"Human kind cannot bear very much reality" : modernist perceptions of time and experience

Abstract

Opsomming: Die tydperk waartydens letterkundige modernisme hoogty gevier het, was ’n tyd van grootskaalse sosiale omwenteling. Die Eerste Wêreldoorlog het eens stabiele samelewingstrukture ondermyn. Die mens het hom in ’n vreemde wêreld bevind. Terwyl modernistiese kunstenaars rewolusionêre veranderinge t.o.v. letterkundige vorm teweeggebring het en die wyse waarop kuns bedryf is radikaal verander het om die disintegrering van sosiale samehang te weerspieël, was die moderniste dikwels verrassend konserwatief in hulle lewensbeskouing. Die onstabiliteit in hulle werk weerspieël die dreigende veranderlikheid van hulle wêreld en die konserwatisme van hulle denke ’n smagting na vastigheid, sekerheid en betekenis. ’n Bewustheid van oomblikke van transendentale belewenis karakteriseer die werk van verskeie modernistiese skrywers. T.S. Eliot beskryf “’n oomblik binne en buite tyd”, James Joyce noem sy weergawe ’n “epifanie”, Virginia Woolf oorweeg “oomblikke van syn” en E.M. Forster bedink ’n “ewigheidsoomblik”. In al hierdie uitdrukkings is daar nie net ’n hunkering na die volkome, die stabiele, die betekenisvolle nie, maar ook die grootste beleefde vertroue dat die lewe en die kuns meer as die kortstondige en verganklike behels.

Summary: The historical period during which literary modernism flourished was a time of great historical and social upheaval. This First World War had broken down structures (of class and gender, for example) which had been regarded as immutable. People felt themselves at sea in a new and unfamiliar world. While the modernists were revolutionaries as regards literary form, bringing about sweeping changes in the way art was being enacted, reflecting the disintegration of social cohesion in their work, many of them were surprisingly conservative in their views of life and society. The instability in their art reflects the threatening changeability of the world they found themselves in, and the conservatism of their thought reflects a longing for stability, certainty, something to derive meaning from. The awareness of a moment of transcending consciousness is common to a number of modernist writers. T.S. Eliot describes the “moment in and out of time”, James Joyce calls his version “epiphany”, Virginia Woolf contemplates the “moment of being” and E.M. Forster ponders the “eternal moment”. In all these expressions, not only a hankering for the complete, the stable, the meaningful is expressed, but also a supreme and experiential confidence that there is more to life and art than the ephemeral and the transient