Modernism in Literature: What Never Were Before

Every new cultural figure wants to bringhis work is something completely original and, of course, dreams to leave an indelible mark in the history of mankind. But the search for new artistic forms and meanings, for some reason, invariably led the creators to the processing of traditions. In addition, it is known that artistic culture is a product of man's intellectual and spiritual labor in the conditions of contemporary social reality. Thus, until the end of 19 Art. every artist and literary man tried to create the New, experiencing the influence of the Present and the Past. Thus, in proclaiming the Future, in fact they actually turned their backs on him. The modernists decided to put an end to this absurdity - they completely renounced the past and the present, in order to create what has never happened before.

The society reacted to an attempt to destroy traditional art methods by aggressive attacks against modernists.

At the beginning of the XX century. the appearance in the art salons of blatantly strange works caused a reaction among the connoisseurs of acute outrage. The famous Spanish philosopher H. Ortega y Gasset explained this by the fact that the art of modernism is unpopular in its essence. Moreover, it is antipopular.

What is modernism? In painting, the desire for innovation gave birth to three trends: Cubism (which appeared in France but invariably associated with the name of the Spanish Picasso), futurism (persistently and scandalously propagated in Italy), and abstract art (as a virus brought from Russia to Germany by Vasily Kandinsky).

A demonstrative and aggressive rejection of anytraditions and conventions was proclaimed by Vladimir Mayakovsky, who naively considered his work to be an absolute innovation. However, did he have the right to claim originality? After all, he wrote his inconsistent, stumbling verses with the help of ordinary words! Where more progressive against the background of such self-proclaimed geniuses felt Hugo Ball - the founder of Dadaism, who read on the stage senseless poems from ... sounds.

Numerous and diverse modernistThe currents arose in different years, in different countries. They were not connected with national traditions and did not have international significance. Modernism in literature has become a reaction to the inhumanity of a new civilization. Artists and writers of the modern era believed that their manifestos, embodied in life, will change the world.

Many motley currents (Imagism, Acmeism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Constructivism, Existentialism) were united by only one - an antirealistic creative method.

Modernism in literature is an infernal mixture of the denial of humanistic values ​​and the reflection of formal signs of the vital activity of organisms endowed with consciousness.

In this case, each of the innovators considered himself the Most Important Creator of the New. In the struggle for the ideals of modern art, cultural figures of the time frankly violated the principles of common sense.

Modernism in literature is James Joyce, EugeneIonescu, Jean Paul Sartre, Hermann Hesse, and many other authors who sang an ode to the absurdity of being, pretending that everyone lives only to die tomorrow, no, no, too pathetic a word, would sound much more accurate: insensibly die and rot like worm.

It is enough to read the short novel "Transformation" of Franz Kafka, in order to get a clear idea of ​​the creative method and ideology of modernism. Let's retell the story in a nutshell.

A man wakes up in his bed anddiscovers that he is a giant mocrica, and now one must somehow continue to live in his family, while relatives have unconcealed disgust and hatred for him and even encroach on murder. And after all, he looks like a lobster just outside - inside beats a tender human heart, the soul is torn from pain, the brain is unable to comprehend the hopelessness and catastrophic nature of what happened.

Such is modernism in literature, accusing society of complete moral and intellectual disintegration.

Modernist trends, for all theirdiversity, equally treat the relationship between art and reality, as well as form and content. Art is more important than reality, art generates itself and exists for itself, art is life. And life is all art, sorry for the absurd assertion, it's rather death, the process of dying. Accordingly - the form is more important than the content.

Modernism has entered the cultural field, plowedby previous generations (trying to grow the seeds of the ancient tradition in the new social conditions, then the seeds of the romantic heritage of the Middle Ages), in order to fill in the uneven fat black chernozem furrow that gives birth to unoriginal ideas, a solid impenetrable and pure asphalt of the Absolutely New Art.

The confusion of concepts, the denial of the ideals of the past, the overthrow of authorities and the rejection of all traditional leads to the fact that modernism exhausts all sources of novelty.

Gradually, in the fight against the old, a new artbegan to destroy itself. The asphalt of modernism was not so strong. Through its solidity, the shoots of postmodernism began to break through, absorbing the full power of the soil that generates all art - the history of human civilization.

Modernism and postmodernism differ only in that,that the latter does not seek to destroy the past (in fact this is impossible). It simply fixes the transition from creativity (as the birth of something fundamentally new) to construction (as the only possible type of artistic activity).

Today's artist, writer, poet, beinghighly educated and well informed, perfectly understands that the imagery generated by his imagination is the essence of the quotation. And he, by and large, has no right to claim the authorship of his works: all subjects, motifs, artistic means can not be called original, because they have already been used in previous cultural epochs. The author only adds a new picture from the old materials.