What is postmodern in poetry? With the early XX'avant-gardes all is achieved. After that, it only remains the difficult thing called expression.
@ jorge: fail. To say "everything is achieved in avantgarde poetry" is like saying "everything is achieved with Cervantes/Flaubert/Shakespeare". Literature rarely deals in absolutes, unlike the Sith. Besides, avantgarde is a lonely island, poetry that severed its connections with the tradition, so you can't really count avantgarde as the end of a "poetic" progression. Sure, postmodernism is primarily a prose thing (novels, short stories), but there are quite a few postmodern poems and poets out there. Borges alone has a few dozen postmodernistic poems.
Anyway, I don't see why not. Firstly, you can fing postmodern elements in virtually anything, but that's just the fun fact. IMHO "The Wasteland" have some very strong postmodern motives and elements: City, Symbol and Semiotic, Floating Subject, Urban (sub)culture, History, Entropy, etc.
If memory serves me right, Richard Lehan even compared "The Wasteland" to some of the Pynchon's works ("V" and "Crying of a lot 49", I think) in his book "The City in Literature", based on similarities in dealings with the motives of City and Entropy.
I agree with Milos, you can find postmodern elements in virtually anything. But to go back to the question "Can we find postmodern elements in T.S. Eliot's poetry?" Why would we want to?
It is very much postmodern in tinge and taste. If W.B.Yeats started the era of postmodernism in his widening gyre in the 'Second Coming', it is T.S.Eliot who gives a shape and tempo in "The Wasteland" with the postmodern symbols and images juxtaposed with the vedas, epics and legends. The postmodern psyche, thinking and expression get completed in T.S. Eliot's symbols: the hands casting dice & other images in'The Journey of the Magi', 'The Hollomen' having the headpiece filled with straw, the patient etherized upon the table in "The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock". The list goes on.
If poetry is indeed universal, it spans the ages. Prufrock is widely viewed as the modern Hamlet. Yeats wrote "Second Coming" as a response/view to WWI, only to have its greater resonance with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Arputhara has pretty much answered, save to note that poets like Berryman, who wished to be buried in hallowed ground, and Anne Porter, who asked in "A Short Testatment" that all those human beings she "roughly dismissed" be "comforted to overflowing" - showing that a measure of spirituality infuses all poetry. Indeed, some say that to write a poem is to pray - to Gods real or imagined.
To the extent that one can find elements of Victorian poetry in the eighteenth century, or of Modernism in the Romantic poets, I suppose one can always find elements of post-modernism in a major Modernist poet. As the Marxists used to say, in any cultural phenomenon there is a residual dimension, a dominant or hegemonic one, and emergent elements. Of course if T.S. Eliot were "hegemonically" post-Modern, we wouln't be calling him a Modernist, but a post-Modernist, but it's only natural that elements of contemporary poetry, if that's what postmodernism means here, are to be found in a major forerunner—above all with the benefit of hindsight, you know, the "T.S. Eliot's-influence-on-Shakespeare" kind of thing that David Lodge wrote about.
Milos , can u please explain how city symbol can be used as a postmodern element?
juxtaposition and creating a sharp contrast between certain images are considered as one of the major characteristics of postmodernism. I agree with Arputharaj Devaraj but I want some other examples of postmodern symbols of Eliot's other poetries?
There are least to approaches to the notion of postmodernism. One is social-historical--such an approach can be found in Lyotard. The other is aesthetical, and can be found in the works of Jameson and Hutcheon. What Lyotard says is that the contemporary approach to knowledge tends to be specialized: you cannot claim to manage a wide knowledge such as it is an encyclopedia; information has a preminent role, and, as such, it tends to avoid any unity of knowledge. In Jameson and Hutcheon pastiche and irony and other elements are typical of postmodernism. Lyotard's approach is more interesting to me, since he offers a plain interpretation of what historically happened in institutions, schools, sciatific research etc. What Lyotard talks about was already expressed by High Modernist writers, along with philosophers, so I don't find much advantage in a distiction between Modernism and Postmodernism, except when I want to stress certain elements typical of Modernism, yet expressed with a greater intensity.
Postmodernism, in Lyotard, is a social-historical cultural context, and does not have to deal with specific poetics. One can find elements that can express man's view on his time, but that's another matter. Baudrillard also explained certain features of our time, not as something static, but as something changing from decade to decade, from place to place in a globalized world.
When one wishes to apply a word like postmodernism must at least decide what its meaning is, since there are different uses of that word. In Eliot's case, the different voices through which Eliot expresses himself in 'The Waste Land' are a postmodernist device in Lyotard's sense. What Eliot offers us is a fragmented encyclopedia, a world in which the subject does not possess a hierarchy of values, and is forced in his infinite quest. There are many elements of this kind in 'The Waste Land'. You have to consider that his poetical approach was not so original as is commonly believed. Eliot knew James Joyce's 'Ulysses' very well, and Joyce expressed all this before and better than Eliot. Joyce's satiric approach to tradition has more to deal with Heidegger's quest to the origin by destroying layer after layer what tradition brought to us.
It is not a case that Jameson considers the great Modernist writers and artists as the greatest postmodernist examples, i.e. James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp. The point is that he didn't find a 'new' notion for a 'new' age, and had to go back to the modernist authors in order to make his definition work.
Yet, Modernist authors, such as Joyce and Eliot, grabbed as much as they could from the past. They needed an encyclopedia (their love for the Middle Ages is remarkable), not to build new Babylons, but to destroy them in their writings (Eliot's "falling towers"). The sentiments and emotions expressed by Joyce and Eliot in 'Ulysses' and 'The Waste Land' are different though: Joyce is comical, funny, witty, whereas Eliot is deluded and desperate.
Most of their novelty is not new at all. They used a lot of preexisting styles and poetics. If you read Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' you can see by yourself how futile can be the notion of postmodernism when it is not offered in a specific, limited context. Globalization was already present in the last two centuries of Russian literature. The list of authors from the past is long, and it can be partly found in Eliot's notes, in Joyce's notesheets, and in their greatest works (Rabelais is one, Dante another, and so on).
In other words, 'postmodernism' is a useful word like 'beautiful' in "what a beautiful day!", "what a beautiful woman!", "you have a beautiful garden!"--with no theoretical intent. Unless there is a theoretical context in which the word is used.
@Milos: No, the earliest XX's avant-gardes are not the end of the progression in poetry, of course. (Personally, from the point of view of the poiesis, I find that their inventory is poor). However, they are the end of formal possibilities search in poetry. The list a) is very long: palimpsests, caligrammes, automatisms, readymade, enchainment intertextuals, juxtapositions and dialogs between icons references and voices coming from whenever (heritage from symbolists), the silence as word, the collective random work etc,etc. The list b) is long too : they blow up, into pieces, not only the "relates", the lyrics, the metrics, but also the syntax, the words and, same, the differences between language articulated and guttural’s sounds ,etc, etc. So, if Borges can write palimpsests in perfects hendecasyllables is because all the possibilities of the instrument are there, on the table.....After that, it only remains the difficult thing called expression, as finally was realized by Rene Char, Cesar Vallejo.
But I apologize. I did like a sniper shooting from the outside (I could not resist the temptation), because I don’t share the theoretical framework. Moreover, I am not sure that the term postmodern was more that one extension of a battle for the market in plastic's arts and a path of escape in the political issues: modernity is death. Yes, specially now where it seems like all, or almost all of us, we are going in a boat, non stop, returning to the middle ages.
postmodernism? a, theoretical fashion 90. The polysemy of language allows us to find anything anywhere
@Annesha For starters (skip to the past paragraph if you don't want the long intro), postmodernism loves to play with symbols and meaning - with Semiotics, to be precise. Did you read "The New York trilogy" by Auster, or "City of Glass" to be precise? I like that novel/novella because it beautifully showcases postmodern approach to Language, Symbols, Semiotics, and CITY, ofcourse. Further more, Umberto Eco, one of the most prominent PM writers, sometimes practiacally bases entire idea of his work on the problematic of Symbols, Meaning, Semiotics, etc.
Why is PM so keen on Symbols? To simplify it: PM "fights" againsts ideas and postulates of 18-19th century Enlightment, Age of reason. Enlightment says: everything can be made known by a human mind and spirit, everything has a meaning, the world is a Man's intellectual and civilizational playground. Postmodernism begs to differ: NOT everything can be known; even if you know something, it's probably wrong and temporary; no meaning is an absolute - symbols change meaning all the time; world is a strange place and civilisation is as we know it is pretty much a failed project.
To elaborate further: Charles Pierce said there's three types of signs: Index, Icon, and Symbol. According to him, Symbols have, unlike the other two, ultimate and neverchanging (or rarely-shanging) meanings: when you see a cross, you are always reminded of a (christian) religion, when you see recycling logo, you always think of recycling, etc. Well, then comes PM and says: "What? You have ultimate and neverchanging meaning? Not in my shift, pal. Nothing has the ultimate meaning, and that includes you. Imma gonna mess you up good!".
Concerning the City, well that's a pretty big thing in PM, too. Important thing is: PM is a fluid phenomenon. Sure it fights agains Enlightment, but sometimes it loves Enlightment. Sometimes PM hates symbols, sometimes it loves them! City is the ultimate culturological/historical product of our civilisation, pretty much the essence of our socio-cultural life, and that's why PM loves it and hates it at the same time. The point is something like this: is the City the ultimate triumph of human society, or is it just a incoherrent mess of minds, symbols and meanings? Does city brings people togehter, or alienates them drastically? Plus, one of the biggest oppositions in PM is "local-global", so you have yet another dilemma: is New York american, or global city? Is London english, or global? Have you been in England if you seen only London? So, some cities have indentities and "meanings" beyond their "nationality". That's way PM writers love metropolises so much, most notably New York: NY is the apoteosis of the entire world, urban, fast paced, values money over... well, anything, alienating, heterogenic, dark, chaotic, entropic, etc. In short, City is a pretty strong PM ellement - many researchers, for example, find PM elements and motives in Balzac's or Flaubert's work just because of their treatment of the City.
I recommend Lehan's "City in Literature" and Spangler's "Decline of the West" for further reading.
What Postmodernist features one can find in T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land?
¿Postmodernist features in "The Waste Land"? E.g. T. S. Eliot's use of footnotes to comment or explain his own poem in a language which hovers between the cryptic and the academic tone. This didn't sound like experimental writing in the 1920s - more like pedantry I guess - but now it can be seen as a pre-postmodernist strategy, and an ironic return to some 17th-century metaphysical attitudes, or an influx of early modern Menippean satire. Although you might well argue that this only amounts to a rereading and revaluing of what is it that Modernism was really about.
I think Eliot's poetry has more resemblance wd late victorians like Arnold den post modernism..except ofcourse he is far better poet den any other n late victorian or modernist. he is a good old poet n modern time
Sure! there are post-modern elements in T.S Eliot´s poetry. But the problem with post-modernist theory is that there are no clear cut differences between it and modernist theory. One could liken both as river and stream, with the river overflowing it´s boundaries and forming a merger with the stream, so these theories overlap. Post-modernism as a literary theory questions order, breaks boundaries, relies on fragmentation, stream of consciousness, parodies life, employs meta-fiction, use pastiche- multiple genre/mixture of genre exploration. Post-modernism attacks the idea of social structures and the concepts of enlightenment. These elements could be traced in the works of poets like Lord Byron`Don Juan´ which is a satire, Thomas Carlyle´s `Sartor Resartus´ that parodies Hegel´s Idealistic theory, Arthur Rimbaud´s `The Drunken Boat´, which explores freedom from societal inhibitions. Rimbaud´s works influenced the post-modernist symbolist, Dadaists and Surrealists. Oscar Wilde also, juxtaposes beauty in poetry by exploring devotion to beauty and aestheticism, see `Ballad of Reading Goal. More over, Picasso, Ezra Pound and W.B Yeats are not left out as post-modernist poets.
T.S Eliot in the poems: Love Song of Alfred Prufrock, Rhapsody on a Windy Night, and The Waste Land, have elements of post-modernism. Rhapsody and Prufrock have what Eliot calls objective correlative, see(Kermode, 1975:48), In Prufrock you find stream of consciousness and the fragmented thoughts of the persona which gives the reader entrance into the persona´s mind. In these poems you find the use of figures of speech such as metaphor, personification, simile and elements of self rhetorical questioning without arriving at an answer. Eliot in these poems use images of urban life. He `de-reflects´traditional life and mores and assumes a duty of reconstructing his idea of order in an `non-orderly´ world, for him this seem to be "a way controlling, ordering, giving shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility...",(Eliot, Ulysses, Order and Myth) .
Therefore, the literary techniques that reflect post-modernism in these poems include objective correlative, melancholy, sense of loss, alienation fatalistic tendencies, existentialist characteristics of meaninglessness of life, despair, thought fragmentation, death, break with traditional romantic realism, and experimental forms of expressions. All these literary techniques reflects post-modernism. This is why T.S Eliot is among the fathers of post-modernism.
I believe we need to be more precise in the definition of these borders, to borrow Derrida's terminology. Despite the pre-definition of post-modern given by Anthony Guidens in 1935, the significant impact of a post-modern atmosphere started out with Jean François Lyotart and the 1987 exhibition at the Pompidou Center entitled Les Immateriaux, and his manifesto of post-modern reality.
To try to apply post-modern concept to Eliot, ee Cummings and other is similar to the attempt of trying to apply concepts of illuminism to Virgil or Homer. One could certainly says that there were features of post-modern sentiment in previous decades, such as in Eliot, Kafka, Proust and Faulkner, Sarraute and others, without risking to label them as "post-modern"!
Post and modern are complex ideologies when combined in evaluation of works of art. An interesting angle to the post-modern ideology is that it questions all absolutes, breaks all boundaries to make room for open-ended multi-perspectives and interpretations of artistic works.
Thanks
I too agree with you. It is a Janus faced ideology--partly a continuation and partly a repudiation from Modernism. It is almost an overlapping theories with few differences.
There is no fixity of meaning of a text. Every work can be interpreted according to the reader's point of view.
I would argue that Eliot was self-consciously not post-modern especially when reading his essays on religion and culture and even poetry. One of the aspects of postmodernism is the notion that language creates reality. I don't think you find that in Eliot. He tried to make sense of reality that was broken but he valued what we use to make sense of it - tradition, religion and even language. As a foil to Eliot, I would say Wallace Stevens was postmodern with his ideas "description without place" and poetry being the "supreme fiction."
Post-modernism, ultra-modernism, fluid modernism, hiper-modernism, trans-modernism, xyx-modernism, they are all expressions of the same, or similar, or comparable phenomenon. Concrete music, concrete poetry, arena theater are all associated to this century old feeling when Eric Satie decided to collect noise in the Champs Elisées, Cage composed 3'33'' and Decio Pignatari composed/wrote his poem on Coca-Cola. Not to mention Dadaism, Futurism, Cconcretivism, and xyx isms. Fenelosa, TSEliot, Concrete Poetry, Absurd/Cruelty Theater, and xy, they all antecipated Jean François Lyotard and Levinas, but they are not exactly the same. I like Matei Calinescu's idea of faces of modernity, starting out in 1290 with the modernus, moderni hippies of the time insurging against established theological standards.
One of the postmodern characteristics in the literary works is the fact that in which there is no a base to evaluate the text in its principles, there is nothing to give meaning to the objects of life. The same thing can be found in "The Wasteland". For example religion is not a sacred object in the poem and even the poet suffers from spiritual dryness. Also the poem is open to interpretations because of its being fragmentary in context.
And what about: “Eliot argues that there is a verbal formula for any given state of emotion which, when found and used, will evoke that state and no other.” (David A. Goldfarb’s “New Reference Works in Literary Theory”, 2004). Objective Correlative. Is this still alive?
Especially wrt Waste Land's ending there is a closure at some level...even if there is some underlying hopelessness,so if you consider this aspect..then its not post modern,but at the level of technicality it does qualify as a postmodernist text. So all his works can be classified as modern or post modern depending on the aspects which are most pertinent for you.
As with most literary labels ('Metaphysical', 'Movement' 'L-A-N-G-A-U-A-G-E' etc.) 'Postmodern' only serves as a pointer rather than as a definition, but that said there are clear indications of postmodern elements in Eliot's poetry (although the distinction between postmodern and modernist is far from clear to me.)
Nevertheless, if postmodern literature is 'characterized by heavy reliance on techniques like fragmentation, paradox ... questionable narrators ... and the questioning of distinctions between high and low culture through the use of pastiche [and] the combination of subjects and genres not previously deemed fit for literature' then:
These fragments I have shored against my ruins 430
seems to tick some of the right boxes (referring as it does to Eliot's perceived disintegration of Western civilisation as well as the form of The Waste Land), not to mention,
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter 200
They wash their feet in soda water
and
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME 165
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. 170
You may wish to look at the poetry of JH Prynne, whose work it is variously suggested is 'late-modernist', 'post-modernist' and 'garbage' (the latter epithet suggesting more than you might think).
Depending on how you define post-modern, post-modern elements can be found in any work. I once heard David Lodge given a lecture on the "post-modern novel," and realized that every one of the elements he listed could be found in Anthony Trollope.
So the question is, what elements are you looking for? I would say that the main difference between Modernists, such as Eliot is one of attitude. Eliot and other Modernists say, "The world has shattered. Let us do what we can to make people see that and then work to put the broken pieces back together." Post-Modernists say, "The world has shattered. Kinda neat. Let's play with the broken pieces and have a little fun."
I agree with Brian Ragen. Postmodern elements can be traced in works never before considered as postmodern. Tristram Shandy, Arabian Nights and Don Quixote, to name a few, all have already been discussed as containing postmodern elements. And it goes on with almost anything, whether classic or modern.
There must be a difference between post-modernist elements found in previous 1987 literature and the arts, and Lyotard's manifesto of post-modernist definir das "la condition post-moderne" established for the occasion of Pompidou Center of April 1987when they put together a comprehensive understanding of post-modernism and immateriality as the founding element of the movement. Lyotard's philosophical text was rolling constantly for the 27 day exhibition, and to apprehend the text one should keep the eyes open for the entire 27 days. This impossibility, if true, would be the real meaning of post-modernism, where nothing can be granted as solid, where immateriality assumes commands and understanding is more than fragmented:i.e. It is immaterial. Good luck, funding everyrhing, everywhere: it is "immaterial". Ah!, don't forget to read Lá condition post-moderne, in French, because as known: traduttore, tradittore! Merry Christmas!
Poets are like seers but better than other people. This faculty makes them transcend above and they are ahead all. They are usually said that they come before time. They don't come before time but their critical observation and futurism makes them lead ahead. No doubt he was modern. He was universal in letter and spirit. But we cannot say him post-modern. Work of post-modern poets will determine whether he is post modern or not.. No one knows what time has held in store.
Yes, we can find series of evidences that characterize modernism in the early poetry of T.S. Eliot, most notably The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land. Modernism is inherently characterized by the qualities of alienation, fragmentation, disorder, spiritual loss, immoralities, commodification, cultural decay and eroding of established norms and values of the society. Eliot has wittily exploited the literary tools such as structural irony, paradox and objectivity in his poems to show the contrast between myths and modern commodity life. He has objectively depicted the condition of spiritually decayed modern people by devising the characters like Madam Sostress, Typist girl and Alfred J Prufrock and so on. These characters are in broad sense the representatives of any modern human being particularly form the western society. According to Eliot, the modern western people are so spiritually corrupted that they even don’t have will power to induce reform upon themselves and the society in which they live. Both The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land are perfect example of open-ended modern poems as the prospective readers are free to interpret them from any of the modernist perspectives.
Shovit Khadka
Pokhara, Nepal
It was Spanos (SUNY) who first tried to read Eliot as a postmodernist - Ashton in her book on moderism/postmodernist shows how Eliot could never be called a postmodernist
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