Experimental Fiction

by Armstrong, Julie;

  What led to the rise of modern cities?

  Modern industry and the growth of the railways led to a wave of urbanization and the rise of great cities. Indeed, modernism can be seen as a response to the shock of the new of city, a city which embodies the spirit and time of modernity and was perceived as a symbol of capitalism. Major modernist cities included Paris, Berlin, New York, Vienna, St. Petersburg and Vienna.

  Why was the modern city an exciting place?

  For a number of reasons, many modernist writers found the rapidly changing modern city an exciting and dynamic place to be. The city provided a stimulating environment, one which had a multiplicity of voices and a variety of experiences. These experiences included walking in crowds of people, observing the rapid development of technology, admiring the architecture and gazing upon the goods being sold in department stores and arcades. There were art works to view and museums to explore.

  Developments in transport were exciting experiences to be had in the city; for example, the Metro in Paris was built in 1900 by the engineer Fulgence Bienvenue. The first line ferried passengers from the Port Maillot to Vincennes in the unbelievable time of twenty minutes; previously it took an hour and a half by carriage. And so, the pace of life became much quicker and the experience of cities much richer.

  There was a bombardment of sensual experiences, which led to a heightened sense of awareness and consciousness. The Paris Exposition of 1900 involved a number of simulations: an exotic Indian landscape with stuffed animals, treasures and merchandise; an exhibit representing Spain at the time of the Moors with interiors and courtyards; a Trans-Siberian panorama which placed spectators in a real railway car which moved along a track, while canvas was unrolled outside the window to give an impression of Siberia. Experience offered by carnivals and fairs in Paris, especially after the 1848 revolution, was bizarre: animals became humans, humans became animals. There were the new department stores and arcades showing consumer items, associated with exotica and romance.

  The flaneur Charles Baudelaire enjoyed walking through the streets, milling among the crowds, absorbing all the experiences and gazing upon the capitalist world. A flaneur is a representative of modernity and a personification of the urban, illustrating many different relationships with the city; a flaneur observes and yet is part of the city. He experiences the city as a place of meetings, a place of flux and collisions, a place of ordered chaos, in which he can experience fleeting impressions and enjoy the spectacle of the city.

  The city was a space in which to examine modernist concerns, for example, representation of time and space. In 1884, the Prime Meridian Conference established Greenwich as the zero meridian and the exact length of the day was determined. In 1912, the International Conference on Time was held in Paris; it established a worldwide time system centred on Greenwich. However, the modernists considered the true experience of time was to be found by looking within, at one’s memories and impressions, thoughts and feelings.

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  Experiment with this: Learning to Look Within and Record Impressions, Thoughts and Feelings of the Modern City

  Create a character, a flaneur, who is walking the city streets of your choice. Enter this flaneur’s mind and record their thoughts, feelings and impressions as they experience the city. What is the city like? How has it changed? What do they see, hear, touch, taste, smell? How do they experience time and space? Are any memories evoked by their experiences?

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  What was cafe and nightclub culture?

  The city became a place where writers could simply absorb the atmosphere and meet with other writers to discuss their work, and so cafe nightclub culture ensued. In 1922, a new nightclub opened in Paris: Le Boeuf sur le Toit; its proprietor was a man called Louis Moyses, who named the club after a popular musical written by Jean Cocteau; he was a man who ‘set the tone of Parisian modernity and embodied its heady, stylish spirit’ (Jackson, p. 30). Jean Cocteau, influenced by Oscar Wilde, published a collection of poems in 1909. However, inspired by Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes, he turned his attention to stage design. Le Boeuf, as it became known, was the place to be seen and the meeting place for all the famous business people, publishers and artists of the day, a place where they could flirt, show off their designer clothes, dance, drink American-style cocktails and, most importantly, discuss ideas and artistic works. ‘The club inspired at least two books about the period – Au Temps du Boeuf sur le Toit by Maurice Sachs, and Quand le Boeuf by Jacques – and was mentioned in countless others’ (Jackson, p. 33).

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  Experiment with this: Learning to Become Familiar with Modernist Writing Techniques

  Write a scene from a novel which is set in Le Boeuf. In this scene two writers, real or imagined, discuss their latest literary work and the writing techniques they are experimenting with. The two writers are approached by a publisher. Write the conversation that ensues between the writers and the publisher. Capture the atmosphere of the nightclub.

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  Which modern writers explored the city in their literary works?

  However, as a result of the rapidly changing city, which was altering perceptions, as well as excitement, there came a sense of isolation and loneliness. These became reoccurring themes in fiction, which used a fragmented, non-linear form to suggest this dislocation and the shifting vision of what it was to be a human being.

  Many writers used the city as a source of inspiration and a setting for their fiction, often providing the backdrop for their fiction, for example, James Joyce used Dublin in Ulysses and the Dubliners. Joseph Conrad employed London in The Secret Agent. Likewise, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and The Waves exude a sense of unreality, attributed to the facelessness and depersonalizing of the crowd, and the corruption of the city, London, and yet, there is also the fascinating quality of the city. As Clariss Dolloway in Mrs Dolloway is walking through London, her mind is a veritable city of thoughts. The idea of solitary lives makes its way into the core of the stories of James Joyce; the isolation of individual consciousness, that there is no escape from the self or from the dilapidated dark city streets, forms the subject of the Dubliners.

  Langston Hughes depicted the lives of African Americans living in Harlem, New York, blossoming into the Harlem Renaissance, what American poet, novelist, social activist and playwright Langston called his reason for writing. Embodying the new literary form, jazz poetry, he wrote about the period ‘the negro was in vogue’, when night clubs, featuring jazz, flourished. Despite material wealth, young Americans of the 1920s were the ‘lost generation’, so named by Gertrude Stein. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920) evoke the disillusionment of the ‘lost generation’. Hughes’ first novel was Not Without Laughter (1930).

  What new styles of writing did the city inspire?

  City life inspired new styles and forms of writing in an attempt to capture the modern world. There were public and private spaces which led to writers exploring the inner world and outer reality using techniques such as stream of consciousness and interior monologue. And so, with city life being ever challenging, it is to the inner world that characters in modernist fiction retreat for security and order.

  Dreams, Philosophy, Science and Fiction

  This chapter informs contemporary readers and writers of experimental fiction of the developments in science, philosophy and psychology which influenced the modernist writer, so that they can utilize some of the ideas and practices into their own work.

  What were the new developments in psychology during the modern times?

  The most fundamental developments in psychology came from Sigmund Freud, 1856–1939. In his work Interpretations of Dreams, he explored the unconscious, believing it to be the ‘true’ reality. He was concerned with the following questions: Where do dreams come from? What causes a particular dream? Freud discovered that the hidden wish in dreams is often of a sexual nature. Repressed thoughts have to get
past censorship before they can enter the dream world. Therefore, the function of dreams is to discharge repressed wishes.

  Freud declared that the unconscious mind may be accessed through the analysis and interpretation of the individual’s dreams. He explained that the seemingly illogical dream state is governed by a logic, with dream thoughts converted into content by processes of displacement (this is where the feelings related to one thing are connected to a different one; negative feelings towards one person are displaced onto something or someone else) and condensation (many ideas are blended together by the dream – implying that one image can stand for many associations). Freud provided a method for expressing the interior; this led to the breakdown of traditional values.

  For Freud, the different parts of the mind were in a constant state of conflict. He suggested that the mind is divided into the id, or unconscious, the ego and the superego, and all human beings are the result of conflict between these three.

  How did developments in psychology impact on the modern writer?

  Many modernist writers were concerned with consciousness which can be traced to the influence of Freud and his work. And so, Freud’s work impacted upon them considerably. As characters became more complex and contradictory, multi-voices, multi-layered narratives were the natural outcomes. The interior of characters’ minds were explored. While Woolf concerned herself with the subconscious, Andre Breton, founder of surrealism, was interested in the theories of Freud; he recorded the dreams of men shell-shocked in the First World War. For Breton, Freud’s theory of the unconscious allowed for another place beyond ‘reality’, a surreal place, a place of dreams, where the truth lies. He experimented with opening up the dream world through automatic writing, that is writing which is practised spontaneously, almost in a trance state, without engaging thought or censorship. He collaborated with Philippe Soupault to create Magnetic Fields, a work of automatic writing, considered to be the first surrealist work. The writers Ford Madox Ford, Proust, Conrad and Joyce, all explored the nature of sleep, dreams, reality and the unconscious in their work.

  As Virginia Woolf stated, human character had changed and she cited December 1910 as the point of change; this, in part, had to do with the influence of Freud and developments in science and philosophy. Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Drew and May Sinclair, who assisted in establishing a psychoanalytical clinic in London, and Dorothy Richardson, who reviewed books on psychoanalysis, were all writers keen to examine the mind in their fiction. Later, D. H. Lawrence, who was especially interested in a consciousness beyond thought and the nature of sexuality, explored the Oedipus complex in Sons and Lovers through the character Paul Morel and the relationship he has with his mother. For D. H. Lawrence, the unconscious was the most essential aspect of a human being. American writers also absorbed the developments in psychology and brought them back to the United States, where they fired the imaginations of writers such as William Faulkner, who employed Freudian elements into his work.

  Freud believed that the mind was a network of differing and conflicting drives; our thoughts are often scattered and conflicting and multiple, and so is our worldview; it isn’t linear or always rational and ordered. The mind is a not a fixed place; it is in a state of flux, a process, an endless procession of shifting moments (Lehrer, p. 177). This is illustrated in To the Lighthouse: ‘Such was the complexity of things … to feel violently two opposite things at the same time; that’s what you feel, was one; that’s what I feel, was the other, and then they fought together in her mind, as now’ (Lehrer, p. 78).

  What influence did psychology have on modernist writing techniques?

  A feature of modernist writing was the use of symbols, influenced by Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams; symbols in our dreams are said to stand in for or represent something. In fiction, symbols are characters, objects or colours chosen by the writer to represent concepts or ideas, for example, the lighthouse and the rainbow used by Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence in their literary works. The lighthouse illustrated that nothing is ever only one thing and the rainbow has biblical implications. The rainbow is a symbol of peace. God showed Noah the rainbow when the flood was finally over.

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  Experiment with this: Learning to Experiment with Symbols in Fiction

  Write a passage from a novel in which you use the following symbols: a rose and a clock. Consider what they represent and when, how and why you use them in the narrative.

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  What were the new developments in philosophy in modern times?

  The German philosopher, composer and poet Friedrich Nietzsche’s impact on modernism was complex. Nietzsche’s ideas are considered to be as important as Freud’s in terms of establishing an intellectual environment in which the modernist writers could thrive. Nietzsche’s claim that God was dead had an impact upon the decline of religious faith even before the twentieth century; this was further accelerated by Charles Darwin’s theories of On the Origin of the Species. Darwin demonstrated that species evolve through secular processes rather than divine intervention. Nietzsche rejected Christian morality and believed the truth was found by looking within. In addition, he embraced irrationalism over rationalism.

  The essence of the French philosopher Henri Bergson was that intuition was more significant than science or rationalism for understanding reality. He was resistant to a mechanistic view of the universe. ‘The laws of science were fine for inert matter … for discerning the relationships between atoms and cells, but us? We had a consciousness, a memory, a being … According to Bergson … – the reality of our self-consciousness could not be reduced or experimentally dissected. He believed that we could only understand ourselves through intuition, a process that required lots of introspection, time spent contemplating our inner connections’ (Lehrer, p. 78). Clearly, we can see links here between Nietzsche’s and Bergson’s philosophies and modernist concerns.

  How did Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson impact on the modern writer?

  It has been suggested that the lack of an omniscient narrator in some modernist fiction was reflecting an era of declining religious beliefs and an ultimately all-seeing, all-knowing, ever-present God. As already stated, Nietzsche questioned all forms of ultimate authority or truth, believing that the irrational self was probably the most creative aspect of a human being. Modernist writers began to create worlds and characters in which the irrational were privileged.

  Marcel Proust was influenced by the philosopher Henri Bergson. Proust’s literature ‘became a celebration of intuition’ (p. 78). Proust’s ‘absorption of Bergson’s philosophy led him to conclude that the nineteenth-century novel, with its privileging of things over thoughts, had everything exactly backward’ (p. 78). Literary works which simply describe things, ‘is in fact, although it calls itself realist, the furthest removed from reality’ (p. 79). ‘But how could a work of fiction demonstrate the power of intuition? How could a novel prove that it was, as Bergson put it, “ultimately spiritual and not physical”? … ’. This is how the Search begins, with the famous madeleine, out of which a mind unfolds:

  No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me … at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me … It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself.

  Here we see the essence of Bergson’s philosophy encapsulated.

  What were the developments in science during modern times?

  Changes in psychological thought were matched by changes in scientific theory. Previously Newton had showed that the universe obeyed precise rules or laws and that events as different as the motion of the planets around the sun and the bending of a light beam can be explained by the application of these rules. He believed in absolute time and absolute space; according to him, everything in the universe was predictable and simple laws were all that was required to understand how it func
tioned. In the Newton model of physics, there was only one reality at a time; all changes in the physical world were described in terms of a separate dimension called time; absolute-time-space co-ordinates were the framework for a fixed, predictable and law-abiding universe.

  However, these rigid rules gave way to the world of Max Planck’s quantum theory of 1900; it was a challenge to classical physics and suggested a contrasting worldview to the Newtonian model and a revision of the way reality was perceived. Quantum physics replaced the classical emphasis on separate parts. The quantum is ‘An entangled universe, its many parts are interwoven, their boundaries and their identities overlap, and through their doing so a new reality is created’ (Danah Zohar, The Quantum Society, p. 258). One of the most revolutionary ideas shown by quantum physics is that light is both ‘wave-like’ and ‘particle-like’ at the same time. In 1927, George Thompson proved the dual nature of electrons, known as the ‘wave-particle duality’. Electric charge travels as waves but departs and arrives as particles and neither ‘wave-like’ nor the ‘particle-like’ properties is more ‘real’. Virginia Woolf is ‘ … enormously aware of time. Throughout her novels time clangs like fate; its sound reverberates with terrifying persistence. When Jacob, when Mrs Dalloway, when Orlando hear clocks strike, the explosion shakes the complex fabric of their being. The whole of Orlando is a fantasia on the time sense’ (Holtby, pp. 52–3). Indeed, Woolf experiments with ‘consciousness of time’ (Memoir, p. 138) in sophisticated ways, weaving past with present; for example, in Jacob’s Room the reader is able to observe a number of incidents happening simultaneously: Florinda sick, Jacob looking at his butterfly collection and recalling how he caught them, Clara asleep, Mrs Pasco watching the steamers along the Cornish coast and all the while: ‘Each moment becomes enriched by other moments; consciousness is never simple’ (Memoir, p. 139).