A Substance of the Metro in September, 1918: High Modernism 101

In an effort to post more regularly I'm hoping to share at least weekly something that has impressed itself upon me. Recently I've done this by sharing the essays I've written, but with my return from Great Britain my essayistic boot camp has ended and I'm simply not producing enough to post. So I thought I'd explore some new forms of posting.

Today I had a three-hour lecture course on High Modernism in American between World War I and World War II. Some names you may recognize from this category are Ezra Pound, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Amy Lowell, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, and Katherine Anne Porter. American Literary Modernism was, in essence, a response to the social and economic conditions of Modernity. With the eruption of World War I and chemical warfare, 5 million dead, and a world left reeling everything was beginning to change. Women gained the vote in 1920 with the 19th Amendment and a new set of sexual mores were coming into existence making many behaviors more acceptable e.g. cohabitation, homosexuality, etc. With these social conditions in mind, Modernity is described as a sense of newness and a dramatic rupture from the past. It's emphasized through Industrialization with the introduction of an increasingly present middle class and the assembly line method to production, as well as scientific developments with Einstein's redefinition of space and time and soon the atom bomb. And finally as previously discussed the social revolutions of the day (voting rights and liberality) were booming.

Understanding the atmosphere of modernity helps us understand the lifestyle of High Modernists who lived bohemian lifestyles, which specifically rejected the middle-class values. They tended to be ex-patriots living abroad, mainly in London and Paris. They were specifically not American Exceptionalists and they used art to imitate the fragmented pieces of their modernist world.

So fragmentation is a style beautifully displayed in Ernest Hemingway's writing.

Indian Camp
http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/73035/Prose1/the%20story%20Indian%20Camp.pdf

After or before reading "Indian Camp" consider looking for these fragmented techniques.

• omitted explanations, summaries, or continual perspective
• begins arbitrarily and no resolution at the end
• occasional symbols that are very personal to the author
• Tenuously related segments in juxtaposition

Now that you've read it, think of this . . . What if George was the father of the newborn Indian Baby? !!!!!
What!!!?!?!?! you may say, or maybe you saw it all along. The exciting part is that we'll never know. Why? Because of Hemingway's Iceberg Principle. Hemingway said, "I always try to write of the principle of the iceberg. There are seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows." In other words, it's not what you read in the words but what you read in the words that aren't there. Gertrude Stein once told Hemingway to write like Cezanne and from the choppy strokes, we find Hemingway's unforgettable Modernist writing style.

Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase

Modernism, under Ezra Pound, eventually took a turn towards an artistic movement called Imagism. Eventually, Pound went to something new and Amy Lowell became the torch bearer but essentially Imagism attempts to show and not tell, and connect the image with the complex. Of the image, Ezra Pound said, "And 'Image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." And a complex in Freudian terms, to which Pound was referring later in the quote, is a group of emotionally charged ideas or mental factors, unconsciously associated by the individual with a particular subject, arising from repressed instincts, fear, or desires." Oxford English Dictionary

Below are two of my favorite Imagism Poems. Before you read them here are the "Rules of Imagists" as laid out by Ezra Pound.

• Imagists must have direct treatment of a "thing" whether subjective (imagined), or objective (concrete)
• Imagists must use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation

As regarding rhythm: Imagist should compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. See if you can see the image and complex connection.

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ezra Pound-1913

September, 1918

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves;
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open
       windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.


Some day there will be no war.
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.

Amy Lowell-1919

And finally, perhaps the most far-fetched movement was Cubism as triumphed by Gertrude Stein. Cubism was an early 20th-century artistic movement that rejected realism by breaking a scene apart and reassembling it in a scattered order. If you were to imagine a conversation, but you could only hear the key sentences or random snippets of thought, and then string them together you'd have cubism. Below is only an excerpt but try to find meaning. I focus on the second section and what it means for women. See what you find.

Excerpt from "A Substance in a Cushion" from Tender Buttons

The Change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable.

Callous is something that hardening leaves behind what will be soft if there is a genuine interest in there being present as many girls as men. Does this change. It shows that dirt is clean when there is a volume."

Gertrude Stein

~~~END~~~

Feel free to leave comments about your feelings and interpretations or questions. Modernism is fantastic and hopefully, you've seen a couple reasons why. Also, Midnight in Paris is a cute film that deals directly with the Modernist group who lived in Paris if your curious to see a depiction. :)

-Natalie Cherie