Classicism of the Twenties

Classicism of the Twenties Art, Music, and Literature

by Theodore Ziolkowski

University of Chicago Press, 2014
Cloth: 978-0-226-18398-5 | Electronic: 978-0-226-18403-6
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226184036.001.0001

AVAILABLE FROM

University of Chicago Press (cloth, ebook)
Brytewave (CafeScribe-Follett Higher Ed)
Chegg Inc
DeGruyter Multi-User Ebook Program
ebrary
EBSCO eBooks (formerly NetLibrary)
University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO)

ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The triumph of avant-gardes in the 1920s tends to dominate our discussions of the music, art, and literature of the period. But the broader current of modernism encompassed many movements, and one of the most distinct and influential was a turn to classicism.

In Classicism of the Twenties, Theodore Ziolkowski offers a compelling account of that movement. Giving equal attention to music, art, and literature, and focusing in particular on the works of Stravinsky, Picasso, and T. S. Eliot, he shows how the turn to classicism manifested itself. In reaction both to the excesses of neoromanticism and early modernism and to the horrors of World War I—and with respectful detachment—artists, writers, and composers adapted themes and forms from the past and tried to imbue their own works with the values of simplicity and order that epitomized earlier classicisms.

By identifying elements common to all three arts, and carefully situating classicism within the broader sweep of modernist movements, Ziolkowski presents a refreshingly original view of the cultural life of the 1920s.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Theodore Ziolkowski is professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Modes of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

REVIEWS

“Ziolkowski presents a remarkable array of writers, artists, and composers, all of whom were keen to take art in new directions after the Great War finally put an end to the long nineteenth century. He usefully defines ‘classicism of the twenties’ as a telling meld of historical appropriation and ironic distance motivated by a war-battered need for order and clarity. This book will serve both as an enticing introduction for the uninitiated and a newly configured map for more experienced travelers.”

— Scott Burnham, Princeton University

“Ziolkowski convincingly explains how and why classical forms and values persisted obstinately—sometimes flamboyantly—in the very midst of cultural innovation and experiment. At the same time, his erudition and ability to combine concepts create before our eyes the most pleasing and intriguing imagery: colorful, filmlike, even kaleidoscopic. This book will delight and fascinate.”

— Virgil Nemoianu, Catholic University of America

“‘Classicism’ in the earlier twentieth century has been extensively discussed in reference to individual writers, artists, and musicians, but Ziolkowski, dealing with individual cases from an overarching interdisciplinary and international perspective, has brilliantly expanded its multicultural horizons.”

— Burton Pike, City University of New York

“Presents a closely and elegantly argued interdisciplinary recuperation of the inter-war response to romantic sensibilities and modernist aesthetics espoused by a core group of artists—composers, painters, and writers—that took the form of a return of classical forms and themes in reaction to the psychic and moral devastation of World War I.”

— Key Reporter

“Highly readable, unforcedly polemical, expository rather than theoretical, and historically informative. . . . [Ziolkowski] has the space to let his examples speak for themselves, and he can point out, with admirable clarity and erudition, the common features that emerge from them.”

— Modern Language Review

List of Figures

Preface

Part 1: The Theory

1. Prewar Classicism - Theodore Ziolkowski
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226184036.003.0002
[Charles Maurras, Pierre Lasserre, T. E. Hulme, Samuel Lublinski, Thomas Mann, neo-romanticism, Greece]
Following a definition of classicism generally, this chapter reviews the manner in which the concept was invoked by cultural critics of the pre-World War I years--notably Maurras and Lasserre in France, T. E. Hulme in England, and Samuel Lublinski in Germany--in the pursuit of order as a reaction against the perceived excesses of neo-romantic movements. Two examples are introduced to show that a trip to Greece and the use of classical themes alone do not suffice to justify the term “classical.” The chapter concludes with a look at Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain as an ironic retrospective of pre-war classicism. (pages 3 - 34)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

2. Classicism of the Twenties - Theodore Ziolkowski
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226184036.003.0003
[rappel à l’ordre, Third Humanism, spiritual crisis, The New Criterion, La Nouvelle Revue Française, La Ronda]
The chapter begins with a look at classicizing techniques used purely formally by certain creative artists in works without a classical orientation. It then turns to thinkers who urged a return to classical values and forms--known variously as “rappel à l’ordre” and “Third Humanism”--and a renewal of order in response to the spiritual crisis (Valéry, Pannwitz) caused by the war and the dissemination of their ideas in such journals as The New Criterion, La Nouvelle Revue Française, and La Ronda. The revival generated a widespread turn to such writers of classical antiquity as Virgil and Ovid. (pages 35 - 68)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

Part 2: The Practice

3. Three Exemplary Figures - Theodore Ziolkowski
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226184036.003.0004
[Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, T. S. Eliot, commedia dell’arte, myth, heteroglossia, dissonance, distortion]
This chapter examines in detail key works of the ’20s by three exemplary figures--Stravinsky, Picasso, Eliot--to determine characteristics that may be called classical. All three refer explicitly to myths and forms of Greco-Roman antiquity--notably Homeric and Ovidian--and to the late Latin commedia dell’arte. Their works of these years share an emphasis on linearity--of language, of musical line, of drawing--and what may be called polytonality or heteroglossia. But their view of the past is distanced by such techniques as distortion, dissonance, and heteroglossia to produce the ironic awareness that the past is irretrievable. (pages 71 - 122)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

Part 3: Test Cases

4. The Writers - Theodore Ziolkowski
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226184036.003.0005
[James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Hans Henny Jahnn, Paul Valéry]
This chapter scrutinizes four writers--Joyce, Cocteau, Jahnn, and Valéry--as test cases. It concludes that Joyce in Ulysses and Valéry in La jeune Parque and La cimetière marin fulfill precisely the same search for order and form as do the exemplary classicists. But Cocteau’s adaptation of Antigone remained essentially superficial, while Jahnn’s scandalous Medea was utterly unclassical in its violence and sexuality. (pages 125 - 145)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

5. The Artists - Theodore Ziolkowski
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226184036.003.0006
[Giorgio de Chirico, pittura metafisica, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Gino Severini]
This chapter surveys the work of four artists of the twenties who are often called neo-classical: De Chirico, Severini, Léger, and Picabia. Only De Chirico’s paintings, during a brief period in the early twenties between his so-called pittura metafisica and his later polyphony of style, reflect in their classical themes the simplicity of line and clarity of organization that he admired in Picasso. The others exemplify, like Cocteau and Jahnn, what might be called “classical without classicism.” (pages 146 - 162)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

6. The Composers - Theodore Ziolkowski
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226184036.003.0007
[Paul Hindemith, Alfredo Casella, Cardillac, La giara, Scarlattiana]
The composers Hindemith and Casella did not turn to themes from antiquity, but their compositions of the twenties--notably Hindemith’s Cardillac and Casella’s La giara and his Scarlattiana--display conspicuously the use of classical musical forms, such as passacaglia, fugue, gavotte, and many others, all orchestrated for smaller instrumentation typical of the Baroque rather than the huge orchestras of Wagner and Mahler. Their writings also reveal a conscious desire to emulate their fellow classicists of the ’20s in the return to order and harmony. (pages 163 - 186)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

Part 4: Conclusions

7. Classicism of the Twenties? - Theodore Ziolkowski
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226184036.003.0008
[Leonard B. Meyer, paraphrase, borrowing, simulation, modelling, distortion, dissonance, heteroglossia]
This chapter summarizes the various conclusions suggested by the concrete examples analyzed in the preceding chapters. It suggests that the techniques employed there are essentially identical to what Leonard B. Meyer in Music, the Arts, and Ideas called paraphrase, borrowing, simulation, and modelling. But it goes on to argue that the classicists of the ’20s used those techniques not only to remind contemporary readers, listeners, and viewers of the themes, styles, and values of antiquity, but also, through such modern devices as distortion (Picasso), dissonance (Stravinsky), and heteroglossia (Eliot and Joyce), to alert us to the irrecoverable distance between past and present. (pages 189 - 198)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

Notes

Index