Early Modernism: Historical Overview

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Early Modernism Historical Overview

• From T. S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred
  Prufrock
• Let us go then, you and I,
• When the evening is spread out against the sky
• Like a patient etherized upon a table

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Early Modernismcritical articulations

• emphasis on details, on the part rather than the
  whole a tendency toward external fromlessness
  an extremely personal stylerefine your
  singularities anti-scientific,
  anti-common-sense, anti-public not a logical,
  but the more or less associational structure.

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Modernism brought a new intensityoften a new
difficultyto the experience of the audience.
Just as surely, it both expressed and contributed
to a broad sense of alienation in the twentieth
century (Gioia 86).
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Modernism did not reject auditory prosody, but
it developed a rival system based on the visual
appearance of the poem on the printed page.
Modernist poets like Williams, Cummings, Moore,
H. D., and Pound consciously shaped their poems
to be seen on printed pages. The visual
arrangement of type on the white space of the
page became the canvas on which they worked.
The Modernists were the first generation of
poets in history who had grown up with
typewriters (91).
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In Modernist aesthetics, which prized
experimentation, innovation, and originality,
constant innovation became the sign for artistic
greatness and integrity (89).
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Sample poems

• Look at T. S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred
  Prufrock, e. e. cummings in Just- (290),
  Gertrude Stein, excerpts from Tender Buttons
  (105), William Carlos Williams, The Red
  Wheelbarrow (156).

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Early Modernist Movements

• Futurism a very early Modernist movement
• F.T. Marinetti Manifesto of Futurism (1909)
  We stand on the last promontory of the
  centuries! Why should we look back, when what we
  want is to break down the mysterious doors of the
  Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We
  already live in the absolute, because we have
  created eternal, omnipresent speed. We want to
  demolish the museums, libraries.

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like Ezra Pound, Marinetti saw Fascism as a means
of directing the new world forward into its idea
future. We want to glorify war, the only hygiene
of the world. Still, his aesthetic ideas pushed
the arts forward.
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Early Mod movements Imagism

• Direct predecessor of most experimental modernist
  poetry in the 20th (and early 21st century).
• T. E. Hulme Visual, concrete language (1908)
  absolutely accurate presentation and no
  verbiage (86-87)

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Ezra PoundImagist and beyond

• Ezra Pound (1885-1972) Born in Hailey, Idaho,
  but lived much of his life in Europe, notably
  Italy.
• Pounds poetry is important, but (in my
  estimation) less so than his public persona and
  editorial talents. Pound was an excellent
  student of languages, and earned a Masters degree
  in Romance Languages. As a poet and scholar, his
  knowledge of, and curiosity towards, world
  languages enabled him to be an important
  translator and a conduit for international
  energies in poetry.

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Similarly, Pound decisively fostered the careers
of T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Hilda Doolittle (H.
D.), William Carlos Williams, and W. B. Yeats.
He edited Eliots The Waste Land (probably the
most famous and influential poem of Early
Modernism), to the point that its almost a joint
composition. He edited poetry journals that
first published Joyce, Yeats, H. D. and others.
He wrote essential criticism that not only
clarified Modernisms aesthetic intent, but also
connected Modernist art to culture and politics,
sometimes controversially.
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After being fired from an academic job in the
states for indecent behavior (really an
administrative excuse to fire someone who seemed
too bohemian), he spent his life in Europe.
During World War II, Pound was doing pro-fascist
radio broadcasts in Italy, supporting Mussolinis
anti-semitic campaign. He was imprisoned by
allied forces, basically in an outdoor cage,
where he was exposed for anyone to see. While
imprisoned, he wrote important poems from his
incomprehensible epic The Cantos.
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Pounds important critical ideas

• From A Few Donts by an Imagist (1913)
• Direct treatment of the thing whether
  subjective or objective.
• To use absolutely no word that does not
  contriubute to the presentation.
• As regarding rhythm to compose in the sequence
  of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a
  metronome.

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Look at Olson, Projective VerseLook at
definition of Objectivism in Zukofsky
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Last word on Pound

• The principles Pound outlined in his columns for
  Poetry expressed a modern desire to avoid
  embroidered abstractions, poetic diction, and
  didacticism characteristics of Victorian and
  Romantic poems. They epitomized modern poetrys
  antipoetic stance.

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High Modernism

• High Modernistscomplex patterns of literary
  references, suggesting to many a contempt for the
  nonscholarly reader (89).
•  
• T. S. EliotI know that some of the poetry to
  which I am most devoted is poetry which I did not
  understand at first reading some is poetry which
  I am not sure I understand yet

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Symbolism

• All art constantly aspires towards the condition
  of music Walter Pater (Gioia 89) 
• Symbolism originates in nineteenth century
  FranceBaudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Verlaine,
  Valery. Influenced by Poes poetic theory.
• Symbolism is evocative rather than explicitly
  declarative.
• Symbolism deeply influenced T. S. Eliot.

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American nationalism vs. Eurocentrism in Early Mod

• Pound, Eliot, Stein, Wallace Stevens all very
  specifically interested in European ideas.
• Frost, Robinson Jeffers, William Carlos Williams
  all very interested in being specifically
  American in their vocabulary.