The Cradle of Modernism

1913 The Cradle of Modernism Jean-Michel Rabaté 1913 1913 The Cradle of Modernism Jean-Michel Rabaté © 2007 by Jean-Michel Rabaté BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Jean-Michel Rabaté to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1 2007 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rabaté, Jean-Michel, 1949– 1913 : the cradle of modernism / Jean-Michel Rabaté. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-5117-7 (alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-4051-6192-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Literature, Modern—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Modernism (Literature) I. Title. II. Title: Nineteen thirteen. PN771.R33 2007 809′.041—dc22 2006052663 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10.5/13pt Dante by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed and bound in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com Contents List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Modernism, Crisis, and Early Globalization 1 1 The New in the Arts 18 2 Collective Agencies 46 3 Everyday Life and the New Episteme 72 4 Learning to be Modern in 1913 96 5 Global Culture and the Invention of the Other 118 6 The Splintered Subject of Modernism 141 7 At War with Oneself: The Last Cosmopolitan Travels of German and Austrian Modernism 164 8 Modernism and the End of Nostalgia 185 Conclusion: Antagonisms 208 Notes 217 Index 235 v List of Illustrations 1 Armory Show poster, 1913 19 2 Bragaglia, cover of Fotodinamismo futurista 39 3 Kazimir Malevich, Elongation of the Suprematist Square 44 4 Italian policemen guarding the Mona Lisa in Florence 57 5 The New Freewoman, December 1, 1913 63 6 Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, 1913 80 7 Le Théâtre des Champs Elysées under construction 109 8 The Star of Ethiopia 129 vi Acknowledgments The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the following copyright material in this book: Illustrations Figure 1: Armory Show poster, 1913, Hirshborn Museum and Sculpture Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Figure 3: Kazimir Malevich, Elongation of the Suprematist Square, 1913, pencil on paper, Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel. Figure 4: Italian policemen guarding the Mona Lisa painting in Florence, Roger Viollet/Getty images. Figure 6: Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, 1913, Engadine, Switzerland. AIP Emilio Segre Archive. Figure 8: Photograph for The Star of Ethiopia, W. E. B. du Bois Library, University of Massachussetts. Quoted Texts “Hic Jacet” by William Carlos Williams, New Directions Publishing (US rights), and Carcanet Press for UK and rest of world rights. “In the Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound, New Directions (US rights), Faber & Faber for UK and rest of world rights. “Trumpets” translated by Robert Grenier, permission granted by Robert Grenier. “Petersburg Stanzas” and “1913” by Osip Mandelstam, from Stone, translated by Robert Tracy, Princeton University Press. vii acknowledgments “Pauis” translated by Darlene J. Sadlier, in An Introduction to Fernando Pessoa: Modernism and the Paradoxes of Authorship, University of Florida Press. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. Finally, I should like to thank Eric Bulson, who kindly read a draft of this book and made countless useful suggestions. viii modernism, crisis, and early globalization Introduction Modernism, Crisis, and Early Globalization Could the year 1913 have brought us bad luck? If I have chosen to focus on one single year, 1913, to explore the emergence of modernism, it is not because this single moment looks, from a distance, like the last haven of peace before the universal conflagration of World War I, or seems to enact the absolute termination of what the French used to call la belle époque and the Americans the gilded age. On that view, 1913 would hold all the last snapshots of an old world contented with itself, basking in the enjoyment of hard-earned privilege and a successful industrial revolution. Rather than seeing this year as a last moment of innocence (which may be what had attracted me to it in the first place), I have come to the realization that it can be described more accurately as the inception of our modern period of globalization: 1913 marks the time when the impetus that delivered the first world war to enthusiastically cheering crowds was already perceptible, and when the same élan created so many masterpieces in the arts and literature; in that sense, we can agree that it has brought bad luck to the world, but that it has changed our perception of the new and the old for ever. 1912 + 1 In fact, the most sensitive of witnesses, the sharper-sighted artists and intellectuals, sensed this quite well in 1913. This is why, in a prescient book published in 1913, Morton Fullerton evoked the prophecy made to William I, Crown Prince of Prussia, by a an old lady from the village of Fiensberg: the woman asserted that the German empire would be destroyed in 1913.1 The bad omen is also what led Leonardo Sciascia to devote a beautiful and sparse novel to this same year.2 Sciascia’s inspiration was triggered when he 1 modernism, crisis, and early globalization found that he owned a copy of d’Annunzio’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien which had been dedicated to a friend with a nice epigraph (“Every arrow is for salvation”), and was signed and dated: “Gabriele d’Annunzio. 7 juin 1912 + 1.” More than superstition working for the author or for his intended reader, this reveals a wish to let 1912 linger on in 1913. Indeed, Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien had been quite visible in 1911, after it had been adapted by Claude Debussy for a ballet danced in Paris by Ida Rubinstein. Alas, the audience agreed that it was a glorious flop, the grandiose and wordy libretto unredeemed by the innovative impressionistic score. This was to be Debussy’s first public failure; it announced mounting financial worries for the com- poser, whose first marriage was fast unraveling and who was already in failing health. By contrast with the care-free years of 1900–9, when cultural tourism reached a peak in Paris, a city that seemed to be intoxicated with its own festive spirit and endless revels as sung earlier by Offenbach in La Vie parisienne and La Belle Hélène, 1912 was marked by deepening shadows: warfare, rearmament, mobilization, and the Balkan wars were looming heavily on the central European front. Music, painting, and literature can be taken as indicators of subtle changes in the zeitgeist, much as Modris Eksteins did in his excellent Rites of Spring.3 For Eksteins, the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring unleashed a torrent of modernist primitivism in which one can understand that the Great War was inevitable. Stravinsky had intended to call his ballet “The Victim,” and shocked people most by having the young maiden destined to be sacrificed agree to her own demise. Here, in a meditation on “primitive” rituals, we find the notion that creation and destruction have become inseparable, which was true not only of the artistic movement that aimed at a general revolution in the arts but also in everyday life. I will return to Stravinsky’s famous ballet in the next chapter, and will limit myself here to an evocation of another revolutionary musician, who was to change music more durably than his Russian counterpart and one-time friend. When Arnold Schoenberg started experimenting with free atonality in the years 1908–11, he was impelled as much by an inner necessity as by his links with the German expressionists. The 1909 monodrama Erwartung is typical of a new atmosphere. The libretto had been written by Marie Pappenheim, a relative of the Bertha Pappenheim, who had been Freud’s and Breuer’s “Anna O.” in the Studies on Hysteria. It is the monologue of a distraught woman who discovers at the end that she has murdered her lover out of jealousy. First, she does not recognize the woods and the corpse, and the music follows her hallucinations and anguished questioning in a series of fresh departures – each section last a few seconds and then stops on a climax; 2 modernism, crisis, and early globalization there is no discernible thematic development; the rhythmic texture changes continually; the enormous speed corresponds to the impression that a whole life unfolds in a few seconds.4 What should interest us in this context is Schoenberg’s superstitious character.

Load more