On Modernism

Chapter 1 Modernist Aesthetics: Late 19th- and Early 20th-century England

Any assessment of the function and role of British “literary” modernist aesthetics at the turn from the 19th century toward the 20th century should consider the substantial changes that took place on different levels and, thus, in diverse subsystems of Victorian society. During the Victorian period, England underwent substantial changes which affected the whole society. Industrialization only partially brought about England’s modernization, which, consequently, did not lead to an all-around success story. The new industries attracted the rural population to find work in the new factories. The ensuing massive migration to cities caused problems in housing, hygiene, and public health because neither the authorities nor the employers thought about social politics. Without any doubt, the 19th century was an age of transformation, primarily in a material sense. It saw the development of mass society as well as the substantial growth of the middle class. The latter became wealthy by their activities in industrial production and trade. At the same time, the situation of knowledge acquisition among the middle class population changed for the better; in contrast, the mass of poor workers had little chances of acquiring a solid education. Fearing a backlash and revolution from the subverted working class, the English political establishment tried to control them by urging them to adhere to the principles of cleanliness, godliness, and birth control. This strategy, however, was no remedy for social uprisings, as the Chartist movement has shown.¹

Cultural departmentalization affected all social strata. Within the scope of progress affecting middle classes, a declining aristocracy, and the rise of the working class, the interrelation of divergent world pictures and aesthetic and moral ideas was regarded as a central subject matter by writers, artists, and critics of the period.

The religious, political, and philosophical ideas in 19th-century Britain provided larger sections of society with ideologies and affirmative principles. This does not mean that traditional convictions and beliefs were uncontested. Modern scientific discoveries and insights had destructive consequences for ←11 | 12→Christianity. Suffice it to refer to geological studies (Sir Charles Lyell)² and Charles Darwin’s empirically confirmed theory of evolution.³ Thus, it is no wonder that the traditional English ideology has been sharply criticized by contemporary intellectuals. The tension between affirmative and critical perspectives concerning the status quo was identified as a source of rising modernism. For some English intellectuals, an asymmetrical relationship between positivism and empiricism as well as between liberalism and socialism became visible, a fact that influenced their analysis of the structures and deficiencies within contemporary society. A consequence of this scepticism became visible in a new sensitivity mirrored in literature. British authors called the Spirit of the Age into doubt, so that they began to concentrate on the condition-of-England question (Carlyle) by giving it artistic expression especially in the English novels, starting from the works of Elisabeth Gaskell and Charles Kingsley and going up to that of Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Although these authors did not present visions of an alternative life, they made it clear to readers that social conditions in England had to be improved radically. Literature could no longer dissolve difficulties of protagonists by reintegrating everybody “who went astray” into the established social pattern (Henry Fielding, Tom Jones). It intensified the representation of individual life instead with all its concomitant fears and sufferings. Therefore, representation of individual reception of, and reaction to, reality achieved relevance and importance. They called for fresh forms of literary representation and techniques. The new developments in modernist literature are characterized by a radical innovation of artistic forms.⁴ Whereas the literary narrative style of the 19th century typically intermingled comedy with tragedy and usually solved problems at the end of a text, modernism turned the objective to a subjective perspective. Modernism preferred clear-cut and sharp forms as well as the writer-subject’s untouched position in the chemical reaction of literary creation.

[Another, J. K.] aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. […] the mind of the mature poet […] being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.

←12 | 13→The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.⁵

Holistic conceptions of artworks were substituted by a new world of fragments and splinters without reference to given a priori frameworks. Intuition, imagination, and synthetic creativity led to the production of absolutely unexpected and unaccustomed artistic entities. The shift in literature was of course observed by critics and even by the critic of critics.⁶ This development may be summed up in Pound’s slogan “Make It New.” But what can this slogan convey for the British literary scene between 1890 and 1920?