THE BIRTH OF MODERNISM
I must admit, I am seldom excited by academia and find it extrodinarily limiting considering how much larger the wider world is.Before returning to the Bahamas, I wished to do a Master's program and PHD thesis on the birth of Modernity combining both literature and the Visual arts.During my time away, I remember how excited I was being exposed to the ideas and thoughts of Pirandello, Picasso, and Brecht and so many more, devouring passionately the vibrancy of colour and form or burrying my head deep into mountains of books hanging onto every word or thought. I admired silmultaniously how they challenged order away from traditional molds to construct and reconstuct form.As life would have it, events and circumstances prevented me from completing this dream but I hope one day to fulfill an ambition.However, having been fortunate enough to be exposed to such great works, I realized how all expression is a direct commentary on a social and political experience framed by events happening at the moment. No artist I would imagine could nor would wish to be removed from his or her time.Snap shots and slices of life that froze moments in motion that no history book could reflect with such vivid detail.This could not be more exemplified than the works of German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer, Bertolt Brecht. He was one of the great influential figures of modern theatre and encouraged audiences to think rather than becoming too involved in the story line identifying more with the characters through effects of alienation. He developed a form of drama called Epic theatre in which ideas or didactic lessons were important.Of course there was also Luigi Pirandello, an Italian dramatist and novelist who was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934. His famous play "Six characters in search of an author" spends much time demonstrating the limitations of the theatre as a medium of story-telling. Thus the play can be regarded as simply an exercise in the realm of a larger theatre; however, it also delves into the larger questions of defining existence and hints at the responsibilities inherent in creativity.From the visual arts there was Picasso's cubist artworks which broke up objects to analyze and re-assembled them in an abstracted form for the subject to be seen from a multitude of viewpoints where planes interpenetrate one another to create an ambiguous space.So thus began my appreciation and great admiration for the modern artist and the process by which he/she searched for truth .What is uniquely characteristic of each is their courage or mad obsession to dig into solid ground and lift up the proverbial rock to discover what lay beneath, to break down existing forms in order to create new ones.They did not seek to obliterate lines or objects but rather sought to redefine form in space"In the beginning the world was without form and void,then God created the heavens and the earth..."Each stroke or thought they discovered, brought creativity into being where laws and chaos defined space revealing multiple planes of existance..According to this theory, Law and Chaos are the dominant metaphysical forces which are in constant struggle with each other, but the interplay creates a neutrality by the Cosmic Balance.Perhaps these things are better articulated by theologians, scientists and philosophers but these artists attempted to humanize them by relating form to our common experience and everyday life.It is to their greatness that these works transcend time into ours with equal and important relevence.LIke I said, I am not a fan of acadamia but am familiar with Post modernist and deconstuctionists debates evolving today that seek to debunk much of what these modernists believed opting to celebrate more the individual as the essential rather than universal claims. But this too has its seeds planted deep within the modernist movement with such peoples as Irish playwright Samuel Becket (" waiting for Godot") and others . Though inspite much of the convincing arguments surronding such theories, I can only claim being personally liberated interlectually, emotionally and spiritually by their thoughts and ideas in a world prior to them had derrived much of its viewpoints from two dimentional perspectives essentially dictated from the Church and religious parochialisms. I suspect I can relate to all this being from the Bahamas where change is often slow in coming even when it involves personal experiences altering perspectives. We hold onto what are safe and comfortable ways of being even when truth is revealed.

MODERNITY AND THE POET
The most famous English-language modernist work arising out of the post-world war one disillusionment was T. S. Eliot. The war undermined optimism, and this fact was reflected in a number of major poems written in its aftermath.
Eliot's poem, depicts modern society as being in the infertile part of the cycle. Human beings are isolated, and sexual relations are sterile and meaningless. He leaves us with the general impression of isolation, decadence, and sterility.
The poem opens with a quoted passage from Dante's INFERNO, suggesting that Prufrock is one of the damned and that he speaks only because he is sure no one will listen. Since the reader is overhearing his thoughts, the poem seems at first rather incoherent. But Prufrock repeats certain phrases and returns to certain core ideas as the poem progresses. The "you and I" of the opening line includes the reader, suggesting that only by accompanying Purfrock can one understand his problems.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
- T.S. Elliot 1919
S'io credessi che mia risposta fossea persona che mai tomasse al mundo,questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.Ma per cio che giammai di questo fondonon torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.--[Epigraph
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, ' What is it?
'Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ' Do I care? ' and, ' Do I dare?
'Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: ' How his hair is growing thin! ')
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: ' But how his arms and legs are thin! ')
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated,
sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
* * * * *
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
* * * * *
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep...tired...or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question
,To say: ' I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,S
hould say: ' That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it at all. 'And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the door
yards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the tea
cups, after the skirts that trail along
the floor---And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen;
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window,
should say,' That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant at all.
'* * * * *
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse
;At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool I grow old...
I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled
.Shall I part my hair behind?
Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers,
and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing,
each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

...Isolation within a desolate, bankrupt and wasteful landscape...
Both Vincent Van Gogh and T.S. Eliot's works reflect the nature of struggle and triumph of the artist's quest for true knowlege toward self-realization. The artist, like a magician, attempts to conjure 'truth' within the deep and dark recesses of his soul. Ironically, through the trick of gods, it is exactly there where he discovers his own falseness and personal 'demons' . He learns he is only a construct of 'ego' - living within his own corruption and that of his external world. He views this identity as mere illusion striving to exist withiin the shallow realm of false sentiment. As in the measurement of a compass that points toward both the North and True North - it is the schitzophrenic battle between the divided 'Self' .This schism uncovers the conflict and inner turmoil within his consciousness. Cunningly though, he is very much aware of the consequence of unleashing such 'colours' of these primal, undiluted passions i.e.,fear, anger,love, joy, hate, rage ect...Paradoxically, by this defiant and defining 'act of creation' , he declares 'Self' with absolute affirmation.Both artists convey the futility of life... within a desolate, bankrupt and wasteful landscape. It is this recurring theme that haunts the artiist's subjects, and which is characterized by a slow paced melancholy. However, this cynicism is ultimately betrayed through the artist's sense of aesthetic idealism and for his desire to attain perfection. He seeks hope through beauty, finds refuge within the calm, solace 'voice' amidst the confusion, and listens for the'music' within the stillness of his silence. Finally, within this self-imposed' exile', he sustains the slow burning embers of honest emotion which flicker the occasional concious scent of truth- and holds faith that this will one day unveil... shades of divinity.

T.S. ELLIOT FROM THE ESSAY "TRADITIONS AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT
" 1920"It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may be simple, or crude, or flat... The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. .. we must believe that "emotion recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration... it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not "recollected," and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. ... the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from the personal..