T S Eliot
Christine Harris
The following topic has been set for an English Lit
assignment. I am not asking you all to answer it
for me, but I would be very interested in any
comments that any of you may care to make.
Discuss the concepts of modernism and Eliot's role
in it. What is the paradox of this avante-garde
movement to which Eliot belonged?
Thank you for taking the time and making the
effort.
Chris
Vance Maverick
In article <4ns9vv$7...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> kil...@acad.stedwards.edu (deb) writes:
> Consider that modernism relies on rationality and universal truths,
> and so its potential to be 'avant-garde' is highly limited to what
> some elite's idea of the truth (i.e. what is beautiful, what is real,
> what is poetry) happens to be. Modernism, as a state of mind, does
> not consider multiple realities (i.e., perspectives, interpretations)
> that are commonly (I think) sought after in today's poetry.
Where does this definition of Modernism come from, and why should we
believe it relevant? Is the Wyndham Lewis of "Inferior Religions" a
Modernist? If so, why is he so conscious of multiple realities?
Or perhaps better, why should we believe even for a second in a
unitary "Modernism" such as you propose, whatever its definition?
Vance
Anthony D Gunter
In <31A190...@tsm.com.au> Christine Harris <ch...@tsm.com.au>
writes:
Chris:
First of all, I hope you were not as thorougly
confused as I by the response posted by kilgore@somewhere
What in the hell was all that about the holocaust????
And T.S. Eliot anti-semitic???? really?????
Most of what you need to know about Eliot and Modernism is
screaming at you from the very first line of "The Waste Land."
April is the cruellest month...
A reactionary statement screamed by a reactionary man. Dig
through the poem and you will find endless material for the
assignment!! It's staring you in the face!
The man moved from the U.S. to "stuffy" old England and joined
the Anglican church, for goodness sakes.
Shooshie
I knew a question like the one that student asked, involving words like
"modernism" and lots of subjective stuff, would *immediately* erupt into a
flame war. Shoulda known that Vance would strike the first blow and Deb
would get caught striking back. Don the firesuits everyone! Forecast calls
for incendiary gasious explosions emitting no light.
Shooshie
In article <4ntj04$6...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, kil...@acad.stedwards.edu
(deb) wrote:
[Vance Maverick <mave...@cs.berkeley.edu> added a note to the human
[symphony, writing:
[
[>In article <4ns9vv$7...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>
[
[i am using a sociological definition of modernity (versus
[postmodernity). modernity being the scientific method, the canons,
[the hierarchy of races, and all the other rules by which we accomplish
[our lives. Now, if you will take that wretchedly antagonistic tone
[from your post, perhaps you would care to engage in a discussion about
[this. i would be interested and open to your opinions.
[
[- deb
[********
[Deborah Kilgore
[
[http://www.it.stedwards.edu/newc/kilgore/home.htm
Vance Maverick
In article <4ntj04$6...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> kil...@acad.stedwards.edu (deb) writes:
> i am using a sociological definition of modernity (versus
> postmodernity). modernity being the scientific method, the canons,
> the hierarchy of races, and all the other rules by which we accomplish
> our lives. Now, if you will take that wretchedly antagonistic tone
> from your post, perhaps you would care to engage in a discussion about
> this. i would be interested and open to your opinions.
No antagonism, at least no more than in your chill tendentious
generalities. My opinion is that "modernism" as you have redescribed
it here (presumably following someone I haven't read; a reference
would be gracious) wants plausibility and utility. How does one
detect your modernism in a work? Is there consensus on who is modern,
by this definition? Can it really distinguish Eliot from, let us say,
Johnson? And since you didn't answer the question about Lewis, let me
post a passage and see what you say.
But life is invisible, and perfection is not in the waves or
houses that the poet sees. To rationalize that appearance is not
possible. Beauty is an icy douche of ease and happiness at
something *suggesting* perfect conditions for an organism: it
remains suggestion. A stormy landscape, and a pigment consisting
of a lake of hard, yet florid waves; delight in each brilliant
scoop or ragged burst, was John Constable's beauty. Leonardo's
consisted in a red rain on the shadowed side of heads, and heads
of massive female aesthetes. Uccello accumulated pale parallels,
and delighted in cold architecture of distinct colour. Korin
found in the symmetrical gushing of water, in waves like huge
vegetable insects, traced and worked faintly, on a golden pa^te,
his business. Ce'zanne liked cumbrous, democratic slabs of life,
slightly leaning, transfixed in a vegetable intensity.
Beauty is an immense predilection, a perfect conviction of the
desirability of a certain thing, whatever that thing may be. It
is a universe for one organism. To a man with long and
consumptive fingers, a sturdy hand may be heaven. We can aim at
no universality of form, for what we see is not the reality.
[Wyndham Lewis, from the 1927 version of "Inferior Religions"]
Modernist? I'd be curious to know what "the sociological definition"
says.
Vance
Anthony D Gunter
In <4nv7nt$6...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> kil...@acad.stedwards.edu (deb)
writes:
>sorry, you're too late, someone already flamed me for presentation.
Someone else accused me of flaming you, and I offer an apology. What I
should have stated in more polite fashion was that I felt you bypassed
the question to arrive at an entirely different subject.
>
>but let's get to T.S. Eliot's possible anti semitism. whether you
>agree with it or not, if the opinion that he was anti-semitic comes
>as a big shocking surprise to you, then besides tardiness and
>unoriginality, you also have a little reading to catch up on. it is
>not a new idea, and i did reference a book on the subject.
>
>extra question marks, at the time of this writing, do not serve to
>bolster your intellectual argument, although they might help you in
>advertising writing or maybe political speechwriting. i'm not sure.
>how would you translate four or five question marks following a
>written question into oral delivery? perhaps shouting the question
>and exaggerating the lilt of the speech, ending with a soprano note?
>
Please forgive the extra question marks; the punctuation serves only
to underline the level of shock experienced in reading your response.
And yes, you may exaggerate the lilt of speech and end with a soprano
note! (!!!) Throw in a bit of vibrato and some gratuitous sputtering
and you've hit the bullseye. I extensively have read FROM Eliot, not
of Eliot. Stating that Eliot held anti-semitic beliefs strikes me in
the same way as someone telling me that Hitler actually wrote very
beautiful, moving poetry. Simply quoting from a book does not fully
support your point, otherwise I both could begin and end my research
papers with only footnotes. (!!!)
>>The man moved from the U.S. to "stuffy" old England and joined
>>the Anglican church, for goodness sakes.
>
>no, that would be for Christ's sake. ; )
>
Yes... that would be for Christ's sake. Good point!!!! (!!!)
BTW:... enjoyed the poem!!! (!!!) $:o)
David Bolduc
Maverick <mave...@cs.berkeley.edu> queries perplexedly:
"My opinion is that "modernism" as you have redescribed
it here (presumably following someone I haven't read; a reference
would be gracious) wants plausibility and utility. How does one
detect your modernism in a work? Is there consensus on who is
modern, by this definition? Can it really distinguish Eliot from,
let us say, Johnson?"
It is so delicious when wonk meets fuzzy on the Humanities home
ground!
But how can you speak of Mannerism as distinct from the Baroque?
And what do you mean by post-Baroque? Or, pre-Baroque precoursers
in, say the Late Italian Renassiance or Flemish painting?
Pace, Louise, we'll get to your beloved alchemical Renaissance yet.
Tee hee!
Janet Dowd
In article <shooshie-210...@news.onramp.net> shoo...@onramp.net (Shooshie) writes:
>
>I knew a question like the one that student asked, involving words like
>"modernism" and lots of subjective stuff, would *immediately* erupt into a
>flame war. Shoulda known that Vance would strike the first blow and Deb
>would get caught striking back. Don the firesuits everyone! Forecast calls
>for incendiary gasious explosions emitting no light.
>
>Shooshie
***Spot on, Shooshie. But, hay, who am I to suppress any one
person their freedom to speech, right !? I read that article,
too, and all I can say about it is, duh?
ObPoem:
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who's the M*r*k of Them all?
It's no puzzle. It's plain facts -
L'il D*bbi* wields his axe.
--Duh Dowdy (c) 1996
As if..
ObSmiley <-oo->
Joseph M Green
This person's definition of modernism is perfectly useless.
Tho -- I like that we "accomplish" our lives.
Tim Patterson
I just have two questions:
1) Where does rhyme come into this; and
2) Why wasn't there a //DB appended to the subject line?
:)
A Poem about my confusion:
Looking at the given dates
That people in this thread have told
All I can do is wonder when
did modernism get so old?
--
Dr.Feelgood's Amazing And Marvellous Poetic Panacea
Guaranteed To Cure All Ailments Of The Soul
NO REFUNDS
http://condor.lpl.arizona.edu/~tim/
Vance Maverick
In article <4ntled$5...@sjx-ixn3.ix.netcom.com> chin...@ix.netcom.com(Anthony D Gunter) writes:
> And T.S. Eliot anti-semitic???? really?????
Yes. This is hardly news. I haven't read Julius, but I recommend
Christopher Ricks' _T.S. Eliot and Prejudice_. It will leave you in
little doubt of the justice of the charge or of the value of the
poetry.
> April is the cruellest month...
>
> A reactionary statement screamed by a reactionary man.
In what way is it reactionary?
Vance (and in what way was Eliot's England
stuffier than Eliot's America?)
Douglas Clark
There are many articles in the magazines at the moment on Eliot's
anti-Semitism because of the new book by Di's lawyer, Anthony Julius.
But the pc people should keep out of this because we must remember
that Eliot was a man of his time and it is wrong to judge him by
current attitudes, however reprehensible seems his position.
Anti-semitism was quite an open posture in society and accepted
as such before the Shoah.
--
Douglas Clark Voice: +44 1225 427104
69 Hillcrest Drive, Email: D.G.D...@bath.ac.uk
Bath, Somerset, BA2 1HD, UK Benjamin Press: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc
Douglas Clark
Without going into the original intentions of the Modernists I think
its legacy in current work lies in the juxtaposition of seemingly
unrelated ideas/images to produce the poetic effect.
Robert James
deb wrote:
>
> chin...@ix.netcom.com(Anthony D Gunter) added a note to the human
> symphony, writing:
>
> >confused as I by the response posted by kilgore@somewhere
> >What in the hell was all that about the holocaust????
Wasn't T.S. Eliot that nice, if rather dull, man who wrote
all those poems about cats? I thought it was Ezra Pound who
was the Hitlerite of the pre-war poetry set.
Robert St. James
(Slacker Modernist by Day, Divine Poet by Night)
lmerkel on BIX
kil...@acad.stedwards.edu (deb) writes:
:
:Vance Maverick <mave...@cs.berkeley.edu> added a note to the human
:symphony, writing:
:
:
:>No antagonism, at least no more than in your chill tendentious
:>generalities.
:
:i had to look up 'tendentious.'
I could have saved you the trouble. What terrible memories
that word has for me -- the summer I had to stop playing
tennis until my elbow healed. Tendenitius is really painful.
Doctors also call it T.S. Elbow. In fact, I think there's
a poet with that name. He wrote that epic about the tennis
player who celebrated his great victory at Wimbledon.
The "Love Song" of J. Alfred Prude Frock, I think.
-- Lee J. Merkel
Shooshie
In article <lmerkel....@BIX.com>, lme...@BIX.com (lmerkel on BIX) wrote:
Chill tendentious - makes my teeth hurt, like when Alfred bit into that
cold peach.
Shooshie
Vance Maverick
deb wrote:
> Here's some Bauman for you, from _Intimations of Postmodernity_ :
> (On modernity, or 'desperately seeking structure')
> "The kind of society that, retrospectively, came to be called modern,
> emerged out of the discovery that human order is vulnerable,
> contingent and devoid of reliable foundations. That discovery was
> shocking. The response to the shock was a dream and an effort to make
> order solid, obligatory and reliably founded. This response
> problematized contingency as an enemy and order as a task. It
> devalued and demonized the 'raw' human condition. It prompted an
> incessant drive to eliminate the haphazard and annihilate the
> spontaneous."
Thanks, that helps. My point in quoting Lewis was to show that the
adventurous writers of Eliot's generation didn't fit easily into
this account of modernism. The same point could be made by looking
at Eliot's poetry (not his criticism), or Lewis' fiction, or Pound,
or Joyce, etc. Do you take them to be postmodernists, or perhaps
intimations of postmodernists?
The original question called Modernism an "avant-garde movement" --
something pretty different from the long historical phase of the
"sociological" Modernism. I'd be curious to know what definition
the poster had in mind....
Vance
Louise Van Hine
Now, if you lived (like I do) in the home of Microsoft Encarta, you would
know that the term "Modernism" was coined by - are you ready? The Pope,
to describe the reforms imposed on Roman Catholic thought by the
transition from the Latin mass to the vernacular mass. It has since been
applied to everything, including T.S. Eliot's poetry, a position I
disagree with mightily.
As a scholar who takes a special interest in that particular fallen angel
of 20th century intellectual history, (T.S. Eliot, that is)
I think the concept of "schools", such as "modern" and "post-modern" and
"po-po-mo" and "angst" need to be revisited, so that at least two people
who are arguing, can understand one another.
I'm going back to bed now. Wake me up when we get to Villon.
: Pace, Louise, we'll get to your beloved alchemical Renaissance yet.
(yawn)
Tim Blackwell
In article <31A60D...@cs.berkeley.edu>, Vance Maverick
<mave...@cs.berkeley.edu> writes
modernism
-----------------------------------------------------------
what I love about modernism is its meccano set
what I hate about modernism is its sneer
---
post-modernism
------------------------------------------------------------
You call it wonderful:-
I call it cash.
----
nods to e.m & j.u
tim blackwell
--
tjb//nOrmAn is fReE to the mAn wIth the GraNarY CoB
WillSlat
Isn't it interesting, how diverse we are?
For some, Eliot is the false god who must be toppled. A lot of anger
there.
For some, "modernism" was an evil empire, now by all good folk
discredited. More anger.
Galway Kinnell has an essay called "Poetry, Personality, and Death" in
which he congratulates Eliot for coming up with the persona of J. Alfred
Prufrock as a way of expressing his sense of sterility and futility. In
the next sentence, Kinnell knocks Eliot: "The persona makes it unneccesary
for him to confront the sources of these feelings or to explore their
consequences in himself."
I would have thought that Eliot's entire subsequent career was devoted to
confronting and exploring and doing combat with his sense of sterility and
futility. Isn't that what Eliot is famous for? Isn't he famous for voicing
the fears of his age, and trying to find a noble response to those fears?
In the same essay, getting to the heart of what he holds against
modernism, Kinnell rants against science, particularly against objective
detachment. "Turned on any natural thing, the eye trained to scientific
objectivity and glowing with the impersonal spirit of conquest becomes a
deathray. What it killsationship between man and thing."
I think modernism gets blamed for things it never did.
My Penguin DICTIONARY OF LITERARY TERMS AND LITERARY THEORY says Modernism
was interested in breaking away from established rules, traditions, and
conventions; in finding fresh ways of looking at how humans relate to the
universe; in experiments in form and style; and in exploring the limits of
the power of language.
I suspect the "paradox" mentioned in the question in the posting that
started this thread is the paradox that Eliot, who started out as a
revolutionary poet clearly intending to topple the canon, is now a member
of the canon.
David Perkins has a two-volume book, A HISTORY OF MODERN POETRY, from the
Belknap Press of Harvard University, for anyone ambitious enough to want
to get the real scoop on Modernism.
It was a pleasure reading what all of you had to say.
Respectfully yours,
William Slattery
Will...@aol.com
ju...@onrampbbs.com
> ***Spot on, Shooshie. But, hay, who am I to suppress any one
>
> person their freedom to speech, right !? I read that article,
>
> too, and all I can say about it is, duh?
>
> ObPoem:
>
> Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
> Who's the M*r*k of Them all?
> It's no puzzle. It's plain facts -
> L'il D*bbi* wields his axe.
>
> --Duh Dowdy (c) 1996
It's inane childish crap like this that torques my jaws with this newsgroup.
Your claws are showing Dowdy and they are really UGLY.
Julie