In considering the previous class’ discussion of E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End, I am still stuck by the sense of mediation, both from the tone of the work as well as from the guided discussion that followed it. Indeed, there were no easy answers, no demarcations of black or white, merely infinite shades of grey. In particular, the discussion of the tension between rural and urban and how those two worlds had no singular champions. The city of London was integral to the Bloomsbury existence, but the rural was equally vital. Neat categorization does not work with such subtle intertwining threads. I am somewhat at a loss in my internal analysis of the Bloomsbury Group – they seem to defy easy theses.
In considering the current readings, I am struck by several things about Pound and Eliot. The feel of Pound’s and Eliot’s work, in light of the readings, exhibits a far different sensibility. Where Forster’s prose is overall gentle and balanced, Pound and Eliot appear fiercer, more stalwart, and territorial. Indeed, Pound’s statement’s from “A Retrospect” are direct, and he wants poetry to be “harder, saner,” and “nearer the bone.” There is no mediation here; there is attack. Likewise, as Eliot says in his “Function of Criticism” that comparison and analysis are tools that can be misused without lucidity, and that “The real corruptors supply opinion and fancy.” There is a predatory directness to it all. The poetry they value is essential, spare, and in and of itself.
“To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.” – Stephen Mallarmé
One gets the sense that Pound and Eliot would prefer to define and kill than leave a suggestion alive to create an erroneous impression. Take Eliot’s critique of Hamlet. He calls it a failure because the audience does not feel the horror intended – even as Materer notes that one cannot divine what reaction Shakespeare intended. As such, Eliot defines a singular point of view of a creative work and deems it the authoritative point of view.
This leads me to another impression from the readings. If Eliot and Pound profited greatly from their status as poets and opinion makers, then their art and intellectual pursuits become not just practices, but resources – ducats to purchase the ultimate prize, power.
Materer notes that Eliot and Pound sought not just to be great poets but great critics as well. Likewise, they and their contemporaries (such as Hulme) revered the “Classical” forms. If Eliot began as a revolutionary poet who then later became a critic who revered the Classics and made them his standard, one might view his rebellion, his desire for influence, and his quest to control the definitions of that which is “good” as a grand poetic and critical version of the Oedipus Complex, wherein the great poetic fathers of the Classical era become both objects of reverence and revolt. Eliot, in become the great poet and the great critic, casts down his fathers and elevates himself to their throne, all the while nodding toward their influence upon him.
Thought digression: if, as one has proposed, that we are still in the “Modern” era, especially the “Heroic Modern” era of Eliot and Pound, then who shall seek to cast them from their Olympus and crown themselves as the new high arbiter of poetics?
Monday, January 28, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Howard's End
Howard’s End appealed to me greatly – far more than I initially expected it would. I had seen the Merchant/Ivory film adaptation years before, but the memory had faded into bare mist. Initially, I thought that Forster was going to turn put the entire novel into epistolary form – an idea that appealed to me due to my studies of the American Novel during the previous semester. (Professor Ashton discussed at length how the epistolary form never truly caught on in American literature as it had in Britain, and I was curious to see how this might have been borne out in a turn-of-the-century “Gateway to Modernism” novel.) While I noted many of the standard “literary” aspects of the novel such as the symbolism of the tree and its folk tradition and how the levels of class interaction played out, I was struck by the voice and tone of the work.
Howard’s End has one of the most thoughtful, even, considered tones of any novel I have ever read. It is a voice of understanding and communication – true communication, not commutual shouting (though plenty of that figuratively occurs between the characters themselves – indeed, the entire conflict between Margaret and Henry could be viewed as one long non-communicative feud). Rather, the narrator seems to truly understand both sides and works to mediate between them in the reader’s mind. I did not quite realize the core of this until I had read Trilling’s “The Liberal Imagination and Howard’s End.” In reading how Forster found common cause with liberalism but did not agree 100 percent with the ideology, (much to his friend’s Lawrence’s lament of his favorable portrayal of businessmen) I could see how the evenness of the narrative came about. Forster, while expressing ideology and idealism, refuses to give in to demagoguery. Likewise, as Stone notes, Forster demonstrated his resistance to settling into easy self/other separations later in his life, even to the extent of writing propaganda – and labeling it as such.
Such bespeaks a deep understanding and honesty with regard to the dualistic forces in one’s nature. Perhaps his pacifism was derived from the fact that he sought to mediate the oppositions within himself – and had no desire to add to the conflict outside of himself.
Other reactions:
I found the scene wherein Margaret notes how much power she had by merely whispering in her husband’s ear (and how she could see how women might not value their suffrage) to be quite… disappointing in the personal/emotional sense. Indeed, both the narrative arcs of Margaret’s suffocation under Henry’s rule as well as the Basts’ trials to be emblematic of how working with a monolithic hegemony tends to support it – a suppressive structure by its nature suppresses anything that wishes to interact with it on ITS own terms. One must note that the excesses of the Wilcoxes (and their gentrified social order) did not cease until after this order was openly challenged.
I did appreciate how each of the three primary social groups, the Wilcoxes, the Schlegels, and the Basts were intertwined in their responsibilities. Forster shows each with virtues, but he never lets any of them off the hook. A lesser writer would have made the erudite Schlegels the unvarnished heroes of the piece and the Basts the unquestioned martyrs, but he shows that simple erudition is insufficient to solve the world’s problems – nor is goodness and need. While he champions art, art is not the panacea.
I enjoyed the tension between the city and the pastoral, and I could see how that highlights one aspect of the Bloomsbury existence. They, by their nature, were products of education and culture – indeed, Woolf as an educated woman was certainly not part of the then-contemporary societal motif. Thus, a group of cosmopolitan city dwellers who appreciate the urban but bemoan its dehumanizing aspects would yearn for the rural. As such, one can draw some very close parallels between the Schlegel family and the Bloomsbury group.
Final note: I found it very interesting that Forster’s first sexual relationship was with a foreigner while abroad. This resonates with my studies of Genet – another writer with deeply ambivalent (though vastly more militant) feelings toward his colonial society. I may have to explore this more deeply.
Howard’s End has one of the most thoughtful, even, considered tones of any novel I have ever read. It is a voice of understanding and communication – true communication, not commutual shouting (though plenty of that figuratively occurs between the characters themselves – indeed, the entire conflict between Margaret and Henry could be viewed as one long non-communicative feud). Rather, the narrator seems to truly understand both sides and works to mediate between them in the reader’s mind. I did not quite realize the core of this until I had read Trilling’s “The Liberal Imagination and Howard’s End.” In reading how Forster found common cause with liberalism but did not agree 100 percent with the ideology, (much to his friend’s Lawrence’s lament of his favorable portrayal of businessmen) I could see how the evenness of the narrative came about. Forster, while expressing ideology and idealism, refuses to give in to demagoguery. Likewise, as Stone notes, Forster demonstrated his resistance to settling into easy self/other separations later in his life, even to the extent of writing propaganda – and labeling it as such.
Such bespeaks a deep understanding and honesty with regard to the dualistic forces in one’s nature. Perhaps his pacifism was derived from the fact that he sought to mediate the oppositions within himself – and had no desire to add to the conflict outside of himself.
Other reactions:
I found the scene wherein Margaret notes how much power she had by merely whispering in her husband’s ear (and how she could see how women might not value their suffrage) to be quite… disappointing in the personal/emotional sense. Indeed, both the narrative arcs of Margaret’s suffocation under Henry’s rule as well as the Basts’ trials to be emblematic of how working with a monolithic hegemony tends to support it – a suppressive structure by its nature suppresses anything that wishes to interact with it on ITS own terms. One must note that the excesses of the Wilcoxes (and their gentrified social order) did not cease until after this order was openly challenged.
I did appreciate how each of the three primary social groups, the Wilcoxes, the Schlegels, and the Basts were intertwined in their responsibilities. Forster shows each with virtues, but he never lets any of them off the hook. A lesser writer would have made the erudite Schlegels the unvarnished heroes of the piece and the Basts the unquestioned martyrs, but he shows that simple erudition is insufficient to solve the world’s problems – nor is goodness and need. While he champions art, art is not the panacea.
I enjoyed the tension between the city and the pastoral, and I could see how that highlights one aspect of the Bloomsbury existence. They, by their nature, were products of education and culture – indeed, Woolf as an educated woman was certainly not part of the then-contemporary societal motif. Thus, a group of cosmopolitan city dwellers who appreciate the urban but bemoan its dehumanizing aspects would yearn for the rural. As such, one can draw some very close parallels between the Schlegel family and the Bloomsbury group.
Final note: I found it very interesting that Forster’s first sexual relationship was with a foreigner while abroad. This resonates with my studies of Genet – another writer with deeply ambivalent (though vastly more militant) feelings toward his colonial society. I may have to explore this more deeply.
Reactions to the Previous Class
I am breaking my blog post into two sections. I feel that my reactions to the previous class merit their own discreet posting, as much for length as for theme.
In reflecting on the concepts of the previous class, I was (and continue to be) struck most by the notion of gender roles as constraints – or, in a harsher sense, traps. The notion of role, especially with regards to gender, seems a most intensely oppressive concept, for it deals solely with perception, and only “masters” of perception are able to alter this aspect of their reality.
Consider the idea of Gender Studies. Consider the implications thereof. If Gender Studies, as evolved from Women’s Studies and/or Queer Studies, then that begs the question of what “Masculine Studies” would entail. Now, one may respond that the contemporary focus of Gender and/or Queer studies are a reaction to the previous monolith dominance of the Male Hierarchy which has suppressed the previous two. I am uncomfortable with that for two reasons. First, a suppression or nullification of the masculine in favor of the other two smacks of the same oppression redirected. Second, once again, it traps the male within this monolith of culture.
The idea of gender role entraps everyone. Yea though it is an natural function of humanity – humans being natural selectors and categorizers – it also demonstrates the fundamental weakness of that nature. Human beings are predators, and the chief function of the predator is to identify prey and commit acts of predation. Social orders allow neat demarcations of “self” and “other” and, by their structure, produce norms. Thus, the roles created by perception, while a natural outcropping of human intelligence, function as little more than mob rule by an essentially headless beast.
What use is society to an individual if one must gauge one’s gender role not only by the norms of one gender but also the reactions of the opposite gender to the first, and the reactions of the first to the second?
This does not seem like a triumph of the individual, as one might hope for in an enlightened society. Instead, it seems like societal mutually-assured-destruction.
Post-script: I’m unwilling to leave this meditation on such a defeatist note. Thus, I inject some humor. One, a clip from the Coen Bros’ film The Big Lebowski, and the other, the trailer for the film adaptation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch – perhaps the best film about gender freedom I’ve ever seen.
Warning: Offensive Language Abounds
In reflecting on the concepts of the previous class, I was (and continue to be) struck most by the notion of gender roles as constraints – or, in a harsher sense, traps. The notion of role, especially with regards to gender, seems a most intensely oppressive concept, for it deals solely with perception, and only “masters” of perception are able to alter this aspect of their reality.
Consider the idea of Gender Studies. Consider the implications thereof. If Gender Studies, as evolved from Women’s Studies and/or Queer Studies, then that begs the question of what “Masculine Studies” would entail. Now, one may respond that the contemporary focus of Gender and/or Queer studies are a reaction to the previous monolith dominance of the Male Hierarchy which has suppressed the previous two. I am uncomfortable with that for two reasons. First, a suppression or nullification of the masculine in favor of the other two smacks of the same oppression redirected. Second, once again, it traps the male within this monolith of culture.
The idea of gender role entraps everyone. Yea though it is an natural function of humanity – humans being natural selectors and categorizers – it also demonstrates the fundamental weakness of that nature. Human beings are predators, and the chief function of the predator is to identify prey and commit acts of predation. Social orders allow neat demarcations of “self” and “other” and, by their structure, produce norms. Thus, the roles created by perception, while a natural outcropping of human intelligence, function as little more than mob rule by an essentially headless beast.
What use is society to an individual if one must gauge one’s gender role not only by the norms of one gender but also the reactions of the opposite gender to the first, and the reactions of the first to the second?
This does not seem like a triumph of the individual, as one might hope for in an enlightened society. Instead, it seems like societal mutually-assured-destruction.
Post-script: I’m unwilling to leave this meditation on such a defeatist note. Thus, I inject some humor. One, a clip from the Coen Bros’ film The Big Lebowski, and the other, the trailer for the film adaptation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch – perhaps the best film about gender freedom I’ve ever seen.
Warning: Offensive Language Abounds
Monday, January 14, 2008
Considerations on the Nature of Modernism - Elements
What is Modernism?
While the readings presented are focused, and the time period and personages in question relatively compact, I am still faced with the problem of a blind man who has expertly identified a snake, a tree trunk, and a wall – but cannot, with any great faculty, gel them together into an elephant.
I do, however, remark at several things.
For one, Scott states that 1940 could be considered the end of the Modernistic era. If Modernism began around the turn of the Twentieth Century and ended in 1940, that bespeaks of several things. Modernism fell during one of the great transitional periods of contemporary history, both for the world and for Britain itself. As an American, I note this date (1940) as during World War II. However, from the British perspective, one could very easily see that date as marking the twilight of the British Empire – the sun finally setting on the Union Jack.
These two events – World War II and the Fall of the British Empire – inform the spirit of the Modernists, for they are inextricably connected to Britain’s character and history. The Modernists, whose works were created as a result of and in reaction to their milieu and circumstances, breathe this transition. The passing of their artistic era and the passing of the Empire seem very congruent.
Consider space and place, especially the country, the city, and the personal (or the room). These elements, so essential to the British character of Modernism, are in transition in British society during this period. The city is becoming more cosmopolitan, as are its people. The country is being de-emphasized in favor of the urban. The social power structure itself is shifting, both economically and politically (via women’s suffrage). The Modernists in exploring these themes in their creative works, their political actions, and their sexual mores could be seen as reactions to the changing face of Britain.
One must also consider the nature of this society. An empire is, by its nature, stratified, monolithic, and domineering. The figurehead looms large, an inheritor of the legacy of the divine right of kings and the aggrandizement of a monarch whose body and nation are one. If one is then considering a reaction to this ruling structure, then it fits that the personal and the domestic would come to the fore. Reid, referencing LeCorbusier, notes how the grand and heroic is de-emphasized. Domestics are elevated. Grandeur is made small, while smallness if magnified. This points not only to the elevation of the craftsman but also the female who has been suppressed beneath the male monolith.
Thus, a collection of writers, artists, and craftspersons of multiple viewpoints and sexualities all seem quite logical in the context of the (d)evolution of a vast feudal empire into a contemporary cosmopolitan urbanized state.
In considering World War II as the end of Modernism, one must look to its prologue – World War I. The Great War showcased the grand foolishness of imperial brinksmanship and, due to the folly of kings and “great” men plunged the world into chaos. The cracks in the structure of this society emerged and lent to the natural questioning of that structure. The cultural ambivalence that resulted created an environment of inquiry. The foreign foes of the First World War were not fighting for a specific ideology (as compared to the Third Reich’s dreams of conquest). Perhaps the unequivocal nature of War War II and the nature of the threat to Britain and the world at large shut down that inquiry. Perhaps Modernism came to an end because the shattering nature of fascism, at home and abroad, suffocated the life from it.
As such, I my best description of Modernism is “a period during the twilight of the British Empire when a perfect storm of cultural questioning took place which elevated and emphasized the creative, the artistic, and the domestic over the imperial and the imperialistic.”
While the readings presented are focused, and the time period and personages in question relatively compact, I am still faced with the problem of a blind man who has expertly identified a snake, a tree trunk, and a wall – but cannot, with any great faculty, gel them together into an elephant.
I do, however, remark at several things.
For one, Scott states that 1940 could be considered the end of the Modernistic era. If Modernism began around the turn of the Twentieth Century and ended in 1940, that bespeaks of several things. Modernism fell during one of the great transitional periods of contemporary history, both for the world and for Britain itself. As an American, I note this date (1940) as during World War II. However, from the British perspective, one could very easily see that date as marking the twilight of the British Empire – the sun finally setting on the Union Jack.
These two events – World War II and the Fall of the British Empire – inform the spirit of the Modernists, for they are inextricably connected to Britain’s character and history. The Modernists, whose works were created as a result of and in reaction to their milieu and circumstances, breathe this transition. The passing of their artistic era and the passing of the Empire seem very congruent.
Consider space and place, especially the country, the city, and the personal (or the room). These elements, so essential to the British character of Modernism, are in transition in British society during this period. The city is becoming more cosmopolitan, as are its people. The country is being de-emphasized in favor of the urban. The social power structure itself is shifting, both economically and politically (via women’s suffrage). The Modernists in exploring these themes in their creative works, their political actions, and their sexual mores could be seen as reactions to the changing face of Britain.
One must also consider the nature of this society. An empire is, by its nature, stratified, monolithic, and domineering. The figurehead looms large, an inheritor of the legacy of the divine right of kings and the aggrandizement of a monarch whose body and nation are one. If one is then considering a reaction to this ruling structure, then it fits that the personal and the domestic would come to the fore. Reid, referencing LeCorbusier, notes how the grand and heroic is de-emphasized. Domestics are elevated. Grandeur is made small, while smallness if magnified. This points not only to the elevation of the craftsman but also the female who has been suppressed beneath the male monolith.
Thus, a collection of writers, artists, and craftspersons of multiple viewpoints and sexualities all seem quite logical in the context of the (d)evolution of a vast feudal empire into a contemporary cosmopolitan urbanized state.
In considering World War II as the end of Modernism, one must look to its prologue – World War I. The Great War showcased the grand foolishness of imperial brinksmanship and, due to the folly of kings and “great” men plunged the world into chaos. The cracks in the structure of this society emerged and lent to the natural questioning of that structure. The cultural ambivalence that resulted created an environment of inquiry. The foreign foes of the First World War were not fighting for a specific ideology (as compared to the Third Reich’s dreams of conquest). Perhaps the unequivocal nature of War War II and the nature of the threat to Britain and the world at large shut down that inquiry. Perhaps Modernism came to an end because the shattering nature of fascism, at home and abroad, suffocated the life from it.
As such, I my best description of Modernism is “a period during the twilight of the British Empire when a perfect storm of cultural questioning took place which elevated and emphasized the creative, the artistic, and the domestic over the imperial and the imperialistic.”
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