Casanova’s article on literary time has stood out for me all semester. It’s been one of those readings that I never stop thinking about and the ways that it applies to my life as well as my other classes. The theory that he is exploring is much bigger than just within modernist literature. It’s something that has continued to this day. The idea that you must travel to a certain esteemed place to truly study art or academia is alive and well. It is one of the primary reasons that I moved to Boston. It’s one of the reasons that my family is so proud of me. To “get out” of a small town or rural area has many complicated layers, but one is the belief that there are no smart people in rural places. That intelligence can only be found in large cities with lots of money and white people. To have a smart child is an anomaly and thus they are sent off to get “educated” as soon as possible, so as to not contaminate them. Casanova is alluding to a much larger system in The World Republic of Letters. He is acknowledging the fact that only those from white and rich places are allowed to be intelligent and thus taken seriously. If someone is from outside of that world, they must move there quickly. In the US, the South and the Midwest are considered to be poor while the Southwest along with the South again have large populations of people of color. In the same way, France and England were comparatively white and rich in the Modern Era. This sets Paris, London, Boston, New York, and Silicon Valley as places where intelligence can flourish. It has nothing to do with talent. Only race and class.
Category Archives: Modernism
From Walter Benjamin’s “Theses On the Concept of History”: Theses V and IX
Question for the Class:
Why do these parables/ideas about the meaning of History relate to Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin?
Thesis V:
The true picture of the past whizzes by. Only as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held fast. “The truth will not run away from us” – this remark by Gottfried Keller denotes the exact place where historical materialism breaks through historicism’s picture of history. For it is an irretrievable picture of the past, which threatens to disappear with every present, which does not recognize itself as meant in it.
Thesis IX:
There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.
Why do these parables/ideas about the meaning of History relate to Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin?
Narrator or Author
In our last class we discussed the line that exists between the author and the narrator. The narrator of a story is just another character of the novel. All the opinions and thoughts expressed by the narrator do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the author. This was one of the critics expressed by Du Bois for Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry. Thurman’s narrator would both criticize Emma Lou, while at the same time express her thoughts, almost always self-hating, as his/her own opinions. In these instances it can be difficult to distinguish the author from the narrator. Had the novel been in the first person point of view, from Emma Lou’s perspective, there would not have been any accusations towards Thurman. Another example provided in class was Nabokov’s famous work, Lolita. In this case as well, the narrator, who also happens to be the main character, is often confused for the author. This caused Nabokov a lot of problems as well as creating a lot of controversy.
This brings me to The Berlin Stories. In this case the author and the narrator both share the same name and a lot of other similarities, including the experiences mentioned in the novel. Since the work is fiction, are we as the readers supposed to separate the author or from the narrator? This is made very difficult with the fact that they both share a name.
Something else I found very interesting was the fact that this is the first piece or writing that has the average man as the storyteller. Stories such as The Great Gatsby and All the King’s Men have this same man. In The Great Gatsby the main character is Gatsby, but the narrator, who is also a character in the story, is Nick Carraway and in All the King’s Men, the story is about Willie Stark but the story is told by Jack Burden. Up until now, we have only had an unknown, invisible character as the narrator. This is the first instance of a character being a vessel to tell the stories of other people, such as Sally Bowles. The Berlin Stories, were published in 1945, maybe this technique is a more recent development.
New Women
The character of Sally in The Berlin Stories helped me to gain a better understanding of Modernism’s New Woman. As I was reading I began to see the essence of Sally in several of the female characters in modernist literature. I thought of Sally Seton from Mrs. Dalloway, Daisy Buchanan from the The Great Gatsby, Kitty Baldry from The Return of the Soldier, Lily from The House of Mirth, Lady Brett Ashley from The Sun also Rises, Petronella from “Till September Petronella.” (Although not within the modernist time frame, I also thought of Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s because of the parallels in the relationship between Holly and the narrator of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the relationship between Sally and Chris.)
Notwithstanding the individuality of these women, to varying degrees they share very similar characteristics and personality traits. They are sexaully liberated and are very aware of the power of their bodies to their male counterparts and even to themselves. They are explicit in their desires. They are outspoken. They are at times selfish. Their personalities are sometimes dramatic and purposely exaggerated as if they constantly have to perform to an audience. They are also clever and skilled at manipulation if not checked by other characters. One thing that is important to note is that they are also all seemingly white.
Is Emma Lou a New Woman? Are there Black female characters in modernist literature that are New Women? We have discussed in class the supposed responsibility put upon Black writers to be representative of their race. There were damaging stereotypes that plagued Black women at the time. These writers must “uplift” the race. Does that mean not including women characters that share the characteristics of New Woman? I think Emma Lou is a type of New Woman.
Time Capsule: The “Roaring Twenties”
“Harlem: The Culture Capital”
“Harlem: The Culture Capital” by James Weldon Johnson places the New Negro in an interesting position within society, as an outsider to creative production centered in a place like Paris, but as an insider within the new cultural capital of Harlem. The pieces in this collection aim to prove the cultural centrality of Harlem and of the artists living and working there. James Weldon Johnson describes Harlem as “the great Mecca for the sight-seer, the pleasure-seeker, the curious, the adventurous, the enterprising, the ambitious and the talented of the whole Negro world; for the lure of it has reached down to every island of the Carib Sea and has penetrated even into Africa,” and he highlights the centrality of Harlem within New York City, stating that Harlem “is not a slum or a fringe” (301). With these passages, the author establishes Harlem as a new cultural center for a new worldwide Negro community. This centrality is somewhat contradictory, therefore, because although Harlem is a center of creative production, the author also asserts that Harlem serves as this cultural center for a distinct Negro community.
Furthermore, James Weldon Johnson describes the complex relationship between Harlem and the rest of New York City: Harlem is a separate, “well-defined and stable” community, but he also states, “Harlem grows more metropolitan and more a part of New York all the while” (309). As the community in Harlem evolves, the neighborhood experiences “a constant growth of group consciousness and community feeling” that the author states is “typically Negro” (309). It is this quality that makes Harlem unique and enables this area to retain a separate identity from the rest of New York City. While Harlem is a cultural center, it is a different kind of cultural center and is central to a different kind of community. This distinction places the New Negro in a complex position, then, as a member of a distinct community that shares in worldwide events and artistic movements, but that operates around its own cultural center. This work presents the New Negro in Harlem as an artist holding a unique position between insider and outsider.
Trains and Movement in The House of Mirth
I kept thinking about Casanova’s theories of place and movement as I was reading Wharton’s House of Mirth. As someone from the mid-west, the theory of epicenters of knowledge and creativity resonated with me, always feeling far away. A large part of choosing Wellesley had to do with being close to such wealths of knowledge and society.
I found similar themes in The House of Mirth. Much depends on Lily’s ability to be in the right place at the right time. She must be invited to all of the right parties; furthermore, she must not be seen in town during the traveling season. It seems as though place is a large factor in one’s ability to maintain status. To this end, trains because relevant. While Wharton also uses ships, carriages and automobiles, it is trains that carry Lily to and from these estates as she attempts to maintain her status. Additionally, the trains signify her slipping in social structure.
The novel begins with Lily being seen in the train station. She is brilliant compared to others common folk. On a train we first see her play the society game in manipulative small talk as a way to separate herself from her worries. When she picks up Trenor at the train station she accepts his offer to play the stock market and thus her debt begins.
I believe that trains and travel help to illustrate how Lily’s status is in flux, changing as she moves to and from party and house. As she never has a stable home of her own, her status is also always shifting.
Mrs. Dalloway Map
Background on Rhys
Clarissa – “there she was”
As we have noted previously, one of the most engaging aspects about Mrs. Dalloway is Clarissa’s identity and how it morphs depending on the occasion and her observers. As we discussed in class, there are only a few characters that see “Clarissa”, while everyone else see Mrs. Dalloway or Mrs. Richard Dalloway. Noting the moment though where she sees herself, we have a glimpse to what Peter and Richard admire in the woman they love, “…collecting the whole of her at one point (as she looked into the glass), seeing the delicate pink face of the woman who was that very night to give a party; of Clarissa Dalloway; of herself” (37). She views herself in the mirror and distinguishes the unique characteristics she has to carry a room. She does not simply “have” a party, but has the ability and power “gives” a party to society, almost as a gift.
Whereas Peter sees her beyond her abilities to have a party, both in the middle of the book and at the end, he highlights that even though there was not anything overtly special about her, – “Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was nothing picturesque about her; she never said anything specially clever…” (76) – Clarissa still possesses a quality which allows her to be her own person and stand out in a crowd of those with greater power positions in society (“For there she was” (194)). Again, this references our discussion in class about Woolf’s use of parataxis. Even though there are political figures and members of society’s top social strata, Peter (the eye through which we finish the novel) sees her, Clarissa. This lens highlights the importance of the individual, and a woman at that, by placing both the political sphere and the domestic together.