Making it new

1. Starting points

[O]n or about December 1910 human character changed. [From that date, a]ll human
relations have shiftedthose between masters and servants, husbands and wives,
parents and children. And when human relations change there is at the same time a
change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature. (Virginia Woolf, Mr Bennett and Mrs
Brown, 1924)
Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Brown 1924- critical essay (Woolf)
As a result of change in the human character + relations: Change in the ideological
superstructure.
(Also change of monarch- Edward VIII)
(Exhibition of post-impressionist painting- Dec. 1910- including the 1st Cubist painting exhibited
in London for the 1st time.

It was in 1915 the old world ended. In the winter 1915-1916 the spirit of the old London
collapsed; the city, in some way, perished, perished from being a heart of the world, and
became a vortex of broken passions, lusts, hopes, fears, and horrors. (D. H. Lawrence,
The Nightmare, 1923)

1915 end of the old world. Very different rupture and resulting world. His projection of the
horrors in peoples life, relations

If I were asked for the starting-point modern literature and the fact that we still call it
modern shows that this particular period isn't finished yet I should put it at 1917, the
year in which T. S. Eliot published his poem Prufrock. It is certain that about the end of
the last war the literary climate changed, the typical writer came to be quite a different
person, and the best books of the subsequent period seemed to exist in a different world
from the best books of only four or five years before. (George Orwell, The Rediscovery
of Europe, 1942)
Orwell essay: The Rediscovery of Europe 1917 T. S. Elliot publishes the poem ???? me
approach literature changes radically, think that modernism hadnt ended yet for Orwell. Has
to do more with war rather than culture- and how it affects literature.

2. Development of European modernism

Paleo-modernism (end of 19th cntury c.1914-20)

Symbolism (Charles Baudelaire W. B. Yeats)

Expressionism (August Strindberg Bertold Brecht)
Futurism (Filippo Marinetti)
Imagism & vorticism (Ezra Pound y Wyndham Lewis)

Neo-modernism (c.1914-20 c.1965)

Dadaism (Tristan Tzara) & surrealism (Andr Breton)

Ultraism (James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges)
Existentialism (Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus)
Cover illustration of Blast magazine, July 1915
For many, the father od modernism is Banderlaine.
Symbolism emerges in France. Modernism as a mwordwise movement including lots
of schole(-isms) not stable. Mot???
War seen as a source of artistic expression.

3. Features of Modernism
To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:
1. experimentation
belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism
sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion
(often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism
promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence artists and not society should judge the arts:
extreme self-consciousness search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of
consciousness exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde
4. intellectualism
writing more cerebral than emotional work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more
posing questions more than answering them cool observation: viewpoints and characters
detached and depersonalized open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent
(John Holcombre, http://www.textetc.com/modernist.html)

3.1. Poetry
Anti-romanticism
I want to maintain that after a hundred years of romanticism, we are in for a classical
revival, and that the particular weapon of this new classical spirit, when it works in
verse, will be fancy. Put shortly, these are the two views, then. One, that man is
intrinsically good, spoilt by circumstance; and the other that he is intrinsically limited,
but disciplined by order and tradition to something fairly decent. To the one party man's
nature is like a well, to the other like a bucket. The view which regards man as a well, a
reservoir full of possibilities, I call the romantic; the one which regards him as a very
finite and fixed creature, I call the classical. I must now shirk the difficulty of saying
exactly what I mean by romantic and classical in verse. I can only say that it means the
result of these two attitudes towards the cosmos, towards man, in so far as it gets
reflected in verse. The romantic, because he thinks man infinite, must always be talking
about the infinite; and as there is always the bitter contrast between what you think you
ought to be able to do and what man actually can, it always tends, in its later stages at
any rate, to be gloomy. What I mean by classical in verse, then, is this. That even in the
most imaginative flights there is always a holding back, a reservation. The classical poet
never forgets this finiteness, this limit of man. He remembers always that he is mixed up
with earth. He may jump, but he always returns back; he never flies away into the
circumambient gas.
(T. E. Hulme, Romanticism and Classicism, 1912)
Hulme, spiritual father of modernism. You can pass but the essay but if you realize you see
thats the intellectual plan from which T. S. Elliot or Ezra Pound may come.
Fancy-reason.
What it all means in poetry in practice, its difficult to tell, but it emphasizes the intellectual
background.
Imagism

These principles are not new; they have fallen into desuetude. They are the essentials of
all great poetry, indeed of all great literature.
1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the
nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.
2. To create new rhythms -as the expression of new moods -- and not to copy old rhythms,
which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon "free-verse" as the only method of
writing poetry. We fight for it as for a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality
of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In
poetry a new cadence means a new idea.
3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good art to write badly of
aeroplanes and automobiles, nor is it necessarily bad art to write well about the past. We
believe passionately in the artistic value of modem life, but we wish to point out that
there is nothing so uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 19 11.
4. To present an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). We are not a school of painters, but
we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague
generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the
cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of his art.
5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.
(Ezra Pound, 1915)
Pound: points on what the new classicism involves:
1. Everyday speech language.
2. Rhytms that carcg the irregulatiry of the Modern consciousness.
3. Subject, new ideas, new ways of expressing.
4. Visual impact of the poem
5. Definiteness
6. Concentration. Brief, short.
Common denominator idea, 1917 by V. Shlovsky (probably didnt know each other were
working in the same direction)
Contrary to Romanticism.
Defamiliarization

And so life is reckoned as nothing. Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture,

one's wife, and the fear of war. "If the whole complex lives of many people go on
unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been." And art exists that one
may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone
stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and
not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make
forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process
of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of
experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important...
(Viktor Shlovsky, Art as Technique, 1917)

Russian term, art is reflecting things in such a way that it defamiliarizared objects: ex. Violence
in TV. Obligation to be difficult, refers to Tolstris War and Peace: youre not shocked as youre
used to it. Same in cubism.

The poets in our civilization must be difficult.... The poet must become ... more
allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into
meaning.
(T. S. Eliot, The Metaphysical Poets, 1921)

Impersonality

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not
the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only
those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape
from these things. (T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1919)

Elimination of the poet from the poem. Obvious reason, the more personal the poem, the less
applicable it to everybody. Less universal. Critique to Romantic poetry.
Free verse, new rhytms.
Haiku: Pound, station of Metro: characterized by its visual nature, Asian form (brought in the
early 20thC. Ignoring traditional western forms of expression for a less unusual form.
Ask not what is literature? but what is it for?
Setting itself- a challenge for the romantics rural setting. Metropolitan Paris. No verb, no
action, pure image. Irregular, diff, length, lines. Free verse + some kinf of rhyme: assonant.
With any explicit simile there is an implicit comparison
Image: the petals- these faces remind of this image.
Apparition: not usual choice of word (may be appearance) technical word. Ghostly quality,
magical use, refer to a ghost (synonym) appears out of nowhere.
Why faces suddenly appear? The train arrives, pulls into the station. Youre inside- go out-
faces, youre outside- people go out?
Sudden emergence of the train, faces appear little by little.
When train appears, rush of air bush.
The 1st line, though longer, reads quicker than the 2nd, shorter one (comma, alliteration b,b)
Visual and audio effects.

2nd level of interpretation:

Appropriateness of the image: of what is being described. DEfamiliarization- looking at the
faces in a new way. Petals: white, contrast with the dark scenario (metro) people wearing
black clothes.
Oriental image (related) bough with white petals, flores, association with the Assians.
Unconventional image but it is appropriate, describes faces and even beautiful aesthetically.
Apparition. Again the ghostly whiteness.
Implicitly: the beatify of these crowd of dark clothes white faces people. Impersonal but you
get the sense of the poet ????
Apparition: death, dehumanized people no gestures, anonymous people, lack of individual
identity. Ppl dressed equally.
Anti-spiritual, loss of spirituality. Dehumanized spectacle. Visual impact + philosophical
implications.

Musicality and free verse

Free verse [was used] to express, organically, the uneven life of the poets
physiology and psyche, in a way that regular verse could not. (Clive Scott, Reading
the Rhythm: the Poetics of French Free Verse 1910-1930, 1993)

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
(Ezra Pound, 1913)

3.2. Narrative fiction

Anti-realism

Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace
the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident
scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is
commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small. Any one who has read The
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or, what promises to be a far more interesting work,
Ulysses, now appearing in the Little Review, will have hazarded some theory of this nature as
to Mr. Joyces intention. On our part, with such a fragment before us, it is hazarded rather than
affirmed; but whatever the intention of the whole, there can be no question but that it is of the
utmost sincerity and that the result, difficult or unpleasant as we may judge it, is undeniably
important. In contrast with those whom we have called materialists, Mr. Joyce is spiritual; he is
concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its
messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards with complete courage
whatever seems to him adventitious, whether it be probability, or coherence, or any other of
these signposts which for generations have served to support the imagination of a reader when
called upon to imagine what he can neither touch nor see.
(Virginia Woolf, Modern Fiction, 1919)
1st chapter of the arguably best 10th modernist novel: Ulysses- trigger of Woolfs eassay.
(Published in Paris, not as a whole novel, send chapters to the Little Reviews, had already
published the portait. Scandalized.
Let us not take anti realist criticism.
24h in the life of a set of Irish people. Protagonist Leopold Blum, doesnt do very much.
Joyce: sincere because of his reflection of the inner would (inner most flame)
Realism: capture the shape of life: but this live. Joyce is sincere because rather that trying to
capture their octemal life, he depicts the inner would not coherent, shapeless, disesthreted?
Spirituality.
Point of view

There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident,
which must have cost many a smile to the intending romancer who was keen about his work. It
appears to me as little to the point as the equally celebrated distinction between the novel and
the romance to answer as little to any reality. There are bad novels and good novels, as there
are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning,
and I can as little imagine speaking of a novel of character as I can imagine speaking of a
picture of character. When one says picture, one says of character, when one says novel, one
says of incident, and the terms may be transposed. What is character but the determination of
incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? What is a picture or a novel that is
not of character?... And what is adventure, when it comes to that, and by what sign is the
listening pupil to recognise it? It is an adventurean immense onefor me to write this little
article; and for a Bostonian nymph to reject an English duke is an adventure only less stirring, I
should say, than for an English duke to be rejected by a Bostonian nymph. I see dramas within
dramas in that, and innumerable points of view. A psychological reason is, to my imagination,
an object adorably pictorial; to catch the tint of its complexionI feel as if that idea might
inspire one to Titianesque efforts.
(Henry James, The Art of Fiction, 1884)
Similar inclusion, psychological issues: more interesting than the external world. Idea of PoV.
There is a problem with psychology. The way we perceive is not ordered: epistemological the
most genuine way of portraying the world, how a character perceives it.
Joyce, reflect that James state of consciousness. To ecpress or reproduce the inner life, the
narrator must follow the stream of consciousness.
3rd o, external narrator. The thought are the protagonists, are presented in the order they
come to is mind. Then, his father in low speaking.
Individual subjectivity. The focus isnt Dublin.
Stream of consciousness

The Fundamental Fact. -- The first and foremost concrete fact which every one will affirm to
belong to his inner experience is the fact that consciousness of some sort goes on. 'States of
mind' succeed each other in him. If we could say in English 'it thinks,' as we say 'it rains' or 'it
blows,' we should be stating the fact most simply and with the minimum of assumption. As we
cannot, we must simply say that thought goes on.
Four Characters in Consciousness. -- How does it go on? We notice immediately four
important characters in the process, of which it shall be the duty of the present
chapter to treat in a general way :
1) Every 'state' tends to be part of a personal consciousness.
2) Within each personal consciousness states are always changing.
3) Each personal consciousness is sensibly continuous.
4) It is interested in some parts of its object to the exclusion of others, and welcomes
or rejects -- chooses from among them, in a word -- all the while.
(William James, The Stream of Consciousness, 1892)
Inner life

Seule la perception errone place tout dans lobjet, quand tout est dans lesprit.
(Marcel Proust, la recherche du temps perdu, 1908-9, 1922)
V. Woolf: (1st part of the 20th C.)
Given as example of womens writing. Womens access to education was extremely limited. Lit
access to high ed. Little access to culture. Women writers: would often adopt male names. And
not usually do creative things.
A Room of Ones Own criticism of the bias against female writing, the prejudice against what
they might have to say. Distinguely feminine style, not only topic Women novelists Women
and Writing. Reflection a 2nd wave of feminism (France)
Madness: trubled all her life, she suddered from madness, declared as mad at some point, two
Wolfs:
1 sucumbs to madness, despair, suicide, 2 uses this madness as creative energy.
Various consequences in her work:
Septimus and Clarissa (at some degree) Madness also influences the style of the novels, not
only about feminine writing. Idea of revelations; life as a voyage of discovery: in her mind
ligh/darkness liquidity, metaphors. Light: revelation, Illumination; idea from her biggest literary
inglueces. Ephyphany:
Discovering sth profund fundamental in te mosr ?? orfinary moments of beauty, parallelism.
Challegne of Mrs. Dalloway. Show how characters that never meet (Dalloway, Septimus) are
connected.
There are many allusions to MRs. Dalloway with its original name The Hours
Characterization: the iea that the interest lies in the psychology of the characeters itself.
How this psychology mingle and become
Social critique: of a post war social structure, which differs very little from pre war. Very little
to change the hierarchy.
What are characters affected by? Ambiguous territory: part of the society she criticizes. Her
way of distaining from society was probably her own madness.
Not consier Mrs. Dalloway as a piece of women writing, but as a social novel: criticsm of a
particular social formation in a particular moment.

Perspective: not what we see, byt how we see it; not the object but how characters perceive
objects. Woolf: interested in the psychology of their characters.
Philosophicl movement (background) idealism. The observing subjects, subjective
representation of the world.
Importance of form: Sometimes the feeling of spontaneity BUT she is a very deliberate artist.
Her novel do present subjective experiences but are not necessarily the authors. Not
autobiographical, there may be some parallism with some situations of her life but thats it.
COMPARE WITH BLISS.

Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a

semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.
Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed
spirit... with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible?... For the moderns... the
point of interest lies very likely in the dark places of psychology.
(V. Woolf, On Modern Fiction, 1919, 1925)

Rythm

Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off
but opening out. When the symphony is over we feel that the notes and tunes
composing it have been liberated, they have found in the rhythm of the whole their
individual freedom. Cannot the novel be like that? Is there not something of it [that can
bring us to] a larger existence than was possible at the time?
(E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, 1927)

He said softly in the bare hall:

I am going round the corner. Be back in a minute. And when he had
heard his voice say it he added:
You dont want anything for breakfast?
A sleepy soft grunt answered:
Mn.
No. She did not want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer, as she turned over
and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must get those settled really. Pity. All the
way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it.
Old style. Ah yes, of course. Bought it at the governors auction. Got a short knock. Hard as
nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I'm
proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now that was
farseeing. His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat and his lost
property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps : stickyback pictures. Daresay lots of officers
are in the swim too. Course they do. The sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him
mutely: Plastos high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of
paper. Quite safe. On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In
the trousers I left off must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing her. She
turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the
footleaf dropped gently over rhe threshhold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back
anyhow.
(James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922)

3.3. Drama
Expressionism and epic drama

Dreamlike and nightmarish atmosphere, with the use of shadows, unrealistic

lighting and visual distorsions in the set. Characteristic use of pause and silence.
Anti-naturalistic settings, starkly simplified images, bizarre shapes and sensational
colours.
Disjointed plot and structure, broken into episodes, incidents and tableaux.
Characters lose their individuality, stereotypes and caricatures rather than
individual personalities, often representing social groups.
Poetical, febrile, rhapsodic dialogues, including either long lyrical monologue or
staccato telegraphese, made up of one or two words or expletives.
Anti-realist style of acting. Appearance of over-acting, adopting broad, mechanical
movements of a puppet.
(J. L. Styan, Modern Drama in Theory and Practice, 1981)

Surrealism and theatre of cruelty

Theatre will never be itself again, that is to say will never be able to form truly illusive means,
unless it provides the audience with truthful distillations of dreams where its taste for crime, its
erotic obsessions, its savageness, its fantasies, its utopian sense of life and objects, even its
cannibalism, do not gush out on an illusory make-believe, but on an inner level.
(Antonin Artaud, The Theatre of CrueltyFirst Manifesto, 1932)
Verse drama (W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Fry)

THE QUESTIONSwhy there is no poetic drama to-day, how the stage has lost all hold on
literary art, why so many poetic plays are written which can only be read, and read, if at all,
without pleasurehave become insipid, almost academic. The usual conclusion is either that
conditions are too much for us, or that we really prefer other types of literature, or simply
that we are uninspired. As for the last alternative, it is not to be entertained; as for the second,
what type do we prefer?; and as for the first, no one has ever shown me conditions, except
of the most superficial. The reasons for raising the question again are first that the majority,
perhaps, certainly a large number, of poets hanker for the stage; and second, that a not
negligible public appears to want verse plays.
(T. S. Eliot, The Possibility of a Poetic Drama, 1921)

destiny waits in the hand of god,

shaping the still unshapen
i have seen these things in a shaft of sunlight
destiny waits in the hand of god,
not in the hands of statesmen
the fool, fixed in his folly, may think
he can turn the wheel on which he turns
the impossible is still temptation.
the impossible, the undesirable,
voices under sleep, waking a dead world,
so that the mind may not be whole in the present.
if the archbishop cannot trust the throne
he has good cause to trust none
but god alone
shall i who ruled like an eagle over doves
now take the shape of a wolf among wolves?
can i neither act nor suffer
without perdition
you know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.
(T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, 1935)
4. Authors

4.1. T. S. Eliot (1885-1965)

Dissociation of sensibility
We may express the difference by the following theory: The poets of the seventeenth century,
the successors of the dramatists of the sixteenth, possessed a mechanism of sensibility which
could devour any kind of experience. They are simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as their
predecessors were; no less nor more than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guinizelli, or Cino. In the
seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered;
and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful
poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men performed certain poetic
functions so magnificently well hat the magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of
others. The language went on and in some respects improved. But while the language
became more refined, the feeling became more crude. []

It is not a permanent necessity that poets should be interested in philosophy, or in any other
subject. We can only say that it appears likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at
present, must be difficult. Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this
variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex
results. The poet must become more and morecomprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in
order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning. (The Metaphysical Poets,
1921)
Objective correlative

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an objective correlative; in
other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that
particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory
experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. If you examine any of Shakespeares
more successful tragedies, you will find this exact equivalence; you will find that the state of
mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep has been communicated to you by a skilful
accumulation of imagined sensory impressions; htewords of Macbeth on hearing of his wifes
death strike us as if, given the sequence of events, these words were automatically released by
the last event in the series. The artistic inevitability lies in this complete adequacy of the
external to the emotion; and this is precisely what is deficient in Hamlet.
(Hamlet and His Problems, 1921)
Tradition

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation
is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone;
you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of
sthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall
cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that
happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form
an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really
new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for
order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so
slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole
are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this
idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that
the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And
the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.
and the Individual Talent

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in
working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And
emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him.
Consequently, we must believe that emotion recollected in tranquillity is an inexact
formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning,
tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very
great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be
experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation.
These experiences are not recollected, and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is
tranquil only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. Of course this is not quite the
whole story. There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and
deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and
conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him personal.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the
expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who
have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. []
There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, and there
is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical excellence. But very few know
when there is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and
not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach
this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not
likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the
present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is
already living. (Tradition and the Individual Talent, 1912)
4.2. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Womens writing
Women are beginning to explore their own sex, to write of women as women have never
been written of before; for of course, until very lately, women in literature were the creation
of men.
It is the masculine values that prevail...this is an important book, the critic assumes,
because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of
women in a drawing room.
(V. W., A Room of Ones Own, 1929)

No one will admit that he can possibly mistake a novel written by a man from a novel
written by a woman. There is an obvious and enormous difference of experience in the first
place.... And finally... There rises for consideration the very different question of the
difference between the mans and the womans view of what constitutes the importance of
any subject. From this spring not only marked differences of plot and incident, but infinite
differences in selection, method and style.
(V. W., Women Novelists, Women and Writing)
Madness

And then I married, and then my brains went up in a shower of fireworks. As an experience,
madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of
the things I write about. It shoots out of one, everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets,
as sanity does.
(V.W., Letters, IV 180)

Epiphany

By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of

speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself.... The three things requisite
for beauty are, integrity, a wholeness, symmetry and radiance....
(James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916)

Now is life very solid or shifting? I am haunted by the two contradictions. This has gone on
for ever; will last for ever; goes down to the bottom of the world - this moment I stand on.
Also it is transitory, flying, diaphanous. I shall pass like a cloud on the waves. Perhaps it may
be that though we change, one flying after another, so quick, so quick, yet we are somehow
successive and continuous we human beings, and show the light through. But what is the
light?
(V.W., A Writer's Diary, Friday January 4th 1929)
Characterization

[I want to] say a good deal about The Hours and my discovery: how I dig out beautiful caves
behind my characters: I think that gives me exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The
idea is the caves shall connect and each comes to daylight at the present moment.
(V. W., A Writer's Diary, Aug. 30th 1923)

Social critique

In this book [Mrs Dalloway] I have almost too many ideas. I want to give life and death, sanity
and insanity; I want to criticise the social system and to show it at work, in its most intense.
(V. W., A Writers Diary, 19 June 1923)

Importance of form

...I think writing must be formal. The art must be respected. This struck me reading some of my
notes here, for if one lets the mind run loose it becomes egotistical; personal, which I detest. At
the same time the irregular fire must be there; and perhaps to loose it one must begin by being
chaotic, but not appear in public like that.
(V.W., A Writer's Diary, Nov. 18th 1924)

MRS DALLOWAY said she would buy the flowers herself.

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges;
Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning -
fresh as if issued to children on a beach.
What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her when, with a little squeak of
the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at
Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the
early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of
eighteen as she then was) solemn, fecling as she did, standing there at the open window, that
something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke
winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said,
'Musing among the vegetables?' -was that it? - 'I prefer men to cauliflowers' - was that it? He
must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace - Peter
Walsh. He would be hack from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his
letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his
smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly van-ished - how strange it was! -
a few sayings like this about cabbages.
She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass. A charming woman, Scrope
Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in
Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she
was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she perched, never seeing him,
waiting to cross, very upright. For having lived in Westminster - how many years now? over
twenty, - one feels in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a
particular hush or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart,
affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning,
musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are,
she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees
it so, making it up, building it round one, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest
frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same;
can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In
people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages,
motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel
organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead
was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

DRAMA
Postwar Britain: rebellion and disillusionment. Bright side: how wonderful is to live in Britain
Dark side: what was the conflict for?
1: Aftermach of war, Adorno to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric
Orwell: announcement of the beginning of governments control in the cold war (the IIWW
didnt get the expected results and the world was divided into two blocks.
What prevented both sides of going to attack the others? Biological weapons. There is peace
because it is not possible to live in war.
2: Loss of empire. Beginning of the end of the British empire. After the war it began a process
of decline until the end of the millennium. Emblematic events: Suez canal crisis, 1967-57) loss
of Egypt.
3: Politics and society: left wing government, process of transformation. 1945-1951. Right wing
government Churchill, 1951-57 Some policies reverted to a more traditional government.
Need to strengthen relationships with US not Europe. Immigrants taking away identity.
4: Post war literature: development in literature in 1950 influence of the social and political on
drama.

DRAMA:
Most important dramatic model in the 1950s: Social Realism: New realist drama.
The Angry Generation/ The Generation of the Angry Young Men.
John Osborne- from the Middland (sth new)
-drawing man: life of the aristocracy, late 19th C early 20th
- Bellic??- more elitist (Elitist style)
REJECTION OR REACTIVE AGAINST
Issues that really affected people; England as it really was. Marriage abortion, street violence,
industries closing- unemployment, bishops defending atomic bombs, hunger and poverty.
Pejornitely called kitchen-skin or distin?
Character model: by Janes A- Rebel without a cause
Language: new: red, spoken as its actually, using four letter mods ad.
Osborne: a drama with and agenda. May be not political but naking
Points of sniety, red, social issues, problematic.
Significant drama- produced in London, audience quite restricted.

LOOK BACK IN ANGER. So successful,

Critical reaction: Most are positive, even the Daily Express ( quite conservative)
Something that would appear to the youth of the 1950s
Today it would be square for the young generations but then it was rebellious, revolutionary.
Themes: About being young in the 1950s
-Title: nostalgia and anger.
Past: war, parents
Present: provides few opportunities to young energetic illusioned ppoeple. Like Jimmy:
talent not rewarded.
-Lack of enthusiasm: apathy of post- war youth, no channel for their enthusiasm.
-Cold war mentality, loss of identity (Britain)

SETTING:
Revolutionary: one room flat in a large midland town not something the audience was used to,
too realistic. People when went to the theatre expected fantasy, lack of hope + certain
provincialism; danstrophobia, loss of social class.
Jimmy- misogynist, puritan. Unconfortable at case that takes it out (domestic violence)
ACT 1: some have complained about the setting being fixed, traditional structure, respect of the
unities of time, space, action
The description is trying to communicate the low class.
The daughter of a coronel??? + a man with university studies- forced to live in this situation (not
really forced by no one) Contrast.
Description of the character very complete, very contradictory, Jammy: man full of
contradictions, unpredictable, difficult to live with.
Cliff: very often the objects of Jimmys rehals attacks. Individuals, not types, representing a
new unexpected mentality.
Alison; presents a traditional housewife role. Clothes, expensive but dirty, grubby, there is no
bedroom (censorship)
Unprecedent picture of an English sbt wouldnt expect. A bed, sth conditions.
Js shirt: ownership, a servant wearing the clothes of my land. Or the other way round? He is
also afraid of her. Freudian dimmension xd
Settings related to the socio-historical moment in which they are produced: social realism
In opposition we find the theatre of the absurd
-?leidegger: fundamental question: why do we exist at all? This question especially present in
moments of despair. The 1st question in terms of importance.
Situation in which religious beliefs have reached rick bottom? Nothing provides an answer
This crisis of beliefs is the ideal condition I which the theatre of the absurd is born.
Sartre: kind of response to Heidegger, not drom the standpoint of religion but the political
perspective of Marxism.
Throw into the maortal: heideggers many of explaining man existence. Being born as almost
a punishment. Sarte afnes that although life may be meaningless, we are here and have a
responsibility.
1940-1950: development of existentialism: assumption of responsibility. Based on the argument
of you are what you do, what defines human beings is actions, identity isnt predetermined.
Duty to yourself and to the others.
Term theatre of the absurd created by the English literary critiques Martin Eslim?
Substitute religions: Gives the WWII neither orthodox religions more alternative one (socialism,
nationalism) provide any meaning. Every system of belief has failed to answer that question:
wat are we doing here?
Types of theatre:
-Commitment: based on existentialism. Recognizes the back of meaning but tries to do sth.
Involves some sort of political activism (matar a alguien aunque sea a tix d, protest)
- non communication: breakdown, impossibility of understanding.
Anti-human pessimism: Esslin.
WAITING FOR GODOT: examples of the three can be found: mental support, inventing games
to pass the time
Characters can understand each other desire to suicide, lack of sense
-IONESEO???? Two main issues:
-Breakdown of communication. Even people from the same family cannot
communicate, understand each other. For the simple reason of not having anything to say, cant
think, cant feel. 1948, yet discovering of the horrors of WWII, what left us emotionally dead.
Indifferent to human suffering.
(Present today and already detected in the 1940s/50s.
Loss of our sense of identity, what leads us to adopt the identity of others, adapt ourselves to the
identity of other. Losing our own(if we ever had one). We are all actors part of a play we know
nothing about whose author is absent. Life is based on role-play: typical of post-war western
mind.
How does all of this manifest in drama?
LOOK BACK IN ANGER: LONG and detailed description of the characters at the beginning
(social realism)
-Absurd: almost no details. Answers to the who and why are not provided.
2: STRUCTURE: also problematic, convention: kind of development thought the plays (until
the 1950s) if not of situations of the characters themselves.
Absurd: everything stays the same. Structure not linear but a circle; repetitive and cyclical
3 LANGUAGE: Its itself different. Characters usually know how to use lg. to express
themselves, lg. is eloquent, is a useful tool to communicate.
Absurd: lg. has broken down or is on the point of doing so. As important as what they say, it is
what characters dont say (silences)
Strategies characters use to replace lg. with sth else.

SAMUELS BECKETT WAITING FOR GODOT

Difficult play, historical moments, sociopolitical circumstances not a particular period.
Not restricted to a particular moment or setting. From the particular everyday things to the
psychological implications even in the stage directions.
Text intended to be performed. Only by
Although we tend to associated Beckett with non-communication and pessimism types, there
are elements of three types of his work, and he certainly was politically involved commitment
(he fought in the war)
1: Structure/DESINGs
Intuition of knowing where it all comes from. Invocations of religions, nature of faith: proverbs:
hope: we hope to be sabes; but we are never certain of tis going to happen and that makes us
anxious for salvation. There is suffering but we have a motivation. Faith is desire, and that is
enough to make us want to life. Characters are waiting, their expecting godot to come is
enough: faith. Symbol: tree: 1st act: dead, 2nd act: some leaves. Kind of parabole of the Christian
idea of faith. Mathew XXII: Lucky carrying burdens. Idea of being crying these until we are
liberated. Evokes the moral dramas from the middle ages, whih were allegorical and presented
salvation at the end. Problems with this reading: main idea is challenged: Salvation never
comes: incomplete morality play
-not beg, middle and but circudor, characters and doing the same. No har Godot really
represents! They discuss the possibility of action but dont really do anything: action vs.
gestures
2: characterization
2:CHARACTERIZATIO:
-Background absent
Vladimir: Eastern?? Pozzo sounds Italian, Lucky American, Estronga; Spanish? From
everywhere: represents humans from every part of the world, humanity in its diff. forms,
possible division bt west-east.Relationship represent relationship betweenhuman beings.
Mutual deprendence: physical emotional
Informal, asocial: Didi and Gogo: like married couple s orthodoz sevant relationship Lucky and
Pozzo. Servant- master exploitation,
ACT II: Pozzo becomes blind and Lucky doesnt escapes.
How slavery domination-inevitable in human relationships but also some people accepting
slavery: ambiguous commentary on human reationships
1st thing we think: GODOT: GOD but DIDI + GOGO : GODOT
Why not call the play simply Waiting for God? French suffix -ot: ito, ico. Esperando a diosito:
familiar little God. Godot not someone external to come. May be what they are waiting for
doesnt exist, isnt to come.
3. Speech:
Tur translation sometimes sounds sold.
-Combination of registers: trivial vs. tremendous, momentous.
Luckys thinking as a kind of entertainment: resembles Poor Tom in Shakesperare King Lear
Clairrogant madness: doesnt have to mean anything but aims at light shedding
Music:hall patter/mime. The ionic duo in silent movies (early 20th C): revival of this tradition.
Echanges that replace ordinary conv, with a conv whose function is to pass the time: what you
do while waiting; a weit which could last forever. Few actors (a bit part by the boy. Absence of
descirptions:diesnt want the audience to make any judgement/preconceptions beforehand.
We guess Didi+Gogo:partners, homeless. Pozzo seems to be healthy, own some land, higher
social level.
Lucky: pozzos servant. Deduced by the dialogue and actions.

-Stage directions are qually spare, minimalistic (description of the setting)

We barely know anything: rural landscape, evening: we could be anywhere.
No indications of the historical background.
-Beginning very typical of Becket: simple insignificant, everyday action, gestures, exaggerated,
realist, not natural
Valdimistrs 1st intention: takes nnothing to be done as a reference to the struggle of life n
general; which he can no llonger stand: death I sinevitable so whats the point of existence. But
despite that, he resume the struggle: keep on fighting: existenvialist point.
The play had this habit of moving from the particular to more general statements of the human
condition. Becket is inviting his readers to infer meaning from everyday gestures. We are asked
to resist things we take for granted: setting: read it symbollicaly:
-country road: life
-Tree: biblical reference, tree of knowledge (Don Juan Byron)
-evening: old age, end of the day, end of life.
Mould: grave
Estagron sitting on the mould reinforced Vladimirs interpretations of his words. Prepare to die:
metaphysical level.
-Reencountrer of two friends who embreace each other: mutual independence friendship
Get up till I embreace you: usual in Irish E: deliberate decision to emphasize the Irish nature
of the V-E relationship.
Its worth comparing from a socio-linguistic PoV the lg. of V/E and the lg of Pozzo.
Typical dialogue q-a. (V doing most of the asking) To establish/ maintain contact with the other
communication.
Jacobsons phatic function of lg.
Much of the action is in the play impl: not what they sat, lg is being used.
Difficulties arise when lg isnt used phatically but referentially-
V. when I think of it: trying to invoke their past
important: represent unversainty, silence, doubts. Trying to recall a past he doesnt seem
ale to remember.
Lg. hets ery vagye and inrerrupted nby gaps, silences
Losing all referential value. How lomg do they know eacxh ther= Do they really knoe each
other that well= etc.
There are points in the play where you think youre got it. The husband context: a million years
opor, in the nineties (1953,1955 perform)
Eiffel Tower: commit suicide- she of 1st things people did, it was fashionable.
Its too late : the play reinforces thought that its too late to do anything.- why? Laeness the
characters + the world coming to an end.

LOOK BACK IN ANGER: difficult to adopt to modern situations.

W.f.G. not restricted to no particular set of socio-historical circumstances; musch more
transcendental and applicable
Stage directions: give an idea of the possible philosophical implications. Ehen performed- better
captured and perceived (intended to be performed). To the credit not only of the performance
but to S. Beckets writing.
-tied: are we tied to Godot? Or do we have freedom=
If we are free, what shall we do with out freedom=? No real solution.
Licky tied to Pozzo.chance to scape. Refuses to do it.
Performance:
-Setting: uniform colums: grey (sky, moud, etc) :1950s cold war.
Greyness:deadness of the environment. Peace that isnt peace.
Post nuclear holocaust: death (writer into the text, present in that gret ash like landscapes)
Actors: irish accent (the text points in this direction. Never stop talkin typical from the Irish.
Only exception: ozzo, bery English RP. Social class associations, describes himself as a lan
owner who owns a servant.
-relationship betwn V andE
Affection log term friendship,
Both very humans: tied to their limitations as human beings.
V. problem with his rostta: not in the text: more philosophical askin questions Gogo wouldnt
tends to make the decisions less depressive. The husband iniciative-
Strogan: ??? boots: Physical limitationals
Lucky and Pozzo: more complicated. Brutallyty, cruelty : + than in the text
Pozzo believes he wants to impress him, perhaps because he is not better possibility.
Hilds the whip?? Doesnt hlevae the bafs.
Physical appeareance: Luckys hair: Fro Pozzo sing of old age. Whole he is ovi???? Short dark
hair.
God????
Gender: effeminate? Like G+V.
Speeach abour? All of the appeareance of academic lethceS?????
Post truth: it doesnt matter but how it is resented.
Postthought: it has derteriorated:
Idea of Pass oft ime important!!
Doesnt mean anything as traditional??? Somesn of trhuth (Christianity) have also failed.
Think need to as form of entertainment But its just noise, turn him off imiatating?
Bible: numerb o????