Expressionism

• Style in art

• Subjective, personal vision

• The irrational

• Exotic elements

WYKŁAD 20

Modernism in poetry

• A lot of changes, revolution in poetry

• T. E. Hulme – a philosopher, philosophy of art, history of art & literature

  • Criticism on romanticism – the poet talked about his emotions, vague emotionalism of a poem, he was concentrated on himself, subjectivity

  • He opposed any romantic attitudes

• The purpose of poetry is different, no concentration on the author’s emotions

• Poetry is sth like an exploration, examination of the phenomena of the world,

• poet - a craftsman, scientist, examiner of phenomena in his mind, not a sweet singer talking about feelings only

• objectivity of poetry

• everything unnecessary is eliminated, you go to the subject, explore a certain phenomena

• poetry – less emotional

• you have to think together with the speaker (be more active) and not only expect that a poem will abruptly flow to your head

• more demanding, complicated poems,

• sources of inspiration: metaphysical poets (In 19th century were republished, some were discovered)

• new form of a verse: FREE VERSE (“verse libre”) –

  • unconstrained by any formal regulations, you don’t have to rhyme

  • The number of syllables does not matter

  • You don’t have to set focus on writing, like a sonnet

  • Unimportant position of the stresses

  • They believed that traditional versification forms were harmful, constricting

  • The form should be arbitrary chosen

  • The concept should dictate the form – not the other way around

  • Topic of the thoughts is more important than rhymes etc

• Symbol may be the way to construct the poem – than it was rejected because of being too vague. Symbol can be read in different ways by different people. You cannot be precise with the symbol.

• Image – nothing new in modernism, the kinds of image and how you used them was different

• Haiku – a little poem e.g. “The Frog” (17^th century)

  • Being pure images, based on a visual, auditory image, details, no comments, the image is enough to carry the whole poem

• You should use images containing as much meaning as possible.

• Poetic group: “The imagists”

• Anglo-American poets, set in 1915 – manifesto: a volume of poetry

• Ezra Pound – great friend of T. S. Eliot, he read Eliot’s poetry

• Hilda Dollitle

• William Carlos Williams

• Image + free verse

WYKŁAD 21

THE 1930’s

1929

– The Great Depression, stock market, economic crisis, massive unemployment

• The rise of the totalitarian regiment, fascism

• Germany 1932 – prosecusoin of the News

• Spain, Italy

• The news from Russia don’t come so easily to western countries

• George Orwell „The Animal Farm” – criticism of totalitarism

The Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939)

• very bloody barbaric behaviour

• Gen. Franco (conservative) vs. The Republicans

• He was like Hitler extremely nationalist kind of leader

• International brigades (Fr. And Eng.) went to Spain to fight for the republic

• What are your values? What are sou supporting? Moral test – What are your ideale? Who do sou suport?

• Psychological introspection of characters

• High time to get involved, react to what is going on around, not only your interior

• Many poets went to Spain, as journalists or jus helping to show attitude – „we are involved”

• 2 directions

  1. religion (revival of religion drama, verse)

  2. socialism (the relief In common humanity)

• „flirting” with socialism (socialist concept) understood as humanity compassion, sympathy, understanding of people , especially in worse situation