The Problem of Modernism in Writing
Modernism has been presented in all forms of art in (don't be shocked!) the modern world. When it was fashionable it made writing boring dull and un-lyrical. There are some exceptions and there are modernists I enjoy, most notably TS Eliot. My main quarrel with most Modernism in writing and art in general, is that it has no ascetical beauty to it.
Take a writer like Virginia Woolf, in contrast to my favorite poet other than, Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose prose was all about his own self expression of the beauty of the presence of God, Virginia Woolf was iconoclastic against lyrical beauty, from the stories I have read from her. She's been called a "stream of consciousness writer" and to be fair she does a pretty good job at details, but as I said the ascetic beauty is rather lacking.
In her "A Haunted House." she seems to be suggesting the most utterly absurd idea that ghost stories should prohibit a real belief in the supernatural in contrast to someone like MR James, who clearly knew of the reality of spirits returning from the dead, she seems to say that ghost stories should be more about memories and simply vague concepts about ghosts. if I were to quote that story I wouldn't know where to start, her ideas are everywhere, and incoherent in my mind.
The modernist saw his literary forebears as old stuffy storytellers that "were not relevant" to there situation before after and during World War 1. Despite the contribution to culture, that say a Dickens gave to our culture. The real problem with modernism is we know in hindsight they were wrong to reject the beauty of their fathers in writing. They thought that the two world wars proved that Western civilization had failed utterly, which most modernists (save TS Eliot.) failed to realize. What Eliot could see is that real European Civilization was Royal and Christian, not Aryan or progressive or modernism, so maybe the real problem with modernism in art is certain modernist's views of modernity not modernism itself.
Take a writer like Virginia Woolf, in contrast to my favorite poet other than, Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose prose was all about his own self expression of the beauty of the presence of God, Virginia Woolf was iconoclastic against lyrical beauty, from the stories I have read from her. She's been called a "stream of consciousness writer" and to be fair she does a pretty good job at details, but as I said the ascetic beauty is rather lacking.
In her "A Haunted House." she seems to be suggesting the most utterly absurd idea that ghost stories should prohibit a real belief in the supernatural in contrast to someone like MR James, who clearly knew of the reality of spirits returning from the dead, she seems to say that ghost stories should be more about memories and simply vague concepts about ghosts. if I were to quote that story I wouldn't know where to start, her ideas are everywhere, and incoherent in my mind.
The modernist saw his literary forebears as old stuffy storytellers that "were not relevant" to there situation before after and during World War 1. Despite the contribution to culture, that say a Dickens gave to our culture. The real problem with modernism is we know in hindsight they were wrong to reject the beauty of their fathers in writing. They thought that the two world wars proved that Western civilization had failed utterly, which most modernists (save TS Eliot.) failed to realize. What Eliot could see is that real European Civilization was Royal and Christian, not Aryan or progressive or modernism, so maybe the real problem with modernism in art is certain modernist's views of modernity not modernism itself.
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