European Literature from Romanticism to Postmodernism This page intentionally left blank European Literature from Romanticism to Postmodernism A Reader in Aesthetic Practice Edited by Martin Travers CONTINUUM London and New York Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503 First published 2001 This selection and introductory material © Martin Travers 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data European literature from romanticism to postmodernism: a reader in aesthetic practice/ edited by Martin Travers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8264-9098-0 ISBN 13: 978-0-8264-9098-8 1. Literature, Modern—History and criticism. I. Travers, Martin. PN710 E88 2000 809'.03— dc21 00-022684 CONTENTS Preface xi Acknowledgements xiv Part I: Romanticism Introduction 3 1. 'A new knowledge of my real self and my character': Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1782) 13 2. 'The vital root of genius': Edward Young, Conjectures on Original Composition (1759) 16 3. 'Touched by divinity': Johann Gottfried Herder, 'Shakespeare' (1773) 19 4. 'Irresistible simplicity and nature': James Macpherson, The Works of Ossian (1765) 21 5. 'The Nordic imagination': Madame de Staël, On Literature (1800) 24 6. 'Inwards lies the path of mystery': Novalis, Fragments (1798) 26 7. 'As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers': William Blake, Letter (1799) 29 8. Romantic longing: August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (1808) 31 9. 'The passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature': William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) 34 10. 'Awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom': Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817) 37 11. 'Sentiments which ought to inform every discourse': Alessandro Manzoni, 'On Romanticism' (1823) 40 12. 'The great instrument of moral good is the imagination': Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (1821) 43 13. 'The grotesque and the sublime': Victor Hugo, Preface to Cromwell (1827) 45 14. 'Liberty in literature as in Arts, industry, commerce and consciousness. This is the motto of our epoch': Mariano Jose de Larra, 'Literature' (1836) 48 15. 'For the spirit comes alive': Giovanni Berchet, 'The semi-serious Letter' (1816) 51 vi Contents 16. The poetry of the Volk: Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, The Boy's Magic Horn (1805-8) 54 17. 'The nations that act, who suffer for the truth': Adam Mickiewicz, The Slavs (1842-4) 57 18. Reflective and non-reflective modes of artistic creation: Friedrich von Schiller, On Naive and Sentimental Poetry (1795-6 59 19. Transcendent and universal poetry: Friedrich von Schlegel, Aphorisms and Fragments (1797-1800) 62 Part II: Realism Introduction 69 1. 'Of the pathetic fallacy': John Ruskin, Modern Painters (1856) 79 2. 'Moral emotion': George Eliot, 'Worldliness and other-worldliness: the poet Young' (1857) 81 3. 'The art of copying from nature': Walter Scott, Review of Jane Austen's Emma (1815) 84 4. 'French society is the real author': Honoré de Balzac, Foreword to The Human Comedy (1842) 86 5. 'The mission of art today': Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, 'The hopes and wishes of the literary and poetic movement after the Revolution of 1830' (1830) 89 6. 'The reflection of the entirety of real life': Theodor Fontane, 'Our lyric and epic poetry since 1848' (1853) 92 7. 'These melancholy shades of life': Charles Dickens, Preface to Oliver Twist (1841) 94 8. Broken in the 'bitter struggle with the realities of life': George Sand, Preface to Indiana (1832) 97 9. 'The individual is no more than foam on the wave': Georg Büchner, Letter to Minna Jaegle (1834) 100 10. 'Demanding from the artist useful truth': Louis-Edmond Duranty, Realist manifesto (1856) 101 11. The novel has become 'contemporary moral history': The Brothers Goncourt, Preface to Germinie Lacerteux (1864) 104 12. 'There is a complete absence of soul, I freely admit': Émile Zola, Preface to second edition of Thérèse Raquin (1868) 106 13. The fateful march through life': Giovanni Verga, Preface to The House by the Medlar Tree (1881) 108 14. 'The supreme of all natural laws': Conrad Alberti, 'The twelve articles of Realism' (1889) 111 15. 'There is no police which we can consider competent in literary matters': Anton Chekhov, Letter to M. V. Kiselev (1887) 113 Contents vii 16. 'With the breakdown of categories masks fall at one blow and faces appear in their true purity': Benito Pérez Galdós, 'Contemporary society as novelistic material' (1897) 116 17. 'The Naturalist has abolished guilt with God': August Strindberg, Foreword to Miss Julie (1888) 119 18. 'The truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances': Friedrich Engels, Letter to Margaret Harkness (1888) 122 Part III: Modernism Introduction 127 1. It 'liberated me from a literature that had no future': Joris-Karl Huysmans, Preface to second edition of Against Nature (1903) 137 2. The 'fatal idiom' of Decadence: Théophile Gautier, Preface to Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil (1868) 139 3. 'To arrive at the unknown through a derangement of all my senses: Arthur Rimbaud, Letter to Georges Izambard (1871) 142 4. 'A literature in which the visible world is no longer a reality, and the unseen world no longer a dream': Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) 144 5. 'The sumptuous robes of external analogies': Jean Moréas, 'Symbolist manifesto' (1886) 147 6. To extract the 'pure notion that lies within': Stéphane Mallarmé, 'The crisis of poetry' (1896) 149 7. Art invents nature: Oscar Wilde, The decay of lying' (1889) 152 8. 'An intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time': Ezra Pound, Imagism 'a retrospect' (1918) 154 9. 'Here, ethics becomes aesthetics, expanding into the latter's sphere': Nikolai Gumilev, 'Acmeism and the legacy of Symbolism' (1913) 157 10. 'We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness': Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 'The founding and manifesto of Futurism' (1909) 160 11. 'Belief in every god that is the immediate product of spontaneity': Tristan Tzara, 'Dada manifesto' (1918) 163 12. 'A really new transfiguration of the artistic world': Kasimir Edschmid, 'Expressionism in literature' (1917) 166 13. 'This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass': Andre Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism (1924) 169 14. 'My new spiritualist manner, pure disembodied emotion, detached from logical control': Federico Garcia Lorca, Letters (1927-28) 172 viii Contents 15. 'New myths are born beneath the feet of all of us': Louis Aragon, Preface to Paris Peasant (1926) 176 16. 'The theatre is as bloody and as inhuman as dreams': Antonin Artaud, 'The theatre of cruelty: first manifesto' (1933) 178 17. 'An escape from personality': T. S. Eliot, 'Tradition and the individual talent' (1919) 182 18. 'From the beginning of consciousness to the end': Virginia Woolf, 'Modern fiction' (1919) 184 19. 'The old stable ego' is no more: D. H. Lawrence, Letter to Edward Garnett (1914) 187 20. 'Beyond the void of language': Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 'Letter [from Lord Chandos]' (1902) 189 21. 'I did not want to say, but wanted to make': Paul Valéry, 'Concerning "Le Cimetiére marin" ' (1933) 192 Part IV: The Literature of Political Engagement Introduction 197 1. 'The moral scandals provoked by the Surrealists do not necessarily presuppose the overthrow of intellectual and social values': Pierre Naville, The Revolution and the Intellectuals (1926) 209 2. 'The productive neurotics will include the political reformers': Louis MacNeice, Modern Poetry (1938) 212 3. 'And so the political can be intellectual, and the intellect can act!': Heinrich Mann, 'Zola' (1917) 214 4. 'This new art is incompatible with pessimism, with skepticism, and with all other forms of spiritual collapse': Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924) 218 5. 'All ideological doubts are absolutely inadmissible': Manifesto of the 'On Guard' group (1923) 221 6. 'Comrade Stalin has called our writers engineers of human souls': Andrey Alexandrovich Zhdanov, 'On Socialist Realism' (1934) 224 7. 'The artistic dialectic of essence and appearance': Georg Lukács, 'It is a question of Realism' (1938) 227 8. 'To analyse the disjunctions within the surface structure of the world': Ernst Bloch, 'Discussing Expressionism' (1938) 230 9. 'Reality is social': Henri Barbusse, Zola (1932) 233 10. 'To break down the old division within bourgeois realism': Ralph Fox, The Novel and the People (1937) 236 11. 'Poetry is a manufacture': Vladimir Mayakovsky, How Are Verses Made? (1926) 239 Contents IX 12. 'The theatre must alienate everything that it depicts': Bertolt Brecht, A Short Organum for the Theatre (1949) 241 13. 'We live in an age of mistaken democracy': D. H. Lawrence, Foreword to Fantasia of the Unconscious (1923) 244 14. 'The idea of the fatherland is generous, heroic, dynamic, Futurist': Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 'Beyond Communism' (1920) 247 15. 'Reinstating in his spirit and in his body the values of force': Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, 'The renaissance of European man' (1941) 250 16. 'Where history speaks, individuals should fall silent': Gottfried Benn, 'The new state and the intellectuals' (1933) 254 17. 'A wave of anomalous barbarism': Thomas Mann, 'An appeal to reason' (1930) 257 18. 'Acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity': George Orwell, 'Why I write' (1946) 260 19. 'The intoxicating effect of a sudden liberation': Arthur Koestler, The initiates' (1949) 262 20. 'Beyond nihilism': Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951) 265 21. To 'transcend the antinomy between word and action': Jean-Paul Sartre, What Is Literature? (1946) 268 Part V: Postmodernism Introduction 273 1. 'A literature of war, of homecoming and of rubble': Heinrich Böll, 'In defense of rubble literature' (1952) 283 2. Making 'literature out of our condition of poverty': Italo Calvino, Preface to The Path to the Nest of Spiders (1964) 285 3. 'The feeling of absurdity': Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) 287 4. To be 'bludgeoned into detachment from our banal existences, from habit': Eugene Ionesco, Notes and Counter-Notes (1962) 290 5. 'The book itself is only a tissue of signs': Roland Barthes, The death of the Author' (1968) 292 6. This lost certainty, this absence of divine writing': Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (1967 295 7. 'Fiction is woven into all': John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) 298 8. Against 'the tyranny of signification': Alain Robbe-Grillet, Towards a New Novel (1963) 301