Surviving Modernism Through Life and Death
Today there is a lot of discussion revolving around the possibility of
a traditional art form, breaking the boundaries of modern subjectivism
and materialism. For many artists the main problem with modern art is
the unhealthy focus on crossing conventionalism with
traditionalism in an attempt to establish a new art form free from
its forerunners. It is said that modernism is the focus on the human
mind and its revolt against the physical boundaries, maintaining
natural laws and limitations. We see it in the denial of ethnic
differences, in "equality" between individuals, in "relativistic art",
but perhaps most clearly, in the worldview of modern man: the human
individual is the central creature of the cosmos and, as such, is seen
as the highest form of idea in the universe.
Several artists raged against this social conception, interpreting it
as a crime against the system in which we all live. They based their
ideas on the inseparability between object and subject and, as such,
denied the modern worldview where the human mind is thought to enact
total control over its physical surroundings. This journey proved to
be confusing, dramatic, and close to impossible - but their strong
wills aroused their senses with courage to live in a world they hated,
and to create something out of the past, presented for people living
today. Two of these heroes are the modernist writers Hermann Hesse and
Thomas Mann.
It is said that it took Hesse about six weeks to finish his novel
"Steppenwolf", hinting that this period in his life included personal
crisis. The story is about Harry Haller, a lone wolf living in a room
rented by an old lady and her son, hiding from the bourgeois city with
its jazz music, sex, democracy, and modern materialism. His life is a
secluded one, completely isolated from the world around him. Haller's
passion is classicistic art, namely Goethe and Mozart. These figures
represent a clean, sparse, traditional, idealistic art, expressing the
nobility of the European soul. Harry devotes most of his time reading
literature and listening to music, now and then visiting the city at
evening to eat and drink.
One night when he's out walking, he meets a strange man who hands him
a treatise. The book is about himself and his conflict between
idealism and moralism, human and wolf. It analyzes his mental
condition as suffering from a modern form of dualism, where the
liberal society forces him to morally restrain his life, pushing him
back into his room and art - the place where he can unleash his animal
inside, the wolf that celebrates the aristocracy and heroism of past
glories. The treatise is cold and logical, but also sad and
despairing. It ends with a call for Harry to realize the potential in
his multiple personalities, to deconstruct his binary vision of moral
right and wrong, and find his inner self by exploring categories far
beyond "human" and "animal". Harry is left alone with his destiny, tackling it through a woman, Hermine, he meets in a bar and a jazz player called Paulo. In the end, he is only wolf - a wolf with a laugh on his face.
Thomas Mann wrote a similar novel on the thematic platform that Hesse
built through "Steppenwolf". It is called "Death in Venice" and is a
more allegorical and symbolic story about the author named Gustav
Aschenbach, a lonely man celebrated for his great books, but in
reality a very sick man. Aschenbach's view on art is a modern one: he
believes it is possible to achieve idealistic art by morally
perfecting his behavior. This causes an inner clash between the birth
of art (emotional and experiential) and his attempts to reach it
(morality and perfection).
His condition becomes so bad that one day he needs to travel away from
his current home. Aschenbach decides to visit Venice, a place on earth
he loves very much. While in Venice he checks into a hotel and notices
a young, blonde boy named Tadzio. Aschenbach falls deeply in love with
this young boy, almost possessed by his unnatural beauty, innocence,
and perfection. In Tadzio Aschenbach finds something that suddenly
disturbs him: he's beautiful only through the inner senses, thereby
free from moral perfection; this slowly breaks down Aschenbach's view
on art, forcing him to realize that beauty does not inherently
exist within social constructs but exists as a manifestation of
something that an artist is able to perceive only by experience and
emotion. Aschenbach becomes more and more sick, and after having seen
that Tadzio's physical appearance isn't as perfect as he first
thought, his mind cannot take it anymore, and it drags his physical
condition down; once again he is forced to leave.
What these two novels have in common is a basic thematic denominator:
two modern individuals trying to achieve and experience the noble
idealism of past European art, and at the same time, living in an age
of liberalism, democracy, and populism. This forces them to morally
restrict their behavior, thereby giving birth to an inner dualism, an
inner conflict between idea and form, heroism and morality. The two
traditionalists are exposed to their opposites in an attempt to break
the modern dualism and become one with idea and art. Harry Haller is
drawn by Hermine into the bourgeois lifestyle, something for which he
has great contempt, dancing to jazz music, visiting restaurants - even
having sex with women he doesn't love. Gustav Aschenbach experiences
a Venice plagued by a growing disease, covered up by the government
authorities. In reality Venice is a physical manifestation of
Aschenbach's inner mind, growing increasingly uneasy over the
uncontrollable love for Tadzio - a love he knows is morally forbidden,
especially since the motive is emotional and not platonic.
The result of these experiences are for us dramatic and chaotic: at
the end of Hesse's novel, Harry is forced to explore his inner mental
state by visiting a "magic theatre" - a Freudian look into his own
mind. There he is able to experience the collapse of the Western
world, the love of an unlimited number of women, and the perverted
plays demonstrating the conflict between moral man and amoral wolf.
Harry ends up stabbing Hermine, his feminine bourgeois side, to death,
having realized that the modern lifestyle is not to fear or despise as
that is the origin of his inner dualism. He rejects the modern disease
by recognizing its inherent emptiness of value. Gustav comes to a
similar conclusion when he realizes that there is no hope for him to
escape the plague in Venice; he is one with the sickness and only
after accepting his emotive love for Tadzio and seeing past his
imperfections can he continue writing on a novel intended to become a
masterpiece. In the end he sits in his sun-chair, looking at the sea,
while Tadzio stands in the water waving to him a last good bye: the
artistic ideal is becoming one with the waves of eternity - but too
late.
What we may learn from these allegories is a key to the survival of
modernism and the continuation of idealistic art; it is the
realization that moral restrictive behavior is a dead end. It is so
easy for us to revert back into our egos and live secluded lives where
no people can hurt us, free from the city and its madness. Thus we
become a Harry Haller - torn between our wolf, alone in our private
confinements experiencing a time now past, and human, trying to tackle the things we all must face in modern society: tedious jobs that kill our passions, discussions about politics with empty people that talk to look good, dance clubs for lost souls to find collective peace; we are trapped in a time not meant for us. How do we tackle it? How do we preserve our Faustian spirits? How do we combine social disease at day and Beethoven at night? Are we, the idealists from another century, destined to walk this earth as dualists? Where is our escape, our hope for the future?
When Harry Haller realizes that he needs to find a way to deal with
modern society, but still preserve his idealistic spirit and hope, he
at last faces Hermine and decides to kill her. His feminine opposite,
the Harry Haller at daytime in society, becomes a natural part of his
human creative soul. As Mozart exclaims in Hesse's novel when he finds
a sad Haller raging against the horrible noise from the radio: under
the distortion we may find a structure of life, of spirit, of
idealism. Yes, it is horrible, but to deny it is to commit suicide.
The only way, says Mozart, to escape the pitiful existence of a lone
wolf destined to either become a split personality (Harry Haller) or a
decaying soul watching the ideal escape from him (Gustav Aschenbach)
is to laugh at the insanity of our modern time. The key to success is
to go beyond the conventional dualism (human at day, wolf at night)
and join these two together, exploring all of the characteristics
found within yourself and using them to your advantage in the quest
for eternity.
If we do not find peace within ourselves, we will end up like Gustav
Aschenbach: dead, yet still longing for beautiful art and noble ideals
to once again rise from the dead. If we say no to our social life and
no to anything connected with the society in which we live, not only
are we left with a disease without medicine, but also an impotent life
deprived of a natural part of us: happiness. There is no way out from
a life in isolation. We must dare to face the social, popular, common
side of us, dare to face our inner jokes of which Mozart so mockingly
speaks.
However abstract or pragmatic this may sound, all Steppenwolf's
reading this know who they are and whether or not they suffer from the
same disease that plagues Harry Haller and Gustav Aschenbach; trust
me when I say there is no point in denial. The strength, contrary to
what we may believe, lies not within the Steppenwolf, but in the wolf
as a whole, in the animal being able to transform into human and live
out that side as if it was a part of him. For the desperate ones: I
have no complete solution, nor any definitive answers to a path
leading to absolute success in this dilemma. However, like I
understand the greatness of Mozart, I firmly believe in the ideas of
Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann. I believe they have something important
to tell us, and that, indeed, it is reading only for the Steppenwolf's
and Aschenbach's. These are basic ideas which all people on some level
can understand, but not necessarily to which they can relate, unless
they are a disguised Haller or Aschenbach, perhaps in a search for a
more complete life. Is there a way to believe in traditions and ideas from centuries ago and still manage a normal life in a modern society gone mad?
I often ask myself this question and will be perfectly honest with
you, the path to eternity is long and covered in mists. It is like
walking through the woods on summer nights when the humidity from the
fields condenses and becomes large white clouds of fog. You wander
alone at night, releasing your inner wolf to declare both war against
the lights from the city and your passionate love for nature, and
struggle to the peace found at night under the starlit sky. Somewhere
up there lives Goethe and Mozart, looking down on us misplaced souls, perhaps with anger, perhaps with a mocking smile. But as I walk, I come to think of what past heroes have said, what their lives communicate with mine - and suddenly, I feel the truth is closer than ever; we are and always will be wolves, wolves with bitter laughs on our faces. -Alexis
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