The Literary Reception of Nietzschean Ideas in Relation to Selected
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The Literary Reception of Nietzschean Ideas in Relation to Selected Works of Modernist Literature Alexandra Emmanuel University of Leeds School of English December 2010 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgment. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Richard Brown, for introducing me to the intriguing field of 'little magazines' and for helping me find my own direction in my interest in Nietzsche and Modernism. My parents and my brother Philip for their understanding and patience all these years I have been away. Michael Papadopoulos, Pavel Goudochnikov, Chris Bartle, James Hudson, Alan Ramon Ward, Sam Francis, Reshma Jagernath, Dominic Williams, Milena Marinkova for helping out and offering advice in the early as well as the final stages of the PhD. Chezi for making these last months 'homely', and Konstantinos for his unfailing love and support through this experience. 11 Abstract The purpose of this study is to provide the beginnings of a' clear account of the correspondences between the initial reception of Nietzschean ideas and selected works of modernist writing by the Anglophone intelligentsia. In particular, the aim of this study is to provide a framework for exploring the Nietzschean undercurrents in the work of such figures as George Bernard Shaw, Dora Marsden, Wyndham Lewis, and James Joyce. Departing from traditional studies of influence and their method, the present account will examine the correspondences between the original reception of Nietzsche's ideas and their later absorption and development in the work of these writers and intellectuals with a special emphasis on the little-magazine culture of the period. As will be shown, in such avant-garde forums as The Eagle and the Serpent, The New Age (and its predecessor the Leeds Arts Club), The Freewoman/The New Freewoman/The Egoist, one sees the cross-fertilization of Nietzschean discourses with the then-contemporary theories of social, cultural and aesthetic egoism/individualism. These periodical and artistic coteries illustrate the close relationship between the reception of Nietzschean ideas and the tradition of radical literary modernism, an intellectual and artistic milieu that was progressive, experimental, and avant-garde in nature. The aim of this thesis is to consider and examine possible ways in which the contemporary discourses of 'radical Nietzscheanism' interact with the aesthetic agendas of these periodicals in general- and the individual agendas of Shaw, Marsden, Lewis, and Joyce in particular. I attempt to contextualize the work and thought of these individuals, to situate their texts within a larger avant-garde milieu receptive to Nietzsche, and to consider the ways in which they affect and are affected by it. III Table of Contents Acknowledgments ~ i Abstract ii Table of contents iii Introduction 1 Chapter One - Nietzsche's Reception in England (especially in periodicals) ..........14 1.1 The Early Century Nietzschean Context: The Eagle and the Serpent (1898- 1903): Nietzsche, Radical Egoism and the Avant-Garde 14 1.2 Holbrook Jackson and the Leeds Arts Club as an Early Platform of G. B. Shaw's and Nietzsche's Philosophic Outlook 38 1.3 From Ego-Mania to Ego-Latria: Selected New Age Aesthetic and Cultural Responses to Nietzschean Egoism (1907-1921 ) 56 Chapter Two - G. B. Shaw's Social Drama and Nietzschean Aesthetics: Portraits of Nietzschean Socialist 'Radicals' in The Philanderer, The Devil's Disciple, and Man and Superman 73 2.1 Introduction 73 2.2 The Philanderer (written 1893; published 1898) 75 2.3 The Devil's Disciple (1897) 91 2.4 Man and Superman (1903) : 99 Chapter Three - Nietzschean Individualism and the Ethic of Self-creation in The Freewoman 112 IV 3.1 Introduction: Dora Marsden and Radical Egoism 112 3.2 Edwardian Conceptions of Super-womanhood and Sex-dualism: G. L. Harding 'Spinsters in the Making', Samuel George's Is Woman Super- man? 116 3.3 Dora Marsden's 'Master Morality' and Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals 123 3.4 New Discourses of Radical Nietzscheanism: John M. Kennedy, 'The Psychology of Sex'; Henri Lichtenberger, The Gospel of the Superman; Charles W. Whitby, 'Tragedy of the Happy Marriage'; Edmund. B. Auvergne, 'The Case of Penelope' 148 Chapter Four - Egoistic Chimpanzees and Murderous Nihilists: Types of Artists and Lovers in Wyndham Lewis's Tarr 162 4.1 Introduction 162 4.2 Lewis in Paris: Turn-of-the-century Aesthetic Individualism. Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche 168 4.3 Tarr and Anastasya: A Joyful Union 181 4.4 The Case Against Kreisler: Lewis's Critique of Decadence 202 Chapter Five - James Joyce and Nietzschean individualism: 'The Death of God' in Stephen Hero and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 214 5.1 Introduction 214 5.2 The Eagle and the Serpent: Wit, Wisdom, and Nietzschean Egoism in James Joyce's Stephen Hero 217 5.3 Stephen's Portrait as an Ascetic Priest: Guilt, 'Bad Conscience' and the Solution of Art in A Portrait 238 v 5.3.1 Nietzsche and Aesthetic Idealism: The 'Death of God' and the Problem of Art 241 5.3.2 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ascetic 245 Conclusion 273 Bibliography 281 1 Introduction This study examines the literary reception of Nietzschean ideas in relation to selected works of modernist literature. By considering the ways in which Nietzsche's thought came to be associated with certain aspects of radical modernism and the literary avant-garde, my thesis attempts to consider how writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Wyndham Lewis, and James Joyce individually respond to this confluence. The thesis has two primary aims. Firstly, I attempt to paint a picture of what I term 'radical Nietzscheanism' by casting light onto the intellectual currents within which Nietzsche's thought was first accommodated. Secondly, I examine how these individual authors respond to Nietzschean discourses of the day - how, that is, some aspects of Nietzsche's radical literary legacy find particular expression in their texts. Michael Bell's recent article 'Nietzscheanism: The Superman and the all-too- human' I points to the importance of reassessing literary modernism's engagement with Nietzsche and the impact his work had on several modernist writers. For Bell, Nietzsche should be valued not merely as a source of influence upon individual modernist writers but rather for 'having articulated discursively and in advance the complex of themes and the composite worldview that can be' deduced from a large part of modernist writing' _2 Bell rightly identifies two phases of what has come to be called Anglophone Nietzscheanism. The first one may be said to begin at the turn of the nineteenth century and continues through to the modernist period (although not without quite a few I Michael Bell, 'The Superman and the all-too-human', in A Concise Companion to Modernism, ed. by David Bradshaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 56-74. 2 Ibid., p. 57. 2 disruptions, variations, and shifts). The next one started in the 1950's, with the attempts of scholars, such as Walter Kaufmann, to free Nietzsche's work from its fascist appropriations, generating a renewed interest in the scholarly community which continues uninterrupted until this day. Although as Bell points out, the two phases are quite distinct and should be studied in their own right, and within the context of their respective periods, he also notes that the recent phase throws new and interesting light on the earlier one, and more specifically on the literary developments generally grouped under the term 'modernism'r' A sense of the relationship between Nietzsche and the literary tradition of modernism can be sought in early accounts of this intellectual phenomenon. For instance, in 'Nietzsche Revisited', a series of articles published in The New Age in 1921,4 Professor Janko Lavrin, referring to Nietzsche's 'radical' literary legacy, notes: It would be difficult to point out another philosopher or thinker of the nineteenth century whose vogue and fate can be compared with that of Nietzsche. Entirely ignored until the end of his literary activities, he suddenly became the slogan and standard of radical 'modernism'; he was proclaimed - almost in a night - the apostle of a new culture and soon after the gospel of his Zarathustra degenerated into fashion, breeding adepts and interpreters all over the world.' Lavrin's account of the phenomenon is particularly interesting for the light it throws not only on the Nietzsche's pre-war legacy (from the early 1900s until the outbreak of the First World War), but, most importantly for my purpose here, on the particular ways writers and intellectuals related to his philosophy. Carefully separating the positive and negative forms of reception, namely' the literary reception and more propagandistic 3 Ibid., p. 56. 4 Janko Lavrin, 'Nietzsche Revisited. I-Nietzsche and Nietzscheans', The New Age, 10 November 1921, pp. 21-22; 'II-Pathology and Art', The New Age, 24 November 1921, pp. 42-43; 'III-Nietzsche's Dilemma', The New Age, 8 December 1921, pp. 65-66; 'IV-Nietzsche and Religion', The New Age, 22 December 1921, pp. 88-89; 'V-The Twilight of God', The New Age, January 5 1922, pp. 114-115; 'VI-We Immoralists', The New Age, 9 February 1922, pp. 190-191; 'VII-The Machiavellism of Strength', The New Age, 9 March 1922, pp. 241-242; 'VIII-II Santo', 20 April 1922, The New Age, pp. 322-323. 5 Lavrin, 'Nietzsche Revisited. I-Nietzsche and Nietzscheans', The New Age, 10 November 1921, p. 21. 3 avenues of appropriation, Lavrin discusses the cultural and perceived philosophical, psychological, and aesthetic value of his work for modem art and literature: To many, Nietzsche was a surprising discovery because his philosophy was not a dry logical 'system' but something more alive: an intimate psychological document [..