15 1913, the future in the past
-
Jean-Michel Rabaté
Abstract
In 1913 James Huneker publishes The Pathos of Distance in New York, a book that, according to Rabaté, materializes the spirit of 1913 as the unstable compound of the new and the old. Borrowing from Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Hunker defined modernism as the blending of canonical beauty and the sublime American contemporaneity. Widening the scope of French modernism by discussing its American reception, Rabaté shows how Huneker’s ambiguous feelings about French art, infused with the new ethics of ‘egoism’ and the contrast between the aesthetics of past and the new French creators, belong to the ‘spirit of 1913’ and will have a tremendous impact on American modernism.
Abstract
In 1913 James Huneker publishes The Pathos of Distance in New York, a book that, according to Rabaté, materializes the spirit of 1913 as the unstable compound of the new and the old. Borrowing from Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, Hunker defined modernism as the blending of canonical beauty and the sublime American contemporaneity. Widening the scope of French modernism by discussing its American reception, Rabaté shows how Huneker’s ambiguous feelings about French art, infused with the new ethics of ‘egoism’ and the contrast between the aesthetics of past and the new French creators, belong to the ‘spirit of 1913’ and will have a tremendous impact on American modernism.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures viii
- Notes on contributors xii
- Acknowledgements xvii
- Introduction 1
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 29
- 1 Prehistoric Proust 33
- 2 Fantômas and the shudder of history 54
- 3 Inventing, collecting and classifying in the margins 72
- 4 The anxious centre 88
- 5 1913, the year of the arrière-garde? 109
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 123
- 6 A modernism that has not yet been 127
- 7 On situating French modernism 145
- 8 Les Caves du Vatican and the real novel 163
- 9 1913, between peace and war 173
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 193
- 10 Camille Flammarion’s flash-forward 197
- 11 How ‘simultaneous’ is it? 220
- 12 Mallarmé’s modernity in 1913 237
- 13 Poetry displaced 252
- 14 Behind Picasso’s pins 274
-
Part IV: Coda: on modernism, beyond France and 1913
- 15 1913, the future in the past 299
- 16 The paradox and promise of the ‘new’ French Modernist Studies 310
- Index 325
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures viii
- Notes on contributors xii
- Acknowledgements xvii
- Introduction 1
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 29
- 1 Prehistoric Proust 33
- 2 Fantômas and the shudder of history 54
- 3 Inventing, collecting and classifying in the margins 72
- 4 The anxious centre 88
- 5 1913, the year of the arrière-garde? 109
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 123
- 6 A modernism that has not yet been 127
- 7 On situating French modernism 145
- 8 Les Caves du Vatican and the real novel 163
- 9 1913, between peace and war 173
-
Acknowledgements
- Introduction 193
- 10 Camille Flammarion’s flash-forward 197
- 11 How ‘simultaneous’ is it? 220
- 12 Mallarmé’s modernity in 1913 237
- 13 Poetry displaced 252
- 14 Behind Picasso’s pins 274
-
Part IV: Coda: on modernism, beyond France and 1913
- 15 1913, the future in the past 299
- 16 The paradox and promise of the ‘new’ French Modernist Studies 310
- Index 325
