Rehearsals Of Modernism: A Treble Syllabary
PROFESSOR Djelal KADIR
436 BURROWES Building
e-mail: kadir@psu.ed
Office Hours:
MONDAYS 11:30-12:30
TUESDAYS 11:00-12:00
Modernism has been the most persistent and internationally the most ubiquitous cultural movement since the latter part of the nineteenth century. Despite of its appropriative impetus, it has also been among the least monolithic cultural movements when viewed comparatively in a global, international context and across inter-artistic and transdisciplinary lines. In spite of its persistence, its programmatic agendas, its virulent manifestos, its apocalyptic zeal, and its vocation for mastery, Modernism as aesthetic and cultural movement has remained an open, process-oriented, self-trangressive, and self-succeeding performative rehearsal.
This seminar aims to explore and reassess the ironies, conundrums, aporias, paradoxes, and the self-defying and self-engendering strategies of Modernism's relentless activity. This re-assessment is pursued through a series of theoretical texts and literary works, principally poetry, across cultural contexts, international traditions, and linguistic frontiers. The seminar investigates Modernism's self-serving impetus. It examines the Modernist impulses that would cast world history and all cultural movements as prolepses, or as typological fulfillments and sidereal orbits of Modernism’s own problematic centrality, thus giving us Pre-modernism, Early Modernism, High Modernism, Post-modernism, and Pre-posterous Modernity.
Sources & Documents The following is the text to be purchased. It is on special order at Webster’s Book Shop:
Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents, eds. Vassiliki Kolocotroni, Jane Goldman, and Olga Taxidou. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1998.
(Master copy of all other items will be on file weekly outside my office door for copying, as will “prooftexts” not on line. If English translations of poetry on line exist, these will also be made available for copying).
Unless otherwise indicated, reading assignments refer to the purchased textbook.
I. Proemion: Modernity, Modernization, Modernism
Matthew Arnold, from "On the Modern Element in Literature" (1857); Charles Baudelaire, from "The Painter in Modern Life" (1859-60); Peter Bürger, "Literary Institution and Modernization" in his Decline of Modernism (University Park: Penn State UP, 1992); Ruben Darío, (1898) “El triunfo de Calibán,” @ http://ensayo.rom.uga.edu/antologia/XIXA/dario/ ; Néstor García Canclini, "Latin American Contradictions: Modernism without Modernization," in his Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (Minneapolis: U Minn P, 1995; 1989); Pablo Picasso, “Art is a Lie,” @ http://www.artseensoho.com/Life/readings/picasso.html
II. Pre-, Post-, Para-Modernisms
Paul Valéry, from "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci" (1895); Edwin Muir, "What Is Modern?" (1918); José Ortega y Gasset, “Verdad y perspectiva,” (1916) @ http://ensayo.rom.uga.edu/antologia/XXE/ortega/ ; Hu Shi, "Suggestions for a Reform of Literature" (1917) in The Longman Anthology of World Literature. Djelal Kadir & Ursula Heise, eds. NY: Pearson/Longman, 2004, vol. F, pp. 47-55); Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity versus Postmodernity,” New German Critique 22 (1981): 3–14.
Leonardo da Vinci, “The Spider and the Bunch of Grapes: A Fable,” @ http://www.artseensoho.com/Life/readings/leonardo2.html ; Paul Valéry, “Anne,” @ http://www.sura.org/~patois/poesie/Valery.Anne.html ; Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man,” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poet/wstevfst.htm ; Paul Laurence Dunbar, “The Dilettante: A Modern Type,” @ http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/dunbar01.html#11 ; Hu Shi, from Changshi ji (Experiments, 1920); Guo Moro, from Nushen (Goddess, 1921).
III. Velocity, Voracity, Vortex(t)
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism" (1909; also @ http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/manifesto.html ); Rubén Dario, "Marinetti y el Futurismo" (1909) in Las vanguardias latinoamericanas, ed. Jorge Schwartz (Madrid: Cátedra, 1991); Ilya Zdanevich & Mikhail Larionov, "Why We Paint Ourselves: A Futurist Manifesto" (1913); Erik Satie, "The Musician's Day" (1913); Percy Wyndham Lewis, from "The Cubist Room" (1914); "Vorticism" from BLAST (1914); Vladimir Markov, "Russian Futurism and Its Theoreticians," in The Avant-Garde Tradition in Literature, Richard Kostelanetz, ed. (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1982. Pp. 168-175); "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste," (Moscow, 1912) @ http://reserve.libraries.psu.edu/rus/100/avant-ga.htm
Georg Heym, “Umbra Vitae,” @ http://gutenberg.aol.de/heym/gedichte/umbravit.htm ; Vicente Huidobro, Altazor I, IV, IX; Hart Crane, “To Brooklyn Bridge,” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poem/hcrane04.htm ; Vladimir Mayakovsky, “Brooklyn Bridge”; Ezra Pound, “A Hypervortext of Ezra Pound's Canto LXXXI,” @ http://www.uncg.edu/eng/pound/canto.htm ; Aleksei Eliseyevich Kruchenykh, “Heights (Universal Language)”; Vasilisk Gnedov, “Poem of the End”; Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "A la automivila de carrera," "The Futurist Aviator Speaks to His Father, Vulcan"; Velimir Khlebnikov, "Incantation by Laughter!"; Vladimir Mayakovsky, "And Yet" @ http://reserve.libraries.psu.edu/rus/100/avant-ga.htm
IV. Matter, Mater, Malady
Arthur Rimbaud, from Letter to Paul Demeny, 15.VII.1871; Walter Pater, "Conclusion to the Renaissance" (1873, rev. 1893); August Strindberg, "Preface to Miss Julie" (1888); Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from The Man-made World or Our Androcentric Culture (1911); Mina Loy, "Feminist Manifesto" (1914); H.D., from "Notes on Thought and Vision" (1919).
Arthur Rimbaud, “Sensation,” @ http://www.sura.org/~patois/poesie/Rimbaud.Sensation.html ; T.S.Eliot, “Hysteria,” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poem/tselio01.htm ; “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poem/tselio02.htm ; Mina Loy, “Apology of Genius” and ms. of “Love Song I” @ http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/wolkowski/main.html ; H.D. “Helen,” “At Baia,” “Heat” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poet/hdoolitt.htm ; Robert Desnos, “Identity of Images (Identité des images)” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poem/lsimps06.htm#English ; Wallace Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poet/wstevfst.htm ; Antonin Artaud, “Deuxiéme lettre de ménage,” @ http://www.franceweb.fr/poesie/artaud1.htm ; Paul Éluard, “L’Amoureuse,” @ http://www.franceweb.fr/poesie/eluard5.htm
V. Decadence, Discourse, Dithyramb
Oscar Wilde, "Preface" to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890); Stéphane Mallarmé, from "Crisis in Poetry" (1886-95); Oswald de Andrade, "Manifesto Antropófago" (1928) in Vanguardias Latino-americanas, ed. Jorge Schwartz. (São Paulo: Editora Universidade de São Paulo, 1995; English translation in The Longman Anthology of World Literature. Djelal Kadir & Ursula Heise, eds. NY: Pearson/Longman, 2004, vol. F, pp. 38-43).
Charles Baudelaire, “Spleen,” @ http://www.sura.org/~patois/poesie/Baudelaire.Spleen.html ; Gabriele d’Annunzio, “Quousque Eadem?”; Oscar Wilde, “Helas,” “Theoretikos” @ http://www.bartleby.com/143/index1.html; Paul Verlaine, “Spleen,” @ http://www.sura.org/~patois/poesie/Verlaine.Spleen.html; Georg Trakl, “Klage,” @ http://gutenberg.aol.de/autoren/trakl.htm; T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land @ http://www.bartleby.com/201/index.html
VI. Case, Condensation, Countervalence
James George Frazer, from The Golden Bough (1890-1915); Sigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams (1900); Lou Andreas-Salomé, from The Freud Journal of Lou Andreas-Salomé (1912, 1913); Jorge Luis Borges, "Anatomía de mi ultra" and "Ultraísmo" (both 1921) in Las vanguardias latinoamericanas, ed. Jorge Schwartz. (Madrid: Cátedra, 1991).
Leopoldo Lugones, “La blanca soledad,” (1912), @ http://www.freeweb.org/letteratura/Artaud/lugones.htm ; Gisele Prassinos, “Blackday,” (1934) @ http://www.kalin.lm.com/prass.html ; Georg Heym, “Und die Hörner des Sommers verstummten,” @ http://gutenberg.aol.de/heym/gedichte/hoerner.htm ; Hart Crane, “Forgetfulness,” @ http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/crane10.html#1
VII. Cadence, Conundrum, Contretemps
Ezra Pound, from "A Retrospect" (1918); Mário de Andrade, "Prefácio Interessantíssimo" (Preface to Paulicéia Desvairada, 1922) in Vanguardias Latino-americanas, ed. Jorge Schwartz. (São Paulo: Editora Universidade de São Paulo, 1995); David Alfaro Siqueiros, Letter from the Front Line in Spain (1938); Robert Graves, “Free Verse” @ http://www.bartleby.com/120/index.html
H. D. “At Ithaca,” @ http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/bestof1923a.html#10; Ezra Pound, “Notes for Canto CXX,” and from “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poet/epounfst.htm [for an annotated, full text of Part I vid. http://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/poems/pound8.html ]; Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” “Metaphors of a Magnifico” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poet/wstevfst.htm ; Mario de Andrade, “Ode ao Burguês”; Carolyn Wells, “Diversions of the Re-Echo Club [or Eighteen ways of looking at a purple cow],” @ http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/wells01.html#1 ; Murano Shiro, "Diving," "Horse on a City Street," from Gymnastics (1939).
VIII. Mid-term Reports and Papers due
IX. Transformation, Transition, Transgression
Antonio Gramsci, "Marinetti the Revolutionary" (1921); Herman Hesse, "Recent German Poetry" (1922); Robert Graves & Laura Riding Jackson, from Modernist Poetry (1926); Bertlot Brecht, from "The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre" (1930).
Arthur Stanley Eddington, “The Physicist Enters A Room,” from The Nature of the Physical World (1929) @http://www.artseensoho.com/Life/readings/eddington.html; Alfred Jarry, “’Pataphysics,” @http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~ngzF92/jarrypub/works/faust2.html (in non-‘Pataphysical terms: @ http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~ngzF92/jarrypub/no13/shattuck.html ) ; Vladimir Mayakovsky, “6 Nuns.”
X. Class, Classification, Corpus
Sergei Eisenstein, from "A Dialectical Approach to Film Form" (1929); Andrei Zhdanov, from Speech at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers (1934); Christina Stead, Report on the First International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture, Salle de la Mutualité, Paris, June 21-25, 1935; Herbert Read, from "What Is Revolutionary Art?" (1935).
Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev, “The Worker”; Leonora Carrington, “The Debutant,” @ http://www.kalin.lm.com/carr.html ; Nazim Hikmet, “Giaconda and Si-Ya-U,” “A Spring Piece Left in the Middle,” “Regarding Art,” @ http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sibel/poetry/poems/nazim_hikmet/english.html ; E.E.Cummings, “anyone lived in a pretty how town,” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poem/eecumm06.htm ; William Carlos Williams, “To Elsie,” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poem/wcwill04.htm ; Osip Emilyevich Mandelstamm, “An American Girl,” “Insomnia. Homer. And sails drawn tight,” “Brothers, let’s glorify the twilight of freedom”; Vladimir Mayakovsky, “La Parisienne.”
XI. Restorative, Recalcitrant, Redemptive
Vicente Huidobro, "Non Serviam" (1914) in Las vanguardias latinoamericanas, ed. Jorge Schwartz (Madrid: Cátedra, 1991); Eric Gill, "All Art Is Propaganda" (1935); Adolph Hitler, from "Great Exhibition of Modern Art" (1937); André Breton, Leon Trotsky, and Diego Rivera, "Manifesto: Towards A Free Revolutionary Art" (1938) in The Longman Anthology of World Literature. Djelal Kadir & Ursula Heise, eds. NY: Pearson/Longman, 2004, vol. F, pp. 43-47).
Guillaume Apollinaire, “La Jolie Rousse,” @ http://www.franceweb.fr/poesie/apol0.htm ; E.E.Cummings, “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r ,” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poem/eecumm05.htm ; William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poem/wcwill03.htm ; Robert Frost, "On A Tree Fallen Across the Road'" from To Hear Us Talk; Carlos Drummond de Andrade, “No meio do caminho tinha uma pedra”; Anna Akhmatova, “I have no use for elegiac passion,” “Epigram.”
XII. Heterodoxy, Heterogeneity, Heterocosm
Rubén Dario, "Palabras liminares" to Prosas profanas (1896) @ http://www.analitica.com/biblioteca/ruben/profanas.asp ; Henri Bergson, from Creative Evolution (1907); Wilhelm Worringer, from Abstraction and Empathy (1908); Fernando Pessoa, from "Notes on Sensationism" (1916); John dos Passos, from "Against American Literature" (1916); Yokomitsu Riichi, "Sensation and New Sensation" (1925) @ http://www.toexcel.com/books/viewgiftoc.asp?isbn=1583482857&page=1 See Chapter Three and Appendix.
José de Almada-Negreiros, “A cena do ódio” @ http://www.ipn.pt/literatura/almada.htm ; Fernando Pessoa, “Inscriptions” @ http://www.ipn.pt/literatura/pessoa.htm ; “A Shrug of the Shoulders” @ http://www.artseensoho.com/Life/readings/pessoa.html ; 3 from 35 Sonnets (1918) @ http://www.alternex.com.br/~wfalcao/englpess.htm ; “Autopsicografia,” @ http://www.lsi.usp.br/art/pessoa/cancioneiro/143.html ; Yokomitsu Riichi, "Love Poems"; Anzai Fuyne, selections; Kitazono Katsue, selections.
XIII. Euphoria, Euthanasia, Euphemism
Vicente Palés Matos & Tomás L. Batista, "Manifiesto euforista, 1922" & "Segundo Manifiesto euforista, 1923" both in Las vanguardias latinoamericanas, ed, Jorge Schwartz (Madrid: Cátedra, 1991); The Eccentric Manifesto, Petrograd, 1922; Gertrude Stein, from "Composition as Explanation" (1926); Transition Group, "Proclamation, 1929"; Theodor Adorno, from "On the Fetish of Character in Music and the Regression in Listening" (1938).
Francis Picabia, “Four Short Poems,” @ http://www.artseensoho.com/Life/readings/picabia.html ; Alfred Jarry, “Le bain du roi,” @ http://ambafrance.org/FLORILEGE/jarry/lebaindu.html ; Paul Verlaine, “Art poétique,” @ http://www.sura.org/~patois/poesie/Verlaine.ArtPoetique.html ; Ryunosuke Akutagawa, “A Note to A Certain Old Friend,” @ http://www.kalin.lm.com/akut.html ; Xu Zhimo, from Feilengcui zhi yi ye (A Night in Florence, 1927).
XIV. Demos, De Modes, De Mots
"A Symbolic Revolt: The Modernist Movement" in Jean Franco, The Modern Culture of Latin America: Society and the Artist (N.Y.: Praeger, 1967); Roger Fry, “The French Group” (1912); Walter Benjamin, from "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936); Theodor Adorno, Letter to Walter Benjamin, 18 March 1936.
Antonin Artaud, from “Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society” (Paris, 1947) @ http://www.artseensoho.com/Life/readings/artaud.html ; Marcel Duchamp, “The” (N.Y., 1916) @ http://www.artseensoho.com/Life/readings/duchamp.html ; Alfred Lichtenstein, “Prophezeiung,” @ http://www.uni-giessen.de/~gi04/MM/gedichte/lic_a.html ; Marianne Moore, “Poetry,” @ http://www.poets.org/LIT/poem/mmoore01.htm ; Anatoly Sergeyevich Steiger, “We believe books…”
XV. Revolution, Resistance, Replication
Lef [Left Front of the Arts] Manifesto (1923); André Breton, from "The First Manifesto of Surrealism" (1924; also @ http://www.surrealist.com/index1.html ); Walter Benjamin, from "Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia" (1929); George Orwell, from Inside the Whale (1940); Tristan Tzara, from “Dada Manifesto 1918,” @ http://www.artseensoho.com/Life/readings/tzara.html
André Breton, “Le verbe être,” @ http://www.franceweb.fr/poesie/breton.htm ; Raymond Queneau, “Postérité,” @ http://www.franceweb.fr/poesie/queneau1.htm ; Tristan Tzara, “Chanson dada,” @ http://www.sura.org/~patois/poesie/Tzara.ChansonDada.html ; Kitagawa Fuyuhiko, from Loss of Semi-Circular Canals (1925), Thermometers and Flowers (1926), War (1929) @ http://home.earthlink.net/~interpoetics/i2/default.html [see also Dean Brink, “Dada and Surrealist Modes of Intertextuality and Social Criticism in Kitagawa’s Early Poetry,” @ http://home.earthlink.net/~interpoetics/i2/default.html]; Takahashi Shinkichi, selections; Nishiwaki Junzaburo, selections.