Abstract
“What was Modernism?” That is the title of an address delivered in June of 1960 by the eminent comparatist Harry Levin at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.1 Apparently, more than a decade ago, in the eyes of this perceptive analyst of literature and the arts, the modernist movement had become a thing of the past. Having acquired full citizenship in the republic of letters, modernism had outlived itself.
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Notes
“What was Modernism?” in Harry Levin, Refractions, pp. 271–295.
Fritz Martini, Was war Expressionismus?, Urach, Port Verlag, 1948.
Hugo Friedrich, Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik.
Walter Sokel, The Writer in Extremis.
Baudelaire, Œuvres, p. 1197: “deux qualités littéraires fondamentales: surnaturalisme et ironie.”
Anna Balakian, Literary Origins of Surrealism. Renato Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-garde.
Lionel Trilling, “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature,” p. 408.
Friedrich Schiller, “Ueber die Aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen,” 22nd Letter: “In einem wahrhaft schönen Kunstwerk soll der Inhalt nichts, die Form aber alles tun; denn durch die Form allein wird auf das Ganze des Menschen, durch den Inhalt hingegen nur auf einzelne Kräfte gewirkt […]. Darin also besteht das eigentliche Kunstgeheimnis des Meisters, dass er den Stoff durch die Form vertilgt.”
Nietzsche, Werke, III, p. 691: “Man ist um den Preis Künstler, dass man das, was alle Nicht-Künstler ‘Form’ nennen, als Inhalt, als ‘die Sache selbst’ empfindet.”
Gerard Knuvelder, Handboek tot de moderne Nederlandse letterkunde, 1953.
J.J. Oversteegen, Vorm of vent, 1969.
R.P. Meijer, Literature of the Low Countries, 1971.
Poggioli, Theory of the Avant-garde, p. 218.
Poggioli, Theory of the Avant-garde, p. 219, 220.
Jean Weisgerber, Hugo Claus, experiment en traditie, p. 10: “modernisme is synoniem met ‘avant-garde’.”
Refractions, p. xi.
Ihab Hassan, “Postmodernism,” New Literary History, III, Autumn 1971, p. 12.
See also Matei Calinescu, “Avant-garde, Neo-avant-garde, Post-modernism: the Culture of Crisis,” Clio, An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History, IV, 1975, 3, 317–340.
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© 1976 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Bulhof, F. (1976). Introduction. In: Bulhof, F. (eds) Nijhoff, Van Ostaijen, “De Stijl”. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1397-0_1
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