Modernism is when the mirror began to crack. If there is any hope of understanding our current world of broken mirrors, we need to remember why the mirror cracked to begin with.
When I taught English, I always explained Modernism as the end of the belief in truth and progress and humanism.
Walt Disney may have believed in the Carousel of Progress and the “great big beautiful tomorrow… that’s only a dream away.” But a big chunk of the world saw their hope in tomorrow collapse after the horrors of WWI. All of our progress led to machine guns and tanks and trench warfare.
Some Works of Modernism
In “The Second Coming,” Yeats predicted all of our progress would lead to one conclusion: “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” T. S. Eliot said, “We are the hollow men… Our dried voices… are quiet and meaningless.” Even Robert Frost presents characters who rewrite their own history to impose meaning on their choices at the cross roads. Although the road not taken is “worn… really about the same,” that speakers admits sheepishly, “I shall be telling this with a sigh… I took the one less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference.”
For awhile, people looked for ways to refine progress and keep it true. They worked very hard to impose truth on the world.
New Criticism introduced methods of analyzing a text to arrive at the true meaning–which often depended heavily on ambiguity. Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings that were strictly unified in theme. Even cubism reduced images down to basic shapes, as if they were foundational truths or something.
Do you have any favorite works from the early twentieth century? What do they have to say about the truth?
I could also wonder about the Modernist tendencies of the church. How long will we keep using our faith as a rhetorical method of rationalism and analysis in our attempts to impose truth upon a world that seems to have lost it?
Sigh. Happy Friday people. Mid Summer Night’s Dream opens tonight. I’m Duke Theseus, charged with maintaining order in a world constantly disrupted by the magic of mischievous faeries.
Note: this post began as a comment on Spagettipie that got completely out of control. So I post it here. She’s got trackbacks now since she came over to Wordpress from the darkside. (That’s right, L.L. Blogger is the darkside.)
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