journal: Modernist poemsConsider any other one of this week’s poem’s(links below) in relation to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by Eliot. The poems all examine different topics important to modernist writers, so you might not find similarities at the level of the subject of the poem. However, consider whether the speakers have anything in common such as attitudes, beliefs, cultural norms, etc. How about the audience they construct for their poems or the broader themes that they address? Remember to give examples that support your claims. Please directly cite the text. (Write a minimum of 3 paragraphs.) Correct grammar, spelling and sentence structure is expectedT.S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” p. 221-4W.B. Yeats: “The Second Coming” p. 306Constantine Kavafy: “Days of 1908” p. 238W.H. Auden “September 1, 1939” (link)
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MODERNISM
from Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century
In its general sense as applied to literature and art, “modernism” connotes
change and innovation, a break with the past, a rejection of the traditional and
conventional, and a search for new means of expression. In the 20th c. the
word has been loosely used to describe art and literature which broke from
the dominant 19th-c. modes of romanticism and realism and which, in the
case of literature, experimented with language and form, found new subject
matter, was antimimetic, and frequently self-consciously delved into the inner
states of the writer.
“Modernism,” however, is more narrowly applied to specific literary
movements in Latin America and Europe, the most prominent being the
modernismo of Spanish America. It has been customary to date Spanish
American modernism from the publication in Chile of a collection of stories
and poems entitled Azul (1888; blue) by the Nicaraguan writer Rubén DARíO.
In fact, although Azul was a landmark of the movement and although Darío
was the first to use the term, the modernist writings of the Cuban José Martí
(1853-1895) and the Mexican Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (1859-1895), as well
as works by the Cuban poet Julián del Casal (1863-1893) and the Colombian
poet José Asunción Silva (1865-1896) predate Azul. Nevertheless, Darío is
the central figure of the movement.
Spanish American modernism originated in a dissatisfaction with the
provincial Hispanic tradition of poetry and perhaps also from a loss of
religious faith. The modernists desired to free Spanish American poetry from
didactic purposes and to make it more cosmopolitan. They first turned for
inspiration to the French Parnassians-Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894), José
Maria de Hérédia (1842-1905), Catulle Mendès (1843-1909)-with their
emphasis on concision, color, form, metrical perfection, and emotional
detachment, and their “art for art’s sake” theory derived from Théophile
Gautier. French SYMBOLISM-Verlaine, Rimbaud, Malarmé-also exerted a
strong influence, adding musical flow, verbal hermeticism, conceptual
complexity, synesthetic imagery, and a mystical undercurrent to the
modernist esthetic. The examples of Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and
Edgar Allan Poe also had an influence on Spanish American modernism.
In Darío’s work the modernist tendency is epitomized. He wrote in highly
literary language, experimented with unusual meters, added color and
innovative imagery to Spanish-language verse, and enriched his texts with
classical and mythological allusions and philosophical undertones.
The leading Argentine modernist poet was Leopoldo LUGONES, whose
verse was influenced by Hugo and Jules Laforgue (1860-1887). Lugones and
other major modernist poets-the Mexican Amado NERVO, the Uruguayan
Julio HERRERA Y REISSIG, the Bolivian Ricardo Jaimes Freyre (18681933), the last of whom used Nordic themes, and the Peruvian José Santos
CHOCANO-reflect awareness not only of symbolism and other vanguardist
tendencies but also sensitive and intelligent identification with New World
problems and cultures; although they looked to Europe (but not Spain), they
also tried to be essentially American.
The Mexican poet Enrique GONZáLEZ MARTíNEZ is considered by many
the transitional figure between modernism and postmodernism in Spanish
American poetry. While his verse is marked by Parnassian and symbolist
elements, his sonnet “Tuércele el cuello al cisne” (1911; “Wring the Neck of
the Swan,” 1958), in which he replaces the swan, the symbol of elaborate
modernist rhetoric, with the wise owl, is seen by many critics as signaling the
end of the modernist period. Among postmodernists who broke away from the
ornate language of Darío and his contemporaries were the Mexican Ramón
López Velarde (1888-1921), who wrote with linguistic brilliance about the
corruption of the city and about erotic subjects, and the Chilean poet Gabriela
MISTRAL, a Nobel Prize winner.
Spanish American prose writers also participated in the modernist movement.
The Uruguayan José Enrique RODó was the foremost essayist of the group;
in Ariel (1900; Ariel, 1922) and other works he pleads for spiritual values in a
materialistic world. The Venezuelan novelist Manuel Díaz Rodríguez (18711927), in ídolos rotos (1901; broken idols) and Sangre patricia (1902;
patrician blood), wrote in highly chiseled prose on symbolic themes. The
Guatemalan literary journalist Enrique Gómez Carillo (1873-1927) kept the
New World’s Hispanic public abreast of modernist and vanguardist
developments in Europe.
The Spanish American War and the arrival of Darío in Europe in 1898
hastened the impact of modernism in Spain. The war caused intellectuals to
reassess Spanish culture, and Darío’s innovations had an influence on such
writers as Juan Ramón JIMéNEZ; the poet and dramatist Francisco
Villaespesa (1877-1936), who popularized the movement in Spain; and
Manuel Machado (1874-1947), a poet who combined Andalusian folklore with
the musicality of modernism. The impact of Spanish American modernism,
with its roots in symbolism, was also felt in Portugal, where its most eminent
representative was the poet Eugénio de Castro (1869-1944).
The term “modernism” has also been used to describe specific avant-garde
literary manifestations in countries outside of Spanish America-in particular,
Russia, the Ukraine, the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, and Brazil.
In Russia the term is identified with the “decadent” foreign influences
(primarily French) of the turn of the century and is used more or less
interchangeably with symbolism. Pioneered by Dmitry MEREZHKOVSKY,
with the mystical philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) as a precursor,
Russian modernism was dominated in its early phase by the poets Konstantin
BALMONT, Valery BRYUSOV, and Fyodor SOLOGUB. and later by Alexandr
BLOK, Andrey BELY, and Vyacheslav IVANOV. The movement was notable
for its aesthetic individualism tinged with anarchism and for its rejection of
moralizing realism in literature. In the Ukraine the relaxation of censorship
after the revolution of 1905 led to a period of modernism influenced by
symbolism and the concept of art for art’s sake. While continuing to deal with
Ukrainian subject matter, particularly village life and the role of the
intelligentsia in the Ukraine, modernist prose writers and poets searched for
new forms. In the 1920s the Soviet government put a stop to the development
of modernist writing in the Ukraine, imposing the strictures of socialist
ideology.
Finland-Swedish modernism came about around the time of Finland’s
independence from Russia (1917), the victory of the Whites in the 1918 civil
war, and the establishment of the Republic of Finland (1919), when an
atmosphere of optimism was pervasive. Poetry was freed from traditional
rhyme and meter and came under the influence of such avant-garde
movements as DADAISM and SURREALISM. Edith SöDERGRAN introduced
modernism into Finland-Swedish poetry and had an enormous influence on
later Finland-Swedish and Swedish poets. Along with her, Elmer DIKTONIUS,
Gunnar BJöRLING, and Rabbe ENCKELL were the leading modernist poets,
while Hagar Olsson (1893-1978), in her criticism, fiction, and drama,
epitomizes Finland-Swedish modernist prose writing.
Modernism in Brazil (see also Brazilian Literature) had almost no links with
the Spanish American modernism of the turn of the century. Coming
somewhat later than Darío’ s brand of modernism, it had its sources in
FUTURISM, EXPRESSIONISM, and CUBISM; gathering momentum during
the first decades of the century, Brazilian modernism was proclaimed and
celebrated at a series of sessions on the arts called the Modern Art Week,
held in 1922 in São Paulo. Its tenets were that art (all art, not just literature)
was to utilize native and folkloric sources, that the Brazilian vernacular rather
than “classical” Portuguese was to be used, and avant-garde movements of
Europe and North America were to be adapted to Brazilian themes. (A later
development was the idea that Brazilian literature was to be free from foreign
influences.) Modernism dominated all the arts in Brazil until after World War
II, and its influence is still felt.
Monteiro LOBATO’s early stories and critical writings are of great importance
to the beginnings of Brazilian modernism. Its outstanding exponent, however,
was Mário de ANDRADE, who in his poetry, fiction-in particular, Macunaíma
(1928; Macunaíma)-and essays embodied the iconoclastic spirit of the
movement. The essayist José da Graça ARANHA was the strongest defender
of the modernists. Oswald de ANDRADE, one of the organizers of the
Modern Art Week, in his poetry and prose exemplifies the modernist idiominformal, irreverent, exalting the primitive. One faction of modernism was
highly nationalistic and somewhat fascistic; Ricardo CASSIANO, a member of
this group, wrote Martim Cererê (1928; Martim Cererê), the epic poem of the
modernist movement.
To mention outstanding writers of Brazilian modernism is to list all the
outstanding writers of the first half of the century. Major poets include Manuel
BANDEIRA, who became the leader of the Rio de Janeiro modernists; Cecília
MEIRELES, considered by many to be the most important woman poet
writing in Portuguese; Carlos Drummond de ANDRADE, one of the greatest
of Latin American poets; Jorge de Lima (1895-1951), from the Northeast, who
wrote excellent Negro poetry and religious verse; and the younger João
Cabral DE MELO NETO, who carried on the regionalist orientation of the
movement.
The Northeast developed its own form of modernism, particularly in the
regional novel. The seminal influence was the anthropologist and novelist
Gilberto FREYRE, who dealt with the distinctive culture of the region. Jorge
AMADO, Graciliano RAMOS, and José LINS DO RêGO were the outstanding
modernist novelists of the Brazilian Northeast, while João GUIMARãES
ROSA, innovative in style and technique, wrote of the region of Minas Gerais.
There is hardly a Brazilian writer today who has not in some way been
touched by the modernism of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Goldberg, I., Studies in Spanish American Literature (1920).
Craig, G. D., The Modernist Trend in Spanish American Poetry (1934).
Spender, S., The Struggle of the Modern (1963).
Davison, N. J., The Concept of Modernism in Hispanic Criticism (1966).
Nist, J., The Modernist Movement in Brazil (1967).
Howe, I., ed., The Idea of the Modern in Literature and the Arts (1968).
Anderson, R. R., Spanish American Modernism: A Selected Bibliography
(1970).
Chiari, J., The Aesthetics of Modernism (1970).
Martins, W., The Modernist Idea (1970).
Bradbury, M.; J. McFarlane, Modernism 1890-1930 (1974).
Forster, M. H., ed., Tradition and Renewal: Essays on Twentieth-Century
Latin American Literature and Culture (1975).
Ackroyd, P., Notes for a New Culture: An Essay on Modernism (1976).
Bender, T. K., et al., Modernism in Literature (1977).
Faulkner, P., Modernism (1977).

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