A Report to an Academy" (Kafka)
Honored Members of the Academy!
You have done me the honer of inviting me to give your Academy an account
of the life I formerly led as an ape.
I regret that I cannot comply with your request to the extent you desire.
It is now five years since I was an ape, a short space of time, perhaps,
according to the calendar, but an infinitely long time to gallop through at
full speed, as I have done, more or less accompanied by excellent mentors,
good advice, applause and orchestral music, and yet essentially alone, since
all my escorters, to keep the image, kept well off course.
----------
Opening from Kafka's novel _The Trial_
Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything
wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought
him his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had
never happened before. K. waited for a little while longer, watching from his
pillow the old lady opposite, who seemed to be peering at him with a curiosity
unusual even for her, but then, feeling both put out and hungry, he rang the
bell. [He is never told what his crime is and spends the rest of the novel
going through life waiting for his trial. The term Kafkaesque comes from this
surrealistic, nightmare-like experience of going though life. In a sense, life
is a "trial". We are always waiting judgement. Kafka's works also illustrate
his sense of the loss of control of the individual to the larger society. It
terms of style, his sentences [in German] tend to go on as streams of
consciousness as in the English translations above.(Contrast this with Brecht
short, sharp sentences.) He committed suicide in 1924. -rv]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another example from William Carlos William' _Paterson_:
Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls He is from Rutherford,NJ
its spent waters forging the outline of his back. He note the river image,the
lies on his right side, head near the thunder city image and the
of the waters filling his dreams! Eternally asleep, timelessness that also
his dreams walk about the city where he persists appear in Eliot's work.
incognito. Butterflies settle on his stone ear. (see "Prufrock", 1-5 - rv))
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSSIAN ACMEIST WRITERS
Mandelstam belonged to the Acmeist school. Along with Anna Akhmatova they
"strove for clarity, for graphic sharpness of outline, and sought to convey the
texture of things rather than their inner souls" (_The New Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics_) as had been the case in Russian writing
in the 19th century with writers such as Tolstoy and especially Dostoyevsky.
He died in 1938 and his grave turned up in Siberia 2 years ago. They were
considered "antirevolutionary" in their writing since they did not follow the
party line in the arts which was "Soviet Socialist Realism" which sought
to portray the heroic nature of the relovution and looked down on abstract
arts. As you can see from these works, at times these writers gave into
political pressures.
"Leningrad" by Osip Mandelstam trans. Clarence Brown
I've come back to my city. These are my own old tears,
my own little veins, the swollen glands of my childhood.
So you're back. Open wide. Swallow
the fish-oil from the river lamps of Leningrad.
Open your eyes. Do you know this December day,
the egg-yolk with the deadly tar beaten into it?
Petersburg! I don't want to die yet! (Petersburg is/was called Leningrad-rv)
You know my telephone numbers.
Petersburg! I've still got the addresses:
I can look up dead voices.
I live on back stairs, and the bell,
torn out nerves and all, jangles in my temples.
A I wait till morning for guests that I love,
and rattle the door in chains. (1930)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Courage" Anna Akhmatova Trans. Clarence Brown
We know what now lies in the balance,
What is now coming to pass we know.
The hour of courage has struck on our clock
And courage will never abandon us.
We're not afraid to be shot dead,
Not bitter to be bereft of home.
We will defend you, Russian speech,
Guard you, great Russian tongue.
Free and unsullied we will carry you through,
Save you from bondage, for our children,
Forever! (1942) (900 day seige of Leningrad, 1942 - rv)
Anna Akhmatova was born in Odessa but spent much of her time in and around
Leningrad. Her husband was shot as a "counterrevolutionary" in 1921. She died in
1966. Leningrad was under Nazi siege for 900 days during the Second World War.
Note the similar feelings both authors had for Leningrad. Below is an earlier
work which is more in the Acmeist style. (rv)
"Apparition" Anna Akhmatova (1919) Trans. Judith Hemschemyer
The round, hanging lanterns,
Lit early, are squeking,
Ever more fesively, ever brighter,
The flying snowflakes glitter.
And, quickening their steady gait,
As if sensing some pursuit,
Through the soft falling snow
Under a dark blue net, the horses race.
And the gilded footman (see "footman" in Prufrock" -- rv)
Stands motionless behind the sleigh,
And the Tsar looks around strangely (Russian Revolution 1917 -- rv)
With light, empty eyes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MODERISM AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" Langston Hughes (1921)
I've know river:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood
in human veins.
(Note the appeal to history -rv)
My soul has grown deep like rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New
Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers. (compares blood flowing in viens to water flow in
the rivers - rv)
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes is the most recognized figure from the Harlem
Renaissance which occured at about the same time as the "modern period". In
this work, note some of the modernist elements that we also find in Eliot: the
sense of being "out of time", the conection to history, the connection to the
present through the use of rivers, the universal nature of "I". (rv)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IMAGISM
Ezra Pound (Am., moved to Italy during WWII 1885-1972)
Edited Eliot's "Waste Land" by cutting out a lot of material that did not
fit tightly. In "Retrospect" (1918), he defined what for him is the essence of
Imagism:
1. Direct treatment of the 'thing' whether subjective or objective.
2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
3. As rearding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase,
not in sequence of a metronome.
He goes on to point out that "An 'Image' is that which presents an intellectual
and emotional complex in an instant in time."
An examples of this might be
"In a Station of the Metro" (1916) "L'Art, 1910" (1916)
The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Green arsenic smeared on an
Petals on a wet, black bough. (1916) egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let
us feast with our eyes.
or Carl Sandberg's "Fog" (1916) and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)'s "Oread" (1924)
The fog comes Whirl up, sea--
on little cat feet. whirl your pointed pines.
splash your great pines
It sits looking on our rocks,
over the harbor and city hurl your green over us,
on silent haunches cover us with your pools of fir.
and the moves on. (Oread was a mountain nymph in Greek mythology.)
or "the Red Wheelbarrow" (1923) by William Carlos William:
so much depends Compare these images with those found in Haiku's, 17
upon syllable traditional Japanese poem of 5, 7 and 5
unrhymed syllables:
a red wheel Under cherry trees
barrow Soup, the salad, fish and all
Seasoned with petals. (Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)
glazed with rain
water All night, this headland
Lunges into the rumpling
beside the white Capework of the wind (Richard Wilbur, 1978)
chickens
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For a female insight into this period, read Virginia Woolf's essay,
"Sheakspeare's Sister in out text.