C-4f

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The Concept
of Modernism
Astradur Eysteinsson
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
The Making of
Modernist Paradigms

THIS CHAPTER does not offer a comprehensive survey of
the uses of our concept, but rather a critical inquiry into domi
nant, paradigmatic conceptions of what constitutes modem
ism. shall examine how modemism has been understood and
what the concept has been made to signify, or, to put it dif
ferently, how we collaborate with historical reality (including
texts designated "modemist") in constructing the paradigm
called "modernism."
The term itself appears to provide us with a semantic base
which to ground such an endeavor. "Modemism" signals a
dialectical opposition to what is not functionally "modern,"
namely "tradition." But this pivotal characteristic seems to be
progressively less prevalent in recent critical discourse, in part
because we now often perceive modemist literature itself as a
"tradition." Actually, the antitraditional aspects of modemism
and their implications were played down at an early stage by
writers and critics seeking an aesthetic order in which to
ground a modem poetics. Thus, while the rage against preva
lent traditions is perhaps the principal characteristic of mod
ernism, and one that has provided it with a name, this feature
has always been counteracted by a desire to forestall the anar
chistic implications of such a stance. am not thinking pri
marily of the attempts of Eliot, Pound, and others to create
altemative, often highly personal and idiosyncratic, "tradi-
tions." This in itself can be seen as just another way of under
mining the authority of tradition and unveiling the arbitrari
ness of the traditions that the modernists felt they were up
against. have in mind, rather, the more strictly formal-aes
thetic politics of critics and commentators on modemism
(some of whom were also practicing moderists). In their vari
ous guises, these approaches constitute a broad and powerful
critical paradigm.
The Rage for Order
In his famous essay "Ulysses, Order, and Myth," which ap
peared in 1923, . S. Eliot lays the groundwork for a great deal of
subsequent criticism and appraisal of modemism. He contends
that Joyce's use of Homer's Odyssey has the importance of "a
scientifc discovery," making Ulysses not a novel, because "the
novel is a form which will no longer serve; it is because the
novel, instead of being a form, was simply the expression of an
age which had not suffciently lost all form to feel the need of
something stricter." This "something stricter" is the use of
myth as "a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and
a signifcance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy
which is contemporary history."1
Here Eliot strikes a chord that has been sounded in innumer
able theories of modemism to this day. Modemism is viewed as
a kind of aesthetic heroism, which in the face of the chaos of
the modern world (very much a "fallen" world) sees art as the
only dependable reality and as an ordering principle of a quasi
religious kind. The unity of art is supposedly a salvation from
the shattered order of modern reality. The aesthetics of mod
ernism have been made to look like a solution to Stephen
Dedalus's problem in Ulysses, when he complains that history
is a nightmare from which he is trying to awake. Eliot's aes
thetics in fact strongly resembles Stephen's, presented in an
ironic manner by Joyce in Portrait of the Artist as Young
Man: "The esthetic image is frst luminously apprehended as
. . S. Eliot, Selected Pro8e of S. E]iot, ed. Frank Kermode (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 97 5 ), p. 177.
selfbounded and selfcontained upon the immeasurable back
ground of space and time which it is not. You apprehend it as
one thing. You see it as one whole. You apprehend its whole
ness. That is integritas."2 This organic theory of art, derived
partly from classical, partly from romanticist aesthetics, is
echoed in different ways in a great number of works on modem
ism-very often through a reference to Eliot's essay or Joyce's
novel-and is frequently taken to constitute the center of the
revolutionary formal awareness and emphasis that most critics
detect in modemist works.
In "Spatial Form in Modern Literature," Joseph Frank says
that for . S. Eliot "the distinctive quality of a poetic sensibility
is its capacity to form new wholes, to fuse seemingly disparate
experiences into an organic unity."3 Frank fnds that a spatial
form of this kind is indeed the distinctive mark of "modern"
literature, undermining the "inherent consecutiveness of lan
guage" (ro) and suspending "the process of individual reference
temporarily until the entire pattern of internal references can
be apprehended as a unity" (13). In so doing modem literature
locks past and present "in a timeless unity" and achieves a
"transformation of the historical imagination into myth-an
imagination for which time does not exist" (6).
Maurice Beebe relies partly on Frank in defning modemism,
which he sees as being distinguished by four features: formal
ism and aesthetic autonomy; detachment and noncommit
ment or " 'irony' in the sense of that term as used by the New
Critics"; use of myth as a structuring device; and a develop
ment from Impressionism to reflexivism, centering its atten
tion upon "its own creation and composition."4 There is no
mention at all of the historical or social relevance of modemist
2. James Jyce, Portrait of the Artist as Young Man (New Yrk: Pegui
ks, 1976!, p. 212. As a implied authr Jyce is curse t uifrmly iric
thrughut the vel, but he wields the aative vice such a way that there is a
fluid play idetifcati with ad distace frm the yug aesthete. view
their mde presetati, it is surpsig hw literally Stephe's aesthetic the
es have bee read by ctics as the authr's frthright statemets, if t his
maifesto.
3 Jseph Frak, "Spatial Frm Mder Literature," The Widening Gyre:
Crisis and Mastery in Mdern Literature (New Bruswick, N.J.: Rutgers Uiver
sity Press, 1963!. p. .
4 Beebe, "What Mderism Was,'' p. 173.


r

works, to which Beebe actually refers to as "the closed worlds
of Modernist art" (r).
Such a portrayal of modemism, especially in the Anglo
American context, is clearly influenced by New Criticism,
which Beebe does not fail to invoke. Eliot's position of author
ity, both as poet and critic, is also instrumental in this particu
lar New Critical construction of the modernist paradigm. It is
crucial not so much because of Eliot's view of the use of myth
as a structuring device5-the New Critics were not all that
interested in mythology-as because of his persistent empha
sis on form as an autonomous vehicle of aesthetic signifcance.
From a certain perspective, modemism, in its rejection of tradi
tional social representation and in its heightening of formal
awareness, would seem the ideal example of New Critical
tenets and of the New Critical view of the poem as an isolated
whole, whose unity is based intemal tensions that perhaps
remain unresolved but nonetheless do not disturb the auton
omy of the work. lndeed, when critics use the term "modemist
criticism" they often seem to be refeing to New Criticism,
and they appear unaware that there need be no "natural" con
nection between modemist works and this particular critical or
analytical paradigm.
this day, however, critics persist in reading modernism
through the spectacles of New Criticism. Recently this ten
dency has been apparent in the discussion suounding post
modemism (see chapter 3), which is frequently seen as reject
ing this particular kind of "modemism," together with the
aesthetics of the organic, unifed, autonomous and "pure" work
of art. Of course, one might point out another, similar connec
tion between modemist literature and modem criticism and
theory, namely that between modemism and Russian formal
ism, whose emphasis on the autonomy of the literary work
based on an opposition between "poetic" and ''ordinary" or
"communicative" language-prefgures that of New Criticism
s. As shall discuss later, Elit, i his essay the mythic rder Jyce's
Ulysses, is actually t at all iterested i the iterpretive implicatis myth
lgical parallels r allusis. He is maily ccered with securig a structural
grid which to latch the wrk that ca fd such cheret structural meas
the chas mder histry. Hece, myth cmes t serve as a aesthetic substitute
fr the "lst" whle histrical reality.
as well as that of a great deal of structuralist work. But as wc
shall see, the implications of Russian formalist poetics are
more intricate and productive with respect to modernism than
are those of New Criticism.
Outside History
Many moderists have to a great extent shared the "purist"
views of formalists and New Critics, and have even forcefully
uttered ahistorical notions of poetic autonomy in their essays
and other commentaries. _But nothing obliges us to take such
views as adequately representative of their own work or of
moderism in general. seldom have literary scholars dem
onstrated a skeptical view of such auto-commentary, as Mary
Louise Pratt does in her criticism of the "poetic language"
fallacy. Having shown how formalist/ structuralist theories are
echoed in the critical writings of moderists like Rilke, Valery,
and Mallarme, she concludes:
It is one thing for the poet, or even the poet-critic, to claim that
his art exists in a universe of its own and bears no relation to the
society in which he and his readers live. It is quite another for the
literary analyst to unquestioningly accept such a view as the basis
for a theory of literature. The poet's declaration that he no longer
wishes his work to be associated with "society" or "reality" or
"commerce" or "the masses" is hardly grounds for the critic to
decide that the associations have in fact ceased to exist or ceased
to pertain to the critical enterpse.6
That moderist literature has severed ties with society, real
ity, or history has indeed been a basic assumption behind a
great deal of criticism of moderism-not only criticism that
could be labeled formalist or New Critical, but, signifcantly
also historically minded criticism, in particular a certain brand
of Marxist criticism. According to Robert Onopa, for instance,
one of the premises of moderism, partly inherited from ro-
6. Mary Louise Pratt, Toward Speech Act Theory of Lterary Dscourse
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 977), p. xviii.
manticism, "is the notion that the uses of art are very much
like the uses of religion."7 The use-structure of religion-con
sisting in salvation from and transcendence of reality, the fallen
world-provides moderism with "an escape from history"
(364). Onopa does not fail to relate this religious aesthetics to
New Criticism:
Organic theory, Richards' dissociation of poetic use from poetic
content, and Eliot's notion of impersonal poetry all were elabo
rated by New Criticism, perhaps the most complete view that the
work of art exists outside of, and should be treated outside of,
history, since art is self-contained and generates its own laws.
Once outside of history, the work is available as a paradigm of
paradise, the antithesis of the fallen world, and, as a product of
man, a means for him to transcend the fallen, time-bound world.
(372)
Daniel Fuchs states: "The moderist aesthetic invented the
New Criticism, in which judgments of form preceded judg
ments of meaning,"8 and Robert Weimann goes so far as to label
"moderist" the various kinds of formalist criticism that he
feels have been dominant in the twentieth century, such as
New Criticism and the critical works of S. Eliot. "Moder
ism," in Weimann's vocabulary, seems to stand for a rejection of
any objective continuity of literary history in favor of a spatial
aesthetic, be it within the literary work itself or on the level of
present appreciation of the literature of the past.9 Moderism,
it would seem, like Stephen Dedalus, is striving to escape from
the nightmare of history, trying to rule out the dimension of
time. Lillian Robinson and Lise Vogel approach this issue from
a slightly different angle but reach a parallel conclusion: "Mod
ernism ... seeks to intensify isolation. It forces the work of art,
the artist, the critic, and the audience outside of history. Mod
ernism denies us the possibility of understanding ourselves as
y. Robert Onopa, "The End of Art as a Spiritual Project,' TrQuarterly, no. 26
(Winter 973): 363.
8. Daniel Fuchs, "Saul Bellow and the Modem Tradition," Contemporary Lter
ature 5 (Winter 97 4): 69.
9 Robert Weimann, Stmcture and Socety n Lterary Hstory: Studes n the
Hstory and Theory of Hstorcal Crtcsm (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 984), esp. pp. 7-78, 2-.
agents i the material wrld, fr all has bee remved t a
abstract wrld f ideas, where iteractis ca be miimized r
emptied f meaig ad real csequeces. Less tha ever are
we able t iterpret the wrld-much less chage it."10
Iroically, it was precisely such gruds that Ortega y
Gasset valrized the "dehumaizati f art," the almst cm
plete dissciati f "huma sesibility" frm "artistic se
sibility" that he saw mdem art havig achieved.11 Thus, it
smetimes appears that the mst radically histrical ad the
mst radically frmalist critics fudametally agree the
basic characteristic f mdem(ist) art ad literature, e grup
cdemig what the ther celebrates. But while Ortega is, r
at least preteds t be, mdestly (ad astcratically!) resigned
t the subsequet status f art as "a thig f csequece"
(49), critics such as Rbis ad Vgel fte seem t fd this
state f affairs immesely threateig: it is as if by beig dis
placed 'ut f histry" we are lifted frm a state f security ad
cmfrt ad put i a bewilderig place that defes iterpreta
ti, much like Kafka's heres. It is tewrthy that sme
critics might wat t see this as a thrughly "histrical" expe
riece ad argue that such a displacemet is a mmet f beig
shcked "it histry." The latter ti is e we shall cme
back t, especially i discussig the theries f Thedr W.
dm.
History wth Vengeance versus "Pure" Aesthetics
Critics wh vehemetly attack mdemism fr beig ahistr
ical, gruds f its preccupati with frmal rder, fte
pe the fldgates f histry through their very characteriza
ti f mdemism. a essay expressiism writte i
1934, Gerg Lukacs attacked its abstract, ahistrical, ia
tial, ad mythical frms, claimig that the ew fascist pw
ers shuld fd i it a suitable aesthetic to draw i frmig a
. Lillian Robinson and Lise Vogel, "Modemism and Histoy," New Lterary
History 3 (Autumn 97): 98.
. Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanzaton of Art and Other Essays on Art,
Culture, and Lterature (Pnceton, N.J.: Pnceton University Press, 968), p. .
ew culture.12 Althugh three years later the Nazis deuced
expressiism as "decadet art," this aalgy betwee mder
ism ad fascism has persistetly bee drawn, partly because
several mdemists have actually teded toward, r eve pely
supprted, fascism. e f the tw essays that started the
expressiist ctrversy i the Germa expatriate magazie
Das Wort i the late 193s, Klaus a attacked the famus
pet Gttfried e, arguig that his veremphasis frm
reflected the authritaria rder ad disciplie f the fascist
state.13 It later became a cmmplace t elabrate this
frmal-idelgical cecti i geeralizig abut mdem
ism, well-knw examples beig Fredric James's Fables f
Aggressin: Wyndham Lews, the Mdernist as Fascist, ad
Frak Kermde's discussin f mdemism i The Sense f an
Ending. Kermde argues that mdemists fnd i myth ad i
the "frmal elegance f fascism" a means t create clsed,
immbile aesthetic hierarchiesi such frm expresses 'rder as
the mdemist artist uderstands it: rigid, ut f flux, the spa
tial rder f the mdem critic r the clsed authritaria s
ciety."14
But i light f the eagemess displayed in critically establish
ing a cnnecti betwee mdemism and fascism, it is bafflig
hw rarely its further historical ad frmal implicatins are
prbed. First, where des this frmal-idelgical nexus place
mdemism with regard to the prevalent capitalist-burgeis
culture f the twetieth cetury? Secd, hw, ad under what
cnditis, ca aesthetically elabrated frm (as frm) becme
the vehicle f a specifc idelgy? d third, d readers f
mdemist wrks actually r predmiatly experiece the
strict frmal elegace that prpents as well as adversaries f
mdemism s fte ccetrate ? It is highly signifcat
that while mdernism is fte accused f beig a cult f frm,
it is als (t ifrequetly by the same critics, such as Lukacs)
2. Georg Lukacs, "GrBe und Verfall des Expressionismus," Essays iiber Realis
mus (Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand, 97), pp. 9-49
3 Klaus Mann, "Gottfried Benn. Die Geschichte einer Verirrung," in Hans
Jiirgen Schmitt, ed., Die Expressionsmusdebatte: Materialien zu ener marx
stschen Realismuskonzepton (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 973), pp. 39-49.
4. Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies n the Theory of Ficton
(New York: Oxford University Press, 966), pp. 114, .
attacked fr frmlessness ad for distrted ad aarchic repre
setati f sciety, disitegratio f outer reality, ad disr
derly maipulati f laguage. It is at this pit that the
whole ti of moderism mvig the cmmuicative act f
readig "outside f histry" shows itself to be a ctradictio
i terms, for the very detecti f either exaggerated frmal
maeuvers r distrted represetatis f reality assumes
sme kid f "rm," a symblic ad semitic rder that u
derlies ur every act f scial cmmuicatio.
It is t surprisig, therefre, that i writigs mdemism
the thery f aesthetic autmy frequetly appears t cexist
with that f cultural subversi, r a questiig f the very
fudatis f the reignig scial rder. This, it seems t me, is
a cetral paradx f modemist studies. a essay i the widely
read sympsium Modernism 189-193, Malclm Bradbury
and Joh Fletcher remark hw mdemists strive fr "that mak
ig f pattem ad whleess which makes art it a order
stadig utside ad beyd the huma muddle, a trasce
det bject, a lumius whle."15 ather essay i the same
anthlgy, written by Bradbury ad James McFarlae, mder
ism is see t signal "verwhelmig dislcatis/' e f
"thse cataclysmic upheavals f culture" that "questin a
entire civilizati r culture."
16
This uderscres, believe, the
mst imprtat task facig moderist studies: we eed t ask
urselves hw the ccept f automy, s crucial t may
theries f mderism, ca pssibly cexist with the equally
prmiet view f mdemism as a historically explsive para
digm. This dichtmy, hardly recgized by mst critics, is
characteristic for the diverget approaches t moderism as,
the e had, a cultural frce, ad the ther as a aesthetic
project. But if we refuse, as thik we must, to ackwledge
any strict budaries betwee the two, the the Dedalia view
f the work of art as a "trascedet bject" ad a islated
aesthetic whle is ivalidated as a critical basis fr mdemist
studiesi it is a abstract ti that is bud t be usettled r
5. Malcolm Bradbury and John Fletcher, "The Introverted Novel," in Malcolm
Bradbury and James McFarlane, ed., Modernism, 1890-1930 (Harmondsworth,
Eng.: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 407.
16. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, "The Name and Nature of Mod
emism," in Bradbury and McFarlane, ed., Modernism, 1890-1930, p. 19.
decstructed whe the wrk is received ad dissemiated,
whe it eters the "huma muddle."
Clemet Greeberg, i his well-kw essay "Mderist
Paintig," prvides us wi th a gd example f hw critics fte
seek t skirt the prblem f cultural disldgmet: "The es
sece f Mderism lies, as see it, i the use of the characteris
tic methds f a disciplie to criticize the disciplie itself-t
i rder t subvert it, but t etrech it mre frmly i its area
of cmpetece."17 Hece, "each art had t determie, through
the peratis peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar ad exclu
sive t itself" whereby "each art wuld be redered 'pure,' ad
i its 'purity' fd the guaratee f its stadards of quality as
well as f its idepedece" ( ro2). The effects peculiar t pait
ig lie i its flatess r tw-dimesiality, but thse f litera
ture wuld aalgusly rest i the "materiality" f laguage r
f "the wrd," as ppsed t its cmmuicative fuctii very
much, f curse, the argumet f the Russia frmalists. But
Greeberg is caught i a kid f itetial fallacy: he asserts
that the mdemist self-criticism f each artistic disciplie des
not take place "i order t subvert it," but he fails t prvide
ay argumets r evidece ccemig this iteti, r,
mre imprtat, ccemig its subversive efect. Iri
cally, he wuld hardly brig up the issue f subversi if he did
t csider it a potetial result f this self-critical fuctio f
mdemism.
Despite the bvius weakesses i his argumet, Gree
berg's thery has becme a stadard apprach t mdemism,
thus buttressig a immesely pwerful critical paradigm i
mdemist studies, a paradigm mreover that is w accepted
by varius less frmalistically rieted critics. fact, this
paradigmatic cstructi is fte simply accepted as a bjec
tive bservati. Thus, Hal Fster, arguig fr a "postmdem
ism f resistace," has qualms abut talkig about the
modemist strivig fr "the purity f each art," a purity clearly
aalgus t ad arisig frm the sactity f idividual md
erist works, which he describes as "uique, symblic, visio
ary" ad as "clsed systems."1
8
Mrever, this ahistorical pr-
? Clement Greenberg, "Modernist Painting," in Gregory Battock, ed., The
New Art: Critical Anthology (New York: . . Dutton, 1966), p. 101.
18. Hal Foster, "Postmodemism: Preface," in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-
jecti seems t have fud its way it theries stesibly
apprachig mdemism frm a very differet agle. Ala
Wilde, i his self-declared phemelgical apprach, estab
lishes fr the "abslute iry" f mderist wrks a ccept f
the "airic," which is based a mmet f fusi ad
harmy, a "frmal symmetry," a self-ctaied aesthetic
whle that balaces ut the mderist percepti f fragme
tati: "Uable t make sese f the wrld but uwillig t
frg the ideal mdel f rderliess, the abslute irist flds
back himself i the sanctuary f his art."19 This reading f
the mderist paradigm is nly a thily disguised rewrking f
the New Critical apprach, accrdig t which the mderist
wrk maages t garner fr itself a ttal aesthetic autmy in
its unreslved irnic tesins, its "equal pise f ppsites"
(35).
We shuld w be ready t tum t critics wh are less likely
t be hampered by aestheticist, frmalist, r New Critical the
ries and wh d nt turn s blid a eye t the histrical
signifcance f mdernist aesthetic practices.
Complementing History
R. . Sctt-James ntes that "there are characteristics f
mdem life in general which can ly be summed up, as Mr.
Thmas Hardy and thers have summed them up, by the wrd
mdernism."20 Sctt-James has i mid a highly self-c
scius, bleak mde f scicultural expressi that he sees as
beig a threateig rise in the dmai f literature. His
bk, published in 198, was f curse written befre the wave
f the mre radical frmal experimets i mdemist literature
ad art, but it signifcatly prefgures a gd deal f critical
respse t mdemism as a histrical and cultural frce, i
ctrast t the varius aesthetic appraisals that largely limit
Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture !Port Townsend, Wash.: Bay Press, 1983),
pp. x-xi.
19. Alan Wilde, Horizons of Assent: Modernism, Postmodernism, and the
Ironic Imagination !Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 33-34.
20. R. . Scott-James, Modernism and Romance !New York and London: John
Lane, 1908), p. ix.
themselves t the frmal characteristics and achievemets f
mdemist writig. The frmer, istead f viewig mderist
aesthetics as mre r less divrced from histry, seeks t i
quire it the varius ways i which mderism either paral
lels, iteracts with, r reacts t scial mdemity. Such studies
set up mdemist paradigms that appear radically different frm
the frmalist nes, althugh the latter have arguably had the
upper hand the pst-Wrld War critical scee, at least
withi the Angl-America sphere.
Naturally, such cultural iquies d t cstitute a uni
frm approach to mdemism. There is, hwever, widespread
agreemet as t the cstituents f mderity t which md
ernism is felt t be respdig. have already alluded to sme
decisive mments i the geeral histrical framewrk f the
s-called mdem experience. Its mre detailed "physical" signs
ad symptms have ften eugh bee eumerated ad packed
it summaries; have selected the fllwig pregnant speci
men, taken frm e f the mst spirited bks the issue f
mdemism, Marshall Berma's All That Is Solid Melts into
Air:
The maelstrom of modem life has been fed from many sources:
great discoveries in the physical sciences, changing our images of
the universe and our place in it; the industrialization of produc
tion, which transforms scientifc knowledge into technology,
creates new human environments and destroys old ones, speeds
up the whole tempo of life, generates new forms of corporate
power and class struggle; immense demographic upheavals, se
vering millions of people from their ancestral habitats, hurtling
them halfway across the world into new lives; rapid and often
cataclysmic urban growth; systems of mass communication, dy
namic in their development, enveloping and binding together the
most diverse people and societies; increasingly powerful national
states, bureaucratically structured and operated, constantly striv
ing to expand their powers; mass social movements of people, and
peoples, challenging their political and economic rulers, striving
to gain some control over their lives; fnally, bearing and driving
all these people and institutions along, an ever-expanding, dras
tically fluctuating capitalist world market. In the twentieth cen
tury, the social processes that bring this maelstrom into being,
and keep it in a state of perpetual becoming, have come to be
called "modernization."21
The visions and ideals nourished by these "world-historical
processes," Berman goes on, have "come to be loosely grouped
together under the name of 'modernism.' This book is a study
in the dialectics of modernization and modernism." One might
feel that "modemism" is in fact used all too "loosely" here, but
Berman's study typifes one approach to modernism, namely, a
general view of it as a dialectical counterpart of social moder
nity, partaking of both the fascination and the destruction that
characterize modemization. And although Berman's work
could not be said to represent a aesthetic "reflection theory,"
modernism (being a broad and seemingly dominant cultural
trend) is for him a kind of mior image of social modemization.
Several other scholars have elaborated on the dialectics of
modemization and modemism. Hugh Kenner points out how
modern science has changed the world outlook in art as well as
its formal characteristics. He argues that modemist poetry, like
modem science, draws on "pattemed energies"22 as well as on
qualities of space discovered in the twentieth century. Else
where he points out that the radically altered "quality of city
life" obligated a "change in artistic means."23 He mentions the
"Machine," the "Crowd," electricity, telephone, new means of
transportation, and other aspects of modem technology, and
goes on to discuss how these elements influenced the structure
of James Joyce's work (and not just his subject matter). "The
deep connections between modemism and modem urban
rhythms" are nowhere more evident than in Ulysses," Kenner
concludes (28). Such rhythms and sounds are also prominent in
other major modemist novels, some of which followed in the
wake of Ulysses; one thinks for instance of Dblin's Berlin
Alexanderplatz and Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer. But the
2 r. Marshall Berman, All That Is Sold Melts nto r: The Experence of Moder
nty (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982!, p. r6.
22. Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
Califomia Press, I97II, p. 153.
23. Hugh Kenner, "Notes toward an Anatomy of 'Modemism,'" in . L. Epstein,
ed., Starchamber Qury: fames foyce Centennal Volume, 882-1982 (London:
Methuen, r982l, pp. 4-5.
structural connections between modernism and modern city
life also reach back in time beyond Ulysses, and are often
traced to Baudelaire's poetry.
Thus, critics have frequently elaborated on the parallels be
tween urban life, modem science, and technological progress
on the one hand and modemist art and literature on the other.
James Mellard notes that when "the new science exploded the
world, it exploded with it the novel as well."24 The problem
with modemist paradigms invoked by drawing such direct
analogies between modemism and modemity (scientifc or
more broadly social) is that modemism, and the social experi
ence it utters, assumes the role of a reverberation and even
reflection of social modemization. Such a analogy can easily
miss the sociocultural and ideological positioning of modem
ism with regard to social modemity, or can reduce it to a
unilaterally reproductive or symbolic act. The latter tendency,
in fact, is clearly exemplifed by critics who see in the formal
fervor of modemism a reflection of fascist discipline or total
itaan ideologies.
One can of course point to several parallels between modern
ization in social life and in art. It is well known, for instance,
that certain modemist groups, in particular the Italian futur
ists, reveled in the technological aspects of modemity and cele
brated in their work modem machinery, the increased tempo of
urban life, in some cases even modem warfare. But we must not
let such cases obscure the undeniably troubled relationship
that generally exists between modemism and modemization.
In "What Was Modemism?" Harry Levin asks in conclusion,
playing on Stephen Dedalus's famous pledge inA Portrait of the
Artist as Young Man, whether it has not been the endeavor of
the modernist generation "to have created a conscience for a
scientifc age?"25 "For" may be a misleading preposition here,
should it suggest that this conscience is uniformly activated by
the "scientifc age" or by modemization in general. Is this
highly disturbed conscience not a critical reaction to modem-
24. James . Mellard, The Exploded Form: The Modenst Novel n Ameca
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, I98ol, p. 30.
25. Harry Levin, "What Was Modemism?" Refractons: Essays n Comparatve
Lterature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966!, p. 295.
ization, presenting its otherness, its negativity, that which is
negated by the prominent modes of cultural production?
Answering this question involves, of course, determining the
semantic and signifcatory status of "modemization," of so
ciocultural modernity. In the introductory essay to Modernism
890-9 3 , Bradbury and McFarlane assert: "Modemism is our
art; it is the one art that responds to the scenario of our
chaos."26 It is noteworthy that their criterion seems to be that
our age indeed constitutes a "chaos." This is arguably a mod
ernist criterion, but risks restricting modernism to a mioring
relationship with this "scenario of our chaos." In fact the au
thors do go on to draw the kind of analogy discussed above: 't
is the art consequent on Heisenberg's 'Uncertainty Principle',
of the destruction of civilization and reason in the First World
War . . . of existential exposure to meaninglessness or absurd
ity," to quote but a few items from their list. Later on, however,
they seem to eschew this reductive analogy, when they argue
that modemism is to some extent centered in "a notion of a
relationship of crisis between art and history" (29). Such a
relationship of crisis would explain why modemist art can not
simply be the reflecting counterpart of history, or of social
modemization. This relationship, and hence the conscience
that modemism may have created for (or against) our scientifc
age, is clearly too troubled and distorted to be possibly mapped
on to classical and mimetic models of the relationship between
art and reality.
Mimetic notions, however, have sometimes been used as an
apology for modemism. In his seminal anthology of 1919,
Menschheitsdimmerung, Kurt Pinthus asks about modem po
etry: "Must it not be chaotic, like the age out of whose tom and
bloody soil it grew?"27 Later Georg Lukacs was to attack mod
ernism on mimetic grounds. In his contribution to the expres
sionist controversy in Das Wort, he claimed that expressionism
had drastically failed to reflect adequately the 'bjective total
ity of reality,"28 and that like other modem movements of the
26. Bradbury and McFarlane, "The Name and Nature of Moderism," in Brad
bury and McFarlane, ed., Modernism, 890-1930, p. 27.
. Kurt Pinthus, Menschheitsdimmerung: Ein Dokument des Expressionis
mus !Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 1959), p. 25 !my translation).
28. Georg Lukacs, 's geht um den Realismus," in Schmitt, ed., Die Expres
sionismusdebatte, p. 198. fnd Lukacs's formulation important: "Das Problem der
imperialist era it reflected only the "tattered surface" of cap
italist society in an "unmediated" manner (201-202). Thus,
expressionism "disavows every relation to reality" and declares
a subjective war on all its contents (207). The paradox here is
that expressionism supposedly disavows its ties to reality
while also reflecting, in its unprocessed rawness, the "tattered
surface" of that reality, that is, capitalist society.
The problem lies in Lukacs's reflection theory, which appears
to assume that "reality" can actually be rendered ("mirrored")
without being mediated. But in his early works Lukacs had
already argued that the reality that people may perceive as
being unmediated will generally not appear to have a "tattered
surface" (it is no coincidence that in the essay at hand he
denounces both his Theory of the Novel and History and Class
Consciousness as youthful, "idealistic" and "reactionary"
works [218-219]). In order to survive and reproduce itself, cap
italist ideology requires a smooth surface, one which, in the
process of its mediation, takes on the guise of a normal human
condition.29 In Wider den mifverstandenen Realismus Lukacs
states that in modernist writing everyday life under capitalism,
the bourgeois norm, is, to a large extent justifably, presented as
a "distortion" (in terms of petrifcation as well as fragmenta
tion) of the human character. But, says Lukacs, literature must
have a clear social-human "concept of the normal if it is to
'place' distortion correctly," see it in its correct context, "that is
to say, to see it as as distortion."30
The concept of the "normal" is central here: it is inconceiv
able that capitalist reality could be continually "lived" as a
distortion, for then the distortion would.have no background of
normalcy against which it would be recognizable. If, however,
the reality of the bourgeois-capitalist era is lived as a more or
objektiven Totalitit der Wirklichkeit." It has been trimmed down to "question of
totality" in the English translation: "Realism in the Balance," trans. Rodney Liv
ingston, in Erst Bloch et al., Aesthetics and Politics !London: New Left Books,
1977), p. 33 Subsequent page references are to the German version.
29. Such normalcy, however, is radically ruptured in the case of extended "phy si
cal" crisis, especially that of war, which is of course the historical background for
Kurt Pinthus's remark quoted above.
30. Lukacs, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, p. 33 Cf. the German
original, Wider den miverstandenen Realsmus !Hamburg: Claassen, 1958), pp.
32-33
less accepted order, as "the ormal," the Lukacs's view of the
modemist distortio of life calls forth implicatios radically
differet from those he seeks to establish, sice modemism ca
oly preset society as a place of distortio by workig agaist
a domiat cocept of the ormal. This is a dialectics that
Lukacs will t ackowledge, sice his cocept of "the or
mal" is of a specifc ideological order ad t the e operative
i bourgeois society (although his career ca be partly see as
tryig to recocile the two). Lukacs is thus i agreemet with a
host of other critics i takig modemism to task for distortig
reality, for failig to adhere to ormal coditios of huma life,
for creatig a sese of chaos i its depictio of the world, ad for
causig a perceptual crisis i the receiver.
Aesthetics of Subversion
Lukacs's approach to the issue of modemism is cotradic
tory, but his cotradictios are illumiatig. They illustrate
how the historical coceptio of a modemist paradigm ca
(ad has teded to) vacillate betwee mimetic otios of a
modem "chaos" reflected i e way or aother by moderst
works ad a uderstadig of modemism as a chaotic subver
sio of the commuicative ad semiotic orms of society.
Not all those who judge modemism critically from the va
tage poit of social orms are as hostile as Lukacs, ad some are
amog the most perceptive commetators modemism.
what remais e of the most iterestig ad isightful essays
modemism, "The Brow Stockig" (the fal chapter of
Mimesisj, Erich Auerbach brilliatly aalyzes Virgiia Woolf's
ovel the Lighthouse as a represetative literary approach
to, ad "realist" reworkig of, modem reality. the Light
house might seem to be a ideal example of the "aesthetic
whole" i modemist art, edig as it does with the boat reach
ig the lighthouse ad with Lily Briscoe's lie beig draw i
the ceter of her paitig: "With a sudde itesity, as if she
saw it clear for a secod, she drew a lie there, i the cetre. It
was doe; it was fished. Yes, she thought . . . have had my
visio."31 Auerbach, however, t limitig his iterests to
3J. Virginia Woolf, T the Lighthouse (London: Panther Books, 1977), p. 192.
the Lighthouse has actually been used as a example of a "close alliance" between
:,
strictly formal matters, fds that the ovel teds toward
chaos, toward the breakig dow of cultural uity or "whole."
this as well as i other works that break with traditioal
methods of represetatio, he sees signs of "cofusio" ad "a
certai atmosphere of uiversal doom" ad "somethig hostile
to the reality which they represet."32
Aother liberal humaist, Lioel Trillig, approaches mod
erism i a t dissimilar fashio. ' the Modem Elemet i
Modem Literature" describes how wary he was whe frst offer
ig a course modem literature to his studets, sice it
seemed to him that its "modem elemet" etailed quite omi
ous portrayals of huma iatioality ad cultural subversio
that were obviously hostile to the domiat views of social
order of which he ad his studets were a part.33 The coserva
tive culture critic Daiel Bell, makig the issue more explicitly
ideological, claims that for over a cetury modemism has per
sisted i "providig reewed ad sustaied attacks the bour
geois social structure."34
this respect Lukacs, the Marxist, is basically i agreemet
with Bell. Usig Kafka as a archetypal example, Lukacs
claims that modemists reduce social reality to ightmare ad
portray it as a agst-dde, absurd world, thus depvig us of
ay sese of perspective. We have already see how Lukacs,
who costatly argued that Marxist ideology had to build
ad critically utilize the bourgeois heritage, claims that litera
ture must have a clear social-huma cocept of the "ormal,"
ad that this is precisely what modemism deouces. Lukacs
shares with Auerbach ad Trillig the ti that as a cultural
force modemism leads to the ievitable subversio of tradi
tioal humaism (a topic we shall take up agai later i this
chapter). But what we see i this vaety of resposes to mod
emism is signifcatly the very reverse of Eliot's view of the
modemism and New Cticism; see Joanne V. Creighton, "The Reader and Modem
and Post-Modem Fiction," College Literature 9 (1982): 216-18.
32. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Westem Litera
ture, trans. Willard R. Trask (Pnceton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953), p.
55 .
33 Lionel Tlling, ' the Modem Element in Modem Literature," in Stanley
Bumshaw, ed., Varieties of Literary Experience (New York: New York University
Press, 1962), pp. 407-33.
34 Daniel Bell, "Beyond Modemism, Beyond Self," The Winding Passage: Es
says and Sociologicalfourneys, 960-1980 (New York: Basic, 1980), pp. 275-76.
paradigmatic breakthrugh achieved by Jyce i Ulysses.
Whereas Elit saw Jyce impsig a strict aesthetic rder up
the futility ad aarchy f ctemprary histry, these critics
judge mdemism as a aarchic frce attackig ad eve se
verely udermiig ur scial rder ad ur habitual way f
perceivig ad cmmuicatig reality.
Crisis of the Subject
Apprached frm such agles f scial rms, mdemism is
judged t as a aesthetic cmplemet f scial mderity, but
rather as a vehicle f crisis withi the "prgress" f mdemiza
ti. The signs f this crisis are geerally felt t reside i a
mdemist preccupati with huma csciusess (as p
psed t a mimetic ccer with the huma evirmet ad
scial cditis), ad they are perhaps mst pruced i
the use f the "stream f csciusess" techique i mdem
ist fcti. Thus, i view f previus literary history, mder
ism is felt t signal a radical "iward tur" i literature, ad
fte a mre thrugh explrati f the huma psyche tha is
deemed t have bee prbable r eve pssible i pre-Freudia
times. But this iward tum is als widely held t have ruptured
the cvetial ties betwee the idividual ad sciety.
Accrdig t Lukacs, mdemism, aided by ctemprary
theries f existetial philsphy, presets the idividual as
beig eterally ad by ature slitary, extricated frm all hu
ma, ad i particular frm all scial, relatis, existig
tlgically idepedet f them.35 Csequetly, by shwig
the idividual as beig "thrw ito existece," mderism
basically egates utward reality, ad equates ma's iward
ess with a abstract subjectivity. This "readig" f the md
erist presetati f huma idividuality cslidated early
it a prmiet paradigm. the wrds Ortega y Gasset
used fr the will-t-style f mder art, it is fte characterized
as the "dehumaizati f art." But the dismatlig f cve
tial presetati f idividuality has led t a certai dicht-
35 Lukacs, Wider den mijverstandenen Realismus, p. r6; The Meaning of
Contemporary Realism, p. 20.
my i mderist aesthetics as well as i theries f mder
ism. the e had, it seems that mderism is built
highly subjectivist premises: by directig its atteti s pre
dmiatly tward idividual r subjective experiece, it ele
vates the eg i prprti to a dimiishig awareess f bjec
tive r cheret utside reality. It is custmary t pit t the
preemiece f such subjectivist petics i expressiist ad
suealist literature, ad mre specifcally i certai tech
iques, such as maipulati f "ceters f csciusess" r
the use f "stream f csciusess" i mder fcti.
the ther had, mderism is fte held t draw its
legitimacy primarily frm writig based highly atisubjec
tivist r impersal petics. S. Elit was e f the mst
adamat spkesme f a eclassical reacti agaist rma
tic-persal petry: "Petry is t a turig lse f emti,
but a escape frm emti; it is t the expressi f pers
ality, but a escape from persality." Hece, "the prgress f
a artist is a ctiual self-sacrifce, a ctiual exticti f
persality," ad "it is i this depersalizati that art may be
said t apprach the cditi f sciece."36
his study f the "geealgy " f Eglish mderism, Mi
chael Leves has shw hw "mdemism was idividualist
befre it was ati-idividualist, ati-traditial befre it was
traditial, iclied t aarchism befre it was iclied t
authritariaism."37 But such differeces ad develpmets
ca easily be veremphasized ad are smetimes based mis
leadig tis f the authr's "presece i" r "absece frm"
the wrk as it is received. Ulysses, fr example, it is ear
impssible t detect a arratr r arrative perspectives that
ca decidedly be said t represet the authr. that limited
sese, the text might be called atisubjective r impersal
(ad Jyce was ideed a spkesma f a "petics f impers
ality "), but at the same time we experiece i the wrk radical
mdes f subjective represetati f reality, to the extet that
outside reality cmes t lse its habitual, mimetic reliability.
But s des the "reality " f idividual experieces mediated
36. . S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Selected Essays, 9?
932 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932), pp. ro, 7
37. Levenson, Genealogy of Modernism, p. 79
tnrough the text, and in this respect the effect of such "subjec
tive" methods is clearly related to that of the "loss of self" or
the "erasure of personality" that exhausts many characters in
modem fction, such as Ulrich in Musil's Mann ohne Eigen
schaften.38 This foregrounds a decisive point: what the mod
ernist poetics of impersonality and that of extreme subjectivity
have in common (and this outweighs whatever may separate
them) is a revolt against the traditional relation of the subject
to the outside world.
In one sense, therefore, Lukacs is not far off the mark in
stating that the ontological degradation of the objective reality
of man's outside world (AuEenwelt des Menschen) and the
corresponding exaltation of his subjectivity necessarily result
in a distorted structure of the subject.39 The problem is that
Lukacs takes this subject to be an already given, natural entity
whereby he forfeits a critical distance that might elucidate
modemist treatments of subjectivity. Gabriel Josipovici, for
instance, claims that modemism brings about a deep question
ing of the bourgeois self that "was in fact a construction. It was
built up by impulses within us in order to protect us from chaos
and destruction."40 And this has of course been a basic view of a
great deal of recent criticism and theory, much of which has in
fact vehemently reinforced modernist deconstruction of bour
geois identity.
It is a widespread notion that chaos and destruction are the
only alteratives that moderism has held up for individuality
and the traditional bourgeois self. Again, we can look to Lukacs
for a critical (and highly polemic) "construction" of a modem
ist paradigm. His views are representative not only because his
approach to moderism has assumed a central place in much
sociological and Marxist criticism, but also because of his
strong ties with traditional bourgeois humanism, the critical
branch of which has often reacted with great reserve, if not
38. See Wylie Sypher, Loss of the Self in Modern Literature and Art INew York:
Vintage Books, 1962), p. 74
39. Lukacs, Wider den mifverstandenen Realismus, p. 22; The Meaning of
Contemporary Realism, p. 24. Lukacs talks about a "Verzerrung" in the "dyna
mischen Struktur des Subjekts. "
40. GabrielJosipovici, The Lessons of Modernism and Other Essays ITotowa,
N. J.: Rowman and Littlefeld, 1977), p. .
hostility, to modernism. In dealing with expressionism in the
thirties, Lukacs was mainly responding to the "formalism" of
its poetry, but when he comes to write Wider den mi[verstand
enen Realismus his emphasis is on fction, and his views are
largely shaped and sharpened by his reaction to moderist
modes of characterization. He attacks moderism for not creat
ing believable and lasting "types," but instead effecting a fading
of characters into shadows or congealment in ghostly ia
tionality. By reducing reality to a nightmare, possibly in the
nebulous consciousness of an idiot, and through its obsession
with the morbid and the pathological, modernism partakes in
"a glorifcation of the abnormal," in "anti-humanism."41
Again Lukacs involves us in an insightful paradox. While he
fnds moderism to have severed the essential ties between
subjective experience and objective reality he still sees in its
portrayal of the human character an aggressive social (that is
antisocial) attitude, which he and several other critics have
judged to betoken a crisis of humanism. One is reminded again
of the words of Robinson and Vogel how the modernist
intensifcation of isolation undermines our interpretive facili
ties. Humanist critics are often of the same opinion. Eugene
Goodheart fnds that the "lesson of moderism" lies in provid
ing "an exacerbated sense of insecurity about the world ... and
if one institutionalizes this lesson in the university, one is
getting not moral guidance, but subversion."42 Like some other
critics, Goodheart fnds an early sign of this tendency in Dos
toevsky's Notes from Underground: "Dostoevsky's under
ground man violates every rule of moral and intellectual de
corum in order to achieve a sense of individual vitality .... He
regards the moral sense as a disease from which he is trying to
purge himself" (ro). The nameless (anti)hero of Dostoevsky's
work, who begins by stating that he is sick and who seeks to
distance himself from all "normal" behavior, is often seen as
the prototype of the moderist "hero," in whom heightened
4 Lukacs, Wider den mifverstandenen Realismus, pp. 63, 31, 29, 32; The
Meaning of Contemporary Realism, pp. 58, 3 r, 30, 32. The English translation is at
times inaccurate, and sometimes condenses the text to the point of leaving out
relevant things.
42. Eugene Goodheart, "Modemism and the Critical Spirit," The Failure of
Criticism ICambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 10.
J ' "" 'Ut ur Joemsm
consciousness and social isolation and paralysis go hand in
hand, as do the exaltation of individuality and its erasure.
Modernism and Its Discontents
Notes from Underground is among the books Lionel Trilling
fnds characteristic for the "modem element" that he sees as
socially subversive, hostile to the positivism and the "common
sense" of our bourgeois era. Trilling comes to the conclusion
that characteristically modern literature, and the "freedom" it
seeks, are incompatible with our society.43 Several humanist
critics have highlighted the discontent of modemism at the
hands of social order, the extraordinarily bleak view of modem
culture and society they fnd embodied in modemism. Accord
ing to Richard Poirier, "modernism is associated with being
unhappy."44 Part of the fame of Eliot's Waste Land springs
undoubtedly from the fact that its title is felt to be typically
evocative of the pessimistic view of modem culture often asso
ciated with modemism (which its adversaries sometimes call
"wastelandism"). Modemist writing-and here it is often felt
to be greatly influenced by Nietzsche-in its preoccupation
with "alienation, fragmentation, break with tradition, iso
lation and magnifcation of subjectivity, threat of the void,
weight of vast numbers and monolithic impersonal institu
tions, hatred of civilization itself" (these are, according to
Daniel Fuchs, the "general characteristics of modernism"45),
would seem to be the music played to the imminent decline of
Westem culture.
Other critics, elaborating on the dark vision that modemism
is felt to usher in, lay more stress how it opens the gates to
the forces of the iational, and some lament the concomitant
destruction of reason. The modernist interest in human con
sciousness was not least directed at the recently "discovered"
subconscious layers of the life of the mind. It is noteworthy that
43. Tlling, "On the Modem Element in Modem Literature," p. 433.
44 Richard Poier, 'The Diffculties of Modemism and the Modemism of
Diffculty" in Arthur Edelstein, ed., Images and Ideas in American Culture: The
Functions of Criticism /Hanover, ..: Brandeis University Press, 1979), p. 125.
45. Fuchs, "Saul Bellow and the Modem Tradition," p. 75.
I
The Making of Modemist Paradigms I 3 r
Lukacs, in discussing the modemist obsession with the patho
logical, sees in it a tendency conspicuously analogous to
Freud's psychological theories. 46 Several modemists were of
course influenced by Freud, and we can no doubt extract from
modemist studies various signifcant aspects of a "Freudian"
theory of modernism. But modemist explorations of the darker
regions of the mind frequently go hand in hand with the kind of
cultural and historical revolt often associated with Nietzsche.
This approach to modernism is perhaps most forcefully pre
sented not a piece of academic criticism, but by Thoma$
Mann in Doktor Faustus, which is indeed a book about music
composed for an era of decline and destruction.
Doktor Faustus although a novel, is one of the most impor
tant books about modemism, written by an author who was
continually contemplating the cultural implications of mod
ernism in art and literature (whether Mann was himself a
"practicing" modernist is by no means as obvious as some
critics seem to think; his whole relationship with aesthetic
modemity is extremely complex). In Doktor Faustus he amal
gamates his views of modernism into a novel whose "hero" is
both a modemist artist and a kind of reincamation of Nietz
sche, whom Mann considered the preeminent cultural precur
sor of modemism. believe we can fnd this novel a rich
melting pot of paradigmatic notions about modemism.47
In the composer Adrian Leverkihn we fnd, frst of all, a
familiar biographical image of the modernist artist. Leverkihn
typifes the isolation of the artist from modem society. He
suffers from "Wel tscheu," as he calls i t; in a way he symbolizes
the separation, so often associated with modernism, of the
world of art from the "real" or "outside" world. Not only does
he ignore a pub1ic audience, "because he altogether declined to
imagine a contemporary public for his exclusive, eccentric,
fantastic dreams,"48 but he seems to have only scom for the
46. Lukacs, Wider den miverstandenen Realismus, p. 29; The Meaning of
Contemporary Realism, p. 30.
47 am not the frst critic to note the relevance of Mann's novel for the whole
debate around modemism. Gabel Josipovici states in the preface to The Lessons
of Modernism that his book is "the result of a long struggle to come to terms
with .. . Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus" (p. ixj.
48. Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian
Leverkuhn as bld by Friend, trans. . Lowe-Porter (New York: Vintage Books,
1971), p. 165.
outside world: "He wanted to know nothing, see nothing, actu
ally experience nothing, at least not in any obvious, exterior
sense of the word" (ry6). His aesthetic views are characterized
by the subjective-impersonal nexus mentioned above. He re
fuses to discuss his music as a personal expression, yet his art is
said to arise from "his exclusive, eccentric, fantastic dreams"
( r 6 5 ). His biographer, Serenus Zeitblom, fnds a perfect expres
sion of this paradox in Leverkihn's last work: "The creator of
'Fausti Wehe-klage' can, in the previously organized material,
unhampered, untroubled by the already given structure, yield
himself to subjectivity and so this, his technically most rigid
work, a work of extreme calculation, is at the same time purely
expressive" (488). Zeitblom experiences a kind of solution of
the paradox we have already mentioned: how modernist works
often seem to involve an interplay of spontaneous reactions of
subjective faculties and a "distancing" effect caused by elabo
rate formal mediation. This becomes a central issue for the
dichotomy of order and chaos that runs through the novel.
Already at the beginning of his career Leverkihn fnds West
ern culture a wasteland. He wonders whether epochs that really
experienced culture could have known the concept itself. For
unconscious presence, "naivete," may be a prerequisite of cul
ture.
What we are losing is just this navete, and this lack, if one may so
speak of it, protects us from many a colourful barbarism which
altogether perfectly agreed with culture, even with very high
culture. mean: our state is that of civilization-a very praisewor
thy state no doubt, but also neither was there any doubt that we
should have to become very much more barbaric to be capable of
culture again. Technique and comfort-in that state one talks
about culture but one has not got it. (59-6)
Leverkihn's music can be seen as a search for this barbarism
that would bring back "Kultur" into a decadent modemity. It is
signifcant that Zeitblom's biographical task, as he sees it, is
very much like that of many students of modemism, that is, he
is seeking to reestablish the "lost" connections between the
world of art (in this case the art of Leverkihn) and the world of
history: "The subject of the naative is the same: 'the outer
world,' and the history of my departed friend's connection or
lack of connection with it" (397). But Zeitblom's own sense of
history and the world around him is inextricably tied up with a
strong tradition from which he is unable to distance himself.
Leverkihn might actually be alluding in part to Zeitblom when
he says that "the nineteenth century must have been an un
commonly pleasant epoch, since it had never been harder for
humanity to tear itself away from the opinions and habits of
the previous period than it was for the generation now living"
(25).
Leverkihn, however, being almost painfully self-conscious
of the habitualized modes of existence (and this awareness is in
itself often considered a major characteristic of modemism),
revolts against the aesthetic traditions of the nineteenth cen
tury. While still a student he asks why "almost all, no, all the
methods and conventions of art today are good for parody
only?" (134). In reporting on one of Leverkhn's works, Zeit
blom notes: "There are altogether no thematic connections,
developments, variations .... Of traditional forms not a trace"
(456). But what troubles Zeitblom more than Leverkihn's for
mal innovations is the fact that they carry with them, in his
major works, a deep questioning of prevalent notions of human
existence, indeed, a radical decentering of man. Leverkihn
wants his music to depict a universe in which modem man is
peripheral, while the elemental and the primal dominate he
describes for Zeitblom his fascination with outer space and the
depths of the ocean with its monstrous creatures, which he
would like to bring to the surface (269-70). The psychological
implications are unmistakable, and Zeitblom, in his "alle
giance to the sphere of the human and articulate" (269), is
frightened by the kind of intellect he fnds in Leverkihn, which
"stands in the most immediate relation of all to the animal, to
naked instinct" (147). Thus, Leverkihn's sophisticated and
self-conscious aesthetics is not to be severed from the totemic
and the cultic or the most primitive levels of human conscious
ness, and Zeitblom must acknowledge that aestheticism and
barbarism are intimately related (373). But as the two coalesce,
Zeitblom realizes that they also negate traditional aesthetics
and the humanism that has formed its bedrock and that is the
foundation of his own view of life. Zeitblom, who describes
lllmselt as "by nature wholly moderate, of a temper, may say,
both healthy and humane, addressed to reason and harmony"
(3)-indeed an archetype of "the normal" as promoted by
Lukacs-Leverkihn's aesthetics and art is the threatening
'ther," the demonic (a key word in the novel), a Faustian
expression of forbidden desires that lead Leverkihn into a pact
with the devil. (We seem indeed to have traveled to the "other"
side of the notion of modernist art as religious sanctuary!)
In seeking the connections between Leverkihn's music and
the turbulent age, Zeitblom is acutely aware of his friend's
perception of historical ruptures, aware that World War sig
naled for him "the opening of a new period of history, crowded
with tumult and disruptions, agonies and wild vicissitudes,"
and that
"
the horizon of his creative life ... there was already
rising the 'Apocalypsis cum fguris'" ( 3 r 5 ), an apt name for his
magnum opus.
From his own perspective (which incidentally closely resem
bles that of Stefan Zweig in Die Welt von Gestern), Zeitblom
also sees the world undergoing an apocalypse; the world of
yesterday a world that had seemed to point toward unequivocal
progress in every sphere of life, is disintegrating:
felt that an epoch was ending, which had not only included the
nineteenth century, but gone far back to the end of the Middle
Ages, to the loosening of scholastic ties, the emancipation of the
individual, the birth of freedom. This was the epoch which had
in very truth regarded as that of my more extended spiritual
home, in short the epoch of bourgeois humanism. And felt as
say that its hour had come; that a mutation of life would be
consummated; the world would enter into a new, still nameless
constellation. ( 3 52)
Zeitblom is unwillingly but inexorably pulled toward draw
ing an analogy between the worldly powers, principally fas
cism, that are shattering the bourgeois-humanist world and the
art of the friend he holds in such high reverence; an art that so
obviously is also hostile to the products of that succumbing
world. Mann has placed the question of the ideological role of
modemism in a blatant, although ambivalent, historical con
text. Zeitblom appears to commit one version of the reflection
fallacy discussed earlier, but he does so in a way that reverses
the alleged modernist reflection of the "closed," rigidly hier
archized order of the fascist state. For Zeitblom, Leverkihn's
modemism is the musical accompaniment to the brutal, cha
otic, barbaric attacks launched on bourgeois humanist order in
the "practical" sphere of life.
What prevents Zeitblom from seeing beyond this mirror rela
tionship is not least his inability to view critically the ideologi
cal implications of those powers of reason which he associates
with humanism. He sees no continuity, only schism between
Westem capitalist society and the emerging forces of fascism,
and he is also unable to fathom the resilience and survival of
Westem capitalism and of the bourgeois humanist subject that
is so ineluctably tied up with that social form. All he sees is its
imminent destruction and the total lack of any viable altema
tives. Mann's own perspective is of course to be dissociated
from that of his biographer-narrator, Mann's very example of
the surviving bourgeois subject, indeed of "the normal," and it
is only against the background of Zeitblom that we can appreci
ate the "abnormality" or subversion of Leverkhn's art and life.
Mann's dialectics is strikingly incorporated into the structure
of the novel: he has a traditional humanist-realist narrator
flter and mediate the norm-breaking art and aesthetics of a
radical modemist. Thus, Mann places himself at a distance
from Leverkihn, while to a certain extent he also treats Zeit
blom with Leverkihn's methods of irony and parody, showing,
for instance, that Zeitblom's relation to history is no more
"innocent" than that of Leverkihn. Despite all his humanist
values, Zeitblom is prone to the kind of nationalist fervor and
desire for social order from which Nazism tapped so much
energy.
Discontent as Negation
do not want to try to determine what Mann's total depiction
of modemism in Doktor Faustus amounts to, rich and ambiva
lent as it is. But from the way he plays his two "heroes" against
one another, Mann appears to concur with the observation,
which modemists are often felt to play out in their works, that
humanism has entered an era of deep crisisi that in a capitalist
world of increasing economic conflict, social strife, and war,
the heritage of bourgeois humanism and all the values it was
taken to ensure are evidently at sea. While modemists have
repeatedly been attacked for antihumanism in their portrayal
of a fragmented subject in an estranged or morbid universe,
they have often seen their aversion from traditional humanism
as necessitated by a historical development that called this
subject and its values into question. Hermann Broch called the
fnal chapter of Die Schlafandler "The Breakdown of Values"
(Zerfall der Werte), and in a commentary on the novel he de
scribes this topic in the following terms:
At the center of this fal volume is the "breakdow of values,"
the historical ad epistemological portrayal of the four-cetury
log process which uder the guidace of rationality dissolved
the Christia-platoic cosmology of medieval Europe, a over
whelmig ad teifyig process, edig i total fragmetatio of
values, the uleashig of reaso together with the eruptio of
irratioality i every sese, the self-Iaceratio of the world i
blood ad sufferig. 49
Broch signifcantly points out the double-edged relation of
modemism to the whole program of the Enlightenment. Mod
ernism is arguably both an heir to the project of the Enlighten
ment and a revolt against its historical process. This ambiva
lence is variously manifest in the presentation of the modem
"subject." Modemism cannot really make the "loss" of the
bounded bourgeois subject and the breakdown of its values a
part of its discourse without in the frst place invoking the
validity, however tentative, of that subject and those values.
quote Terry Eagleton:
The cotradictio of modemism i this respect is that i order
valuably to decostruct the uifed subject of bourgeois huma
ism, it draws upo key egative aspects of the actual expeece
of such subjects i late bourgeois society, which ofte eough
49. Hermann Broch, "Der Wertzeall und die Schlafwandler," pub. in an appen
dix to Paul Michael Litzeler, ed., Die Schlafwandler: Eine Romantrilogie (Frank
furt: Suhrkamp, 1978), p. 734 (my translationl.
does t at all correspod to the offcial ideological versio. It
thus pits what is icreasigly felt to be the pheomeological
reality of capitalism agaist its formal ideologies, ad i doig so
fds that it ca fully embrace either. The pheomeological
reality of the subject throws formal humaist ideology ito ques
tio, while the persistece of that ideology is precisely what
eables the pheomeological reality to be characterized as ega
tive.50
Modemism thus invokes the bourgeois subject, but it does so
more through negation than affrmation. Hence-and this
sums up the various aspects of the crisis of the subject dis
cussed above-modemism can be seen as the negative other of
capitalist-bourgeois ideology and of the ideological space of
social harmony demarcated for the bourgeois subject. This ap
pears to cohere with the historical theory of what Matei Cal
inescu has termed "the two modemities," according to which
modemism is judged in the light of its opposition to the "prog
ress" of social modemity. We have already seen how such a
dualism characterizes some critical approaches to modernism
whereby modemism is seen as subverting and negating the
cultural and ethical heritage of traditional bourgeois society.
According to Calinescu:
At some poit durig the frst half of the ieteeth cetury a
irreversible split occurred betwee modemity as a stage i the
history of Westem civilizatio-a product of scietifc ad tech
ological progress, of the idustrial revolutio, of the sweepig
ecoomic ad social chages brought about by capitalism-ad
modemity as a aesthetic cocept. Sice the, the relatios be
twee the two modemities have bee irreducibly hostile, but t
without allowig ad eve stimulatig a variety of mutual iflu
eces i their rage for each other's destructio.s
Ctics who emphasize how modemism negates the cultural
"contents" of bourgeois society as well as the status of its
50. Terry Eagleton, "Capitalism, Modemism and Postmodemism," Against the
Grain: Essays 1975-1985 (London: Verso, 1986!, p. 144.
51. Matei Calinescu, Faces of Modernity: Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 41.
subject-Trillig will serve as a example-fte d s i
terms f thematic, ethica scilgical, psychlgical, phil
sphica ad idelgical issues. The questi remais whether
this is a apprpriate basis which t grud such a egati
ad hece a mdemist paradigm. Surely we ca imagie a
traditial realist text that fulflls the thematic requiremets
f such a egati. It seems, therefre, that i rder fr us t
begi fdig the edges f mdemism, we have t relate the
abve issues t mdes f presetati, t laguage ad frmal
mediati, widig ur way back t the questi f "mdemist
frm."
the abve-quted article, Herma Broch ges t say f
his Schlafandler trilgy: "While 'Pasew' still hlds t
the style f the ld family vel (althugh frged it a thr
ughly mdem eJ 'Esch' already shws signs-i strict par
allel t the histrical prcess f disitegrati i the frms
f life-f the disitegrati ad blwig-up f aative art
which reaches a extrardiary breakthrugh i 'Hugueau' "
(734-35). Brch thus draws a "strict parallel" betwee his ar
rative and the histrical process f the disitegrati f life.
This cstitutes e mre variat f the refecti thery: i
the "explsi" f arrative frms we are t see reflected the
dissluti f burgeis frms f life. What is ivlved here,
hwever, is t a refecti f the prevalet perceptis f the
"prgress" f scial mdemity but rather a "reprducti" f
its egative r its "ther"i that is, f scial experiece that
ctradicts the "ffcial" idelgy f cherece ad prgress
that is iterwve with techlgical ad capitalist-ecmic
develpmet. This cultural egati, mrever, is maifested
i the revlt agaist traditial arrative mdes. Hece, while
i cultural terms mderism ca be see as cstitutig the
'ther mdemity/' this cultural fucti, by ecessity as it
were, etails a egati f prevalet literary ad aesthetic tra
ditis.
pwerful istance f such a egati ccurs tward the ed
f Dktr Faustus. Zeitblm tes f Leverkh's last wrk,
Fausti Weheklag: "He wrte it, dubt, with his eye Beet
hve's Nith, as its cuterpart i a mst melachly sese f
the wrd. But it is t ly that it mre tha ce frmally
egates the symphy, reverses it it the egative" (49! fr
Zeitblm als fds a reversal f the "Watch with me" f Geth-
,
semaei Faustus des t wat aye t stay awake with him
r tempt him to be saved, t because it is t late, "but
because with his whle sul he despises the psitivism f the
wrld fr which e wuld save him, the lie f its gdliess"
(49). Leverkh's wrk is a egati t ly f Beethve's
paradigmatic symphy but f sciety's geeral "psitivity/'
which is aulled by its egative reversal. Oce e kws
that Thedr W. dr was a's musical advisr i writig
Doktor Faustus, it is hard t t thik that he had a had i
a's frmulati f egativity. Ideed, this seems t be
cfrmed i "Zu eiem Prtrit Thmas as/' i which
dm describes hw he "rebelled" agaist a's rigial
descripti f Fausti Weheklag: "t ly i view f the ver
all situati f Dctr Faustus's lametati, but with regard
t the vel as a whle, fud the heavily laded pages t
psitive, t uiterruptedly thelgical. They seemed t lack
what was called fr i the decisive passage, the frce f a deter
miate egati as the ly permitted sig f the ther."52 He
the relates hw a chaged the text t the likig f his
advisr.
Adorno's Aesthetics of Negativity
S far we have traced several mdemist paradigms as they
have bee cstructed by critics ad schlars i the ctext
f twetieth-cetury literature-frst thse that, i a mde
strgly related t New Criticism, judge mderism the
basis f strictly frmal aesthetics, accrdig t which mdem
ist wrks are characterized by a largely referetial dis
curse ad a ahistrical frmal autmy. Tuchig cer
tai Marxist readigs f such a 11escape" frm histry, we the
mved thrugh appraches t mdemism as a histrical cu
terpart f scial mdemity t varius readigs f it as a
culturally subversive eterprise that revlts agaist dmiat
tis f the burgeis subject r f burgeis-capitalist his
trical develpmet.
Jche Schulte-Sasse claims that 11the tw mst prevalet
. TheodorW. Adomo, Zur Dialektik des Engagements: Aufsatzezur Literatur
des 20. fahrhunderts IFrankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973!, p. 144 (my translationJ.
". . ... 'V..''fL V. il.VU\.1111;111
(and also most interestingj theories of modernism [are] those
proceeding from Adomo and from French poststructuralism."53
This is a rather surprising statement. Rightly or wrongly, al
though in many cases it can and should be approached as
a theory of modemism, poststructuralism (especially in the
Anglo-American spherej has been discussed mostly in light of
theories of postmodemism, with which it is more or less con
temporary. Adomo's work, especially outside German-speak
ing countries, has hardly been at the forefront of the discussion
suounding modemism. His theories certainly deserve to be
placed at the center of that debate, however, not least since they
focus acutely, within a coherent aesthetic framework, on im
portant ideas and problems that are often more loosely ex
pressed by others.
Adomo's theories of art, in particular his Asthetische Theorie
(r970), are shaped by-are indeed almost concomitant with
his approach to modemism. have chosen to ignore in this
context how this undermines the generality of his aesthetic
theory, for instance with regard to premodemist art. The most
fruitful way to look at Asthetische Theorie, this most signif
cant, although unfnished, work of Adomo's ripe years is to read
it as a theory of modemism. Also, before proceeding, would
like to note that Adomo's term "die Modeme," is clearly equiv
alent to our use of "modemism, "54 its frst signs being visible at
around the mid-nineteenth century, especially in Baudelaire's
work, although it reaches its heights only in the twentieth
century and is still fully in the foreground in Beckett, who is
one of Adomo's chief examples of "die Modeme."
In his opening chapter Adomo states that the communica
tion of works of art with the outside world, from which they
53 Jochen Schulte-Sasse, "Foreword: Theory of Modemism versus Theory of the
Avant-Garde," in Peter Birger, Theor of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw
IMinneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984!, p. xv.
54 On at least two occasions, Adomo actually uses the concept "Modemismus"
for a kind of epigonal, imitative modemism; he clearly assumes it to be a rather
pejorative ter. See Asthetische Theorie, ed. Gretel Adomo and Rolf iedemann
IFrankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), p. 45; Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen: Aufsatze
zur Literatur des 20. fahrhunderts IFrankfurt: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1973!, p.
167. The same use of the ter can be found in Renato Poggioli, The Theor of the
Avant-Garde, trans. Gerald Fitzgerald ICambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1968!, pp. 216-18.
The Making of Moderist Paradigms I 41
"blissfully or unhappily" seclude themselves, takes place
through noncommunication, and this is how they manifest
their fragmentation.55 This view of artworks as fractured and
communicating through noncommunication obviously points
to features of modernist art, a view that is substantiated when
Adomo seeks to pinpoint the social nature of art. He sees art as
being social neither solely through its mode and state of pro
duction nor through the social derivation of its material con
tent. "Rather, it is social primarily because it stands opposed to
society." This function is facilitated through the autonomy of
art, for by crystallizing its autonomous qualities "rather than
obeying existing social norms and thus proving itself to be
'socially useful'-art criticizes society just by being there. Pure
and immanently elaborated art is a tacit critique of the debase
ment of man by a condition that is moving toward a total
exchange society where everything is a for-other." The asocial
aspect (das Asozialej of art "is the determinate negation of a
determinate society."56
We see here pivotal elements of Adorno's view of the so
ciocultural function of art. Its social context is that of an ever
expanding, monolithic capitalist society, moving toward a sys
tem of total exchange as well as total rationality, which is
equivalent to absolute reifcation in matters of social interac
tion. It is a system in which the very notion of meaning has
become wholly contaminated with the capitalist ideology of
total exchange. In the face of this human debasement, art's
basic mode of resistance is in a sense that of opting out of the
system's communicative network in order to attack it head on
from the "outside." In one of his essays Adomo even goes so far
as to say that "the topical work of art gets a better grip of society
the less it deals with society."57
Adomo's complex dialectics, however, by means rests on a
one-sided purism, for the qualities of art that promote its "au
tonomy'' also aange themselves in such a way that they re
fect social conditions. This happens through a process of nega-
55 Theodor W. Adomo, Aesthetic Theor, trans. C. Lenhardt jLondon: Rout
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1984!, p. 7; cf. Asthetische Theorie, p. 15.
56. Adomo, Aesthetic Theor, p. 321; cf. Asthetische Theorie, p. 335
57. Adomo, "Voraussetzungen," Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen, p. 115 lmy
translation).
tive mimesis, t ulike that discussed i the cotext of Broch
ad a. Adoro states i Asthetische Theorie that moder
art has iterest i a direct reflectio of the social surface; it
does t "wat to duplicate the faade of reality," but "makes
a ucompromisig reprit of reality while at the same time
avoidig beig cotamiated by it." Kafka's power as a writer,
he adds, is precisely that of this "egative sese of reality."58
a separate essay, Adoro rejects ay attempt to see i Kafka's
work the physical reflectio of a moder bureaucratic society.
Rather, the shabbiess depicted Kafka "is the cryptogram of
capitalism's highly polished, glitterig late phase, which he
excludes order to defe it all the more precisely its
egative. Kafka scrutiizes the smudges left behid the de
luxe editio of the book of life by the fgers of power. world
could be more homogeeous tha the stiflig e which he
compresses to a totality by meas of petty-bourgeois dread; it is
logically air-tight ad empty of meaig like every system."59
Here we ca observe aother dialectical twist Adoro's
theory: by arguig that moderists like Kafka preset the
"egative" of society (presetig what Adoro fact some
times calls 11the egative of egativity"), he hads meaigless
ess over to the 11logically closed" capitalist system. this
society1 logic ad ratioality have tured ito their opposites.
Asthetische Theorie Adomo otes that the fact that mimesis
is practicable i the midst of ratioality employig its meas1
maifests a respose to the base irratioality of the ratioal
world and its meas of cotrol. For the purpose of ratioality, of
the quitessential means of regulating nature1 "would have to
be something other than a means, hece a non-rational quality.
Capitalist society hides and disavows precisely this irration
ality, whereas art does not." Art holds forth the image, rejected
by rationality, of its purpose and exposes its other, its irra
tionality.6
0
While we may not agree with Adoro's pessimistic view of
the ievitably destructive social process of huma rationality,
which he saw as being typically represented by the Enlighten-
58. Adomo, Aesthetic Theory, p. 28; Asthetische Theory, p. 36.
59 Theodor W. Adomo, "Notes Kafka," Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierr
Weber(Cambridge, Mass.: MJPress, 198Ij, p. 256.
6. Adomo, Aesthetic Theor, p. 79; Asthetische Theorie, p. 86.
ment, his is a compellig explanatio of the 11irrational" ele
ment moderism, an elemet that some critics ca oly
blidly reject. ( the other hand, e might also ote that his
pessimism-appearig more radically i Dialectic of Enlight
enment, which he coauthored with Horkheimer-rus parallel
with the bleak view of the moder huma situatio that crit
ics, particularly traditionally humaist critics, see as promi
ent in moderist literature).
The moderist reversal of society's rational negativity, ac
cording to Adoro, fds a authentic expressio in the objec
tifcatio of a subjective experiece of society. This experiece,
as Eagleto puts it i the above quote, does 1't at all corre
spod to the offcial ideological versio" of bourgeois society,
but is in fact its egative "reflectio." Such objectifcation,
therefore, must not take on the shape of the ostesibly objec
tive portrayals of subjective experience in realist representa
tion, for, as Adoro otes i discussing Beckett, the egativity
of the subject as a true objective gestalt can only manifest itself
i a radically subjective cofguratio (Gestaltug). It canot
emerge in a "allegedly higher objectivity."61 If understand
Adoro's typically dese formulatio correctly, it provides us
with the most elaborate illustratio yet of the subject-object
exus in moderist representation. While subjective experi
ence is to be mediated through objectifcatio, that is, as a
objective gestalt (and it is at this level that Adoro discards the
relevance of the author's personality), this objectifcatio, i
order to express the negativity of the experiece, must be co
structed i a radically 1'subjective" maer-it must not take
the shape of "rationalized" objective represetation to
which as social beigs we are accustomed. Thus, on e level of
representatio, for instace in Kafka's work, the outside world
is forcefully objectifed through all the surface elemets famil
iar to us, but on another level this objectifcatio does t
concur with our habitualized perception of the 'bjective"
world, and hece takes on the shape of a radically subjective
construct. This subjective "Gestaltug" effects the erasure or
61. "Die Negativitat des Subjekts als wahre Gestalt von Objektivitit kann nur
in radikal subjektiver Gestaltung, nicht in der Supposition vermeintlich hoherer
Objektivitit sich darstellen." Adomo, Asthetische Theorie, p. 370; cf. Aesthetic
Theory, p. 354
explsi, discussed abve, f the burgeis subject, while at
the same time reflectig, i a "egative" maer, its scial
echaimet.
It fllws that dr is perhaps the mst promiet repre
setative f the view that mdemism, i Fredric James's
wrds, is t s much "a way f avidig scial ctet .. . as
rather f maagig ad ctaiig it, secludig it ut f sight i
the very frm itself."62
The Functin f Form
dm has sught a sluti t a paradx metied earlier
i this chapter; he has ge far tward reccilig the ppsi
tial cceptis f mdemism as, the e had, a aut
mus aesthetic practice ad, the ther, a histrical-cultural
frce. But at least e level, it seems t me, this sluti
may have bee bught at t high a price. While Adm's
utright rejecti f itetiality ad the validity f authr
ial-subjective expressi may be justifed, he ges t far i
erasig the ti f ay kid f social consciousness behid
the creati f the wrk. Artists ad writers, accrdig t
dm, shuld t thik f themselves as critical agets, they
shuld ccetrate frmal matters, fr what is scially de
termiat i wrks f art "is ctet that articulates itself i
frmal structures."63 Thrugh the scially ucscius wield
ig f frm, histry wuld fd its way it works f art, sice it
is a inheret part f them, whereby the wrks cstitute
themselves as a ucscius histrigraphy f their age. 64
There is a sese i which this certaily hlds true, but as a
geeral rule it brders a essetialist reflecti thery, ad
eve thugh we may agree that frm, i e way r ather, is
62. Fredric Jameson, "Reflections in Conclusion," in Emst Bloch et al., Aes
thetics and Politics (London: New Left Books, 1977!, p. 202.
63. Adomo, Aesthetic Theory, p. 327; Asthetische Theorie, p. 342: "Gesell
schaftlich entscheidet an den Kunstwerken, was an Inhalt aus ihren Fonstruk
turen spricht."
64. Adomo, Asthetische Theorie, p. 272: "Sie sind ihrer selbst unbewuBte
Geschichtschreibung ihrer Epoche; das nicht zuletzt venittelt sie zur Erkennt
nis." Cf. Aesthetic Theory, p. 261.
always histrical, we d t have to share Adm's rejecti f
artists ad writers, such as Brecht, wh self-csciusly use
their frmal cstructis as vehicles f mre 'btrusively"
fregruded scial issues.
dr's thery f frm, aside frm the fucti f frm as a
vehicle f the egative histrigraphy f the age, shares a gd
deal with that f the Russia frmalists, eve thugh they have
mre bviusly ctributed t the cstructi f ther md
emist paradigms. Like the frmalists, dm distiguishes
betwee aesthetic r "petic" laguage ad the laguage f
everyday cmmuicati. dm says f aesthetic laguage
that its purpsefuless, divested f practical purpse, lies i its
laguage-semblace, i its purpseless cceptual lack, its dif
ferece frm signifcatry laguage.65 Atisignifcatory la
guage is f curse part ad parcel f Adm's very ccept f
frm, which designates a pruced cfrtati f art ad
empical life.66
The atithesis i Adm's writigs betwee aesthetic ad
signifcatry laguage eed t, hwever, stem frm the fr
malists, fr his aesthetics this atagism is a fudametal
elemet f scial egativity. But as such it des play the rle f
a kid f "defamiliarizati," t use a frmalist ccept that
has bee prmiet i the theretical discurse suudig
mdemism. Mdemist writig, thrugh its autmus fr
mal cstructis, places us at a "distace" frm sciety, mak
ig it strage, whereby we cme t see its reverse, but true,
mir image, its egativity.
Hece, Adm's aesthetics f egativity, by likig artistic
autmy t a dialectical scial mimesis, seeks t reccile
the tw majr fuctial implicatis f the frmalist thery
f defamiliarizati. Victr Shklvsky, i his semial essay
'rt as Techique,
1
1
tes that "habitualizati devurs wrks,
clthes, fumiture, e's wife, ad the fear f war,
11
ad states
that art, through its defamiliarizig practices, "exists that e
may recver the sesati f life."67 This frmulati wuld
65. Adomo, Asthetische Theorie, p. 2; Aesthetic Theory, pp. 202-3.
66. Adomo, Asthetische Theorie, p. 213; Aesthetic Theory, p. 205.
67. Victor Shklovsky, 'rt as Technique," in Lee . Lemon and Marion J. Reis,
ed., Russian Fonalist Criticism: Four Essays (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 196s!, p. 12.
appear to have signifcant social bearings; indeed, defamiliar
ization could be seen as a major arsenal of devices to be directed
against reifed ideologies. It is precisely this aspect of the de
familiarization theory, as Peter Birger points out in discussing
its inherent duality, that Brecht developed further in his "Ver
fremdungstechnik."68 But Shklovsky immediately adds: "The
technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar,' to make forms
diffcult, to increase the diffculty and length of perception
because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself
and must be prolonged" (12) . Shklovsky is here under the sway
of the general formalist tenets of aesthetic autonomy and the
separation of poetic from 'rdinary" language. It is of course
this "purist" side of defamiliarization, according to which
"making it strange" only means ensuring the total separation
of the work from social affairs, that one can then trace through
out the methodologies of twentieth-century literary criticism,
and nowhere as clearly as in Anglo-American New Criticism.
We have already discussed how such aesthetics of sanctity and
wholeness have been projected onto the emergence of the mod
ernist paradigm.
But the Russian formalists' broad signifcance for critical
approaches to modemism is by no means limited to issues of
defamiliarization. They were among the frst literary scholars
to realize the signifcance of Saussure's dissociation of "natu
ral" links, within the sign, between the signifer and the sig
nifed. Thus, they helped initiate a period of semiotic inquiry
into the relationship between the levels of reference and mean
ing, an inquiry that has also been carried out, in a different way,
by modemism in art and literature. But despite the fact that the
formalists had intimate ties with the literary experiments of
contemporary Russian futurism, we must be cautious in draw
ing self-explanatory parallels between modernist literature and
modem literary theories or critical methodologies. The Rus
sian formalists can certainly be judged as instigators of a semi
otic revolution, but what they inquired into at a theoretical
(analytical and metalinguistic) level regarding production and
68. Peter Birger, Vermittlung-Rezeption-Funktion: Asthetische Theorie und
Methodologie der Literaturwissenschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch,
1979), p. 98.
function of meaning in literary language is more immediately
acted out as a crisis of meaning in the realm of modernist
literature, as is apparent when its site of troubled signifcation
is observed in the context of social norms of language use.
From this perspective one could argue that it is only with the
emergence of poststructuralist activities that theory "catches
up with" the literary practices of modemism in this performa
tive sense. Modernism could certainly be seen as the aesthetic
embodiment of the "crisis of representation" that structural
ists, and particularly poststructuralists, have greatly elaborated
on recently and to some extent "performed" themselves. While
Anglo-American advocates of poststructuralism have fre
quently taken it to be a part of a postmodernist revolt against
the burden of a modernist tradition, some of them have ac
knowledged the often blatantly modemist tendencies in the
methods and language-play of poststructuralist critics. Gregory
Ulmer, for instance, states that "the break with 'mimesis,' with
the values and assumptions of 'realism,' which revolutionized
the modernist arts, is now underway (belatedly) in criticism,
the chief consequence of which, of course, is a change in the
relation of the critical text to its object-literature."69 And a
consequence of that change is our diffculty in determining to
what extent poststructuralist practices present us with a the
ory of modernism, or a construction of a modernist paradigm
for to some extent the borders between theory and practice
have been erased.
At the risk of oversimplifcation, however, we can extract
from the variety of poststructuralist work two major concems
that relate to the issues we have been discussing in terms of
modernism: the crisis of language and representation and the
crisis of the subject. The source of these two manifestatons of
crisis, which poststructuralists generally see as being inti
mately related, is frequently sought through modernist texts.
Julia Kristeva, for instance, using early modernist texts as her
examples, demonstrates how an archaic, instinctual, incestu
ous, matemal process of "signifance" in norm-breaking liter-
69. Gregory Ulmer, "The Object of Post-Criticism," in Foster, ed., The Anti
Aesthetic, p. 83. See also Ronald Schleifer, "The Poison of Ink: Modemism and
Post-War Literary Criticism," New Orleans Review 8 (Fall 1981): 241-49.
48 I The Concept of Modernism
ary works violates the authorized codes and the symbolic func
tion of social signifcation, allowing the subject to slip out from
under "the constraints of a civilization dominated by transcen
dental rationality."7 Kristeva also notes that this process is
dangerous for the subject and must be "linked to analytical
interpretation" ( 145 ), but other poststructuralists-perhaps
none more than Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus-valo
rize a total release of the subject from repressive rationality.
Similarly, it would be possible to approach Jacques Derrida as
a theorist as well as a practitioner of modernism, and to see
modernism in its totality as a deconstructive practice in the
Derridian sense. Thus, we could read texts such as Ulysses (not
to mention Finnegans Wake)

The Waves, The Sound and the
Fury, and Das Schlo with an emphasis on how they under
mine the human desire for stable centers of representation by
constantly displacing signifers, frustrating immediate "pres
ence" of meaning, decentering the subject or whatever con
stitutes a production of convention-bound reference, and dis
persing it in the linguistic feld. Modemist texts present
elaborate witness to the notion, so basic to Derrida's endeavors,
that "the verbal text is constituted by concealment as much as
revelation."71 (This notion, differently formulated, constitutes
the foundation of Adomo's theory.)
Here one might object that a possible result of this ap
proach-and here we are touching on one of the reasons for
Derrida's large following in the United States-would be deter
mining the central thrust of modemism to be an incessant
language game, playing one skittish signifer against another.
This makes modemist studies risk reverting to the New Crit
ical idea of the work as a self-bounded whole, vibrating with
unresolved intemal tensions. Another problem is that accord
ing to a radical deconstructive philosophy of language, not only
modemist works are characterized by the various implications
of "differance/' but indeed every verbal text. This might seem
70. Julia Kristeva, "From e Idetity to a Other," Desire in Language:
Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, ed. Leo S. Roudiez, tras. . Gora, .
Jardie, ad L. S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia Uiversity Press, 198), p. 140.
71. Gayatri C. Spivak, "Traslator's Preface," i Jacques Deida, Of Gram
matology, p. xlvi. Cf. the quotatio from Jameson how modemism frustrates
our detectio of social cotent, at . 62 above.
The Making of Modemist Paradigms I 49
ultimately to deconstruct any possibility of establishing a theo
retical framework for a modemist paradigm, or even of register
ing literary-historical paradigms at all.
On the other hand, one can argue that what makes modem
ism "different" is the way in which it is aware of and acts out
the qualities of "differance." The emergence of a modemist
paradigm could then be judged in terms of a break in the histor
ical attitude toward language and communication as evinced in
literary texts. According to another poststructuralist, Michel
Foucault, literary modernism has a central place in demarca
ting historical paradigms, or "epistemes, as he calls them.
When language, in the nineteenth century, had been thor
oughly instrumentalized as an object and vehicle of knowledge,
Foucault sees it "reconstituting itself elsewhere, in an indepen
dent form, diffcult of access, folded back upon the emigma of
its own origin and existing wholly in reference to the pure act
of writing."72 Questions concerning the very nature of language
and literature "were made possible by the fact that, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, the law of discourse hav
ing been detached from representation, the being of language
itself became, as it were, fragmentedi but they became inevita
ble when, with Nietzsche and Mallarme, thought was brought
back, and violently so, towards language itself, towards its
unique and diffcult being" (306).
It is appropriate to end this chapter on such a note, for mod
emism does, after all, seek a break with tradition, a fact that is
emphasized in varying degrees (or at least tacitly assumed) by
all the different constructions of the modemist paradigm dis
cussed above. This basic characteristic needs to be more com
prehensively pursued in the light of the continuity of history
that modemism sets out to explode. The next chapter, there
fore, undertakes a critical examination of how modemism has
been positioned in the context of literary history and how it has
fared in the ceaseless process of canonization.
72. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human
Sciences (New York: Vitage Books, 1973), p. 300.