My term paper on Modernism

The Modernist writers were aware that they were living in an age which was undergoing massive change. Virginia Woolf famously said “on or about December 1910 human character changed.” Awareness of this change radically affected their writing. The investigations of Freud, Marx and the new developments in the empirical sciences influenced their worldview and their works of art. The stable worldview that writers like George Eliot were used to was changing. The idea of the organic growth of an individual and of society was no longer in vogue. In its place there was the awareness of fragmentation. Organic unity no longer existed. In the visual arts in place of the landscape paintings of the previous century the20th century saw experiments like cubism by painters like Pablo Picasso. Picasso’s paintings were the visual representation of the fragmented worldview of the modernists. There were changes in the study of language as well, while earlier the study of language was limited to the study of the development of language linguists like Ferdinand de Saussure introduced the concept of “signified” and “signifier” thus starting an investigation into the structure of language. James Joyce in his novels explored the limits and possibilities of language. Critics of the modernists have said that modernism was an elitist movement. Appreciation of modernist art was restricted to the university educated. Such criticism was leveled against T. S. Eliot as well. This was not surprising as the modernist works were allusive in nature. T. S. Eliot’s poetry contained literary allusions to myriad literary works including the Upanishads. Other critics have contended that knowledge of literary allusions that Eliot was making was not necessary for the enjoyment of his poems. The different nature of the modernist works of art was not simply due to the literary allusions. D. H. Lawrence’s fiction which did not have as many literary allusions as T. S. Eliot’s was still vastly different from the work of George Eliot. The war played a large role in shaping the sensibilities of the modernists. Septimus Warren Smith in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is a war veteran who has been left emotionally shattered by the war. After experiencing the horrors of war he can now no longer lead a normal existence. It is indeed no coincidence that T. S. Eliot’s waste land resembles a European battlefield strewn with trenches. The idea of the pre-modernist coherent and organic self is replaced by the fractured self. The modernist writers were aware of Freud’s investigations of the mind. While pre-modernist writers were satisfied with depicting the external reality the modernist writers were delving into the subconscious and the unconscious and trying to represent them in their writing. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway sought to reveal what was going on in the mind of the characters in her novel. The Modernist age was an age of experimentation. The experiments were both in the form and content of literary works. While it is important to see the Modernist age as an age where new ideas were brought into practice it is erroneous to assume that the modern writers were cut off from the past. Myths and history were important for the modernist writers. The modernist writers took these ancient myths and reinterpreted them. James Joyce’s novel Ulysses is perhaps the best example of a modernist writer reevaluating ancient myths and connecting those myths to the present. Eliot was no different his study of history and myths shaped his poetry. For the modernists technique was of as much importance as form. Woolf’s narrative technique of the “stream of consciousness” is a case in point. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness used the technique of a narrative within a narrative thus making it difficult to determine authorial intention.   Another significant technique used by the modernists was the use of vague symbols and imagery, Kurtz in Heart of Darkness can stand as a symbol of colonial brutality or even as a symbol of the corrupting influence of the “African darkness” on the “civilized” European mind. How do we read a character like Prufrock in T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is he a dissolute man, no longer in his prime or is he something more, a symbol of the anxieties that the modern man must face. Modernity with its industrialization, colonialism and imperial wars of conquest created anxieties in the modern man. In Eliot’s poetry the internal conflict of the modern man is externalized. The indeterminacy, the vagueness of the imagery creates an atmosphere of dreariness. The run down streets, the “yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle against the windowpanes” are all the undesirable effects of industrialization.  The big city is a product of industrialization. City life with all its monotony is a very important theme in the “Love Song”. Modernity had positive aspects as well, the ease of communication and transport because of trains and the telegraph service, the advances in modern medicine. Eliot’s protagonists like Prufrock and Sweeney are trapped in a nightmarish scenario in which the dreary modern world is the backdrop. There are anxieties which cannot be articulated, all the more terrifying because of their vague nature. The “overwhelming question” that Prufrock faces is never answered in the poem. It remains a mystery for the reader. We can only guess as to what the question is. In Eliot’s “Sweeney Among The Nightingales” we are never told clearly if the “nightingales” and their accomplice are plotting to kill Sweeney. There is an atmosphere of dread and conspiracy in the poem. Another important theme in both the “Love Song” and “Sweeney Among The Nightingales” is the recurring animal imagery. In both poems animal like qualities are attributed to the characters. The industrial “yellow smoke” in the “Love Song” is described like a giant, lazy cat. Prufrock himself wishes that he “should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the doors of silent seas.” Prufrock would much rather be a lobster scuttling along the seabed. A few lines later he imagines his head brought on a platter like a cooked lobster.  In “Sweeney Among The Nightingales” animal imagery is much more frequently used. The poem describes a “dive” which is frequented by prostitutes and people of low repute. Sweeney in the first stanza of the poem is described in animalistic terms. The image that we get of Sweeney is more ape than man.  Another important theme in Eliot’s poetry is the fear of growing old. Prufrock  is ashamed at the bald spot in the middle of his head and he always keeps referring to it. He is constantly worried about how he looks, how others perceive him, the slight frame of his body is a source of embarrassment for him. Some critics are of the opinion that the “overwhelming question” that Prufrock faces is his love for a certain young lady. Prufrock is uncertain whether he will be accepted by this lady or not. This “question” is raised to an almost metaphysical level. Love is no longer a simple matter  concerning two individuals for Prufrock the question has an almost cosmological significance. For Prufrock it is easier to “squeeze the universe into a ball” than to ask the question that is bothering him. Prufrock because of his inability to resolve the “overwhelming question” has a diminished self-image. He knows he is no Prince Hamlet, but merely an attendant.  An actor playing a minor part. Prufrock’s diminished sense of self is no surprise, other modernist works of art have also portrayed man bereft of heroic grandeur of the past. Modernity with its large scale industries, metropolises overshadows and belittles the common man. The man working in a factory is just a cog in the wheel of giant industrial machinery. The aloof hero who stands alone isolated common in romantic poetry is replaced by the ordinary modern man with his anxieties, neurotic behavior and interchangeability. Also missing is the high idealism of the romantic hero who is ready to fight for the rights of the downtrodden. For the Romantic poets, poetry had the function of connecting man to the higher things in life. The imagination was particularly valued; it was tool for man to escape his limitations. Transcendence was possible through the beauty of poetry and art. The modernist poets felt that poetry had a different function, poetry should not be escapist. For the modernists poetry should be able to capture the human condition in an age which had experienced a break from the past, a break from tradition. The “zeitgeist” had changed and it was the duty of the writers to capture it in their poetry. This meant innovations in their poetry, Eliot uses blank verse to great effect in his poetry. Eliot’s poetry would not have been what it is now  had it not been for Ezra Pound who edited Eliot’s poems. Pound had a decisive hand in editing Eliot’s poetry.

“Humility is Eliot's whole theme because it has to be: words never embrace

meanings adequately, either because words are relatively inert or themselves

too mobile. To the extent that distinctions are subtle, they are not susceptible

of demonstration. Life discovers footholds in the interstices of art

whose very suggestiveness rests on an exacerbated sense of insecurity.” (Mays)

J.C.C. Mays comments on Eliot’s usage of words, Eliot’s understands arbitrariness of word meanings, the meaning maybe too wide for the context it is used for, or it may even be not strong enough to convey the meaning that the poet wishes to convey.

“Prufrock divides into a you and an /, a public outward personality

and a thinking, inert sensitive self; the dissociation is continually ascribed

to a failure of nerve, an essential timidity. Prufrock does not dare to make

his visit, just as the speaker in The Waste Land fails to address the hyacinth

girl and the Hollow Men are transfixed by eyes they dared not meet in

dreams. Eliot's heroes fail to confront their own selfhood from the beginning,

whether this is conceived as a Dantesque heart of light or a Conradian

heart of darkness.”(Mays)

The critic notes the rupture in the self which Prufrock undergoes, a defence mechanism perhaps to protect the inner self from the vagaries of the outer world. The critic has rightly noted that Eliot’s heroes fail to confront their own selfhood.

“The epigraph from Measure for Measure locates the

limbo the voice comes from; the dry, barren, blocked situation the old man

inhabits is invaded by promises of rejuvenation, which are grotesque and

inadequate; memories of what might have been recreate an illusion whose

temptations only underline failure. The speaker remains suspended among

images: "Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season."(Mays)

The epigraph foreshadows the nature of the poem, the protagonist can easily be considered an old Prufrock, at an old age dryness has set in the mind of the old man, rejuvenation is denied.

Bibliography

Mays, J. C. C. "Early poems: from "Prufrock" to "Gerontion"." Moody, A. David. The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 108-121.

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