Encyclopedia - of - Literary - Modernism - Formal Experimentation

F
Faulkner, William (1897- community within narrative forms which

1962) redefine traditional modes of perceiving
reality.
William Faulkner is best known as a nov- Faulkner's early influences included
elist who exposes the U.S. South's racial novelists such as Balzac, Dickens, and
and gendered conflicts within a fictional French symbolist poetry. The assimilation
framework which simultaneously embod- of a wide range of writers whose work de-
ies strong links with international modern- rived from diverse cultures laid important
ism. In many of his works Faulkner makes groundwork for Faulkner. His first signifi-
use of a variety of literary modernist tech- cant published work was The Marble Faun
niques. The formal experimentation (1924), a long poem written in octosyl-
within Faulkner's novels can also be tied labic couplets which owes much to the in-
in with his interest in modernist art and fluence of the French poet Verlaine and
cinema. Also, the radical aesthetic inno- also reveals echoes of Keats' Ode on a
vations which characterize Faulkner's own Grecian Urn. The poem focuses upon a
works have become a potent influence marble faun who realizes that his status as
upon the international literary and cultural an object of art ensures his immortality.
scene, particularly in Latin America. However, this self-conscious knowledge of
Faulkner was born at a crucial point static artistic form is also a cause of pain,
within U.S. history. The legacy of the de- because it means that he can never expe-
feat of the South in the Civil War was still rience the transitory joys and sorrows
recent enough to be strongly ingrained which constitute man's brief existence.
within the consciousness of many South- Despite the derivative nature of the poem,
erners. The ongoing racial divisions be- there are already signs of tension here be-
Copyright © 2003. ABC-CLIO, LLC. All rights reserved.
tween blacks and whites were strongly tween a romantic and a modernist aesthetic
apparent within the Mississippi in which in Faulkner's implicit critique of the very
Faulkner grew up, thereby further contrib- pastoral form he employs.
uting towards the sense of a region divided A vital influence on Faulkner's devel-
both against the North and within itself. opment as a modernist came when he trav-
At the same time, the early decades of the eled to Europe in 1925 and encountered
twentieth century witnessed a period of the avant-garde artistic milieu of Paris (see
economic and social modernization which France). During his time there, Faulkner
was also affected by the advent of World was particularly struck by the new modes
War I. It is in this turbulent context that of visual representation he saw at the vari-
Faulkner developed as a modernist writer, ous art galleries he visited, and one might
exploring the traumas experienced by his trace some of his later fictional techniques
Poplawski, Paul. Encyclopedia of Literary Modernism, ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uci/detail.action?docID=492233.
Created from uci on 2023-06-25 05:16:54.
Faulkner, William (1897-1962) 103
back to these experiences—his subtle use ing (1930), another example of high mod-
of color back to the impressionists, for ex- ernist art. The novel centers on Addie
ample, and his distinctive swirling im- Bundren, the dead mother, whose dying
agery back to Cezanne. wish was that her coffin should be carried
Faulkner's first novel, Soldier's Pay to Jefferson by her family and buried there.
(1926), focuses on the postwar disillusion- Accordingly, her family undertake a per-
ment experienced by Donald Mahon, a ilous journey, passing through fire, flood,
soldier who returns from active service to and physical injury, until they finally reach
live an impaired physical and mental life. their destination. Like The Sound and the
Faulkner's preoccupation with the chaos of Fury, the novel is divided into separate
a fragmented world and its psychological monologues, but in this case there are 59
impact upon the individual is typically rather than 4. Some of the visual descrip-
modernist. Yet, in many ways the novel tions within As I Lay Dying can be likened
occupies a transitional space between to developments within cubist painting,
nineteenth-century realism and twentieth- with three-dimensional objects often rep-
century modernism. There is a clear sense resented in two-dimensional form. The
of linearity in the plot development and structure of the journey itself has strong
characterization, but at the same time there mythic overtones and this attempt by
are the surreal dream sequences and strik- Faulkner to fuse chaotic narrative form
ingly unconventional image patterns with the mythic pattern of the quest can be
which characterize much of Faulkner's likened to other canonical modernist
later work. works such as T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland.
The Sound and the Fury (1929) was The "sensational" aspects of Faulk-
the first of Faulkner's works to reveal a de- ner's next novel, Sanctuary (1931), caused
cisive break with realist narrative forms in an adverse reaction amongst some critics
favor of a completely new approach. The when it was first published, and in many
story focuses on three brothers, Quentin, ways this novel represented a complete
Jason, and Benjy, who all share the same contrast to the highly experimental novels
incestuous obsession with their sister, that had preceded it. Nevertheless, Sanc-
Caddy, and with the decline of the old aris- tuary also exposes a different facet of
tocratic South. The narrative is presented Faulkner's modernist interests. The plot
through four character monologues in a focuses on Temple Drake, a well-off white
manner strongly resembling that of James girl who becomes drawn into a Memphis
Joyce. The style of each monologue underworld of violence and prostitution.
closely mirrors the typical thought pro- Much of the shocked critical reaction to
cesses and voice style of the particular the novel was caused by the inclusion of a
character in question and Faulkner here scene in which Temple is raped with a corn
clearly adopts the modernist move away cob, but, arguably, this is an example of
from omniscient narration and towards Faulkner's concern to strip off the respect-
subjective viewpoints. The section attrib- able veneer of a certain stratum of middle
uted to Benjy, the mentally retarded class society and expose disturbing areas
brother, for example, uses short sentences of experience in ways which would defam-
and a very limited range of vocabulary, iliarize the reader's perceptions. Although
whereas Quentin, the suicidal intellectual, the overall form of Sanctuary may not be
is given a much more complex linguistic as innovative as The Sound and the Fury
style. or As I Lay Dying, some of its visual de-
Faulkner followed up the success of scriptions are still strikingly expressionis-
The Sound and the Fury with As I Lay Dy- tic.
104 Faulkner, William (1897-1962)
Light in August (1932) tackles the sub- Faulkner's previous novels, although the
ject of racial prejudice in the South. The form and content of the novel is no less
central character, Joe Christmas, is of modernist in its orientation. Faulkner dra-
mixed race, and he has had an unhappy matizes two juxtaposed stories. One con-
childhood, first in an orphanage and then centrates on a convict and explores the
in an extremely strict religious household. way popular literature has given him ro-
In later life he kills his ex-lover and is fi- mantic notions of the life of a train robber.
nally hounded to a violent death. Juxta- The other focuses on Harry and Charlotte,
posed against this story is the ongoing a couple who flee the constrictions of mod-
journey of Lena Grove, a pregnant woman ern civilization in search of an ideal ro-
who sets off in search of the lover who has mantic love. Faulkner's allusion to and
deserted her. Faulkner here evokes an denigration of other forms of pulp fiction
acute sense of the injustices done to the displays his self-reflexivity as a modernist
individual within a specific social context, artist, and shows him self-consciously in-
and within a larger framework of deeply terrogating the craft of fiction by challeng-
resonant religious imagery—though in ing the parameters of particular genres.
typically modernist fashion, Faulkner The novel Intruder in the Dust (1948)
evokes Biblical parallels only to invert
marks the end of Faulkner's great period
them. For example, Joe Christmas's lynch-
as a modernist writer. Although he contin-
ing symbolizes a kind of crucifixion; but
ued writing into the next decade, subse-
there is no sense in which his death rep-
quent works such as A Fable (1954) move
resents a divine sacrifice or renewal for the
away from the typical concerns of mod-
community, as he himself is guilty of the
ernism in both form and content. Intruder
crime that he commits, and the men who
in the Dust, however, deals with Lucas
kill him have fixed racist views.
Beauchamp, a black man accused of mur-
Faulkner's next novel, Absalom, Ab- der, and again reveals Faulkner's interest
salom! (1936) shares some thematic par- in taking an established genre—here, the
allels with his preceding one. The story is
detective story—and using it as a vehicle
set against the background of the Civil
to expose deeply paradoxical attitudes to-
War, and it traces the life of Thomas Sut-
wards issues such as race. Faulkner is not
pen, a character who, despite humble ori-
concerned to follow "the rules of the
gins, builds up a powerful estate. Sutpen
game" of the detective novel, but rather to
abandons his first wife in Haiti, and she
violate them, systematically challenging
subsequently gives birth to a son, Charles
the familiar generic distinctions between
Bon, who later reappears to haunt Sutpen.
the roles of villain, victim, and detective.
Faulkner's modernist interest in exploring
extreme states of mind and sexual taboos Faulkner's most highly experimental
group of short stories is Go Down, Moses
is strongly in evidence here in the explo-

ration of the South's concern with misce- (1942), an interlinked collection centering
genation, which Faulkner exposes as a on the McCaslin family. The most famous
locus of paradoxical desire and repulsion. of the stories in this group is "The Bear,"
Absalom, Absalom! is again narrated from which tells of the attempt to shoot the elu-
different viewpoints, with rapid shifts sive bear called Old Ben. Faulkner here
backwards and forwards in time, and the explores how new technological develop-
instability of spatial form is interestingly ments, symbolized by the railway, threaten
represented by the destruction of the house to destroy ancient rural ways of life such
which Sutpen builds. as those associated with the forest; but,
The Wild Palms (1939) deals more di- as with Absalom, Absalom!, he is also
rectly with romantic love than any of deeply critical of the legacy of the white
Faulkner, William (1897-1962) 105
slaveholding society which, unable to an important role in providing a certain

emancipate itself from the specter of mis- kind of critical reception of Faulkner
cegenation, resists social change. which stressed the modernist aesthetic
Another aspect to Faulkner's relation- qualities of his work rather than his
ship with modernism is his interest in cin- Southern regionalism. Faulkner was also
ema. In 1933, Faulkner worked at MGM appropriated into a tradition of French ex-
on a film entitled Today We Live, based on istentialism by writers such as Jean-Paul
his short story "Turn About." He also col- Sartre.
laborated with Howard Hawks at 20th A subject of intense debate in recent
Century Fox from 1935-1936 on another Faulkner scholarship has also been his im-
film called A Road to Glory. The screen- pact upon Hispanic American writing.
play for this film was written at the same Contemporary writers such as the Colom-
time as Absalom, Absalom! and Today We bian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Mexican
Live contains resonances of The Sound Carlos Fuentes, and the Peruvian Mario
and the Fury. The films concentrate upon Vargas Llosa, have readily admitted to
a blind male protagonist who undertakes a having been impressed by Faulkner's
suicidal journey in the pursuit of love. Al- work. The reason often cited for Faulkner's
though the actual form of these films was continuing appeal in Latin America partly
not radically avant-garde in the manner of derives from his modernist credentials.
Faulkner's novels, the themes of alienation Latin American novelists were trying to
of the individual, self-destruction, and ex- break free of constraining indigenous and
istential angst are typical modernist tropes Spanish models, and Faulkner's innova-
which dominate both the fiction and the tions in form and technique breathed fresh
films. Faulkner's relationship with Holly- life into stultifying literary traditions.
wood is most famous for the work he pro- Faulkner first appeared on the Latin
duced with Warner Brothers, from 1942- American scene in the 1930s, partly as a
1945. He made a considerable impact on result of the influence of the French recep-
the genre of film noir through his collab- tion of Faulkner. Several articles by Coin-
orations on The Big Sleep and To Have and dreau were published and translated in the
Have Not. Although much of his most ex- Argentine journal SW: In the 1940s articles
perimental writing did not materialize on and translations of Faulkner's works also
to screen, the fact that Faulkner was ex- began to appear in the Uruguayan journal
posed to the process of film making for Marcha, which like Sur, was keen to as-
extended periods gave him opportunities similate new modernist writers and artists
to observe alternative ways of rendering from the international scene. In the 1950s
visual effects. The rapid shifts from scene in Mexico Faulkner began to be translated
to scene which are common within his and reviewed, although his impact here
novels, for example, have affinities with was not as great as in Uruguay or Argen-
film montage techniques. tina, part of the reason being Mexico's re-
Faulkner's legacy as a modernist sistance to U.S. cultural influences, which
writer has had a profound impact upon the were often inextricably linked with forms
broader international scene, and has influ- of imperialism.
enced the development of modernism The number of translations and re-
within countries outside the United States. views of Faulkner soared dramatically in
The French were the first to exhibit an in- the 1950s throughout much of Latin
terest in translating and publishing Faulk- America. It was also during this period that
ner's works in the 1930s and 1940s. Critics Faulkner himself took several trips abroad
such as Maurice Edgar Coindreau played as a kind of cultural ambassador for the
106 Feminism 1890-1940
United States In 1954, he attended an in- try into higher education and the profes-
ternational writers' conference in Sao sions and even call for voting rights.
Paulo, Brazil, and in 1961 he made an ap- By the 1880s women's organizations
pearance in Venezuela. Both visits ensured had become an important element in the
his reputation as a modernist writer who Labor movement. Working-class activists
was capable of injecting fresh impetus into became particularly prominent in the
the literary traditions of foreign nations, a Women's Cooperative Guild (founded in
process which is still continuing today. 1883), and went on to form the Women's
Trade Union League, Women's Industrial
Helen Oakley Council, Women's Labour League and Fa-
Selected Bibliography bian Women's Group. In the 1890s there
Blotner, Joseph. Faulkner: A Biography. London: was a massive surge in cross-class and
Chatto and Windus, 1974. cross-party feminist campaigns for full cit-
Gray, Richard. The Life of William Faulkner: A izenship. By 1897 coordination of these
Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwells, 1996.
organizations produced a federation, the
Harrington, Evans, and Abadie, Ann J., eds. Faulk-
ner, Modernism and Film: Faulkner and Yok- National Union of Women's Suffrage So-
napatawpha, 1978. Jackson: Mississippi UP, cieties. The constitutionalists, under the
1979. leadership of Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Minter, David. William Faulkner: His Life and Work were termed "suffragists." More militant
Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, "suffragettes," willing to take direct ac-
1980.
tion, looked to Emmeline Pankhurst, who
Moreland, Richard C. Faulkner and Modernism: Re-
reading and Rewriting. Wisconsin: Wisconsin in 1903 founded the Women's Social and
UP, 1990. Political Union in Manchester. Fiction at
Singal, Daniel J. William Faulkner: the Making of a the end of the century became preoccupied
Modernist. Chapel Hill and London: Carolina with controversy over the "new woman" or
UP, 1997. "feminist" as she was beginning to be
called (Caine 135-47). This younger gen-
Feminism 1890-1940 eration of firebrands, it was feared, might
reject marriage and motherhood alto-
The movement to extend the role of women gether. Novels featuring The New Woman
in society that we now term feminism de- included Sarah Grand's The Beth Book
rived from the Enlightenment concept of (1897), George Gissing's The Odd Women
natural rights, which produced various (1893), Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure
forms of egalitarian ideas in the French (1896), and Emma Brooke's The Superflu-
Revolution. During the nineteenth century ous Woman.
British feminism gathered strength from World War I brought a lessening of
Owenite socialism on the left. But it also suffragist activism because some feminists
benefited from the way evangelical women divided their time with supporting the
had entered the public sphere at a time of peace campaign, while many concentrated
religious revivalism. Throwing themselves on working for the war effort. In recogni-
into voluntary social work as an extension tion of female patriotic support, on Feb-
of woman's conventional maternal role, ruary 30, 1918, British women over thirty
women had become the backbone of nu- with a property qualification were enfran-
merous philanthropic causes. Feminists chised. This partial success contributed to
could therefore draw upon a wide spectrum some lessening of urgency and the relative
of support in campaigns to reform the prop- disunity over priorities which character-
erty and divorce laws; to crusade against ized the postwar women's movement. It
state-regulated prostitution; to demand en- faced an uphill task, for there was a
Feminism 1890-1940 107
strongly antifeminist backlash. Despite the Union of Women's Suffrage Societies now
1919 Sex Disqualification Removal Act, a changed its name to the National Union of
marriage bar was introduced in many pro- Societies for Equal Citizenship and, led by
fessions to rid the workplace of the women Eleanor Rathbone, aimed for a broader ap-
who had replaced men during the war. peal by focusing on women's particular
Women were now expected to choose be- needs in their domestic role. This could be
tween a career and marriage. Demobilized criticized as endorsing conventional fem-
soldiers resented the feminists' demands ininity. But many "new" feminists also
for the right to work and for equal pay, and wanted to improve the lives of working-
the "surplus" of unmarried women was class women. They campaigned for family
perceived as a burden. Sexologists like allowances, birth control advice, and the
Havelock Ellis proclaimed what Queen raising of the age of consent. Achieve-
Victoria had refused to believe—the exis- ments of the decade included the Equal
tence of homosexuality in women—so sin- Franchise Act (1928), the Matrimonial
gle women were also suspected as possible Causes Act (1923) which equalized di-
"inverts." vorce, and the Guardianship of Infants Act
Though some Western states pio- (1925) which allowed divorced women
neered equal suffrage, feminism had ini- custody of their children.
tially progressed more slowly in the The thirties would see a diminution of
United States than Britain, for the nine- feminist political activity but the debates
teenth-century domestic ideal of "the an- on different strategies and emphases
gel in the house" was even more highly within the movement produced a prolifer-
idealized in the republic, and its labor ation of theoretical publications from the
movement weaker and less interested in mid-twenties on (Caine 209). These in-
women's rights. But American women cluded Eleanor Rathbone's The Disinher-
were quicker in breaking into higher edu- ited Family (1924), greeted by Time and
cation, and had a higher profile leading Tide as "perhaps the most important femi-
consumers' leagues and temperance so- nist text since Mill's Subjection of
cieties. By World War I, the American Women"', "Ray" Strachey's "The Cause"
women's movement had become a dy- (1928), a classic history of British femi-
namic broadly-based alliance addressing nism; Winifred Holtby's Women in a
many issues as well as the emancipation Changing Civilisation (1935); Virginia
of women. Suffragist militancy increased Woolf's A Room of Ones Own (1928)
after correspondence and visits from the which many placed alongside Mary Woll-
British feminists. This and the political stonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of
clout of women's moral crusades eventu- Woman (1792) in importance to the move-
ally prevailed and American women ment; and Woolf's even more radical
achieved suffrage parity with men in Three Guineas (1938).

1920. Like most modernist writers, Woolf
By the mid-1920s it was apparent that maintained a certain distance from politi-
there was a clear divergence in the British cal activism. She presented herself as giv-
women's movement between old equal ing an individual perspective in her
rights feminism and new welfare feminism journalism and in the lectures to women's
(Law 161). The former, led by Lady Rhon- groups and colleges in which she worked
dda (Margaret Haig), the novelist Winifred out the ideas later embodied in her femi-
Holtby and the "Six Point Group," con- nist books. Nevertheless she was closely
centrated on political emancipation and involved with the Women's Cooperative
entry to the professions. But the National Guild, wrote for Lady Rhondda's Time and
108 Feminism 1890-1940
Tide and moved among feminist circles: Reaction against the rise of feminism
Pippa and Ray Strachey, and Margaret was a prime factor in the crisis of mascu-
Llewellyn Davies were close friends. linity, coinciding as it did with the demise
Woolf's texts were particularly important of the cult of martial heroism in the car-
for the direction of late twentieth-century nage of Flanders, the first mass war after
feminism in that they argue for "new" or industrialization. This shows itself in the
"difference" feminism (a separate tradition depiction by male modernists of weak
of women's writing and aesthetics in A male protagonists at the mercy of complex
Room of One s Own, the identification of external forces, ironized or ridiculed as in-
women with peace and men with war and capable of the romantic heroism of the past
fascism in Three Guineas) yet imbue this (Joyce's Bloom in Ulysses, T. S. Eliot's J.
supposedly "softer" feminism with a rad- Alfred Prufrock, Lawrence's Clifford
ical edge. A Room of One s Own takes a Chatterley in Lady Chatterley s Lover,
materialist stance: arguing that economic Chaplin's tramp, Kafka's K, Beckett's
equality is necessary to give women the Hamm in Endgame). Sexually inadequate
ideological independence from men that protagonists may be juxtaposed with sex-
would establish their own distinct literary ually experienced women who are some-
tradition as a primary source of cultural times feminists (Molly Bloom in Ulysses,
authority. Three Guineas is a refusal of fe- Clara and Mrs. Morel in Lawrence's Sons
male patriotism in the face of impending and Lovers). The feminine is thus ambi-
war, in its angry indictment of the milita- valently portrayed and Marianne DeKoven
rism and tendency towards fascism of pa- (25) has interpreted this as prompted by an
triarchy. unresolved contradiction between fear of
It is apparent from the above account and desire for empowered women.
that the "first wave" of feminism coincided Since the "second wave" of feminism
with the rise of literary modernism. In- began in the 1970s, feminist critics have
deed, a repudiation of the perceived effem- recuperated many female modernist writ-
inacy of Victorian sentimentalism and yet ers, crucial to the founding and develop-
a revulsion against the empowered New ment of the movement, but marginalized
Woman gave a distinctly masculinist char- by the mid-twentieth-century New Critics
acter to modernism, which prized aesthetic who shared the masculinist tendency of the
innovation over accessibility and objective modernists. These include H. D. (Hilda
precision over sensibility. Unsurprisingly, Doolittle), Gertrude Stein, Djuna
the Anglo-American canon of high mod- Barnes, Marianne Moore, Dorothy
ernist writers which held sway for forty Richardson, Katherine Mansfield, Mina
years was entirely male: James Joyce, Loy, Kate Chopin, Amy Lowell, Nancy
T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Cunard, Rose Macaulay, Charlotte Mew,
W. B. Yeats, Joseph Conrad. Avant-garde May Sinclair, Rebecca West, Jean Rhys,
modernists, however, have been accused of Anai's Nin, Stevie Smith, Zora Neale
elitism in their fetishization of Art and Hurston, and Willa Cather. Virginia
their withdrawal from political or social Woolf, who had been the one exception of
engagement. Misogyny, racism, and anti- a female modernist allowed into the canon,
Semitism may be found in many modern- had been patronized as lightweight and
ist texts, generated by fear of the social solely concerned with ahistorical subjec-
upheaval which followed the World War I: tivity within the private world of memories
the triumph of the Bolsheviks in Russia, and sensations. But late twentieth-century
and the rise of democracy and feminism feminist critics revalued Woolf by contex-
throughout Europe. tualizing her work in the female literary
Feminism 1890-1940 109
tradition and by recognizing that not only (and see also Benstock) provide a histori-
her feminist polemics and journalism but cist and contextual, rather than thematic,
also her fiction emanate from her intense approach to female modernists, uncover-
engagement with the feminist movement. ing networks of women writers and pub-
For Woolf's feminist politics may be ap- lishers, and exploring the way their texts
prehended not merely through her subject were circulated and published. These
matter (sapphism, the woman artist, lives women can be seen to have rejected patri-
of women) but, most importantly, in her archal norms in their lives and their writ-
literary style itself. Her disruption of linear ing simultaneously.
plotting, foregrounding of fictionality, and The extent and importance of female
dispersal of the authority of the omniscient modernist writing has now been firmly es-
author into multiple points of view, her tablished—not just as a separate enclave
fragmentation of stable social identity, but as central to the movement. Moreover,
may all be seen as intimately connected the rise and subsequent decline of the
with her desire to find a specifically fem- feminist movement between 1890 and
inine sentence and style. Contemporary 1940 can be seen as one of the most im-
feminist critics have found much in com- portant catalysts for literary modernism,
mon between Woolf's subversive and pa- whether male or female authored. The
rodic repudiation of the conventions of questioning of conventional gender roles
realism and the ideas of French feminists which ensued inspired frank literary ex-
like Helene Cixous and Julia Kristeva, in plorations of diverse forms of sexuality.
their association of the semiotic with the Disillusion with traditional categories of
feminine in its disruption of the Symbolic stable, fixed identity also generated artistic
in writing. Linear plotting, an omniscient experimentation in representing subjectiv-
author, traditional realist techniques and ity as fragmented and fluid. Revisioning
closure, on the other hand, have been seen the dynamics of gender offered new in-
as reflecting and therefore validating pa- sights into the ideologies of war and im-
triarchal law. perialism. Feminist thought during the
Gilbert and Gubar {The Female Imag- period also acted as an important critique
ination 2-3) have posited not only male of the modernist guru, Sigmund Freud,
and female modernisms but even mascu- questioning the male-centered nature of
linist and feminist modernisms. They sug- the Oedipal family romance at the heart of
gest that many female-authored texts psychoanalysis. The ongoing political
express exuberance at the breakdown of agenda of feminism, even after suffrage
traditional structures rather than the anxi- had been achieved, continued to provoke
ety and fear of male canonical authors. It ambivalent reactions to social change:
may even be, they continue, that women both fear and exhilaration at the prospect
writers broke with their nineteenth- of the dissolution of the primary patriar-
century precursors precisely because they chal institutions of marriage and the fam-
were inspired by the prospect that femi- ily.
nism offered release from confinement.
Caroline Franklin
While such a polemical argument force-
fully expresses the revision of literary Selected Bibliography
history that second wave feminism neces- Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris,
sitates, its generalizing tendency has the 1900-1940. London: Virago, 1987.
Bolt, Christine. The Women's Movements in the
disadvantage of eliding somewhat the im- United States and Britain from the 1790s to the
portant differences between female mod- 1920s. Amherst, MA: U of Massachusetts P,
ernist writers. Hanscombe and Smyers 1993.
110 Film and Modernism
Caine, Barbara. English Feminism 1780-1980. Ox- ciety. Until sound erected linguistic
ford: Oxford UP, 1997. barriers in 1928, film promised to fulfill
DeKoven, Marianne. Rich and Strange: Gender,
History, Modernism. Princeton, Princeton UP, modernism's internationalist aspirations.
1991. Yet film also facilitated national ideolo-
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Writing Beyond the End- gies. Cameras occasioned imperialist
ing: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century spectacles such as the first public British
Women Writers. Bloomington: Indiana UP,
royal wedding (1911), to popularize the
1985.
Elliott, Bridget and Wallace, Jo-Ann. Women Artists
monarchy, widely perceived as German, in
and Writers: Modernist (Im)Positionings. Lon- preparation for war. United States immi-
don and New York: Routledge, 1994. grants were addressed as Americans and
Felski, Rita. The Gender of Modernity. Cambridge, warned, by commercial interests, against
MA: Harvard UP, 1996. "decadent" French films.
Friedman, Ellen and Fuchs, Miriam, eds. Breaking
the Sequence: Women s Experimental Fiction. Many modernists embraced film en-
Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. thusiastically. James Joyce in 1909 re-
Gambrell, Alice. Women Intellectuals, Modernism, turned briefly from exile to establish
and Difference: Transatlantic Culture, 1919- Ireland's first permanent cinema. Pablo
1945. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Picasso, a keen moviegoer, in 1912 inves-
Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. No Man s Land:
The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twenti-
tigated film to animate artworks, but con-
eth Century. 3 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, centrated instead on cubism: imposition of
1988; 1989, 1994. multiple perspectives—like camera an-
. The Female Imagination and the Modernist gles—to fragment and re-present a scene.
Aesthetic. 1986. Ezra Pound wrote passionately about
Hanscombe, Gillian and Smyers, Virginia L. Writ-
ing for their Lives: The Modernist Women
films, and persuaded cinematographer
1910-1940. London: The Women's Press, Dudley Murphy to collaborate with com-
1987. poser George Antheil on Ballet mecanique
Harrison, Brian. Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits (1924), directed by Fernand Leger. Pound
of British Feminists between the Wars. Oxford: increasingly elaborated interest in Oriental
Oxford UP, 1987.
Law, Cheryl. Suffrage and Power: The Woman's ideograms, which forge concepts through
Movement 1918-1928. London and New York: simultaneity and juxtaposition. Soviet
I. B. Tauris, 1997. filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein traversed a
Scott, Bonnie K. Refiguring Modernism. 2 vols. similar route, developing montage (edit-
Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995.
ing) techniques in which splicing separate
, ed. The Gender of Modernism. Blooming-
ton: Indiana UP, 1990. shots struck a third meaning from collision
of existing meanings. Pound had earlier
Film and Modernism launched imagism (1912), a poetic ten-
dency characterized by directness and jux-
taposition; he particularly promoted H. D.,
If "Make it new!" was modernism's rally-

ing cry, cinema, product of the machine who later co-founded the film journal
age, would seem an inherently modernist Close Up (1927-33), which first published
creation. First projected publicly in 1895, Eisenstein's seminal theories in English.
the medium advanced rapidly. Worldwide H. D. herself performed in avant-garde
screenings of Queen Victoria's funeral productions. Surrealists sought chance
(1901), the first truly mass event, dis- and stimulation by transporting a picnic
played unprecedented immediacy. Along- between movie theaters during screenings,
side electricity, railways, telegraphy, and to maintain the distance, the hallucinatory
associated developments such as time otherness, of the images, rather than sur-
zones, films irrevocably altered individ- render to involvement. Salvador Dali, with
uals' relationships to space, time, and so- Luis Bunuel, was received into surrealism
Film and Modernism 111
for their film Un Chien Andalou (1929)— cial pressures that discourage free experi-
not his paintings. Joyce discussed with Ei- mentation. Uncle Josh, like the patent
senstein filming Ulysses (1922); and the theatricality of fantasies by magician
cyclical structure of Finnegans Wake Georges Melies, makes clear too that early
(1939), often explained by reference to or- film routinely flaunted its textuality and
ganic rhythms or models of history, may was a long way yet from the transparent
equally derive from the erstwhile normal realism that modernism in other arts con-
experience of entering a cinema during a tested.
continuous performance and leaving at the Despite involvement of key personal-
same point in the program. Samuel Beck- ities, influences are hard to determine. Did
ett intended to study with Eisenstein; his writers described, at the time or subse-
absurdist sensibility is indebted to slap- quently, as utilizing cinematic technique
stick comedy, apparent in his bowler- (these include Joyce, according to Eisen-
hatted tramps, amalgams of Charlie stein, and Joseph Conrad and D. H. Law-
Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, in Waiting rence) consciously employ filmic style (as
for Godot (1952); he cast Buster Keaton John Dos Passos did) or was this mere
for his experimental Film (1964). synchronicity? Or had modes of percep-
Relationships between film and mod- tion changed generally under the pervasive
ernism, vital as these connections dem- influence of movies? Conversely, were
onstrate, remain problematic. Modernism such parallels consequent upon writers re-
is rarely mentioned in film studies, except sponding to the same modernity that also,
in comparisons with art or literature, oth- independently, attracted the camera's
erwise in relation to countercinema in the gaze?
1960s. Earlier cinema, still evolving, Some high modernists, particularly in
lacked tradition; there were not yet tired the 1920s, regarded cinema as symptom-
forms to repudiate. A further complication atic of debased popular values, severed
is whether film modernism is synonymous from tradition. This was not entirely snob-
with avant-garde, self-defined as an auton- bery: most early filmmakers had no con-
omous artistic practice. ception of their work having anything to
Though film initially administered a do with expression, communication or,
shock of the new, audiences soon adapted: least of all, art. The freshness of single-
witness comedies such as The Country- shot studies by the Lumiere brothers, the
man s First Sight of the Animated Pictures first public exhibitors, lies in close obser-
(R. W. Paul, U.K., 1901) and its American vation of the familiar (workers leaving the
remake, Uncle Josh at the Moving Pictures factory, baby being fed), combined with
(Edwin S. Porter, 1901), which ridiculed, the makers' care to demonstrate the fidel-
on behalf of less credulous spectators, ity of their system as a scientific device.
the bumpkin's attempts to expose reality The charm of Melies' fantasies resides in
"behind" the screen. Cinematic modern- ingenuity and imagination, their un-
ism as alternative practice arrives only bounded enthusiasm for the potential of
after film achieves maturity, decades be- magic and illusion. Most early films, how-
hind established arts, and not always self- ever, were produced merely to sell equip-
consciously part of a movement. Earlier ment. Rival systems competed to supply
modernist disruptions were peripheral to traveling shows and music halls. Nobody
mainstream practice unless, like Soviet would buy a projector without a regular
montage, they could be incorporated film supply, and when permanent movie
into realism. Film is an expensive theaters became established after 1905 de-
medium, largely determined by commer- mand for new titles soared as showmen
could no longer travel to find new audi- genre was the Phantom Ride, taken from
ences for the same entertainment. Movies, the front of a train to replicate forward mo-
frequently directed by whichever actor tion. To some extent then, film was just
happened to be not in front of the camera, another facet of modernity.
became a commodity, sold by the foot. Yet film did bestow a distinct mode of
These conditions nevertheless fostered vision, partly by the present absence of
ways of seeing that spread quickly. (In events depicted, partly by manipulating
1903 the first purpose-built cinema time. The Lumieres' first screening
opened, in Tokyo; by 1908 the United spawned the urban legend about viewers
States had 8,000 nickelodeons.) Yet film fleeing to escape from an approaching
was not entirely new; commercial viability train (a scene recreated in Uncle Josh). If
evolved out of existing ambitions. Optical true, this was not repeated; audiences
toys and automata had long fascinated sci- learned quickly to distinguish illusion
entific societies and exhibition visitors. from reality. If false—although prompting
Waxworks, lantern shows, camera obscu- a good publicity story, people may have
ras, simulators, panoramas, dioramas, folk been play-acting, participating—then they
museums, and panoramic novels all sought were aware of the mediation, never totally
to appropriate or imitate reality. Convo- in thrall. The image was, after all, mono-
luted exhibition layouts suggested spatial chrome, flickering; and a feature of show-
or temporal movement, or created oblique manship, until brighter, hotter lamps
viewpoints, anticipating camera angles. ended the practice, was to begin the image
They involved spectators by encouraging with unremarkable still projection before
identification with characters, represented cranking it into life. Baby's Breakfast (Lu-
by mannequins, and by appealing to voy- miere, France, 1895)—from the same pro-
eurism, integral to cinema from the start. gram—impressed audiences less with its
The only utilitarian function of the Eiffel predictable main action than with leaves
Tower was its novel view. (Visitors to the blowing on a tree. This was quite outside
Musee Grevin observed a tableau of M. the repertoire of artifice, and shows too
Eiffel on the unfinished edifice, their per- that audiences did not yet expect fore-
spective shared with wax workmen in a grounded, centered compositions but
structured relay of the gaze that cinematic scanned the entire image. Thus began the
editing would take two decades to formu- alternation, central to cinematic pleasure,
late.) between suspended disbelief, implying
The flaneur (Charles Baudelaire's critical separation, and imaginative in-
dandy or idler) observed city attractions volvement. Later spectators identified with
anonymously, like filmgoers in the dark. Uncle Josh even while mocking him.
Life itself became a show. Arcades resem- Melies was first to separate screen
bled exhibition halls; store windows dis- time from real time, by introducing edit-
played wonders of production. Posters ing. This freed filmmakers from events as
vied for attention, thrusting exoticism, they occurred before the camera and per-
sexuality, and conspicuous consumption mitted a different ordering, according to
into everyday commerce. Streetcars, per- narrative demands. Other manipulations of
ceived through the filter of dramatic head- time also became common. Shortage of
lines, threatened public safety, stirring a new films caused exhibitors to appeal to
frisson of excitement as they passed. Train jaded tastes by projecting backwards, at
journeys heightened visual sensation high speed, or in slow motion, desperate
through a rectangle from a seated perspec- to squeeze more profit from existing stock.
tive. Uncoincidentally, a popular early film Scientific films included speeded up re-
cordings of plants growing, which were unconsciously exploited. Albert Einstein

immensely popular along with micro- was on the verge of his theory of relativity
cinematography of bacteria and insects, X- (which in the 1920s he suggested should
ray images and, less elevatedly, pirated be animated by Dave and Max Fleischer,
copies of surgical operations, including creators of Popeye). Accounts of modern-
the 1902 separation of Siamese twins, that ism rightly emphasize the subjectivity and
circulated in mobile freak shows. R. W. fluidity of perception common to these
Paul in 1895, after reading H. G. Wells's world views. Correspondences occur in
"The Time Machine," had started patent- early films: many incorporate keyhole-
ing a simulator to transport audiences shaped apertures for overtly voyeuristic
through history and the future; he instead shots; others build jokes around waking
became the first British film exhibitor. and sleeping (The Dream of a Rarebit
Time, which the new century symbol- Fiend, Porter, U.S., 1906); in How It Feels
ized, was a major fascination, commodi- To Be Run Over (Hepworth, U.K., 1900),
fied in industrial production and transport a rapidly approaching automobile gives
schedules. Messages from India that once way to blackness bursting with exclama-
took up to two years, depending on sea tion marks and a fragment of the disem-
conditions, could be telegraphed to Lon- bodied victim's stream of consciousness:
don in minutes. Wireless telegraphy "Oh dear, mother will be pleased."
enabled instantaneous transatlantic com- Social commentators, whether in sen-
munication. If time was money, leisure had sational newspapers, academic journals, or
value. Movies became one way of spend- aesthetic manifestos, became obsessed
ing it. Time was understood in terms of with modernity as pervasive hyperstimu-
space. The two combined in motion, which lus and danger. Workers left noisy, hazard-
movies exemplified. ous factories to ride deafening, terrifying
Trains featured prominently. Chases machines at fairgrounds, where they
were immensely popular. While cinema would also watch films of fire engines
expressed admiration for railroad effi- rushing to blazing apartments. Contem-
ciency, the destruction, absurdism and porary observers, and later Benjamin, be-
anti-authoritarianism of slapstick, a car- lieved shocks were attractive, even
nivalesque confrontation with mechaniza- addictive, antidotes to exhaustion and tor-
tion, manifested a certain unease. Critic por, a principle Eisenstein was to embrace
Siegfried Kracauer and many avant-gard- positively in using montage for political
ists, including Leger, the surrealists, and agitation. Filippo Marinetti and the Ital-
theorist Walter Benjamin, noted this ex- ian futurists (from 1909) embraced such
plicitly in the 1920s. For intellectuals, excitement with glee. (Intriguingly, at least
Chaplin embodied alienation. one cinema, in Birmingham, England, was
While audiences delighted in the Lu- called The Futurist.) Perhaps the Joycean
mieres' Demolition of a Wall (France, epiphany, encountered also in Lawrence,
1895)—or, rather, the reverse-projection was—like T. S. Eliot's return to myth—
with which even these serious documen- an attempt to see through transitoriness to
tarists followed it, so that masonry defied something enduring and permanent, to es-
gravity and soared into place—Henri cape Bergson's universe as flux.
Bergson was developing the philosophy of Avant-gardists reveled in melodra-
time central to Marcel Proust's Remem- matic cliffhanger serials, emblematic of
brance of Things Past (1913-27). Sig- fractured experience and speed. Even be-
mund Freud was examining memory and fore dada and surrealism, Philippe Sou-
exploring rifts in identity that cinema itself pault and Jean Epstein hyperbolically
praised Pearl White's smile in The Exploits in time, expensive epic films, with original
of Elaine (Pathe, U.S., 1915) as "announc- orchestral accompaniments, justified in-
ing the upheavals of the new world" and flated ticket prices that excluded riff-raff
declared cinema to be no mere mechanical and lined the owners' coffers.
toy but "the terrible and magnificent flag Cultural pedigree failed to impress
of life." Rene Magritte featured the mys- some intellectuals, however. Wordless,
terious masked criminal Fantomas (Louis pantomimic treatment of classics could be
Feuillade, France, 1913-14) in a later seen as risible and pandering to bourgeois
painting to represent urban anxieties. tastes. Conscious alternatives evolved,
That some modernists, notably Eliot, committed to releasing the potential of
took an elitist view of popular culture had "pure" cinema, sometimes situating this in
much to do with its anarchic disruption of the excitements of popular attractions.
tradition. Before war and revolution made Leopold Survage, who exhibited with
refugees of European aristocrats, circuses the cubists in 1912, filmed Colored
and fairs were already mistrusted for the Rhythm to explore analogies between mu-
social mobility they represented: rumors sic and visual movement. Wholly abstract,
abounded of dukes working as clowns; neither illustration nor interpretation of
many performers (particularly boxers, sev- music, this showed awareness of editing in
eral of whom became film actors) achieved establishing relationships between shapes,
fortune despite humble origins; and vio- treating hues as notes. Wassily Kandinsky
lent outrage over a motion picture showing and Robert Delaunay also based abstrac-
the first black heavyweight boxer, Jack tions on music, but the expense of color
Johnson, defeating his white opponent aborted this development. Others saw cin-
prompted a United States ban in 1910. ema as translating reality into dreamlike
As novelty faded, educated people saw fantasies, eerily devoid of sound and color.
film as an industry, not an art. Many be- Literary theorist Georgy Lukacs, usually
came disenchanted. Fires, exacerbated by remembered for commitment to realism,
flammable film, cost a number of lives, re- extolled as cinema's "essential character-
newing memories of 140 deaths when a istic" a paradoxical present tense that
projector exploded in Paris in 1897. Adult unrolls elsewhere. Kandinsky too was at-
illiteracy, poor eyesight, and, in the United tracted to film as fantasy: he planned col-
States, lack of linguistic fluency among laboration with Arnold Schoenberg on a
immigrants, combined with cheap admis- celluloid opera for which the composer,
sion, meant theaters were full of children who desired "utmost unreality," proposed
brought in to read the intertitles, increas- Kandinsky or Oskar Kokoschka as pro-
ingly common as narratives gained length duction designer.
and complexity. Rowdy infantilism en- Cubist analyses of the visual experi-
sued. Concerns for morality joined those ence of motion and futurist impressions of
for safety, especially given the armed rob- its physical sensation derive directly from
beries and passionate embraces repre- Jules-Etienne Marey's multiple exposures
sented on screen. What kind of people of moving figures in the 1880s, part of cin-
anyway, when electricity validated tech- ematic prehistory in that they attempted to
nological triumphalism, chose to congre- capture duration. These were known to im-
gate in darkness? portant painters and poets. Marcel Du-
Around 1908 the industry hit upon lit- champ's Nude Descending a Staircase
erary adaptations and historical dramas to (1912), pays overt homage: the swirls of
woo back middle-class audiences. Luxu- white dots at its center resemble reference
rious cinemas, high-quality projection and, points on the suits worn by Marey's mod-
els. Bergson, whose philosophy of form torting mirrors to convey drug-induced

and perception influenced cubists, stated hallucinations. Never publicly released,
in 1911: "the mechanism of our ordinary the film shows close affinities to later sur-
knowledge is of a cinematographical realism and German expressionism. Poet
kind." Blaise Cendrars, who had written a novella
Avant-garde film became discernible in the style of a film treatment (numbered
as a movement in the 1920s, led by poets scenes and single sentence descriptions),
and painters rather than experienced film- assisted on, and appears in, Gance's
makers. Non-commercial, typically non- J'Accuse (France, 1919). Here rapid cut-
narrative, it rendered inner vision rather ting is employed, a technique perfected in
than objective reality. The strands already Gance's La Roue (1922) and his master-
established paralleled modern painting, piece Napoleon (1927) which was to influ-
ranging from rigorous abstract geometry ence Eisenstein and Soviet colleagues. La
(De Stijl, Bauhaus) to surrealism. Roue, though largely conventional, dra-
Hans Richter joined Dada after asso- matizes locomotive power. Leger would
ciation with several movements, and claim he abandoned painting and con-
worked on abstracted black and white ceived Ballet mecanique after seeing a se-
studies in figure/ground relationships. quence, edited by Cendrars, in which
These, a futurist ally observed, resembled Gance's face is superimposed on blurred
musical counterpoint, an idea developed in shots of tracks, locomotives hurtling to-
his film Rhythm 27 (1921), in which black, ward camera, spinning wheels, and recip-
gray and white rectangles relate to each rocating connecting rods: simultaneously
other and the frame on a screen treated as external vision and psychological expres-
flat canvas rather than a window onto any- sion. The compositions of wheels and
thing else. Richter was influenced also by rods—machinery as aesthetics—strikingly
Viking Eggeling, who investigated linear resemble Leger's paintings at the time. An-
forms. The two together produced long other montage portraying a crash incor-
scroll drawings, in which elements inter- porates abstracted forms and familiar
acted and evolved in time and space. These elements presented too rapidly for recog-
culminated in a submission, supported by nition, dizzying camera movements and
referees including Einstein, to UFA, the intercut negative shots. To Leger this ex-
German conglomerate, which granted an- tended the field of vision, presenting not
imation facilities. Although unsuccessful, objects but spectacle.
the project taught that film is different Pound, though he damned La Roue as
from painting, that temporal is as impor- "the usual drivelling idiocy," conceded
tant as pictorial form, and that mechanical these sequences were "essentially cine-
graphics were required as projection mag- matographic," not derivative from exist-
nified imprecisions in hand drawing and ing arts. Film societies, such as Club des
coloring. Both artists continued to make Amis du 7me Art (Casa, founded in Paris
films, some of which survive, including 1921), demonstrated that outside English-
Eggeling's adaptation of the scroll draw- speaking culture cinema was taken seri-
ings, Diagonal Symphony (1921-23). ously. (American poet Vachel Lindsay's
Abel Gance, a commercial director, The Art of the Moving Picture (1915)
was mistrusted by producers for constantly made little impact.) The expatriate Amer-
experimenting; his close ups and tracking ican Little Review had carried poetry and
shots were considered disorienting. La articles about film since 1914 and French
Folie du Dr Tube (1915), a magical fantasy journals contained influential criticism for
in the manner of Melies, employed dis- a literary intelligentsia; these were as
likely to celebrate Keystone Comedies or humans mechanized. (Recall Lawrence's

Cecil B. DeMille epics as to philosophize characterization of Clifford Chatterley as
over film aesthetics. Dadaists used movie man-machine.) A newspaper headline,
imagery in many media. "The cinema sat- filmed as letters separated in space and
urates modern literature," Epstein insisted time, recalls the sandwich board men in
in 1921: Rene Clair, Germaine Dulac, Ulysses. Absence of color and context, for
Marcel L'Herbier, and Louis Delluc were example a close-up eye, achieve defamil-
among writers who became significant iarization. Dodgem rides, games of
filmmakers; Desnos, Cendrars, Goil, Sou- fortune, and an animated construction rep-
pault, Artaud, Colette, Aragon, Apolli- resenting Chaplin, whom Leger, George
naire, and Cocteau all wrote screenplays Grosz and others had been drawing for
or criticism. years, embrace modernity, chance, motion
L'Herbier's LTnhumaine (France, and popular culture in an avant-garde al-
1924) opens on a Leger construction of a liance with "authentic" experience against
rotating wheel and rods, similar to his bourgeois decorum. Prismatic fragmenta-
paintings and the close ups in La Roue. tions derive from vorticism, via Pound, of
Although a narrative, it contains fast ed- whom a "vortoscope" photograph had
iting and split-screen techniques to convey been exhibited in 1916. Twice Ballet me-
exhilarating motion. Inventions such as ra- canique cuts from eyes to whirling ma-
dio and television feature in a laboratory, chinery: compare "Doctor T. J. Eckleburg"
comprising fantastic, stylized machines, and speeding automobiles in The Great
constructed from flat, black and white geo- Gatsby (1925) or the vision of Tiresias and
metric shapes, oriented toward camera and the "throbbing taxi cab" in The Waste Land
defying perspective—designed by Leger (1922).
in the style of his paintings, but influenced Richter situated Ballet mecanique,
also by the set of Karel Capek's robot play Clair's Entr'acte (France, 1924) and his
R.UR. (1920). (L'Herbier reportedly insti- own work in a movement, consolidated
gated a concert hall riot to obtain docu- through cine-clubs that developed an au-
mentary footage when he fell behind dience and provided discussion and influ-
schedule; Erik Satie, Joyce, Picasso, Man ence. Initially better received in the
Ray, Pound, the Prince of Monaco and sev- German-speaking art world than Paris,
eral surrealists are supposedly glimpsed Ballet mecanique was shown in 1926 at the
among those brawling, provoked by avant- new London Film Society (Alfred Hitch-
garde music from Antheil.) cock was a member) and many times with
Ballet mecanique is cinematic experi- LTnhumaine in New York.
mentation, not extension of painting. In 1926 novelist Ilya Ehrenburg took
Time, determined by rhythm and duration, avant-garde films to Russia. Here Eisen-
is divorced from narrative. Representation stein may have seen La Roue or Ballet me-
drains away: an extended shot of a woman canique as his Old and New (1929)
on a swing gradually becomes a rhythmic contains experimental abstractions, such
pattern as no new information intrudes. as a spinning bicycle wheel edited in to the
Rhythm within shots complements rhythm famous cream separator scene in order to
imposed through editing: a shot of a create light patterns, a technique employed
washerwoman climbing steps is continu- by Leger using kitchen utensils.
ally repeated, like a loop. As in poetry, jux- Fritz Lang's Metropolis (Germany,
tapositions and parallels create metaphors, 1927) incorporated the latest cinemato-
tensions between stasis and movement, graphic devices as well as art direction
rhymes. Objects are anthropomorphized, based on sculptures by Walter Gropius and
a vision of city planning inspired by ar- generally, by mediocrity rather than op-
chitects such as Mies van der Rohe, pre- posed to movies outright.) Gertrude
sented in faceted, cubist style. This belated Stein, Arnold Bennett, and Marianne
excursion of expressionism viewed mech- Moore contributed, as did psychoanalysts
anization pessimistically and, in its cri- Barbara Low and Hanns Sachs, who intro-
tique of Taylorism and fascination with the duced H. D. to Freud for analysis in the
city, evidently based on Manhattan, con- 1930s. H. D. especially was enormously
firmed the shift from Paris to New York as excited about P. W. Pabst, whose Secrets of
center of modernity. a Soul (Germany, 1926) dramatized psy-
In 1929 Un Chien Andalou shocked choanalysis with the help of Freud's as-
audiences with nightmare images, includ- sistants. Osbert Sitwell and Andre Gide
ing an eye slit by a razor and a severed were advertised as future contributors in
hand covered in ants, presented in what ap- early issues. Documentarist John Grierson
pears a realist mode but without apparent and communist activist Ralph Bond de-
logic. Here, as in other avant-garde pro- veloped key ideas in the journal's pages,
ductions, such as Entr'acte, which in- while its importance in publishing Soviet
cludes a chase after a runaway hearse theorists cannot be overstated, particularly
modeled on a Mack Sennett comedy, the as they became restricted by anti-formalist
modern unconscious is suffused with cin- dogma. Close Up admired Russian and
ema: at one point the protagonist, who re- German films, but respected elements of
sembles Keaton, suffers a pratfall while Chaplin and the epic qualities of westerns
hauling across his girlfriend's room two as compatible with "film for film's sake."
supine priests attached to pianos contain- The editors initially despaired of sound as
ing flayed horses. The ephemeral, involv- an end to internationalism (they were early
ing, kinesthetic directness of cinema, champions of Japanese cinema, for ex-
allowing no time for contemplation, was ample) and because they feared theatrical
the sensation modern art and stream-of- and literary contamination. They publi-
consciousness literature strove for. Dulac's cized artists such as Man Ray and the
The Seashell and the Clergyman (1927), a surrealists and supported "the Negro view-
study in sexual frustration involving dis- point"; Macpherson and H. D. made an
torted images, double exposures, and slow avant-garde film with Paul Robeson, Bor-
motion, although denounced by its writer, derline, in 1930.
Antonin Artaud, can be counted the first Close Up cultivated a modernist,
surrealist film. sometimes difficult, style, blending and
Close Up confirms the centrality of dialogizing theory and journalism, po-
film to modernism. Edited by filmmaker etry, impressionistic literary description,
Kenneth Macpherson, novelist Bryher, and technical advice, and politicized mani-
H. D., it published over twenty articles by festo. It strikingly pre-echoed 1970s the-
Dorothy Richardson. Richardson per- ory in opposing ideological mechanisms
suaded Wells to contribute and obtained of mainstream film, supporting "third
promises of articles from Aldous Huxley cinema," theorizing spectatorship, advo-
and Havelock Ellis and would have solic- cating avant-gardism, fighting censor-
ited a piece from Lawrence had his health ship, and arguing for alternatives in
permitted. ("You know Lawrence loathes distribution and exhibition. The imbrica-
films? Foams about them. I'm sure he'd tion between cinematic and literary mod-
foam for you," she wrote to Bryher, al- ernism—and their status as elite
though evidence suggests Lawrence was a practices—is underlined by Close Up be-
keen filmgoer, incensed, like Close Up ing financed by Bryher (pseudonym of
shipping heiress Winifred Ellerman, from a speeding snowball. Absence of

whose father was the wealthiest man in sound became noticeable, rendering si-
Britain after the King), who also was pa- lent films immediately old-fashioned.
tron of Joyce and Richardson and spon- Costs rose. Non-commercial and artisanal
sored the Parisian publisher of Ernest production became difficult, especially
Hemingway, Stein, H. D, and Mina Loy. after the 1929 crash. Totalitarian regimes
Close Up is interesting too for involv- in Russia and Germany discouraged
ing so many women and because it ex- experimentation, and Anglo-American
amined female spectatorship as a positive documentary-making took a social dem-
social phenomenon, especially given that ocratic turn under Grierson. The Second
modernism is frequently understood as Congress of independents in Brussels
masculine, with low culture its denigrated (1930) liquidated the aesthetic avant-
feminine counterpart. Lawrence, in several garde in light of changing political im-
novels and essays, and poems in Pansies peratives. Refugees found Hollywood
and Nettles (1929) in which he condemns unconducive to individual creativity, al-
hysteria over Rudolph Valentino, was though German directors relegated to 'B'
guilty as anyone in propagating this atti- pictures enjoyed relative non-interference
tude, although his views were selectively and revived expressionist style and mod-
appropriated to justify conservatism and ernist themes of urban paranoia in film
insularity: in contrast to the rigorous ex- noir thrillers in the 1940s and 50s.
plorations in Close Up, the first issue of Eisenstein and colleagues had pre-
F. R. Leavis's Scrutiny (1932) pontificated: dicted in Close Up that exciting experi-
"No film yet produced can justify the se- ments with sound would give way to
rious critical approach demanded (for in- subordination of film to theatricality.
stance) by a good novel or poem." Hitchcock, in Blackmail (1929), the first
In the late 1920s, then, cross-fertili- British talkie, was unusual in recognizing
zation of talent and energy secured film immediately the expressive possibilities of
briefly in a matrix of experimentation in- sound, used contrapuntally to the image,
volving all the arts. The First International in montage. His subsequent career weaves
Congress of Independent Cinematography an intermittent modernist thread into pop-
in Zurich (1929) attracted filmmakers ular cinema: The Man Who Knew Too
from as far as Japan, and established a dis- Much (two versions: U.K., 1934 & U.S.,
tribution network for film clubs. A lively 1956), employs music to build suspense
and positive event, over which Eisenstein's within the action; Spellbound (1945), fore-
presence had a galvanizing influence, the grounding the psychoanalytic concerns of
congress wrangled inconclusively over def- many Hitchcock films, incorporates a
initions of "independent" and "avant- dream sequence by Dali; Rope (1948),
garde." H. D. in Close Up used the comprising ten-minute shots joined invis-

newly-coined term "modernism" in de- ibly, dispenses with editing; Rear Window
scribing such cinema as "mechanical effi- (1954), by contrast, makes brilliant use of
ciency, modernity and curiosity allied with editing principles established by Eisen-
pure creative impulse" and saw as its func- stein's teacher, Lev Kuleshov; Vertigo
tion "to shock weary sensibilities." (1958) is an exercise in point of view; and
Talkies stopped the momentum dead. Psycho (1960) employs Eisensteinian
Enclosing cameras in soundproof booths montage to devastating effect. Another ar-
and staging shots for hidden microphones guably modernist Hollywood film is Citi-
ended the delirious mobility that in zen Kane (U.S., 1941): Orson Welles,
Napoleon permitted a point-of-view shot granted unusual freedom, constructs mul-
tiple points of view within a flashback ema. Andy Warhol's films, accompanied
structure reminiscent of William Faulk- by avant-garde rock music, to some extent
ner's novels, fluid chronological shifts, ex- initiated a gradual, sexploitation-driven
pressionist deep-focus camerawork, sound crossover into Art Cinema.
bridges between scenes, extended shots, Shared language encouraged British
and montage sequences, always flamboy- producers to try competing with Holly-
antly flaunting technique. wood within the United States. While this
Cinematic experimentation consists of held back British national cinema, com-
isolated phenomena after 1930: Len Lye's pared with government-subsidized "qual-
drawings directly onto film, followed by ity" productions elsewhere, it excluded
semi-abstract propaganda shorts for the independent production from all but po-
General Post Office (U.K.) in the late litical and avant-garde practices which
1930s; rhythmic editing to match accom- complemented radical academic theory
paniment by a W. H. Auden poem in and criticism. Art Cinema occupied a dis-
Night Mail (Basil Wright, U.K., 1936), tinctly alternative position in Britain, as-
also for Grierson's G.P.O. Film Unit; sociated with cinema clubs, the only
dreamlike, poetic images in silent films by places where surrealist films or Soviet po-
Maya Deren (U.S., 1940s); lurid fantasies litical films had been seen because of cen-
by Kenneth Anger, mostly made in France sorship. (Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin
but screened within the New York under- (1925) was forbidden to public audiences
ground, starting with Fireworks (1947). until 1958). The result was a highly polit-
Art Cinema, a marketing niche for fea- icized countercinema. This gave vent in
ture films, consciously defined against the English-speaking world, particularly
Hollywood and closely associated with na- North American campuses where film
tional cinema, emerged after World War II studies had become institutionalized, to
when the studios broke up. In the 1950s energies sweeping across Europe, espe-
and 60s international filmmakers, func- cially after the 1968 uprisings.
tioning as brand names, enjoyed consid- Meanwhile the French New Wave (in-
erable freedom. Typically they employed augurated 1959) refreshed, interrogated
devices originating in national film indus- and, in the Brechtian work of Jean-Luc
tries of the silent era—which had sought Godard, politicized both Art Cinema and
to break the synthesis of entertainment, ex- serious criticism of Hollywood by chal-
periment, and art characteristic of the best lenging realist assumptions and again
American product, to compete on different highlighting the materiality of the text. In
terms—and in literary and theatrical mod- the modernist tradition, it made reading
ernism. They explored subjective states, difficult, involving the spectator con-
often involving ambiguous narration, pas- sciously and actively in producing mean-
sive protagonists, heavy emphasis on ing, challenging the transparency that

flashbacks, and foregrounded enunciation. appears inherent in photographic media.
The American underground revived As in the 1920s, a split was perceived
filmmaking by poets and painters, using between the artistic avant-garde, repre-
cheap equipment developed for military sented now by the North American Co-op
use. Refugees such as Richter, who had movement, and political modernism. At
continued filming in collaboration with the 1929 Independent Congress Eisenstein
other artists into the 1960s, enjoyed re- and Richter had made a comic short to-
vived interest. Usually silent for financial gether—ironically the end, rather than in-
reasons, avant-garde film was more likely stigation, of a dialogue. Now, again,
to be encountered in a gallery than a cin- circumstances changed. Postmodernism
120 Finnegans Wake (1939)
(especially appropriation of experimental Finnegans Wake (1939)

techniques and intertextuality into televi-
sion advertising and pop videos) normal- James Joyce's last prose work is written
ized practices previously considered in an uncompromisingly innovative nar-
modernist. The rise of the New Right cur- rative style intended to suggest the noctur-
tailed funding for innovation. Increasing nal dream world. Joyce wrote to Harriet
permissiveness in film and television regu- Shaw Weaver in November 1926 that a
lation reduced the political and artistic po- "great part of every human experience is
tential of shock. Video ownership changed passed in a state which cannot be rendered
the textual status and reception of films sensible by the use of wideawake lan-
and offered easy access to production. The guage, cutanddry grammar and goahead
context within which modernism was plot." He took the title from an Irish-
meaningful had shifted. American ballad which recounts the fall
and resurrection of Tim Finnegan, a
Nigel Morris drunken hod-carrier who dies in a fall
from his ladder but at his wake is revived
Selected Bibliography by a splash of whiskey. The title also al-
Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. New York,
1911.
ludes to Fionn mac Cumhaill, the hero of
Chanan, Michael. The Dream That Kicks: The Pre- ancient Irish legend, suggesting that hav-
history and Early Years of Cinema in Britain, ing died ("Macool, Macool, orra whyi
2nd edition. London and New York: Routledge, deed ye diie?"), he will surely return
1996. ("Mister Finn, you're going to be Mister
Charney, Leo, and Vanessa R. Schwartz, eds. Cin- Finnagain!") to be chastised again ("Mis-
ema and the Invention of Modern Life. Berke-
ley, Los Angeles and London: University of
ter Funn, you're going to be fined again!").
California Press, 1995. But "Finnegans" also suggests that an end
Christie, Ian. The Last Machine: Early Cinema and is denied, as exemplified by the book's
the Birth of the Modern World. London: BBC ending in mid-sentence ("A way a lone a
Education and British Film Institute, 1994. last a loved a long the")—to be merged
Donald, James, Anne Friedberg, and Laura Marcus,
with its opening ("riverrun, past Eve and
eds. Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema and Mod-
ernism. London: Cassell, 1998. Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of
Lawder, Standish D. The Cubist Cinema. New York: bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of
New York University Press, 1975. recirculation back to Howth Castle and
Morris, Nigel. "Lawrence's Response to Film." In Environs"). Thus the "Wake" of the title
D. H. Lawrence: A Reference Companion. Ed- refers both to a vigil held over a dead per-
ited by Paul Poplawski. Westport, CT: Green-
wood Press, 1996, pp. 591-603.
son's body, accompanied by drinking, and
Neale, Steve. "Art Cinema as Institution." Screen to a rising or resurrection. Finnegans Wake
22, no. 1 (1981): 11-39. typically reconciles the polarity of oppo-
Smith, Murray. "Modernism and the Avant-gardes." sites. Allusions to the title recur through-
In The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. Edited out the book (e.g., "to Finnegan, to sin
by John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson. Ox-
again and to make grim grandma grunt
ford and New York, 1998, pp. 395-412.
Soupault, Phillipe. "Cinema, U.S.A." (1923). In The and grin again," 580: 19-20).
Shadow and Its Shadow: Surrealist Writings on The Wake is an all-inclusive ever-
Cinema, 2nd edition. Edited by Paul Ham- elusive non-linear narrative with cyclical
mond. London: British Film Institute, 1991, patterns ("Teems of times and happy re-
pp. 60-61.
Wollen, Peter. "The Two Avant Gardes." In his
turns. The seim anew. Ordovico or viri-
Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter- cordo. Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle's
strategies. London: Verso Editions and New to be," 215:22-24). According to the
Left Books, 1982, pp. 92-104. book, essential human experience recurs
Finnegans Wake (1939) 121
throughout history: birth and death, sexu- Joyce also comes close to modern psy-
ality and family, guilt and judgment. For chology in his treatment of Issy ("jung and
an accommodating structure Joyce used easily freudened") whose split personality
the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico's recalls his daughter Lucia.
cyclical theory of history which postulates Joyce began collecting material for
three ages, divine, heroic, and human. He Finnegans Wake and started composing in
added to this a "ricorso," a period of tran- a fragmentary way late in 1922. Between
sition and renewal. Joyce also made use of March and October 1923 he began draft-
Giordano Bruno's theory that everything ing short mock-heroic pieces that he was
in nature is realized through interaction to alter and distribute throughout the book:
with its opposite (e.g., mourning and res- "King Roderick O'Connor" (in II.3, 380-
urrection). He wove scores of languages 82), "Tristan and Isolde" (in II.4, 383-99),
into the Wake s pseudo-English, producing "St Patrick and the Druid" (in IV, 611-12),
paradoxical meanings and limitless scope "St Kevin" (in IV, 604-6), "Mamalujo" (in
for associations. Yet if that multi-lingual II.4, 383-99, interpolated into "Tristan
work attempts to approach the Creation in and Isolde"), and "Here Comes Every-
its elaborate structure, its elusive meaning, body" (1.2, 30-4). It was during this period
and its universality, it is also profoundly that Joyce began to form a clearer picture
comic in its conflation of laughter and sad- of the direction his avant-garde work was
ness. Finnegans Wake abounds with allu- taking, and he gave it all his creative at-
sions to literature and popular culture, tention until it was published in spring
history, mythology, religion, geography 1939. During the book's composition
and folklore. If Joyce's encyclopedic ten- Joyce referred to it as Work in Progress as
dency is obvious in Ulysses, it is every- suggested by Ford Madox Ford in 1924.
where in Finnegans Wake. Studies of the drafts and notebooks
The central figures of the book's noc- held at the British Library and at Buffalo
turnal world are Humphrey Chimpden have revealed that Finnegans Wake came
Earwicker (HCE) and his family: his wife about less through multitudinous revisions
Anna Livia Plurabelle (ALP), their twin than through a literary method based on
sons Shem the Penman and Shaun the systematic accretion. Joyce continued to
Post, and their daughter Issy. The family revise and reorganize parts of the Wake
live at the Mullingar Inn in Chapelizod, even after they had appeared in various
Co. Dublin. Rather than being particular journals between 1924 and 1938. He was
individuals, however, these characters are sharply criticized by some former admir-
archetypes representative of a kinship sys- ers, including Pound, who thought he was
tem which keeps repeating itself irrespec- engaging in substantially meaningless if
tive of time and place. As in a dream, they stylistically complex exercises. Joyce en-
undergo numerous transformations. The couraged a group of friends, Samuel

identity of the dreamer remains a mystery; Beckett and Frank Budgen among them,
plausible guesses include HCE, Fionn mac to compile a collection of essays justifying
Cumhaill, Joyce himself, and the reader, or Work in Progress. The volume appeared as
any combination of them. The dream tech- Our Exagmination round his Factification
nique he developed gave Joyce the free- for Incamination of Work in Progress in
dom to entwine archetypal and historical 1929. Virtually all of Finnegans Wake was
themes while enacting in language the ac- in print by 1938, either serialized in the
tual processes of the sleeping mind. Freud- Paris journal transition or as individual
ian slips and puns, transferences and booklets. Joyce's failing eyesight made
sublimations are omnipresent in the Wake. him rely on friends to read books and
122 Finnegans Wake (1939)
make lists of words and allusions; and he larly so since Joyce's stylistic parodies en-
retained any dictational or transcriptional compass the Bible and The Egyptian Book
errors he thought interesting. of the Dead as well as nursery rhymes and
The Wake's linguistic complexity and the banter of comic-strip characters such
multidimensional narrative strategies as Mutt and Jeff, referred to as Mutt and
make a concise meaningful plot summary Jute or Muta and Juva.
virtually impossible. However, there is a The Wake contains seventeen chapters
kind of narrative line involving the Ear- divided into four Books: Book I contains
wicker family in a number of situations. In eight chapters; Book II four; Book III four;
the beginning HCE commits some sexual and Book IV one. Most editions of the
misdemeanor in the Phoenix Park, either Wake have the same pagination and line
with two girls or three soldiers. In the en- spacing, and critics customarily use Arabic
suing scandal ALP defends him in a "lit- numerals to refer to pages and lines, and
ter" written by Shem and carried by Shaun Roman numerals to designate the Books.
which is lost but retrieved by a hen Joyce himself liked to compare the
scratching in a midden. The sons compete Wake to the intricately illuminated Book of
for Issy's favors. HCE grows old and im- Kells, and indeed, the Wake is built on nu-
potent, but after death and burial revives. merous complex symmetries. However,
Completing the cycle old ALP prepares to upon reading the Shaun chapter, Ezra
reappear as Issy, and so attract HCE again. Pound wrote to Joyce in November 1926
In composing the work Joyce desig- that "nothing short of divine vision or a
nated the main characters and aspects of new cure for the clapp can possibly be
their identity by the little signs or "sigla." worth all the circumambient peripheriza-
In a footnote on page 299 several sigla ap- tion." The book's unequaled plenitude and
pear together as the "Doodles family," and forbidding impenetrability remain a matter
Joyce included some of the sigla through- of taste: Finnegans Wake remains elusive.
out the book. Their role became increas- As Samuel Beckett wrote, "the Wake is not
ingly complex as Joyce's work proceeded. about something; it is that something it-
HCE and ALP appear under many guises self-
as various encodings of their initials are
used as well as an elaborate series of nu- Christine O 'Neill
merological devices. Their metamorpho-
ses range from the mythological to the Selected Bibliography
Atherton, James S. The Books at the Wake: A Study
geographical; they are aspects of the Dub-
of Literary Allusions in James Joyces Finne-
lin landscape, with the river Liffey and the gans Wake. Expanded and corrected ed. Ma-
hill of Howth serving as symbols for fe- moroneck, N.Y.: Paul P. Appel, 1974.
male and male in a world of flux. Joyce Bishop, John. Joyce s Book of the Dark. Madison,
told Frank Budgen that "Time and the river Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1986.
and the mountain are the real heroes of my Campbell, Joseph and Henry Morton Robinson. A
Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. London: Fa-
book." Other recurrent figures in the book
ber, 1947.
are the four old men who are modeled on Devlin, Kimberley J. Wandering and Return in Fin-
the four evangelists and collectively called negans Wake: An Integrative Approach to
Mamalujo; but they also represent the Irish Joyce s Fictions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP,
annalists known as the Four Masters. 1991.
There is an apostolic group of twelve who Glasheen, Adaline. Third Census of Finnegans
Wake: An Index of the Characters and Their
appear as clients in the pub or members of Roles. Berkeley: U of California P, 1977.
a jury. It is often difficult to attribute the Hart, Clive. Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake.
narrating voice to any one figure, particu- London: Faber, 1962.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1896-1940) 123
McHugh, Roland. Annotations to Finnegans Wake. moved east in 1913 where his experience
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. at Princeton proved to be a formative one.
Norris, Margot. The Decentered Universe of Fin-
negans Wake: A Structuralist Analysis. Balti-
Although he withdrew because of ill-
more and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. health and a bad academic record, and
Rose, Danis and John O'Hanlon. Understanding even after re-entry failed to complete the
Finnegans Wake: A Guide to the Narrative of course, the dangerous attractions of its
James Joyces Masterpiece. New York and world provided him with the context of
London: Garland, 1982.
This Side of Paradise (1920). This was a
popular success because the concerns of
Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1896- its hero, the "romantic egoist" Amory
1940) Blaine, struck a chord for post-war youth.
Blaine's quest for an image of self and his
The fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald is often hunger for experience propels the text.
associated with the decade of the 1920s He pursues fame, wealth, romance and
known as the Jazz Age. It has come to em- amusement and is attracted by literary and
body the perceived spirit of that post-war religious thought. Yet this pursuit of plea-
period of brittle excitement and potential sure and fulfillment is shot through with
disillusion, which was, in some senses, an his sense of an evil presence. However he
invention of the author himself. This is seems to succeed in accommodating this
particularly evident in the short stories presence, which is associated with flawed
which punctuated and, to an extent, funded romantic entanglements with a succession
Fitzgerald's oeuvre. As the titles of the of young women, and the novel ends with
collections Flappers and Philosophers the suggestion that he has achieved some
(1920) and Tales of The Jazz Age (1922) self-knowledge.
suggest the stories they contain, first pub- Critical responses have pointed up the
lished in The Saturday Evening Post and shortcomings of This Side of Paradise, cit-
Scribner 's, resonate with the fashions and ing literary borrowings, under-developed
moods of the time. Yet even in these early incidents and unconvincing characteriza-
stories, such as "The Diamond As Big As tion. Fitzgerald, too, in a letter of 1938 to
The Ritz," where the pursuit of the pre- Perkins dismissed the novel: "looking it
cious glitter which informs wealth ends in over, I think it is now one of the funniest
disaster, the underside of glitz and glam- books since Dorian Gray in its utter spu-
our is suggested. This is reinforced in the riousness" (Letters). However, although
later collection, Taps at Reveille (1930) immature, this text is significant in that it
where the central theme of "One Trip evokes not only the stylish preoccupations
Abroad" is the corruption of innocence. of the post-war generation but also Fitz-
By this time, after the Wall Street crash of gerald's developing engagement with the
1929, the bubble of the twenties' prosper- potent nexus of female beauty, evil, and
ity had burst; hence Fitzgerald's assertion wealth.
in a letter to his editor Maxwell Perkins in This nexus is suggested in the title of
May 1931, "The Jazz Age is over . . . I Fitzgerald's second novel The Beautiful
claim credit for naming it and that it ex- and the Damned (1922) where Gloria and
tended from the suppression of the riots on Anthony Patch relentlessly pursue an ex-
May Day 1919 to the crash of the stock travagant, leisured and destructive life-
market in 1929—almost one decade" (Let- style believing that they will inherit even
ters). more wealth when Anthony's grandfather
Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in the dies. This text is informed by a sense of
midwest city of St Paul, Minnesota. He both the sterility of life and the consequent
124 Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1896-1940)
vulnerability to evil which stems from the classic by T. S. Eliot and referred to re-
privileging of wealth and beauty. Ulti- cently by the critic Malcolm Bradbury as
mately Anthony's alcoholism alienates his Fitzgerald's masterwork. Again the text is
friends and Gloria's beauty not only fades firmly rooted in the Jazz Age and it dem-
but, significantly, becomes unclean. Ac- onstrates the author's understanding of the
cording to Edmund Wilson, Fitzgerald's doubleness of this era. This is a time when
friend from Princeton, this novel is better the liberated hedonism of wild parties co-
written than This Side of Paradise but he exists with Prohibition and the right-wing
still felt that Fitzgerald's imagination "suf- views voiced by Tom Buchanan; when his
fers badly from lack of discipline and pov- old money coexists with Gatsby's new and
erty of aesthetic ideas." Other critics have probably criminal money and when a lei-
suggested that other flaws in the novel, sured society coexists with a working class
such as a lack of authorial distance, stem urban wasteland watched over by an
from similarities between the Patch mar- advertising hoarding. The consumerism
riage and that between Scott and Zelda. which informs this hoarding leads to a
However this line of argument, though sense of the "vast meretricious beauty"
valid, can be over-stated given Fitzgerald's embodied by Daisy Buchanan, whose
satire of the conduct and snobbery of the "voice is full of money." Again a combi-
upper-class characters. nation of female beauty and wealth prove
Fitzgerald's fourth novel Tender Is the to be destructive.
Night (1934) has also been read biograph- The plot can be simply summarized: it
ically, and certainly Fitzgerald's alcohol- is the story of Jay Gatsby's failed attempt
ism and Zelda's psychological problems to recreate the love affair he once had with
have resonances in a text which concerns Daisy Fay, now the wife of Tom Buchanan.
the emotionally complicated relationship, Such an attempt ends in death where Myr-
played out within the fashionable expatri- tle Wilson, Tom's mistress, is run down by
ate life of the French Riviera and Paris, Daisy driving Gatsby's car. After being
between Dick Diver, a Freudian psychia- told by Tom that the car was driven by
trist and Nicole his wealthy and beautiful Gatsby, Myrtle's husband kills Gatsby and
wife/patient. Yet Fitzgerald is also con- then himself. Now the cultural specificity
cerned here with larger and more public and historical reference which indicate
issues, with the tainting of innocence, with Fitzgerald's concern for verisimilitude and
the dissipation of professional and per- which resonate through this plot, might
sonal integrity and with society's respon- suggest that the text can be placed within
sibility in this process. The novel was the conventions of realism, but this is not
neither a commercial nor a critical success. the case. This is not a linear narrative and
The post-war fashionable life of the 1920s Gatsby's story emerges through the re-
was no longer popular as subject matter in tellings and interconnections associated

the depression of the 1930s. Furthermore with modernism. As Fitzgerald wrote to
the focus seems uncertain, evidence of this Perkins in 1922: "I want to write some-
is the fact that it can be read in two ver- thing new, something extraordinary and
sions and Fitzgerald continued to amend it beautiful and simple and beautifully pat-
after publication. terned" (Letters).
Lack of focus and uncertain structure Yet the story is not "simple" in the
are certainly not criticisms to be leveled telling. Nick Carraway is an unreliable
against his third novel The Great Gatsby narrator, revealing this from the outset
(1925). Although sales were poor, it was where he follows a pronouncement that he
acknowledged at the time as a modern is non-judgmental with a judgment. He
Ford, Ford Madox (1873-1939) 125
distorts Gatsby's story; amplifying, omit- son and published posthumously in 1941.
ting and ignoring in an attempt, which After his death, Fitzgerald's reputation, di-
verges on the voyeuristic, to reconcile his minished by accusations of sentimentality
fascination and repulsion with the subject. and superficiality, continued to decline,
As Tony Tanner has suggested, "Fitzger- but a resurgence of popularity has led to
ald's book is Nick's book, but Nick is not the republishing of his novels and short
Fitzgerald . . . while Nick is trying to stories and a wealth of critical material.
write Gatsby we are also reading Nick."
Ann Hurford
Significantly, in a modernist text, the
reader is made aware of the writing itself. Selected Bibliography
In a further doubleness, Nick is both Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Letters ofF Scott Fitzger-
ald. Ed. Andrew Turnball. Harmondsworth:
within and without the text, in both past
Penguin, 1968.
and future. This alerts the reader to the Tanner, Tony. "Introduction." The Great Gatsby by
fact of the artifact, that his telling is a F. Scott Fitzgerald. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
narration in the process of being written. 1990.
Through Nick's narrative, Fitzgerald is Wilson, Edmund. The Shores of Light. New York:
not only satirizing the flawed priorities and Farrar, Straus, 1952.
snobbery of a section of twenties moneyed
society, he is interrogating the American Ford, Ford Madox (1873-
Dream. Gatsby as dreamer and vulgarian 1939)
is its embodiment, his "heightened sensi-
tivity to the promises of life" is undercut Ford's engagements with modernism are
by his self-inventings and gesturings. The so extensive and diverse that they tend to
ending suggests the failure of the Dream, have been seen neither steadily nor whole.
and the impossibility of a belief in "a fresh He was born in 1873, the son of Francis
green breast of the New World," given not Hueffer, a free-thinking German emigre
only the corrupt wealth of the Buchanans who became music critic of the Times, and
but "the valley of ashes" where the Wil- Catherine Madox Brown, the daughter of
sons live. That this failure can be read as the painter Ford Madox Brown. Christened
mutilation is suggested in a letter of 1924 Ford Hermann Hueffer, he changed his
from Fitzgerald to Perkins: "I want Myrtle name to Ford Madox Ford in 1919. He is
Wilson's breast ripped off—it's exactly the a transitional figure, evolving from his
thing, I think" (Letters or Tanner?). Pre-Raphaelite origins, through turn-of-
Fitzgerald was exercised by the am- the-century impressionism, into the early
biguities of the Dream until the end of his modernism of Edwardian London, and
life. Evidence of this is the fact that his later transatlantic modernist developments
final novel, The Last Tycoon (1941), is set in Paris in the 1920s.
in Hollywood, the "dream factory" of Ford was at the center of the three
America. This text is fueled by his expe- most innovative groups of writers in En-
riences as a screen writer and informed glish in the first half of the twentieth cen-
with the confused nature of his domestic tury. His friends Henry James, Stephen
and professional life which is revealed in Crane, and Joseph Conrad, formed what
the essays of 1936 and 1937 "The Crack he imagined another friend, H. G. Wells,
Up" and "Early Success." He explores calling "a ring of foreign conspirators plot-
similar tensions in the life of Monroe ting against British letters." All these men
Stahr, a film producer. This novel was left lived near Rye, where Ford conspired with
incomplete because of Fitzgerald's sudden them about the plotting of novels. He col-
death in 1940 but edited by Edmund Wil- laborated with Conrad intermittently from
126 Ford, Ford Madox (1873-1939)
1898 to 1908. Though the resulting works knowledge, deceit, class, and power. But
are inferior to both men's own best work, this time the setting is the war, and English
the experience of collaboration was the life before, during, and after it. In Some
making of Ford as a writer, furnishing him Do Not. . . (1924), the eccentrically bril-
with material and technical confidence. liant protagonist, the mathematician Chris-
In Edwardian London he gathered the topher Tietjens, is separated from his
best writers together to contribute to his society wife Sylvia, and meets the suffra-
English Review, in which he published gette Valentine Wannop. When he is on
D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, and leave in London, suffering from shell-
Pound for the first time in London, next shock and amnesia, he and Valentine al-
to James, Conrad, Bennett, Wells, and most become lovers. The second and third
Hardy. After the Great War (see The War), volumes are set mainly on the western
in which he served, and was shell-shocked, front. No More Parades (1925) deals with
Ford moved to Paris. There he founded the the mental strains of Tietjens' life in the
transatlantic review, bringing together the army: his experiences under bombard-
work of Joyce, Gertrude Stein, William ment; his concern for his men; his morti-
Carlos Williams, E. E. Cummings, Jean fication when Sylvia pursues him to
Rhys and Ernest Hemingway. France to torment him more effectively.
From the late 1920s he divided his Most of A Man Could Stand Up (1926)
time between Paris, Provence, and Amer- concerns Tietjens waiting for and then sur-
ica, especially New York. He died in viving a German attack. It is framed by
France in 1939. His earliest fiction now two scenes from the day of the Armistice:
seems dated: historical novels, romances, first Valentine trying to retain her authority
political and literary romans a clef. But his in a girls' school; then a hallucinatory re-
chief contributions as a modernist are the union between her and Tietjens. Some crit-
superb novels The Good Soldier (1915) ics follow Graham Greene in thinking the
and the tetralogy known collectively as Pa- sequence should have ended there. But
rade s End (1924-28). Ford added the Last Post in 1928, detailing
The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion Valentine's and Christopher's life at Groby,
explores the tensions and hypocrisies of the family estate, after the war, with his
upper-middle-class British and American dying brother Mark and his French mis-
society on the eve of World War I. The
tress.
American narrator, John Dowell, tells of
his friendship with the English couple Ed- Parade s End doesn't have Joyce's dis-
ward and Leonora Ashburnham. He re- play of artifice, or Wyndham Lewis' cruel
counts how Edward kills himself for love modernity. Its panoramic scale, tracing of
of his young ward Nancy, and how he later history, preoccupations with love and
honor, give it continuities with Victorian
discovers that Ashburnham was having an

affair with his wife Florence, who has also fiction. Yet it also continues Ford's exper-
committed suicide. The milieu is that of iments in modernism: the exact rendering
Henry James's fiction. The story is redo- of experience, in all its instability, evanes-
lent of Edwardian sentimentality. But the cence, and bafflement. The techniques de-
treatment is influentially modernist. The velop throughout the sequence, so that
cunning shifts of time, place, tone, and Last Post is structured entirely by streams
psychology foreground the form and the of consciousness. The emphasis on the
telling, and raise questions about the nar- psychological effects of war, together with
rator's reliability and motivation. Ford's determination to see the war in re-
Like most of Ford's fiction, Parade s lation to questions of society and sexuality,
End pursues these questions of passion, make the tetralogy seem ahead of its time:
Ford, Ford Madox (1873-1939) 127
a precursor of Pat Barker's Ghost Road other modernists, it is in part because of

trilogy, and of the post-psychoanalytic ap- the lessons they were able to learn from
proach to war as trauma. It has become him. This is particularly true of Pound,
increasingly recognized as the best English whom Ford "discovered," befriended, pub-
fiction about the war. lished, took on as a secretary, and corre-
Ford published 26 other novels, nearly sponded with for the rest of his life. The
fifty further books, and over five hundred high value Pound placed on Ford's verse
periodical pieces, including reminiscences, was due as much to its critical example as
poetry, criticism, and travel writing. His to its achievement. Pound called Ford the
creative prose is often characterized by a best critic in England, and repeatedly ac-
generic hybridity that is perhaps more fa- knowledged Ford as one of his significant
miliar in postmodernism. His memoirs in- mentors. Two principles receive particular
corporate a high degree of fictionalization. emphasis: that "poetry should be as well-
The best are Return to Yesterday (1931), written as prose"—a view that, thanks to
recounting his pre-war literary recollec- Pound's mediation, was to influence T. S.
tions, and thus covering the period of The Eliot; and the idea that poetry should be
Good Soldier; No Enemy (1929), rework- conversational, should not include any-
ing some of his war reminiscences; and It thing that could not actually be said. Pound
Was the Nightingale (1934), dealing with later felt that the increasingly conversa-
his recuperation after the war, and the writ- tional style of Yeats's later poems owed
ing of Parade s End. The excellent memoir much to Ford (again via the mediation of
Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance Pound, who acted as Yeats's secretary too).
(1924), which Ford himself provocatively After Conrad and James, Pound was Ford's
described as a novel, has more recently
most significant literary contact: their
been seen as metafictional, for its accounts
writing to and about each other was crucial
of the two men's theoretical thinking about
in establishing modernist poetics.
the novel.
Ford was a prolific critic throughout
Ford's other contributions to modern-
his career, and of prose as well as verse.
ism can perhaps best be analyzed under the
His phases of most intense critical activity
related headings of poetry and criticism.
coincide with the writing of his best fic-
As a poet his primary instinct was lyric.
His earlier verse is strongly influenced by tion, and his activities as a literary editor.
the expressive modesty of his aunt Chris- His editorials for the English Review, pub-
tina Rossetti. His Edwardian poems be- lished selectively as The Critical Attitude
come more ironic, testing traditional (1911), have been seen as necessary pre-
modes against modern urban experience. liminaries to the development of modern-
His best war poem, "Antwerp," describes ism. He wrote weekly "Literary Portraits"
for the Outlook from 1913 to 1915—the
Belgian refugees arriving in London. After

the war he experimented with modernist period of The Good Soldier. Here, as in
parody in Mister Bosphorus and the Muses much of his writing about literature, rem-
(1923), a work drawing on his knowledge iniscences and biography are combined
of music hall as well as the history of po- with criticism. He consistently advocates
etry, and showing striking similarities with what he calls "impressionism." While this
both The Waste Land and Ulysses. His remains fundamentally a post-romantic
verse of the 1920s and 1930s aspires to the theory of expression, attaching a high
more relaxed, conversational aesthetic that value to the personality of the artist, it
he had always advocated. paradoxically moves towards modernist
If much of Ford's poetry now seems theories of impersonality, in its emphases
dated, quaint even, besides the work of on self-effacement, the aloofness of the
128 Formal Experimentation
author, the rendering of concrete particu- Formal Experimentation

larity to convey emotion rather than by au-
thorial statements of feeling, and the The period from 1890-1930 was charac-
presentation of intense perceptual experi- terized in literature by "a complex of in-
ence with a minimum of discursive or nar- ventive gestures, daring performances"
rative connection. Ford's activities as an (Levenson 2). Experimentation was in part
editor represent a critical intelligence at the consequence of artistic attempts to en-
work in another sense, of course. He has gage with and assimilate aspects of social
been described as the best literary editor and cultural disintegration. Writers of this
of the twentieth century, unparalleled in period wrestled with the complexities of
his gift for discovering and encouraging new forms while confronted by an unpre-
new talents. dictable, dislocating society that they
aimed to assimilate and even revolutionize
Max Saunders through art—broadening into the vast
realms of politics. Literary innovation be-
Selected Bibliography came a way of attempting to redress social
Cassell, Richard A., ed. Critical Essays on Ford Ma- breakdown: "A way of happening, a
dox Ford. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.
Ford, Ford Madox. Critical Writings of Ford Madox
mouth" (Auden 82). Paradoxically, while
Ford. Ed. Frank MacShane. Lincoln: U of Ne- engaging with and even relying on social
braska P, 1964. modernization for much of its content and
. Letters of Ford Madox Ford. Ed. Richard form, literature (along with the other arts)
M. Ludwig. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton also provided a means of transcending so-
UP, 1965. cial failure, offering an area of conviction
. The Ford Madox Ford Reader. Ed. Sondra
J. Stang. Manchester: Carcanet, 1986.
and cultural pride.
. Selected Poems. Ed. Max Saunders. Man- It is crucial to recognize that while the
chester: Carcanet, 1997. modernist period was characterized by for-
. War Prose. Ed. Max Saunders. Manchester: mal experimentation, the experiments
Carcanet, 1999.
were localized and resulted in a multiplic-
Harvey, David Dow. Ford Madox Ford. 1873-1939.
A Bibliography of Works and Criticism. Prince- ity of styles, impossible to quantify or ex-
ton: Princeton UP, 1962. plore exhaustively. Modernism as a term
Judd, Alan. Ford Madox Ford. London: Collins, cannot be used (like romanticism) as a
1990. broad stylistic description. It is possible,
MacShane, Frank, ed. Ford Madox Ford: The Criti- however, to identify recurrent trends which
cal Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1972.
are prevalent in many of the most signifi-
. The Life and Work of Ford Madox Ford. cant writers of the period, and which fa-
New York: Horizon, 1965. cilitate a contrast with the preceding
Mizener, Arthur. The Saddest Story: A Biography of nineteenth-century literature.
Ford Madox Ford. London: The Bodley Head, The nineteenth-century realist novel
1972.
was characterized by a past-tense, third-
Saunders, Max, ed. Special double Ford issue of
Agenda 27:4/29:1 (Winter 1989/Spring 1990), person narrative in which the presence
1-169. of an omniscient narrator (indicating an
. Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life. 2 vols. Ox- external context or reality) was always im-
ford: Oxford UP, 1996. plicitly or explicitly in evidence. Modern-
. "Ford Madox Ford: Further Bibliogra- ist fiction deviated from such pre-existing
phies." English Literature in Transition 43:2
(2000): 131-205.
modes of discourse: its form was dictated
Stang, Sondra J. ed. The Presence of Ford Madox instead by its preoccupation with the psy-
Ford. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania chological workings of the conscious or
Press, 1981. unconscious mind. Structures relating to
Formal Experimentation 129
external events were therefore diminished ary text (Homer's Odyssey) and creating
or presented highly selectively, and re- episodes which directly correspond to spe-
placed by interior monologue concerned cific chapters in Homer, Joyce illustrates
with reflection and analysis rather than in Ulysses the way in which multiple styles
representation. The stream of conscious- and forms can coexist within a single book
ness method of Virginia Woolf exempli- with great success and originality. From a
fies this technique, in which the combination of third-person, past-tense
conventional structure involving a begin- portrayal of events with first-person,
ning, middle, and end is entirely broken present-tense depiction of the thoughts of
down, and replaced by a flowing stream of the two protagonists, Joyce shifts to a pre-
association through which experience is occupation with symbolism and elabora-
gradually conveyed. Expressionist drama tion, incorporating musical structures and
from Strindberg's A Dream Play to Eliot's parodies of literary and other styles. Joyce
Sweeney Agonistes analogously sought to referred to this promiscuous appropriation
avoid cause-and-effect narrative, employ- and rejection of multiple styles as a
ing dream-logic rather than conventional "scorching" method, in which "each suc-
sequencing. cessive episode, dealing with some prov-
Chronological dislocation and the ince of artistic culture (rhetoric or music
breaking down of conventional structural or dialectic), leaves behind it a burnt-up
coherence often results in a sense of irres- field" (Joyce 129). Ulysses is characteristic
olution, and modernist writers frequently of modernist texts in its self-consciously
aimed to counteract both structural and allusive methodology, in which it appro-
priates both styles and intertexts.
linguistic closure through the use of open
endings. D. H. Lawrence, for example, Stylistic variety, as well as allusion to
"ends" his novel Women in Love (1920) multiple myths and intertexts, is also char-
with an inconclusive argument between acteristic of modernist poetry, such as El-
iot's The Waste Land (initially entitled "He
the protagonist-lovers, Birkin and Ursula,
Do the Police in Different Voices"). Poetry
concluding with " T don't believe that', he
of this period shifted away from conven-
answered" (Lawrence 481). The debate—
tional rhyming and rhythmic structures to-
about whether or not it is necessary for
wards the use of free verse, which
Birkin to supplement his relationship with
facilitated new flexibility and experimen-
Ursula with "another kind of love" is left
tation. Rejecting extended narrative or
unresolved, as the characters' perspectives
epic verse, poets such as Yeats, Pound,
are antithetical, and hence irresolvable
and Eliot turned to symbolism or imagism
without the intervention of an objective in their creation of a more self-consciously
narrative voice. aesthetic method. Pound's "In a Station of
The "end" of James Joyce's Ulysses
the Metro" is perhaps the purest and most

exemplifies a radically different kind of re- renowned exemplification of imagism.
sistance to closure. Here, Molly Bloom's Pound's method, like Yeats's symbolism,
monologue, which slides into a flow of was concerned with the creation of "the
words representing her unrestricted stream beautiful image." Yet imagism's terse min-
of thought, results in an abandonment of imalist method seemed to many modernist
orthodox sentence structure and punctua- writers limiting at the time of a sociologi-
tion. This conclusion is, of course, char- cal cataclysm on the scale of World War
acteristic of perhaps the most strikingly I. New poetic experiments were neces-
original and stylistically experimental sary—resulting in more substantial poetic
novel of the modernist period. As well as works such as The Cantos, Spring and All,
grafting his novel onto a precursive liter- Observations, and The Tower.
130 Forster, E(dward) M(organ) (1879-1970)
Pound's "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" Forster, E(dward) M(organ)

(1920)—the product of a close collabora- (1879-1970)
tion between Pound and Eliot—revealed
the way in which a long poem could be English novelist, short story writer, essay-
constructed through juxtaposing shorter ist, critic, travel writer, biographer, and li-
poems and fragments. In this respect it brettist.
paved the way for The Waste Land, and the His father having died nine months af-
long poems of Williams and Stevens. ter his birth, E. M. Forster spent his hap-
"Mauberley" is also significant through piest childhood years with his mother at
being written in rhymed quatrains, thus "Rooksnest," a house near Stevenage that
constituting a "counter-current" or correc- he would later immortalize as "Howards
tive to free-verse imagism, which Eliot and End." In 1893 he moved with his mother
Pound felt had been pushed to its limit. to Tonbridge, where he attended Ton-
It is necessary to recognize that the bridge School as a day boy: he hated the
formal experimentation evident in the experience and later wrote passionately
work of key modernist writers did not nec- about public school brutality. His educa-
essarily constitute a linear development. tion and his subsequent travels were
Rather, it entailed a constantly shifting funded by the trust money left for him by
process of assimilation, revision, and re- his great aunt, Marianne Thornton, on her
jection, in the attempt to establish a ne- death in 1887. At King's College, Cam-
gotiation between the (often conflicting) bridge, he studied first classics, then his-
demands of sociological awareness and tory. The friendships he forged at
modern aesthetics. James Longenbach Cambridge underpinned the liberal hu-
rightly asserts that "reading the moderns, manist values of his upbringing: in 1901
we need to remain open to their various- he was elected to the Apostles, a diverse
ness, their duplicities, their contradic- group of artists and intellectuals devoted
tions" (Longenbach 125). to the polite social and intellectual ideals
advocated by the Cambridge philosopher
Bethan Jones G. E. Moore. The Apostles group included
such luminaries as Bertrand Russell, Lyt-
Selected Bibliography ton Strachey, and John Maynard Keynes,
Auden, W. H. "In Memory of W. B. Yeats." In his and its members would soon form the
Selected Poems. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Lon- backbone of the Bloomsbury group,
don: Faber and Faber, 1988.
Butler, Christopher. Early Modernism. Oxford: Ox-
fronted by Virginia Woolf. Under the
ford UP, 1994. Cambridge influence, Forster shed the op-
Joyce, James. Letters. Ed. Stuart Gilbert and Rich- pressive Christianity of his childhood and
ard Ellmann. 3 vols. London: Faber and Faber, was able to confront his own homosexu-
1957-66. Vol. I. ality.

Lawrence, D. H. Women in Love. Ed. David Farmer,
After Cambridge, Forster re-joined his
Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1987. mother for tours of Italy and Greece. Dur-
Levenson, Michael. "Introduction." The Cambridge ing 1903 he contributed articles to the In-
Companion to Modernism. Ed. Michael Leven- dependent Review, run by his Cambridge
son. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. friends. His first short story, "Story of a
Longenbach, James. "Modern poetry." In Levenson. Panic," was published in 1904. In 1905 he
Pound, Ezra. Personae. Ed. Lea Baechler and A.
became tutor to the children of the Count-
Walton Litz. New York: New Directions, 1990.
Williams, William Carlos. "America, Whitman, and ess von Arnim at Nassenheide in Pomer-
the Art of Poetry." The Poetry Journal 8 (No- ania. He returned to England for the
vember 1917). publication of his first novel, Where Angels
Forster, E(dward) M(organ) (1879-1970) 131
Fear to Tread, in October 1905. The fol- friends with the Greek poet Constantin Ca-
lowing year he went to live with his mother vafy, whose work he promoted in England.
in Weybridge, where he would stay for the He stayed in Alexandria until 1919. After
next twenty years of his life. Here, he be- the war he became editor of the left-wing
came tutor to the Muslim patriot Syed paper, the Daily Herald, but went back to
Ross Masood, with whom he would de- India in 1921 to become secretary and
velop an intense friendship. Three more companion to the Maharajah of Dewas Se-
novels followed in quick succession: The nior. In 1922 he published Alexandria: A
Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a History and a Guide, and in 1924 his last
View (1908), and the novel that truly es- and most celebrated novel, A Passage to
tablished his reputation, Howards End India. This novel reveals the oppressive
(1910). Forster's first three novels are con- nature of British colonial rule in India: it
cerned to show the effects of the repressive also shows the British tourists Adela
forms of English middle-class life. In Quested and Mrs. Moore falling under the
Where Angels Fear to Tread, Lilia Herri- spell of the country's strangeness. At the
ton visits Italy to recover from the death center of the novel is the mystery of the
of her husband, only to start a relationship happenings at the Marabar Caves: the In-
with an Italian. When Lilia dies giving dian Doctor Aziz is said to have raped the
birth to a son, her outraged family scheme young English girl Adela Quested, but is
to snatch the child away and bring it up in acquitted at the trial after Adela realizes
England. In a tragic finale, the scheme fails that the proceedings are being rigged.
and the child is killed. In A Room with a Forster was to write no more novels
View, Lucy Honeychurch finds love with after A Passage to India. Instead, he turned
George Emerson in Florence only after to journalism and criticism. He delivered
finding the strength to reject Cecil Vyse, a series of lectures on the novel at Cam-
the "proper" young man who threatens to bridge University in 1927 that were sub-
crush her. Howards End is concerned with sequently published as Aspects of the
the future of England: it looks for ways to Novel (1927); he wrote a biography of his
connect culture and industry, sympathy friend, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
and opportunism. Forster's novels are of- (1934); and he published a collection of
ten compared to those of Jane Austen for essays entitled Abinger Harvest (1936) af-
their comedy and their concern with social ter the village in Surrey where he inherited
manners, those of Samuel Butler for their a house in 1924. In 1946, a year after his
liberalism, and those of Proust for their mother's death, he was offered an honorary
structural use of the leitmotif. fellowship at Cambridge and a permanent
In the immediate pre-war years Forster home at King's College. In 1949 he
made two important visits. One was to In- worked with Eric Crozier on the libretto
dia in 1912, where he struck up a friend- for Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd.
ship with the Maharajah of Dewas Senior; Two Cheers for Democracy was published
the other was to Edward Carpenter at his in 1951, and The Hill of Devi, his book on
house near Chesterfield in England. The India comprising letters and commentary,
meeting with Carpenter inspired Forster to appeared in 1953. Forster worked in his
write Maurice, his homosexual novel, pub- own time to uphold the rights of the indi-
lished posthumously in 1971. During the vidual and to oppose the censorship of lit-
war, he worked as a cataloguer in the Na- erary works. He became the first president
tional Gallery, before leaving for Alexan- of the National Council for Civil Liberties
dria to work for the International Red in 1934, he campaigned against the sup-
Cross. In Alexandria he became close pression of Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well
132 France
of Loneliness, and, in 1960, he appeared synchronized phonograph sound, visitors

for the defense in the trial of Lady Chat- to the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900
terley s Lover at the Old Bailey. He was might have been forgiven for thinking that
awarded the Order of Merit in 1969. The this spectacularly beautiful and vibrantly
Life to Come, a collection of short stories cosmopolitan city was the capital of a con-
dealing with homosexuality, was pub- fident world power whose stable govern-
lished posthumously the year after Mau- ment and united people were resolutely
rice, in 1972. In 1980 his unfinished looking forward to the new century. In
fictional works were collected in a volume many ways they would have been mis-
entitled Arctic Summer and Other Fiction. taken. Closer to reality was the assessment
of the journalist Adolphe Rette who wrote
Andrew Harrison
in 1898, "The dominant characteristic of
Selected Bibliography an epoch of transition like ours is spiritual
The standard Abinger Edition of Forster's works is anxiety. It is not surprising we are living
published by Edward Arnold and Andre in a storm where a hundred contradictory
Deutsch. The standard bibliography of his
elements collide; debris from the past,
works has been prepared by B. J. Kirkpatrick:
A Bibliography ofE. M. Forster. Oxford: Clar- scraps of the present, seeds of the future,
endon Press, 2nd edition, 1985. An acclaimed swirling, combining, separating under the
biography by P. N. Furbank was published in imperious wind of destiny." Indeed for a
two volumes: Volume I: The Growth of the Nov- time in the 1890s a wave of anarchist
elist (1879-1914). London: Seeker and War- bombs had seemed to threaten the very
burg, 1977. and Volume II: Poly crates' Ring
(1914-1970). London: Seeker and Warburg,
fabric of the bourgeois society which the
1978. thirty-year old Third Republic had striven
Gardner, Philip, ed. E. M. Forster: The Critical to consolidate but which remained deeply
Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, divided in matters of politics, religion, and
1973. culture. Potently symbolic of these divi-
Hertz, Judith Scherer, and Martin, Robert K. E. M. sions were two visual icons today univer-
Forster: Centenary Revaluations. London:
Macmillan, 1982.
sally synonymous with Gay Paree, but
Page, Norman. E. M. Forster. London: Macmillan, then both new and charged with conflict-
1987. ing messages: to the left, the Eiffel Tower,
Stone, Wilfred. The Cave and the Mountain: A and to the right, the basilica of Sacre -
Study of E. M. Forster. London: Oxford Uni- Coeur. The Eiffel Tower (1889) was
versity Press, 1966.
erected in two years to celebrate the cen-
tenary of the Revolution of 1789 and the
France triumph of Republican ideals; Sacre-Coeur
was conceived in the 1870s as an act of
reparation for the fratricidal massacres (in-
Culture, Politics, and cluding the Archbishop of Paris) by the

Society 1895-1939 Communards of 1871, in the miniature
As they visited the international pavil- civil war which followed the defeat by
ions, many in the sinuous Art Nouveau Prussia of Napoleon Ill's Second Empire.
style, as they admired the banks of the The monumental pseudo-Romanesque ed-
Seine transformed to resemble the palaces ifice on the appropriately-named hill of
of the Grand Canal in Venice, as they rode Montmartre (Mont des Martyrs) took forty
on the Big wheel, ascended the ten-year years to complete and was still unfinished
old Eiffel Tower (for many years the tallest in 1900.
structure in the world), or watched with On the left, Republicans and socialists
amazement Sarah Bernhardt on film with led by Jean Jaures, favored a modern sec-
France 133
ular state with no established church and association, against the political left, were
no clerical involvement in education. They several influential authors now chiefly re-
were the inheritors of the proto-socialist membered for their politics; Leon Daudet,
movements of the nineteenth century and Maurice Barres, and Charles Maurras.
the theories of positivist thinkers such as Edouard Drumont, the author of La France
Auguste Comte (1798-1857), Ernest Re- Juive, propagated anti-Semitism in his
nan (1823-92) and Hippolyte Taine journal La Libre Parole and in 1899
(1828-93), for whom science and reason Charles Maurras set up the nationalist
were the new religion of progress. On the and anti-Semitic movement and journal
right, an extreme form of nationalism was LAction Frangaise. This crucial event
evolving, fueled by the defeat of 1870 and marks the beginning of French fascism.
the loss of the provinces of Alsace and Maurras claimed that France was overrun
Lorraine; this championed the power of with Jews, Protestants, Freemasons, and
the army, the Catholic Church and the re- half-breeds and called for the restoration
ligious orders, fostered (in its worst of a catholic monarchy. Maurras's journal
manifestations) xenophobia and anti-Sem- was only suppressed in 1944 and he was
itism, and campaigned for the restoration imprisoned for Nazi collaboration. The
of the monarchy. The long-simmering hos- polarization of political and cultural atti-
tility between these two factions erupted tudes persisted long after the Dreyfus af-
violently into the open over the Dreyfus fair; the virus of anti-Semitism resurfaces
Affair. in French society and literature in the Thir-
In 1895, Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in ties, with the vitriolic outpourings of Ce-
the French army (who happened to be Jew- line, Drieu de la Rochelle, and Robert
ish) was tried and convicted by court- Bresillach. To the end of the twentieth cen-
martial of spying for Germany and exiled tury France was still coming to terms with
to the notorious Devil's Island prison. As the sinister history of its Nazi collabora-
evidence of a gross miscarriage of justice, tors.
compounded by prejudice and cover-up The involvement of the Catholic
began to emerge, public figures from all Church with reactionary forces undoubt-
walks of life, not least men of letters, were edly hastened further the secularization of
drawn into a protracted and at times vio- the state already undertaken by successive
lent controversy which only partly abated governments and, by 1906, the Church was
with the complete exoneration and reha- completely disestablished, religious orders
bilitation of Dreyfus in 1906. The most fa- were disbanded and Church property was
mous episode of the affair was the open nationalized. But Catholicism was not en-
letter "J'accuse!" from Emile Zola to the tirely tainted with extremism. A growing
President of the Republic Felix Faure, pub- disillusion with positivist materialism in
lished in 1898 in the newspaper LAurore. the last decades of the old century had led
Zola accused the generals, the War Office, to a resurgence of catholic belief and prac-
the courts and the right-wing press of con- tice, represented in literature first by Ver-
spiracy, cover-up, and prejudice. Zola was laine, then at the turn of the century by the
tried and convicted of libel and fled briefly former naturalist novelist J.-K. Huysmans
to England to avoid arrest. An impressive and the poets Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel,
list of major writers sided with the pro- and Francis Jammes. Catholic philosophy
Dreyfusards and they were backed by the was revitalized in the 1920s by the convert
radical republicans and socialists who now Jacques Maritain and by Etienne Gilson
gained the upper hand in the Assemblee and the catholic existentialism of Gabriel
Nationale. Ranged against Dreyfus and, by Marcel (1889-1973) predates Sartre and
134 France
Camus by twenty years; indeed much of liance of socialists and communists to

the vocabulary of existentialism as popu- government in 1936, the year which saw
larized by Sartre can first be heard in the Andre Gide's trip to Moscow and subse-
catholic philosophy of action propounded quent rejection of Stalin. That same year,
as early as 1893 by Maurice Blondel intellectuals were again forced to take
(1861-1949). A number of France's lead- sides for or against fascism in the Spanish
ing musicians were also inspired by their Civil War; Georges Bernanos denounced
profound catholic faith; Gabriel Faure, the Falangists in his Les Grands Cimeti-
Francis Poulenc, and Olivier Messiean. eres sous la Lune (1938), and Celine coun-
Unlike the flowering of "War Poets" to tered with his anti-Semitic and pacifist
be found in British literature, the horror of Bagatelles pour un Massacre and LEcole
World War I is recorded principally in the des Cadavres (1937-38). Drieu de la Ro-
works of French novelists, of which Henri chelle took over as editor of La Nouvelle
Barbusse's Le Feu remains a most power- Revue Frangaise, alienating all its sea-
ful example. Dada and surrealism may be soned contributors (including Gide and
seen as a belated literary pendant of the Valery) as he steered it toward collabora-
bomb-happy anarchist idealists of the tion. Charles de Gaulle, a member of the
1890s, all of whom seem to say "a plague last legitimate government of the Third
on both your houses" to the feuding fac- Republic, warned in his writings of the fu-
tions of the old political and cultural order. tility of relying on the Maginot line to de-
A telling example of this was the surrealist fend France's eastern border and the urgent
pamphlet "A Corpse," denigrating Ana- need to replace cavalry with tanks.
tole France and issued on the very day of
Throughout these turbulent years,
his funeral, in which Aragon asked "Have
Paris remained the cultural mecca for art-
you slapped a corpse yet?" The 1920s
ists and writers from around the world and
were known in France as les anneesfolles,
virtually every major new movement in art
and there is perhaps, in the more frivolous
excesses of surrealist happenings, in the and literature was born out of the coming
craze for popular music and dancing, even together of so many original and innova-
in the newly liberated and uncorsetted tive talents in the studios of the Bateau La-
women's fashions pioneered by Coco Cha- voir, in the bohemian cafes of Montmartre,
nel, a desperate desire to shake off the or the intellectual salons of Montparnasse,
memory of a generation exterminated in or in the pages of innumerable literary re-
the fields of Picardy and Flanders, and a views of which La Nouvelle Revue Fran-
sense that, after the false dawn of 1900, gaise was the most illustrious and
the new century was at last under way. influential. James Joyce and T. S. Eliot
Pacifism was widely advocated in politics were early visitors and Samuel Beckett
and literature and this mood persists until came and stayed. Pablo Picasso was the
the beginning of the 1930s when a sea- first of a whole host of foreign painters
change is heralded by Louis Aragon's who either settled in Paris or created their
commitment to the communist party and most important works there. Serge Dia-
his expulsion from the surrealist move- ghilev brought his ballets russes and Ni-
ment. The thirties see the rapid re-politi- jinsky. Gertrude Stein led the invasion of
cization of cultural life as writers and "Americans in Paris," escaping from pro-
intellectuals attempt to come to terms with hibition and a less than open attitude to
the challenge of Soviet communism in the artistic innovation. From America too
wake of Stalin's overtures to European so- came jazz and the much-admired cabaret
cialists. The front populaire brought an al- artiste Josephine Baker. Paris's place at the
France 135
center of the modernist movements of the of Germany. Rolland remained a distin-

early twentieth century is, quite simply, guished left-wing literary figure, in touch
unique. with public figures from around the world
(Tolstoy, Gorky, Ghandi), seeking to pro-
The Novel
mote pacifism and reconciliation. In 1933,
Many major novelists writing in the with painfully accurate foresight, he re-
first thirty or so years of the century confused the Goethe medal from Hitler's Ger-
tributed to the genre of the roman-fleuve. many.
The term was coined by Romain Rolland, Jules Romains (Louis Farigoule,
but saga or chronicle novels which trace 1855-1972) is remembered above all for
the fate of recurring family members and his vast 27 volume roman-fleuve, Les
social groups go back to Honore de Bal- Hommes de bonne volonte (1932-46), but
zac's La Comedie humaine and, above all his first distinctive contribution to the new
to the champion of naturalism, Emile century began when, one evening in Oc-
Zola (1840-1902) and his twenty-volume tober 1903, on his way home from the Ly-
cycle Les Rougon-Macquart (1871-93) cee Condorcet, he experienced what he
which traces in meticulously realistic de- later called "1'illumination de la rue
tail the public and private history of a fam- d'Amsterdam." Romains had a vision of
ily under the Second Empire, the regime the teeming population of the busy Paris
which collapsed with France's defeat by streets not as depersonalized and alienated
Prussia in the war of 1870. Zola elaborated but somehow humanely interconnected as
his theory and method in Le Roman ex- if sharing one interrelated soul or spirit.
perimental (1880) and he researched his This was the origin of his doctrine of un-
work with all the zeal of a modern cam- anisme which was to influence a number
paigning journalist, denouncing poverty, of writers, some of whom gathered briefly
corruption, and the exploitation of the pro- as a literary commune known as lAbbaye
letariat. His involvement in the Dreyfus af- in honor of Rabelais' Theleme. Romains'
fair at the turn of the century was a fitting poetry, especially La Vie Unanime (1908),
climax to a literary career constantly in the contains many fine examples of his theory
service of humane social causes. which clearly influenced Guillaume Apol-
Romain Rolland (1866-1944) pub- linaire in whose poetry can be heard more
lished the ten volumes of his roman-fleuve, than an echo of this sense of fraternity in
Jean-Christophe, between 1903 and 1912 the big city as a counterpoint to the more
and won the Grand Prix de L'Academie prevailing mood of melancholy isolation
Franchise in 1913, the year in which (one feels obliged to point out that most of
Proust was obliged to publish Du Cote de this is already present in Baudelaire's verse
chez Swann at his own expense. The cen- and prose poems of the 1850s and 60s).
tral character Jean-Christophe is a German Romains' highly regarded first novel

musician ("Beethoven in today's world") Mort de quelquun (1911) demonstrates
and Rolland traces his passionate life and how the apparent nobody of the title is
loves and evokes the "divine exaltation" of subtly interconnected, if only in death, to
his music. In spite of many fine passages the bustling life of the city, in a way rem-
on childhood, love, music, and an idealized iniscent of John Donne's "No man is an
and exalted sense of human fraternity, and island. . . ." In the Twenties, in his trilogy
in spite of the award of the Nobel prize in Psyche (1921-29), Romains explored con-
1916, Rolland's position above hatred and jugal bliss and a quasi-mystical eroticism
above the fray of war was ill-understood at times reminiscent of his British contem-
by a country gripped by a virulent hatred porary D. H. Lawrence. However, in the
136 France
eyes of many critics, the sheer vastness of experiences in wartime hospitals. In a

the novel cycle Les Hommes de bonne vo- more ambitious cycle Salavin (five vols.
lonte which charts the quarter-century be- 1920-32), he charts the neurotic misad-
tween 1908 and 1933, ultimately dilutes ventures of the eponymous anti-hero, a
and weakens its undeniably powerful mo- hopelessly ineffectual and at times self-
ments, not to mention the fact that the later deluded creature (clear echoes of Dosto-
volumes concerning the 1920s and 30s yevsky) who succeeds only in extremis,
were written in exile in America during when he saves the life of a child at the cost
World War II. Apart from unfolding the of his own; Salavin in some ways prefig-
careers of two principal male characters, ures the impotent or dilatory characters of
Romains presents an almost bewildering mid-century fiction. Duhamel felt his
cavalcade of major and minor characters greatest claim to fame was his ten-volume
who lack the continuity and credibility of roman-fleuve, Chronique des Pasquier
such characters in Zola or Proust. With the (1933-45), which follows the fortunes and
benefit of hindsight, the two most effective misfortunes of an extended family based
and poignantly affecting volumes are the on Duhamel's own through the 1880s to
detailed accounts of the Great War, Pre- the 1920s. While there is much of anec-
lude a Verdun and Verdun, (both 1938) dotal and historical interest, and while Du-
written on the eve of France's humiliating hamel was an elegant and readable stylist,
capitulation to Nazi Germany and the es- he does not have the dramatic sweep and
tablishment of a collaborationist regime vision of Balzac and Zola before him, nor,
led by, of all people, Marechal Petain, "the unlike Zola or Proust, is his work under-
victor of Verdun." pinned by a truly gripping ideological or
aesthetic idee-maitresse other than a vague
Few of his successors, though emulat- humanitarianism, with the result that the
ing many of his techniques and his concern overall effect is somewhat inconclusive
for social justice, could equal him in style and certainly inspired no real emulators.
or energy. The novels of the socialist An-
Roger Martin du Gard (1881-1958)
atole France (1844-1924) are more satiri-
made a powerful contribution to the liter-
cal, ironic and, ultimately pessimistic in
ature surrounding the Dreyfus affair in his
spite of many comic touches. La Rotisserie second novel Jean Barois (1913) chroni-
de la Reine Pedauque and Les Opinions cling not only its repercussions in the in-
de Jerome Coignard (both 1893) were tellectual and social life of the nation but
long admired for their witty irreverence also the rifts at the heart of families torn
and Llle des Pingouins (1908) and La Re- apart by conflicting religious and political
volte des Anges, (1914), were compared to attitudes. Alongside the heroic stand of
Voltaire. France was widely admired for Zola and his fictional transposition of the
the purity of his style and well into the
affair in his novel Verite (1903), Anatole

1920s he was internationally considered as France's Monsieur Bergeret a Paris
the single most important voice in French (1901), passages in Proust's Le Cote de
literature, receiving the Nobel prize in Guermantes and his earlier Jean Santeuil,
1921. du Gard's novel is further evidence of the
Georges Duhamel (1844-1966) after depth to which the Dreyfus affair had po-
training as a doctor, began his literary ca- larized French public life and letters and
reer as a poet and playwright under the forced writers to take a stand which a later
benign influence of unanisme and the Ab- generation would admire and emulate as a
baye group. In his first novels Vie des Mar- model of engagement.
tyrs and Civilisation (1917-18) he writes Du Gard's contribution to the roman-
movingly and with bitter immediacy of his fleuve is the family saga Les Thibault (7
France 137
vols 1922-40, Nobel prize 1937). In this themes and preoccupations which pervade
ambitious work, minutely documented his earliest works, Le Cahierd Andre Wal-
contemporary details, objectivity and re- ter and Poesies d Andre Walter (1891-2)
alism and a degree of deterministic behav- in which a fairly naive adolescent conflict
iorism all betray a debt to Zola but there between the flesh and the spirit ends in the
is also a personal and private sensibility evasion of madness and death. However,
haunted by the enigma of existence and the in 1893, in the course of a visit to Tunisia,
mystery of death which the author's ag- Gide experienced an emotional and sen-
nosticism could not assuage. Thibaultpere sual liberation which allowed him to come
believes all answers are to be found in his to terms with his unorthodox sexuality (in
catholic faith whereas his two very differ- late twentieth-century terms he came out)
ent sons, Antoine and Jacques, embrace and after rejecting his earlier persona and
the faith of science on the one hand, revolt the sterility of a dreamy literature divorced
and humanitarianism on the other. Ironi- from life (Paludes, 1895) he begins to find
cally the father dies a lingering death still the unmistakable Gidean voice in Les
plagued by doubt and fear and his sons Nourritures Terrestres (1897). At the same
both die as a result of the war. Only time he apparently bowed to convention by
Jacques' illegitimate son is left to confront marrying his cousin Madeleine. The en-
an uncertain future in the post-1918 world suing prose works which deal with this pe-
(an epilogue made doubly bleak by its pub- riod of awakening and self-discovery may
lication in 1940). Les Thibault offers many be considered as the first stirrings (in prose
fascinating glimpses into the private lives at least) of a genuinely modern literary
and public events, the mood and mentality aesthetic and one which was profoundly to
of the years up to the Armistice but artis- mark many French writers up to and be-
tically and emotionally the work seems to yond Camus and Sartre. Les Nourritures
chart an end rather than point to new be- Terrestres reveals many of the themes and
ginnings. attitudes which run like a leitmotif
From the time of his co-founding, with throughout his multifaceted literary career,
the theater director Jacques Copeau and namely, a throwing off of all conventions
the critic Jacques Riviere, of the influential and received ideas, a quest for authentic
Nouvelle Revue Frangaise (1909) up to his personal experience, freed from the shack-
death, Andre Gide (1869-1951, Nobel les of any pre-existent moral or social or-
prize 1947) was widely regarded alongside der ("Families, I hate you"), a commitment
Proust, Claudel, and Valery (all published to openness (disponibilite) to self, others
by NRF-Gallimard), as one of the truly and new experiences ("every new thing
great writers and innovators of the half- must find us totally open to it"), a burning
century; indeed in the thirties he v/as, in need for sincerity in all domains including
the words of one critic, "our most impor- sexuality, and, since such desiderata do not
tant contemporary." Like Proust, Gide was come easily, an abiding awareness of the
born into the well-to-do haute bourgeoisie. conflicts and caprices inherent in the psy-
He was (again like Proust) a sensitive child che of a lucidly narcissistic individual
but one whose strict protestant upbringing ("Throw away this book . . . find your own
within an at least nominally catholic cul- attitudes [to life]"). The somewhat breath-
ture left him with a profound adolescent less and ejaculatory style and tone of
sense of guilt and difference. His early Nourritures, part diary, part prose poem,
friendship with Paul Valery and Pierre part sermon, are disciplined in the next
Louys and his meeting with Mallarme three prose works, which Gide entitled re-
made him familiar with the symbolist cits not novels, but all of which are fie-
138 France
tionalized narratives of aspects of personal tuit; when he reads to Lafcadio the news-
experience. Thus, in L'Immoraliste (1902), paper account of Fleurissoire's death he
the narrator, after a bout of tuberculosis, reveals that the dead man was his brother-
undergoes a physical and sensual reawak- in-law. As so often with Gide the precursor
ening in North Africa but when, having of modern literary experiment, there is no
nursed him to health, his wife also falls ill definitive closure at the end of the story.
and they return to Africa, he neglects her Lafcadio cannot flee from his own self-
for hedonistic self-indulgence as she lies knowledge but Gide's sympathy clearly
dying, and he is subsequently filled with a lies with this free individual (symbolized
sense of impotence and remorse in the face by his illegitimacy) rather than the con-
of his ill-gained freedom. In La Porte Etw- ventional bourgeois characters who are
ite (1909) Gide deals with the conflict be- mocked and lampooned.
tween divine and earthly love. Here, In his Socratic dialogue Corydon
puritan self-abnegation on the part of Al- (1924) Gide took the extremely daring step
issa (whose diaries eventually form an im- of openly discussing homosexuality, in-
portant element of the recit) blots out all cluding his own. He had disapproved of
hope of fulfillment in love for the narrator Proust's disguising of male homosexual
Jerome. The later recit, La Symphonie Pas- experience except for the more salacious
torale (1919), written in journal form, or grotesque aspects embodied by the
along with the autobiographical Si le baron Charlus. From now on Gide was no-
Grain ne meurt (1926) complete Gide's torious as well as famous, attracting ve-
treatment of material essentially derived hement criticism as a corrupter of youth,
from his own early experiences. The first from conservative and religious quarters
three of these works seem to be polar ex- (virtually all his works were placed on the
tremes of aspects of Gide's own inner life Catholic Church's index of banned books).
but for more than half a century, partly due Gide's courage in the climate of his time
to their subject and partly to their experi- cannot be denied and was another source
ments with narrative form they caught the of admiration for younger generations.
imagination of a younger generation of The much later emergence of lesbian, gay,
would-be writers for whom Gide offered and gender themes as a valid area of
(but very loosely as he would have wished) literary inquiry owes much to Gide, the
a model in life and art. pioneer of coming out. In 1927 Gide pub-
In 1914 Gide described what was in lished the only work he described as a
effect his first novel Les Caves du Vatican novel, Les Faux Monnayeurs, but this very
as a sotie, a form blending humor, irony, label may be a playful irony as there are
suspense, and something of the detective two novels, one taking place inside the
story. In this extremely funny story of the other in the journal of the novelist-
timid provincial bourgeois Amadee Fleu- protagonist Edouard, a classic example of

rissoire's attempt to rescue the Pope from the mise en abyme. The counterfeiters of
a supposed kidnapping, the debonair the title are for Gide not just the wayward
young Lafcadio commits the famous Gi- students passing fake money but all those
dean acte gratuit (an impulsive action young or old who live in what Sartre would
without cause, premeditation or motive), later call mauvaise foi, deceiving them-
when he pushes Fleurissoire to his death selves and others. Gide's sympathies lie
from a speeding train. In a typically Gi- with Edouard who is trying to strip his
dean paradox in which life imitates art, novel (within the novel) of all that is
Lafcadio's novelist half-brother has hit superfluous, incidental, in an attempt to
upon the idea of the very same acte gra- capture the essentials of the lived con-
France 139
sciousness and experience of those who geoisie, eccentric, fastidious and, at the
are "pure, honest, authentic." Like Proust, end, a sickly and obsessive recluse. But be-
Gide jettisons the traditional adherence to hind this fagade, one of the most lucid and
chronological time with flashback, inter- acutely perceptive minds of the century,
polations, and elements of simultaneity coupled with a poetic sensibility of the
and monologue interieur. When Edouard highest order, was tirelessly sifting, re-
(often Gide's mouthpiece) admits he will cording and re-ordering the minutiae of
never finish the novel, he is affirming everyday existence and simultaneously ex-
Gide's view that a single closed work of amining the mental processes by means of
art can never hope to capture once and for which the individual psyche evaluates,
all the flux of personality or the kaleido- transforms, and interprets the given ma-
scopic continuum of duration. Here, in terial of the outside world. Proust did in
embryo, are the seeds of the post-1945 fact have a degree in literature and had at-
nouveau roman. The self-conscious ques- tended the lectures of Henri Bergson
tioning of literary forms and structures, which undoubtedly inspired or clarified his
coupled with an at times flamboyant rejec- own reflections on the nature of conscious-
tion of social and moral norms remain at ness, the role and functions of memory
the center of much of Gide's best work and and, above all, the distinction between le
were widely admired and emulated by the temps and la duree which were to become
next generation. In the 1930s, his intellec- cornerstones of his work. A la recherche
tual curiosity led him to flirt with com- du temps perdu occupied the second half
munism which he publicly rejected after a of his life so completely that his life and
trip to the USSR, and his final posthumous work became coterminous in a way only
memoir, revealing the suffering he had dreamt of by artists of the romantic period;
caused his wife, was one last example of indeed, if Proust has a predecessor it must
his need for honesty, however painful. surely be Baudelaire whose obsession with
Critics in the second half of the century time and fascination with memory and the
have underlined the internal inconsisten- past is encapsulated in lines which uncan-
cies in Gide's thought and the at times gra- nily sum up Proust's quest for "l'enfance
tuitous complexity of his modes of retrouvee a volonte": "Charme profond,
expression, claiming also that many of his magique dont nous grise/Dans le present
characters are not nearly as emancipated le passe restaure!" This is not to say that
as they at first appear. Be that as it may, Proust did not share a wider literary in-
Gide's presence as a very public man of heritance. At the most banal level A la re-
letters (including his journals, his corre- cherche is a roman-fleuve which traces the
spondence and his involvement with NRF- lives and loves, the fortunes and misfor-
Gallimard) did in its own day exert tunes of a number of inter-related families
enormous influence, and his legacy is still against the instantly recognizable and
palpable well into the second half of the sharply delineated social and political
century. background of, for instance, the Dreyfus
In the annals of twentieth-century lit- affair and the First World War. Its wealth
erature, Marcel Proust (1871-1922) of minutely observed detail would be un-
stands alone. Literally, because in his rela- thinkable without the example of Zola and
tively short life he was often perceived as realism. Its sense of the mystery immanent
an aloof and snobbish dilettante, adhering in the most mundane of material objects
to no school or movement and moving which thereby become symbols, would not
only in the closed and privileged world of have been so sharp without the poetic
Parisian aristocracy and the haute bour- model of the symbolists. Its sustained
140 France
meditation on the nature and power of art by turns witty, amusing and profoundly
harks back to Proust's close reading of touching. Its linguistic and syntactical
Ruskin. One could go on but there is a complexities perfectly mirror the com-
sense in which all of this is irrelevant be- plexities of its content and while demand-
cause A la recherche transcends all its ing, never feel over-contrived. Proust once
sources and, like its reclusive author, compared himself to Noah in his ark, "en-
stands alone as a kind of universe of its closed, and darkness covering the earth,"
own which, almost a century on, has not who was yet able to see before him the
ceased to attract readers, critics, film-mak- whole world. From his ark on the Boule-
ers and even philosophers (see Raul Ruiz's vard Haussman and finally at 44 rue Ha-
critically acclaimed film Time Regained melin, Marcel Proust repopulated the
[1998] and Alain de Botton's How Proust world of twentieth-century fiction.
Can Change Your Life [Picador, 1998]). Another world apart, which within its
The twentieth century's growing fascina- own terms bears comparison with that of
tion with Proust seems to stem from the Proust, was the creation of the only woman
curious fact that the further its contempo- writer of real stature in the first half cen-
rary historical and social milieu fades into tury. [Sidonie-Gabrielle] Colette (1873-
the shadowy pages of history, the more its 1954) served her literary apprenticeship
real power and intentions become appar- ghost-writing the Claudine novels (1900-
ent. Above and beyond the specific char- 1903) which appeared under her husband's
acters and the convoluted interaction of pen name Willy and were an instant suc-
their finite lives, Proust elaborated a sus- cess, partly for their frank and spicy atti-
tained meditation on the very nature of tude to adolescent sex. After her divorce
consciousness, personality, friendship (or and during a period in music-hall and cab-
its impossibility), sexual desire and its un- aret, Colette began a highly successful ca-
attainable goals, the delusions of romantic reer as a novelist which was to last forty
love, the subjective and intermittent nature years and bring her both popularity and
of memory within which, for Proust, there serious critical acclaim with such well-
lay a secret fullness of all past selves known titles as La Retraite sentimentale
which could only be retrieved and restored (1907), Les Vrilles de la Vigne (1908), La
through art, and even then, only through Vagabonde (1910), Cheri and La Fin de
the elusive agency of involuntary memory. Cheri (1920-26), Le Ble en Herbe (1923).
The work evolves in, and is crowned by, In La Maison de Claudine (1922), La
an understanding of time which is not lin- Naissance du Jour (1928) and Si do (1929),
ear or chronological, but suffused and il- Colette drew on memories of her Burgun-
luminated by a purely Proustian inner dian childhood and schooldays, and her in-
sense of a temporality which embraces tense and observant love of nature. Of her
past and present, moments and durations, later successes, Gigi (1943) brought her
flashback, digression, inner monologue, world fame through the musical and film.
juxtaposition, and simultaneity. The cul- Colette's novels succinctly evoke the con-
mination, in Le Temps retrouve, is an solation of profound and affectionate
epiphany in which the fullness and value friendships, the torment of adolescent love
of one transient mortal is asserted within and of adult jealousy. She minutely but
a Herculean work of art from which le pithily details the pleasure and pain of sen-
temps, in its hideously contingent Baude- sual relationships and celebrates the plen-
lairean sense, has been triumphantly ban- itude of aesthetic enjoyment to be derived
ished. And yet, without a trace of from the real world of places, people, her
piousness or self-indulgence, the work is cherished pets, houses, and things. Her
France 141
prose style was, and still is, considered a brooding and claustrophobic atmosphere
model of freshness, elegance, and min- of the provinces which mirrors the spiri-
utely observed detail. In the post-feminist tual entrapment of his characters (notably
age, the praise Colette has received for her Therese). While Mauriac's creations are
"woman's world" writing may seem dated often powerful and convincing and he is a
and patronizing. Her works have an acuity compelling narrator, a later generation, in
and freshness found only in the very best the person of Jean-Paul Sartre, accused
writers of either/any gender. That hers is Mauriac's characters of being trapped and
unmistakably the beautifully modulated predestined in a quasi-Calvinist universe
voice of a self-possessed woman in a male- with none of the authentic freedom of
dominated milieu and moment, is in itself choice which was a pre-requisite of the ex-
a remarkable achievement. istentialist view of the human condition.
The catholic revival of the turn of the Whereas Mauriac refused the label
century had a profound influence on the "catholic novelist," underlining his inde-
two young men who perhaps best embody pendence as a man of letters, Georges
the most elevated and non-partisan aspects Bernanos's novels are more narrowly con-
of what one might loosely call the catholic cerned with the Church through the some-
novel or novel of conscience. Both Fran- what melodramatic and tormented or
cois Mauriac (1885-1970, Nobel prize humdrum and apparently unfulfilled lives
1952) and Georges Bernanos (1888-1998) of the priests who appear in many of his
were influenced by the vehemently nation- works from Sous le Soleil de Satan (1926)
alist and anti-Dreyfusard Maurice Barres a steamy tale of seduction, murder, dia-
and the less doctrinaire but equally cath- bolic possession, and ultimate salvation
olic and nationalist Charles Peguy. This through grace, to his masterpiece Journal
brought them dangerously close to the vir- d'un Cure de Campagne (1936), the story
ulent anti-Semitic and monarchist catholic of a humble and pious country priest's
tendency of the Action frangaise move- struggle to serve the needs of his recalci-
ment around Leon Bloy and Charles Maur- trant, devious, or anguished parishioners,
ras and the virulently prejudiced author of at the end of which he dies exhausted but
La France juive, Edouard Drumont. Ber- still convinced of the efficacy of divine
nanos succumbed for a time but was later grace. In spite of his earlier anti-Semitism,
to use his inside knowledge to attack them Bernanos, like Mauriac, rallied to the
all the more effectively. Mauriac's novels, cause of anti-fascism and in the 1930s
often set in the rather bleak countryside of shocked the world with his forthright de-
his native Bordeaux region, are heavily nunciation of the Spanish Church's sup-
preoccupied with the sins of the flesh and port for Franco and his massacres during
the torments of souls torn between good the Civil War (Les Grand Cimetieres sous
and evil, between the presence of tempta- la Lune, 1937).

tion and the apparent absence of God. The While for some, the horror of World
pre-1939 novels on which his later fame War I may have reinforced the need for a
remained firmly established are Le Desert theological worldview which at least of-
de I Amour (1925), Therese Desqueyroux fered the hope of meaning beyond evil and
(1927), Le Noeud de Viperes (1932), Le suffering, in other, slightly younger, nov-
Mystere Frontenac (1933) and La Fin de elists it may have contributed to a desire
la Nuit (1935). Mauriac's style was much to flee from discredited Eurocentric cul-
praised for its detached classicism even tural values. Henri de Montherlant (1896—
when dealing with passionate or tormented 1972), after describing his war experiences
themes, as was his ability to recreate the in his first novel Le Songe (1922) turned
142 France
to the exoticism of Spain, the heroics of olutely forward to a post-Christian world

bullfighting and to works based on sport in which man must forge for himself a new
and his travels. His masterpiece Les Celi- sense of identity. This new and compelling
bataires (1934), charts the comic and pa- voice (which also implicitly challenges the
thetic decline of a grotesquely eccentric solutions on offer from surrealism) is to be
pair of aristocrats, an elderly Baron and his heard in Les Conquerants (1928), La Voie
nephew, the "virgin" comte de Coantre Royale (1930), La Condition Humaine
who at the end, symbolic of the unmour- (Goncourt prize 1933), Le Temps du Me-
ned passing of an old order, dies alone and pris (1935) zndLEspoir (1937). More po-
unattended in the country, followed to his litically committed than Malraux, the
grave by a solitary valet. surrealist Louis Aragon (1897-1972), pil-
Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900^14) lar of the French communist party, turns
is remembered for his career as a pioneer in the thirties to realistic novels in the hope
pilot in the first regular air-mail services of encouraging "men of peace who will be
between France and Africa and later masters of their own destiny": Les Cloches
America. His novels are essentially drawn de Bale (1934), Les Beaux Quartiers
from his experience of long distance night- (1936).
flights, alone and precariously pitted One utterly dissonant voice which
against hostile elements in uncharted ter- emerged from the traumatic experience of
ritory: Courrier du Sud (1930), Vol de Nuit war is that of Celine (Louis-Ferdinand
(1931), Terre des Hommes (1939). Destouches 1894-1961). After years of
In his essay La Tentation de travel and training as a doctor, Celine prac-
I'Occident (1926), Andre Malraux (1901- ticed in the slums of Paris where he
76) clearly enunciates the bankruptcy of gleaned much of the atmosphere which he
the old European God-centered culture (as was to decant into his bitter, cynical, and
had dada and the surrealists) and a sense nihilistic Voyage au Bout de le Nuit (1932)
of the absurdity of the human condition; followed by Mort a Credit (1936). (An-
Europe was "a vast cemetery where only guish turned to rabid hatred in Celine's
dead conquerors sleep." But beyond these later work in which he vilifies not only the
limits Malraux proclaims the possibility of Jews but also his fellow French citizens).
regeneration through courage, fraternity, While there is compassion for the poor and
travel, and action. His own experiences as the dispossessed in his early novels, the
an archaeologist in the Far East at a time impregnable meanness of spirit of those in
of great political upheaval and conflict authority denies all hope to the inhabitants
were to provide the backdrop of an alien of the filthy lower depths whose sordid and
culture against which his often isolated desperate lives (including that of the au-
and individualist characters struggle to thor) offer no hope of escape from the
give direction and meaning to lives buf- mindless imprisonment of the human con-
feted by the forces of conflicting ideolo- dition. Strangely, perhaps due to the mor-
gies, damaged sensibilities and an almost bid appeal of its subject-matter, Voyage
actively hostile natural environment. was widely read but the public were
Rather than articulating their position in equally shocked by its style; an often black
doctrinaire philosophical or political lan- and anguished first-person narration full of
guage, Malraux's characters attempt to slang and coarse vulgarity which broke ut-
transcend solitude and absurdity through terly with the correctness and restraint of
virile action, and in this they foreshadow so much mainstream French literary nar-
aspects of Sartre and Camus. Unlike the rative. Celine's style clearly influenced the
roman-fleuve novelists, Malraux looks res- semantic and syntactical liberties of many
France 143
later writers including the exponents of the The two most influential poetic voices
post-war nouveau roman, and descendants of the catholic revival are Charles Peguy
of the unsavory Ferdinand Bardamu in (1873-1914) and Paul Claudel (1868-
Voyage are to be found in the works of Sar- 1955). Through his journal Cahiers de la
tre, Genet, and Beckett. Quinzaine, Peguy was a powerful advocate
Poetry of social causes (including Dreyfus), and,
after his conversion in 1908, an increas-
The opening years of the century are ingly mystical blend of Catholicism and
still dominated by the symbolist school of nationalism. His Le Mystere de la Charite
poets who drew on the legacy of Baude- de Jeanne dArc (1909), Le Porche du
laire, Verlaine, and to a lesser extent Rim- Mystere de la Deuxieme Vertu (1911) and
baud, in their quest for a musical and Le Mystere des Saints Innocents (1912) are
mellifluous language in which to clothe vast lyrical meditations on the mystery of
images suggestive of the shifting and sub- faith, imbued with a great sense of frater-
jective nature of personal reality. Symbol- nity and spiritual exultation, expressed in
ists valued the ambiguity of figurative sweeping and irregular versicles reminis-
discourse ("The poet's duty is to suggest" cent of the Bible. In more regular verse
wrote Mallarme) and, following Rimbaud forms in his Tapisseries,filledwith images
and Verlaine, they loosened the restraints of the Virgin and the Saints drawn from
of classic French versification. One ex- catholic piety, Peguy articulates his vision
treme of this tendency culminates in the of France's mission as "the eldest daughter
refined and delicately calibrated sensual
of the Church." In the most famous page
notations of Stephane Mallarme's late
of his epic quasi-Hugolian poem "Eve"
work, which takes allusion to the confines
(1913), Peguy celebrates those who die
of hermeticism. Mallarme's rigorously in-
gloriously for the Motherland ("Heureux
tellectual approach to literature as a key
ceux qui sont morts . . .") as he himself
element of a "high" cultural tradition was
was to die a year later in the first battle of
apparent at his Tuesday gatherings, "les
the Marne.
mardis de la rue de Rome," which was a
salon in the grandest French tradition Paul [Louis Charles Marie] Claudel
where Gide and Valery were among the (1868-1955), who had a long and distin-
apprentices at the feet of the master. The guished career as a diplomat, experienced
more dreamy and delicately lyrical aspect a dramatic double conversion to both lit-
of late symbolism is best caught in Mau- erature and religion. His reading of Rim-
rice Maeterlinck's drama Pelleas et Meli- baud had the effect of liberating him from
sande (1892), on which Debussy based his the vague yearnings of symbolism and
only opera, and LOiseau bleu (1909). aestheticism and this sense of freedom was
given theme and direction by his sudden
Other poets who enjoyed a considerable

reputation at the time were Henri de Reg- and unshakable conversion to Catholicism
nier (1864-1936); Francis Jammes (1868- in Notre-Dame on Christmas day 1886.
1938); and the editor of the review Vers et For Claudel poetic inspiration was nothing
Prose, Paul Fort (1872-1960), whose less than the breath of the Holy Spirit and
peers crowned him Prince of Poets in the poet participated in creation by naming
1910. In a category all of his own, a kind the world and celebrating the life-giving
of pre-surrealist mystical baroque, is the pulsation of the spirit which animates and
strange and wonderful Saint-Pol-Roux transforms matter. This intoxicating sense
whose Reposoirs de la Procession (1893— of vitality is matched by a sweepingly
1907) are filled with strikingly original ex- original style which Claudel compared to
tremes of imagery and metaphor. the surging of the sea, composed of free
144 France
verse and versets which echo the poetry of poem is also noteworthy for the classical,
the psalms and of the Old Testament and almost Racinian, elegance of its diction
of classical antiquity. The variety of im- and the studied musicality of its language,
ages and moods (far greater than in Peguy) making it one of the great examples of tra-
and the overarching sense of structure and ditional French lyricism alongside Lamar-
purpose (far clearer than in Peguy) made tine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarme.
his Cinq Grandes Odes (1904-10) a This gift for mellifluous assonance, cou-
unique example of a catholic poet's re- pled with meditations on art and con-
sponse to the visionary aspects of Rim- sciousness are to be found again in the
baud's Illuminations and Une Saison en masterly Le Cimetiere Marin (1920) which
Enfer, a response which, in Claudel's own ends with the life-enhancing cry, "Le vent
words, did not peter out in what he saw as se leve! . . . II faut tenter de vivre!" and
the spiritual defeat of "poor" Verlaine and the studied elegance of Charmes (1922),
Mallarme. all published by NRF-Gallimard. In the
Saint-John Perse (Marie-Rene Alexis rigorous classicism of his verse forms, the
Saint-Leger Leger, 1887-1975, Nobel careful musicality of his language and the
prize 1960) was a distinguished diplomat lucidity of his themes, Valery was a reso-
like his friend Claudel and was influenced lutely traditional poet but many French
by Claudel's use of the long, rhythmic line critics maintain that La Jeune Parque and
of free verse now known as the verset clau- Le Cimetiere Marin are among the greatest
delien. His Eloges (1911) are filled with French poems of the twentieth century. Va-
the sensual natural imagery of his native lery remained a central figure in French
Guadeloupe couched in a style at times intellectual life largely because of his pro-
reminiscent of Rimbaud or Claudel. His lific output over twenty years of intellec-
Anabase (1924), a sweeping epic in which tual essays on many aspects of literature,
the conqueror-poet roams through torrid politics, and philosophy: Varietes, TelQuel
eastern landscapes and celebrates the rich- and Regards sur le monde actuel.
ness and diversity of individual human ex- In his excellent study of the origins
perience, was translated into English by of the avant-garde in France up to 1914
T. S. Eliot who clearly recognized a fellow (The Banquet Years), Roger Shattuck
"classical in literature." called Guillaume Apollinaire (Guillaume
Paul Valery (1871-1945) had also sat Albert Wladimir Alexandre Apollinaire
at the feet of Mallarme but moved on to de Kostrowitsky, 1880-1918) "the impre-
become one of the most prominent secular sario of the avant-garde." Until his pre-
intellectuals of the first half of the century. mature death in the great flu epidemic of
His early prose works, Introduction a la 1918, Apollinaire certainly seemed to be
methode de Leonardo da Vinci (1895) and a common denominator between many of
the parodic La Soiree avec Monsieur Teste the poets, painters, and musicians who
(1896) were reflections on the nature of saw themselves as innovators and icono-
mind and the limits of intellectual activity. clasts, rejecting (in loosely Nietzschean
In 1913, encouraged by Gide to return to terms) Apollonian order (evolution
poetry he began what eventually became within certain classical norms), in favor
La Jeune Parque (1917), a long reflective of Dionysiac adventure (modernist rup-
poem on the awakening of a youthful con- ture and discontinuity). Indeed, in one of
sciousness to a fuller awareness of the pro- his last poems "La Jolie Rousse," which
cesses of solipsistic thought and, at the is something of a credo for all his fellow-
end, an embracing of the sensual world in artists, Apollinaire speaks of resolving
a lucid spirit of intellectual enquiry. This "cette longue querelle . . . de l'ordre et
France 145
l'aventure" but then takes up and restates ous journals, the earliest of which, inspired
the challenge which Rimbaud had aban- by a stay in the Rhineland and his ill-fated
doned over forty years earlier, and in so affair with the English governess Annie
doing also provides a kind of pre-mani- Playden, still showed a debt to symbolism
festo for surrealism (a word he himself in spite of some daring images and syntax.
invented); Others reveal the influence of cubism in
terms of discontinuity and juxtaposition of
Nous voulons vous donner de vastes et images. All of these were to be assembled
d'etranges domaines in his first major collection Alcools (Mer-
Ou le mystere en fleurs s'offre a qui cure de France, 1913) from which punc-
veut le ceuillir tuation was entirely banished and which
II y a la des feux nouveaux des begins with one of his latest and most res-
couleurs jamais vues
olutely modernist poems "Zone." The
Mille phantasmes imponderables
Auxquels il faut donner de la realite poem is a kaleidoscopic series of autobio-
graphical flashbacks as the poet wanders
Apollinaire had met Alfred Jarry and was alone and dispirited across Paris, and the
influenced by the bizarre and outlandish urgent simultaneisme of its structure
techniques of his play Ubu Roi and his seems almost at odds with its themes of
"science of imaginary solutions," la Pa- alienation and loss, culminating in a sym-
taphysique, but he was equally familiar bolic suicide at sunrise. But as the rest of
with the mood and language of the sym- the volume makes clear, Apollinaire's
bolists and the poetry of Baudelaire, Rim- sense of a stable identity is precarious at
baud, and Verlaine. Apollinaire edited the best of times and he continually rec-
several short-lived magazines, Le Festin reates and destroys tentative personae in
dEsope (1903), La Revue Immoraliste, order to discover his true voice and iden-
and Les Soirees de Paris (1912). In 1903 tity. This fragmentation or multiplication
he met the painters Picasso, Derain, and of personality in the maelstrom of histori-
Vlaminck, Marie Laurencin (with whom cal events and rapidly evolving artistic
he had a long affair), and the poet Max movements is to be found again in his last
Jacob. With his intense curiosity for all collection Calligrammes (1918). Apolli-
things new, and his raucous good humor, naire distilled into many of these poems
Apollinaire participated in the artistic and his experiences at the battlefront which be-
poetic ferment of the inhabitants of the Ba- comes a bizarre theater of war from which
teau Lavoir, a ramshackle old building in horror and pathos are not absent but buf-
Montmartre which housed many poets and fered by verbal and visual fantasy, bitter-
painters and witnessed the birth of cub- sweet humor, and an aching eroticism.
ism, which Apollinaire celebrated and Elsewhere, in "Lundi Rue Christine" one
publicized in his essay Les Peintres Cub- finds the first real poeme-conversation
is tes (1913) when the movement was at the made up of overheard scraps of conversa-
forefront of avant-garde art. In the same tion. The poem "Les Fenetres," written for
year, he wrote his influential Antitradition the catalogue of an exhibition of the paint-
futuriste, which incorporated some of the ings of Robert Delaunay, is a daring trans-
ideas of Marinetti and the Italian futurists position into words of the swirling, highly
whose preoccupations with speed and the colored near-abstractions of the original.
machine age also delighted him (compare In the calligrammes of the title (or ideo-
with Calligrammes, "Allons plus vite nom grammes-lyriques, as he also called them)
de Dieu"). Since the turn of the century Apollinaire "paints" with words just as the
Apollinaire had published poems in vari- cubists had painted with letters (including
146 France
collage of newsprint) in many of their itself) for much of the modernist experi-
most famous works. Thus "Pluies" is writ- mentation of his time. His work is also a
ten in streams of letters falling like rain bridge between the end of symbolism and
across the page. In "La Colombe poignar- the first stirrings of surrealism.
dee et le Jet d'eau" the disposition of let- Max Jacob (1876-1944) was one of
ters depicts the dove and the fountain. Picasso's first friends in Paris and, al-
When one reads the dove, it is made up of though he never achieved the popular
the names of women the poet had loved, acclaim of Apollinaire, he exerted a pro-
while the fountain weeps the names of his found influence on many of his contem-
artist friends, separated by the war. At the poraries including Apollinaire, Reverdy,
base, the letters form a watchful eye which Cocteau, and the young surrealists, not
speaks of nightfall on the northern battle- only through his poetry, novels, and illus-
front which is now a sea of blood. In the trations but through his zany and bohe-
moving poem "La Petite Auto," which en- mian lifestyle in Montmartre and at the
thusiastically evokes Apollinaire's return Bateau Lavoir where he lived for a time
to Paris at the outbreak of war and also among the painters. He was fascinated by
more ominously prophesies the end of an Jewish mysticism to which, after his vision
old age and a brutal rebirth, the normal of Christ and conversion in 1915, he added
typographical layout gives way at one his own idiosyncratic blend of catholic pi-
point to a depiction of the little car. These ety, in which his friends didn't quite be-
experiments were novel, playful, and at lieve, thinking it to be the by-product of
times touchingly effective. They also pro- his addiction to ether-sniffing! He was a
vided the surrealist poets and painters with scholarly autodidact who half-seemed to
an example of what Pierre Reverdy called live within his outlandish semi-autobio-
"[the renewal of] the facade of words." graphical first novels, Saint Matorel
Apollinaire had also prefigured the surre- (1909) and Oeuvres mystiques et bur-
alists' preoccupation with dreams in his lesques du Frere Matorel (1911). He re-
fantastical prose-poem "Onirocritique" (in vitalized the form of the prose-poem with
LEnchanteur Pourrissant 1908) and his prophetically presurrealist Le Cornet a
above all with his drame sur-realiste (a des (1916), whose very title implies the
term he first applied to Diaghilev's and aleatory freedom of later surrealist tech-
Cocteau's Parade), Les Mamelles de Tire- niques of composition and he continued to
sias performed in 1917. The influence of publish, treading his own original and id-
Jarry is evident but so too is that of the iosyncratic path, until his death from
esprit nouveau on which he had given a pneumonia in the notorious transit camp
lecture in the same year. In the preface to for French Jews at Drancy. The inimitable
Mamelles, Apollinaire called for an alli- Max was a fervent proselytizer for mod-
ance of "sounds, gestures, colors, shouts, ernism and, as his Art Poetique of 1922
noises, music, dance, acrobatics, painting, and his voluminous correspondence re-
actions and multiple decors. . . ." In his veal, saw his vocation partly as a mentor
advocacy of effects of shock and surprise to the younger generation of poets.
not least in the realm of imagery and meta- Blaise Cendrars (Frederic-Louis Sau-
phor, his exploitation of techniques of si- ser, 1887-1961) also deliberately blurred
multaneity and juxtaposition (see the the distinction between life and art, truth
poem "II y a" in Calligrammes), and his and fiction in his influential early poems
voracious appetite for novelty and humor- and his later novels. Fascinated by a sense
ous fantasy, Apollinaire's life and work of almost mystical self-discovery through
may be seen as a meeting place (like Paris real (or imaginary) travels, Cendrars' first
France 147
success was with Pdques a New York Reverdy's other claim to fame at this time
(1912). This, and especially his Prose du was the launching of his short-lived but
Transsiberien (1913) clearly influenced crucial review NORD-SUD (1917-18; fac-
the style, themes and language of Apolli- simile edition published in 1980 by Jean-
naire's "Zone" as did his removal of much Michel Place) in which he offers an
punctuation. Prose is a "railroad" poem in important definition of the modern poetic
which impressions and images sweep past image taken up by the surrealists Breton,
in quasi-simultaneous litany. The original Eluard, Soupault, and Aragon, whom he
edition was remarkable for being a two- befriended and whose first poems ap-
meter long depliant, advertised as "nearly peared here, alongside new poems by
as tall as the Eiffel tower," and illuminated Apollinaire, Jacob, Tzara, and Cocteau
with couleurs simultanees by Sonia Delau- among others, and illustrations by Braque
nay. In the period leading up to surrealism, and Leger. His reflections on poetry and
Cendrars also published Du Monde entier imagery collected in Self-Defence (1919)
and Dix-neuf poemes elastiques (both also influenced the surrealists although,
1919). converted to Catholicism in 1921, Reverdy
Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960) arrived never actively participated in the move-
in Paris from his native Narbonne in 1910 ment. A more personal and spiritually an-
and with the friendship and guidance of guished tone is to be heard in his poetry
Apollinaire, Jacob, and the cubist painters, from the late thirties, notably Ferraille
quickly established himself as an unmis- (1937). His early volumes were corrected
takably modern poetic presence in Poemes and collectively republished in Plupart du
en Prose (1915), La Lucarne Ovale Temps (1945) and his later work (along
(1916), the roman poetique Le Voleur de with much that really belongs to his first
Talan (1917), and Les Ardoises du Toit period) in Main-d'oeuvre (1945). The
(1918). Of all the modern poets writing modern Flammarion edition of his works
around this time, Reverdy seems to pos- brings together his valuable essays on po-
sess a mood, tone, and style which appear etry and reveals how fine an art critic he
to owe little to anything or anyone beyond was, his friends' names reading like a roll-
his own creation of a poetic world of sim- call of the greatest modern painters of the
plicity, sobriety, and a deep sense of the twentieth century to 1945.
mysterious power of language to transform Poetry was merely an element, and not
everyday objects into signs of a complex the most important, of dada, the movement
and haunted inner life via the juxtaposition founded in Zurich in 1916 by Tristan
of apparently banal images which create Tzara (1896-1963) with Hugo Ball and
the "sparks" of which Breton later spoke the artist Hans Arp. Disgusted by what
as an essential ingredient of surrealist po- they saw as the bankruptcy of a culture
etics. Aware of Mallarme's experiments which allowed the carnage of war, they de-
with typographical layout and emulating fied logic and reason with madness and
Apollinaire's suppression of punctuation chaos and mocked conventional art
(but not his calligrammes), Reverdy (es- through riotous anti-art events which pre-
pecially in Les Ardoises du Toit) produced figured the Happenings and certain other
brief poems which by their manipulation anti-establishment aspects of the Ameri-
of space and type on the page become ob- can hippie scene of the 1960s, and, per-
jects (le poeme-objet) for the eye as well haps, the provocative performance art of
as the ear. Reverdy creates a new mood of the end of the twentieth century. From
strangeness and expectancy at times not 1918 to 1921, the dadaist ranks included
unlike the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. the avant-garde artists Francis Picabia and
148 France
Marcel Duchamp, as well as the poets An- duced the ballet Parade (1917), with music
dre Breton, Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, by Erik Satie and decors by Picasso, Le
and Philippe Soupault. Innovation, icono- Boeufsur le Toit (1920) with music by Da-
clasm, and provocation were the order of rius Milhaud and decors by Raoul Dufy,
the day. In 1919 the four poets founded a and the wickedly satirical Les Mariees de
review ironically entitled Litterature (from la Tour Eiffel (1921) with music by the
Verlaine's poem "L'Art poetique" of 1872 composers known as les six. He was a
in which, after listing all that is desirable gifted and original filmmaker, adapting his
in a poetic work, he dismisses everything own works, and his surrealistic Le Sang
else as mere literature, "Et tout le reste est d'un Poete is an early and influential ex-
litterature"). They broke with dada in 1924 ample of cinema as a modern art form. He
when they changed the name of the review had a genuine talent as an artist and illus-
to La Revolution surrealiste, officially in- trator, with an economic and almost
augurating the surrealist movement. After Picasso-like sense of line which may be
Tzara's ground-breaking innovation he admired in his frescoes for the Church of
continued to write poetry in a more sur- Notre-Dame de France, off Leicester
realist vein and is also important for his Square in London, and for his own chapel
theoretical writings on poetry. at Milly-la-Foret (as well as, in less edi-
Moving effortlessly in and out of the fying mode, in his erotic sketches, which
various literary and artistic coteries of the speak for themselves!).
period, Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) was a Apart from Marcel Proust's magnum
remarkably multi-talented and protean fig- opus, France's other major and, in many
ure whose contribution (resented perhaps ways more obviously far-reaching contri-
for its very versatility) has never quite bution to modernism in art and literature
been given the weight it deserves. Cocteau is the surrealist movement, a movement
was fascinated by the myth of Orpheus whose genuinely revolutionary ideas and
and saw all his creative activity as poetic: techniques can be seen to have permeated
"poesie de theatre, poesie de roman" a re- vast areas of both high and popular cul-
minder that all artistic activity is poesis. tural activity right down to the end of the
Profoundly galvanized by Stravinsky's Le twentieth century. Suffice it to say that its
Sacre du Printemps (1912) and the impre- roots (apart from the Swiss origins of its
sario Serge Diaghilev's famous injunction violent but short-lived precursor dada and
"Etonnez-moi!," he threw himself into the the universal nightmare of war) are clearly
melting-pot of modernism, briefly inter- to be found in the particularly French, and
rupted by his ambulance service in the largely poetic, quarrel between order and
war, which inspired his first novel, Thomas adventure which was already present in the
Vlmposteur. His early collections, Le Po- works of Apollinaire, Jacob, Cendrars, and
tomak, (published belatedly in 1919), Ode Reverdy. While on the one hand refusing
a Picasso (1919), Le Cap de Bonne Es- all tradition and ancestry in their "defini-
perance (1919), Poesies (1920), Vocabu- tive clearout of the literary stable," the first
laire (1922), Plain-Chant (1923), L'Ange surrealists, Breton, Soupault, Eluard, and
Heurtebise (1925) reveal a strikingly clas- Aragon (all poets), acknowledged this debt
sical facility and flexibility of language but also claimed to be the inheritors of a
and a thematic content rich in dreams, fan- select band of largely marginal literary fig-
tasy, humor, and paradox: "the poet is a lie ures (the Marquis de Sade, Rimbaud, Lau-
who always tells the truth." At the same treamont, and Jarry), as well as being the
time, for Diaghilev's company he pro- champions of the new theories of the un-
France 149
conscious expounded by Freud, with Theater

whom Breton exchanged letters. The cen-
Theatrical activity in France was so
tral place they accorded to the drug-like
profoundly influenced after 1945 by the
power of / 'image, is a key element in their
emergence of the generation loosely
quest for a new language, more profoundly
known as the theater of the absurd that
in touch with the deepest recesses of the
many earlier playwrights were eclipsed or
psychic and spiritual self, which had
seemed dated in their preoccupation with
haunted the best of French poetry since
realistic plots, sets, and psychological ver-
Baudelaire. In their determination to make
isimilitude. Nevertheless, the first half of
artistic endeavor more vibrantly relevant to
the century offers a rich variety of plays
the complexities of the modern age, they
reflecting many aspects of contemporary
rejected Mallarme's quest for a purer and
politics and society. Edmond Rostand
more abstruse poetic diction ("donner un
achieved popular success with his neo-
sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu"), and
romantic verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac
the linguistically traditional lyricism of his
(1898). The novelist Jules Romains also
intellectual heir Paul Valery. Their earliest
had a highly successful career as a dra-
experiments with dreams, automatic writ-
ing, aleatory juxtapositions, and the sup- matist with a number of powerfully pro-
pression of decipherable links between the phetic plays in which he evokes the
poles of traditional metaphor, led at first to dangers of dictatorship and the gullibility
their denunciation as sensationalist char- of the masses: LArmee dans la ville
latans and barbarian iconoclasts; indeed (1911), Cromedeyre-le-vieil (1920), Knock
their most provocative public manifesta- (1923), Le Dictateur (1926). In the theater
tions were often calculated to epater le of pure entertainment, Georges Feydeau
bourgeois. But the early surrealists have (1862-1921) was the supremely polished
left an immensely challenging and vibrant purveyor of the French farce which has en-
poetic legacy in French. Andre Breton in joyed undimmed success throughout the
particular was a subtle theorist and the century.
manifestoes of surrealism from 1924 on- At this time the poet Paul Claudel was
wards became the blueprints for a range of also writing his highly personal and pas-
experimentation and refreshingly original sionately lyrical dramas which explore the
creations in all the arts, not least the cin- conflict between human and divine love in
ema (Bunuel's Un Chien andalou, 1928, historical settings: Partage de Midi,
and Cocteau's Le Sang d'un poete, 1931), UOtage, Le Pain dur, I Annonce faite a
all corresponding to the surrealist desire Marie, Le Soulier de Satin. Although these
for revolution permanente. The post-1945 plays were written between 1906 and
theater of the absurd owed much to their 1923, many were not produced until after
resolute anti-realism and in many ways 1940 and it was only then that, thanks to
surrealism realized Freud's dream of re- the director Jean-Louis Barrault, Claudel
leasing the deeper voice of the id from the came to be seen in retrospect as one of the
restrictive prisons of the ego. The influ- major theatrical voices of the century.
ence of the surrealists continued to be felt Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi (1896) is
to the end of the century in areas as diverse clearly the ancestor of a very different
as new-wave French cinema, Sixties hip- form of theater which seeks to break with
pie culture (the student revolt of May 1968 the tradition of the theater of ideas and the
in France provoked a wave of neo- well-made play in favor of a liberating
surrealist verbal protest), advertising, pop world of fantasy, absurdity and anti-
videos, and stand-up comedy. realism. The direct inheritors of this vision
150 France
are Apollinaire in his surrealist Les Ma- of his entire career. Nevertheless, some
melles de Tiresias and Jean Cocteau, in his critics have seen his work as too whimsical
ballet Parade (both 1917). Cocteau devel- and precious. For all his love of verbal wit,
oped his own vein of surreal fantasy and fantasy, and paradox, Giraudoux was not
personal mythology in his first play Or- tempted by surrealism but remained firmly
phee (1926), a modern dress version of the in the camp of those who believed that
myth, including a talking horse and the "tout ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas fran-
mysterious angel Heurtebise whose name gais."
Cocteau claims to have invented (from the In this he exercised a powerful influ-
brand-name of the elevator OTIS-PIFRE) ence on the young Jean Anouilh (1910—
while under the influence of opium. Myth- 87) whose skillfully crafted historical and
ical themes were the starting point for his modern plays on both light and dark
highly original Antigone (1928, with mu- themes continued to hold the stage from
sic by Arthur Honneger) and La Machine the thirties until long after 1945, providing
infernale (1934). Les Parents terribles an antidote to what some critics saw as the
(1938), dealing with psychologically com- muddier or more pessimistic extremes of
plex amorous liaisons caused, like most of the theater of the absurd.
his productions, a scandal at its first per- While mainstream French playwrights
formance. After 1945, Cocteau made films remained fairly conservative in the first
of several of his earlier works and seemed half of the century, they were well-served
to be one of the last representatives of the by a number of directors who actively
inter-war spirit of playful experimentation. sought to modernize production tech-
Wit, fantasy, and myth are also hall- niques and to train a new and more flexible
marks of the theater of Jean Giraudoux breed of actors. Lugne-Poe had welcomed
(1882-1944) but these are allied to an al- Jarry to his Theatre de l'Oeuvre. Jacques
most classical elegance and lucidity of ex- Copeau ran his Theatre du Vieux-
pression and a sustained humane reflection Colombier from 1913 to 1924 and one of
on pacifism and love. His first play Sieg- his actors, Charles Dullin, founded the
avant-garde Theatre de 1'Atelier in 1921;
fried (1928), adapted from his own novel,
Louis Jouvet, Georges Pitoeff, and Gustav
was a sympathetic study of Franco-
Baty complete the list of innovative direc-
German relations and accurately reflected
tors whose influence only fully begins to
the need for reconciliation which was
be felt as events tragically move once
widely felt and expressed by large sections
again from the theater of ideas to the the-
of the French intelligentsia. Its most pow-
ater of war.
erful expression was to be found in Girau-
doux's masterpiece La Guerre de Troie Robert V Kenny
naura pas lieu (1935), in which mytho-
Selected Bibliography.
logical characters embody the desperately Birkett, Jennifer, and James Kearns. A Guide to
topical debate on war and peace. In 1929 French Literature. London: Macmillan, 1997.
his first mythological play Amphytrion 38 Connon, Derek, and Michael Cardy. Aspects of
had celebrated the joys of faithful human Twentieth-Century Theatre in French. New
York: Peter Lang, 2000
love in the face of which a rather less than Fletcher, John, ed. Forces in Modern French Drama.
omnipotent Jupiter was forced to bow out London: U of London P, 1972.
gracefully. Giraudoux's tone becomes France, Peter, ed. The New Companion to Literature
darker throughout the thirties but in his in French. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.
Impromptu de Paris (1937) he defends re- Guicharnaud, Jacques. Modern French Theatre.
1967.
fined language as a vehicle for refined and Litterature frangaise: Le XXe siecle, Pierre-Olivier
original thought, which was the hallmark Walzer, vol 1 1896-1920, 1975; Germaine
Futurism 151
Bree, vol 2 1920-1970, 1978 (vol 2 also avail- the Victory of Samothrace" (see Apollonio
able in English). 21). Marinetti's proposals culminate in a
Little, Roger. The Shaping ofModern French Poetry.
Manchester: Carcanet Press 1995. dithyramb to dynamism:
Nadeau, Maurice. Histoire du Surrealisme. 2 vols.
1945^8 (English translation, London: Jona- We will sing of great crowds excited by
than Cape, 1965). work, by pleasure, and by riot... of the
Potts, D.C., and D. G. Charlton. French Thought
multicoloured, polyphonic tides of rev-
Since 1600. London: Methuen 1974
Raymond, Marcel. De Baudelaire au Surrealisme.
olution . . . of the vibrant nightly fervour
Corti, edition nouvelle, 1969 (English transla- of arsenals and shipyards blazing with
tion 1970). violent electric moons . . . [of] deep-
Sartori, Eva Martin. The Feminist Encyclopaedia of chested locomotives whose wheels paw
French Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood, the tracks like the hooves of enormous
1999. steel horses . . . (see Apollonio 22)
Shattuck, Roger. The Banquet Years: The Origins of
the Avant-Garde in France; 1885 To World War
L London: Jonathan Cape, 1969. Marinetti's dazzling cluster of images
Unwin, Timothy. The Cambridge Companion to The opens up a panoptic futurist vision of in-
French Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, dustrial energy.
1997. As the movement gathered force, it
spawned statements, including Manifesto
Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939) of the Futurist Painters (1910); Futurist
Painting: Technical Manifesto (1910);
Viennese neurologist and originator of Boccioni's Technical Manifesto of Futurist
psychoanalysis. Sculpture (1912); Russolo's The Art of
Noises (1913); Carra's The Painting of
See under Psychoanalysis.
Sounds, Noises, and Smells (1913); Ma-
rinetti's Destruction of Syntax—Imagina-
Futurism tion without Strings—Words-in-Freedom
(1913), The Variety Theatre (1913), and
Futurism (1909-15) rebelled against past Geometrical and Mechanical Splendor
culture and attempted to express the dy- (1914); and Sant'Elia's Manifesto of Fu-
namism of the machine age. Italian futur- turist Architecture (1914). There were
ists proposed a new worship of speed, manifestos on music (Pratella, 1910), pho-
electricity, and machines. They were icon- todynamism (Bragaglia, 1911), and cin-
oclastic and provocative, commanding at- ema (Corra, 1912), culminating in a
tention through shock and outrage. Led by proposal for The Futurist Reconstruction
F. T. Marinetti (1876-1944), a poet with of the Universe (Balla and Depero, 1915).
a genius for publicity, they poured forth Futurists transposed Bergson's elan vi-
highly charged manifestoes. Marinetti tal and Nietzsche's will-to-power into uni-
chose thetermfuturism over electricism or versal dynamism, in which disruption,
dynamism to appeal to the younger gen- asymmetry, and aggression galvanize con-
eration. His founding manifesto, which ap- sciousness. Science and poetry joined
peared in Le Figaro, Paris, February 20, hands: Marinetti claimed that "[p]rofound
1909, trumpets a new ideology: "We af- intuitions of life added one to the other,
firm that the world's magnificence has word by word, according to their illogical
been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty conception, will give us the general out-
of speed. A racing car whose hood is lines of an intuitive physiology of matter"
adorned with great pipes, like serpents of (see Clough 195). Fusing vitalism and
explosive breath . . . is more beautiful than mechanism, he described mechanical
152 Futurism
forces as "vast nets of nerve impulses or To a futurist eye like Boccioni's,

electric currents, veritable systems of ar- "moving objects constantly multiply them-
teries and veins" (see Clough 136). The selves; their form changes like rapid vi-
futurists "were seeking a mechanical pan- brations . . . Thus a running horse has not
theism in which the machine acquires a four legs but twenty, and their movements
soul and the mind becomes a motor" are triangular" (see Apollonio 28). Anto-
(Clough 136). Anticipating science fiction nio Bragaglia's photodynamism recorded
and cybernetics, Marinetti envisaged light-traces of actions as swift as a slap,
" 'the mechanical kingdom' supplanting but Boccioni rejected the technique as
'the animal kingdom' " and "an immortal merely automatic. Balla's Leash in Motion
superman who will be mechanized . . . and Rhythms of a Bow (1912) borrow their
with replaceable parts" (Martin 130). analysis from chronophotography, but in
The futurist painters, Umberto Boc- Study of Paths of Movements (Swifts)
cioni (1882-1916), Carlo Carra (1881- (1913) he creates lyrical graphs of im-
1966), Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), Gino pulses. As Carra explains, the futurist goal
Severini (1883-1965), and Luigi Russolo is not to paint a leaping figure or its tra-
(1885-1947) were "inspired by the tangi- jectory, but the leap itself. Boccioni trans-
ble miracles of contemporary life, by the lated expansion and contraction into
iron net of velocity which envelops the formal principles in Muscles in Velocity
earth . .. and by the anguished struggle for and Spiral Expansion of Muscles in Move-
the conquest of the unknown" (see Carrieri ment (1913). The plastic sense of move-
28). They exalted "the uproar [of great cit- ment in his Elasticity (1912) had its
ies], the scientific division of work in the counterpart in architecture, where materi-
factories, the whistle of the trains . . . the als were to have a modern "elasticity and
pulsation of the motors; the cadenced beat- lightness" (Tisdall 130). Marinetti was
ing of the transmission belts" (see Carrieri fascinated by "the solidity of a sheet of
33). As illustrated by Boccioni's Dyna- steel . . . the incomprehensible and inhu-
mismfsj of a Human Body, a Footballer, man alliance of its molecules or of its
and a Cyclist (1913), they wanted to pen- electrons"; his anti-anthropomorphism
etrate to "[the] dynamic waves which con- and misogyny appear, when he adds: "The
stituted the object's inner reality" and to warmth of a piece of iron or of wood is
achieve "the plastic expression of reality now more attractive to us than the smile or
conceived as motion" (Clough 83, 80). the tears of a woman" (see Carrieri 80).
The concept of speed is vital to futur- Rejecting human sentiment and psy-
ism: for Boccioni, "Velocity is an abso- chology, futurists wanted to dramatize
lute," for Marinetti, "[it] creates the forces in matter. Marinetti proposed in
universe" (see Clough 87, 15). Marinetti's 1912 "[to] capture unawares, by means of
"reformed typesetting allows [him] to treat freely moving objects and capricious mo-
words like torpedoes and to hurl them tors, the respiration, the sensitivity and the
forth at all speeds: at the velocity of stars, instincts of metals, rocks, wood, etc. Sub-
clouds, aeroplanes, trains, waves, explo- stitute the psychology of man, now de-
sives, molecules, atoms" (see Clough 52). pleted, with the LYRICAL OBSESSION
Balla's Abstract Velocity (1913) is an at- OF MATTER" (see Carrieri 80). The fu-
tempt to render the "Plasticity of Light x turists sought transcendence in physical
Speed." Even architecture, as Antonio forces which, for Marinetti, are "move-
Sant'Elia (1888-1916) saw it, should re- ments of matter, beyond the laws of intel-
flect a new sense of lightness and swiftness ligence" (see Carrieri 80). Boccioni aimed
in glass and steel. at "Physical Transcendentalism" in sculp-
Futurism 153
tures like Unique Forms of Continuity in radiation and the various types of geomet-
Space (1913), a superhuman image of rical optical illusions" (Martin 51), along
"muscular dynamism" with a surging with transparency and simultaneity, are in-
sense of movement. tegral to the futurist vision. The painters
For the futurists, mechanolatry was declared in 1910: "Space no longer exists:
the key to modernolatry. As early as 1907, the street pavement, soaked by rain be-
Boccioni declared: "I want to paint the neath the glare of electric lamps, becomes
new, the fruit of our industrial time" (see immensely deep . . . Thousands of miles
Taylor 35). He explored construction sites divide us from the sun; yet the house in
on the outskirts of Milan and, in The City front of us fits into the solar disk" (Apol-
Rises (1910-11), aimed at "a great synthe- lonio 28). Capturing simultaneity required
sis of labor, light, and movement" (see decomposition of light in painting and de-
Taylor 35). Marinetti urged poets "to ex- formation of mass in sculpture. Futurist
press the life of the motor" and the spiri- dynamism and lines of force were trans-
tual dynamism of the machine, "[which] is lated into optical effects by Balla in Thick-
the symbol of the 'mysterious force' of the nesses of Atmosphere (1913) and Mercury
infinite" (Clough 136). The futurists tried Passing in Front of the Sun (1914) and by
to subject human life and rhythms to the Severini in Spherical Expansion of Cen-
machine, a cult that led to the glorification trifugal Light (19'14).
of industry, conquest, and war. Carra wrote Futurists "saw the object as a nucleus
in 1915: "The war is creating in man a of radiating forces" (Martin 169) and
really new love for machinism and metall- aimed to synthesize opposing or diverging
ism, which inspire an entire new art . . . " lines offeree in ways that would dramatize
(see Carrieri 165). Futurist war paintings interaction. For Boccioni, "simultaneity is
include Carra's Interventionist Manifesto a lyrical exaltation, a plastic manifestation
(1914), a brightly colored collage of head- of a new absolute, speed; a new and mar-
vellous spectacle, modern life . . ." (Apol-
lines, flags, and words or letters signifying
lonio 178).
shouts or noises; Boccioni's The Charge of
Futurism expressed rhythm, vibra-
the Lancers (1915); and Severini's Ar-
tion, and interpenetration rather than vi-
mored Train (1915). Marinetti bombasti-
sual appearance. Boccioni proposes:
cally called war "the only hygiene of the
"LET'S SPLIT OPEN OUR FIGURES
world" and Walter Benjamin justly criti-
AND PLACE THE ENVIRONMENT
cizes the futurist aesthetics of war, ma-
INSIDE THEM" and maintains: "Our
chinery, power, and destruction. bodies penetrate the sofas on which we
Electricity was a prolific generator of sit, and the sofas penetrate us in the same
futurist imagery. Marinetti exulted in elec- way as the passing tram enters the houses
tricity, speed, and power. "Nothing is more
and the houses, in turn, fling themselves

beautiful," he wrote in 1914, "than a great on the tram . . ." (see Apollonio 63; Car-
humming central electric station . . ." rieri 32). The spectator is to be placed at
(Apollonio 155). Electricity might seem to the center of converging forces, as in Si-
defy plastic expression, but the futurists multaneous Visions (1911) and The Street
"[thought] of the picture zone as a flick- Enters the House (1912). Planes, forms,
ering network of multiple stresses, charged and colors intersect. The titles of futurist
with magnets and electric currents" (Ko- paintings allude to these principles—see
zloff 40). Balla mastered the scintillation for example Boccioni's The Noise of the
of electric light in Street Lamp (1909), in Street Penetrates the House (1911) and
which a shower of red, gold, and green Russolo's Interpenetration of Light +
chevrons outshines a crescent moon. "Ir- House + Sky (1913).
154 Futurism
Boccioni's study of movement at- streets, and workshops, while Marinetti

tracted him to "the poetry of the straight celebrated the anarchic energy of the Va-
line and the mathematical calculation" riety Theater. Marinetti's "Futurist Eve-
(see Carrieri 25). He identified vitality nings," staged in theaters and music halls
with linear form: "Our straight line will be in Milan, Paris, Moscow, and London,
alive and palpitating . . . and its funda- used aggressive tactics of "speed, brevity,
mental, naked severity will be the iron- absurdity, disruption, and audience in-
severe symbol of the lines of modern volvement" (Tisdall 108) to provoke re-
machinery" (see Carrieri 74). The futurist action. Futurist theatrics mixed songs,
vision of energy depicts lines of force ra- speeches, and stunts with mechanical
diating out from a nucleus, as in Carra's noisemakers and films, breaking ground
Centrifugal Forces (1914). Boccioni in- for dadaism in 1917 and Ionesco's theater
sists that "[the] opening and closing of a of the absurd in the 1960s. Marinetti pro-
valve creates a rhythm which is just as claimed that futurist poetry should consist
beautiful to look at as the movements of of "perpetual dynamism of thought, an un-
an eyelid, and infinitely more modern" interrupted stream of images and sounds,"
(Apollonio 64). He introduced "spiral stemming from an "elastic consciousness"
structure" and rhythmic interaction of con- (see Martin 91). Futurist poets—including
vex and concave forms into his sculpture Paolo Buzzi, Enrico Cavacchioli, Ar-
Development of a Bottle in Space (1912— mando Mazza, and Aldo Palazzeschi—
13). Meanwhile, Russolo experimented wrote hymns to industry and the machine,
with the "Art of Noises" and gave concerts such as Mazza's ode to a futurist Venice,
with a battery of "Noise Intoners." His with roaring shipyards, "erect chimneys,"
compositions, The Awakening of a City and blazing furnaces. Marinetti, inventor
and Meeting of Automobiles and Aero- of Words-in-Freedom, advocated the use
planes, are soundscapes that relate to the of concrete images untied to logical struc-
futurist music of Balilla Pratella (1880- ture. His inventive typography set words
1955) and to later experiments with sound in expressive patterns, while the verbal de-
and silence by John Cage. signs of Francesco Cangiullo and Corrado
Futurist painters aimed at pure plastic Govoni anticipate concrete poetry.
rhythm through linear, spiral, overlapping, Ardengo Soffici (1879-1964), Flor-
transparent, and wavelike forms, or entine editor of Lacerba, compared futur-
through kaleidoscopic fragmentation as in ism with cubism, provoking a fist-fight
Severini's Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the with Marinetti's Milanese contingent.
Bal Tabarin (1912). Boccioni represented Carra used cubist planar structure "[to
psychological forces by directional lines in tighten] up his composition," while Sev-
States of Mind: The Farewells, Those Who erini adapted it more loosely in the "shift-
Go, and Those Who Stay (1911), fusing ing planes" of The Obsessive Dancer
abstraction with lyricism. "Emotion in (1911) and "kaleidoscopic facets" of Pan-
modern painting and sculpture," he wrote, Pan at the Monico (1910-12) (Tisdall 44,
"sings of gravitation, displacement, recip- 53). Despite their formal affinities with
rocal attraction of forms, of masses and cubism, futurists were emotionally closer
colors, sings of movement, the interpene- to "aggressive, expressionist vitalism"
tration offerees" (Apollonio 174). (Martin 55). They sought to intensify sen-
Futurism evoked the dynamic rhythms sation and animate the image of contem-
of the modern city, its work, traffic, bustle, porary reality by "opening up" objects to
and entertainment. Boccioni acclaimed reveal the interplay of internal and exter-
clowns, acrobats, circuses, fairs, cafes, nal forces. Boccioni claimed that "[the]
Futurism, Italian 155
Italian futurists [were] the only primitives Poggioli, Renato. The Theory of the Avant-Garde.
of [a] completely transformed European Trans. Gerald Fitzgerald. Cambridge: Harvard
UP, 1968.
sensibility," but their primitivism was the Taylor, Joshua C. Futurism. New York: Museum of
outcome of modern complexity rather than Modern Art, 1961.
classical simplicity (see Clough 18, Ko- Tisdall, Caroline and Angelo Bozzola. Futurism.
zloff 128). London: Thames, 1977.
Futurism and dadaism were the most
violent of twentieth-century avant-gardes, Futurism, Italian
but where dada was anti-art and anti-war,
futurism heralded the new art of the Ma- A movement which was launched by the
chine Age. Thanks to his powerful person- publication on February 20, 1909 in the
ality, Marinetti spread futurist ideology to Parisian newspaper Le Figaro of Filippo
a variety of fields and countries. Even in Tommaso Marinetti's "Fondazione e
England, futurism had its impact on artists manifesto del Futurismo" ("The Founding
of the Rebel Art Centre, such as Wynd- and Manifesto of Futurism"). The atmo-
ham Lewis, Christopher Nevinson, David sphere and the central tenets of Italian fu-
Bomberg, and Edward Wadsworth—al-
turism are wholly evident in this first
though Lewis fiercely defended the origi-
manifesto. The tone is brash and icono-
nality of his and Ezra Pound's vorticism.
clastic; there is a strike against the tradi-
Futurist theories sprang up ahead of prac-
tional humane forms and pieties of art,
tice, with the artists struggling to embody
including conventional grammatical struc-
them. Dynamism was the motive force: for
tures; there is a celebration of machinery,
Boccioni, the outward shell of things was
speed, youthfulness, and the irrational; and
to be broken open to reveal "the lines and
there is the promotion of alternative liter-
masses which form the internal arabesque"
(see Tisdall 74). While futurists' attempts ary forms intended to capture the accel-
to express movement in the static media of erated consciousness of the modern city
painting and sculpture were sometimes in- (analogy; mathematical symbols to replace
coherent, their explosive energy and cult connective grammar). The emphasis of the
of innovation left their mark on much of founding manifesto is essentially literary,
twentieth-century art. but the movement would swiftly expand to
include painting, sculpture, architecture,
Jack Stewart music, theater, photography, cinema, poli-
Selected Bibliography tics, and even, in its later stages, cookery.
Apollonio, Umberto, ed. Futurist Manifestos. Lon- Italian futurism had its home in Milan,
don: Thames, 1973. in the industrial north of Italy (a country
Banham, Reyner. Theory and Design in the First
Machine Age. New York: Architectural, 1960.
which underwent a late and rapid process
of industrialization). Its zealous celebra-
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of

Mechanical Reproduction." 1936. Illumina- tion of industry reflects its support for the
tions. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. emergence of a new and independent Italy,
New York: Schocken, 1969. 217-51. and for its break from an artistic heritage
Carrieri, Raffaele. Futurism. Trans. Leslie van
Rensselaer White. Milan: Edizioni del Milione,
which, it was felt, threatened to turn the
n.d. country into a museum for foreign tourists.
Clough, Rosa Trillo. Futurism: The Story of a Mod- The movement's background helps to ac-
ern Art Movement. A New Appraisal. New count for its strident attack on "passeisme"
York: Greenwood, 1969. (a love of the past) and for its pronounced
Kozloff, Max. Cubism/Futurism. New York: Char-
terhouse, 1973.
nationalism.
Martin, Marianne W. Futurist Art and Theory, The tone and content of the Italian
1909-1915. New York: Hacker, 1978. futurist manifestos represent a collage
156 Futurism, Italian
of popular influences, the most significant a casualty of the First World War, and the
of which derive philosophically from most influential phase of futurism died
Nietzsche and Bergson, politically from with him. Although a new group of poets
Georges Sorel, and in artistic terms collected around Marinetti after the war,
from Zola, Whitman, Emile Verhaeren, the impact of the movement waned and its
and Alfred Jarry. Although Marinetti had, previous revolutionary vigor was lost in its
in his pre-futurist days, been immersed in merger with Mussolini's fascist regime.
the works of the symbolist poets, he soon Nonetheless, Italian futurism must be
came to define futurist literature in oppo- afforded a considerable place in any con-
sition to symbolism, which he represented struction of modernism. It was the first
as wallowing in "passeisme," singling out avant-garde movement, and its influence
Gabriele D'Annunzio for particular criti- spread across Europe, and to America and
cism on this score. Japan. In England, it exercised a particular
In painting, the Italian futurists bor- fascination for D. H. Lawrence, and it lay
rowed heavily from impressionism and behind the formation of the vorticist move-
cubism, but they wanted in particular to ment; in America, its influence is strongly
stress movement in their work, and often felt in Hart Crane's important poem, "The
represented animate and inanimate sub- Bridge."
jects merging with their environments,
conjuring up the bustle of modernity and Andrew Harrison
the subject's loss of a stable identity. Key
words for the Italian futurist painters are Selected Bibliography
Apollonio, Umberto, ed. Futurist Manifestos. Lon-
"compenetrazione" (interpenetration) and don: Thames and Hudson, 1973.
"scomposizione" (deconstruction). Um- Perloff, Marjorie. The Futurist Moment: Avant-
berto Boccioni's paintings, and his sculp- Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of
tures of the human form in movement, Rupture. London: University of Chicago Press,
notably exemplify the exploration of these 1986.
Rye, Jane. Futurism. London: Studio Vista, 1972.
preoccupations. White, John J. Literary Futurism: Aspects of the
Boccioni, arguably the most talented First Avant Garde. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
of the Italian futurist artists, died in 1915, 1990.

Encyclopedia - of - Literary - Modernism - Formal Experimentation

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Encyclopedia - of - Literary - Modernism - Formal Experimentation

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

F

Faulkner, William (1897- community within narrative forms which

is strongly in evidence here in the explo-

slaveholding society which, unable to an important role in providing a certain

achieved suffrage parity with men in Three Guineas (1938).

If "Make it new!" was modernism's rally-

cordings of plants growing, which were unconsciously exploited. Albert Einstein

els. Bergson, whose philosophy of form torting mirrors to convey drug-induced

likely to celebrate Keystone Comedies or humans mechanized. (Recall Lawrence's

shipping heiress Winifred Ellerman, from a speeding snowball. Absence of

garde." H. D. in Close Up used the comprising ten-minute shots joined invis-

sive protagonists, heavy emphasis on ing, challenging the transparency that

(especially appropriation of experimental Finnegans Wake (1939)

undergo numerous transformations. The couraged a group of friends, Samuel

was no longer popular as subject matter in tellings and interconnections associated

discovers that Ashburnham was having an

a precursor of Pat Barker's Ghost Road other modernists, it is in part because of

Belgian refugees arriving in London. After

author, the rendering of concrete particu- Formal Experimentation

the Metro" is perhaps the purest and most

Pound's "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" Forster, E(dward) M(organ)

1957-66. Vol. I. ality.

of Loneliness, and, in 1960, he appeared synchronized phonograph sound, visitors

Culture, Politics, and cluding the Archbishop of Paris) by the

Camus by twenty years; indeed much of liance of socialists and communists to

center of the modernist movements of the of Germany. Rolland remained a distin-

tral character Jean-Christophe is a German Romains' highly regarded first novel

eyes of many critics, the sheer vastness of experiences in wartime hospitals. In a

affair in his novel Verite (1903), Anatole

timid provincial bourgeois Amadee Fleu- protagonist Edouard, a classic example of

and evil, between the presence of tempta- la Lune, 1937).

to the exoticism of Spain, the heroics of olutely forward to a post-Christian world

Other poets who enjoyed a considerable

conscious expounded by Freud, with Theater

forces as "vast nets of nerve impulses or To a futurist eye like Boccioni's,

and the houses, in turn, fling themselves

Boccioni's study of movement at- streets, and workshops, while Marinetti

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of

You might also like