Decadent Experience: Conservatism and Modernity

At the core of literary decadence is a conflicted relationship with modernity. For some decadent writers, the onset of rapid social and technological change could usher in possibilities for living and loving in hitherto unimagined ways, yet for others of a more conservative hue, modernization was to be rejected, tradition embraced. This essay argues that experience can be used as a framework for articulating these very different forms of decadence. The essay begins with an exploration of aesthetic modernity as an attempt to articulate the shock of the new, whereby the experience (present) or sensation becomes the ground for the erosion of collective tradition (experience past). Decadent and aestheticist writers such as Walter Pater, Arthur Symons, and Oscar Wilde embraced these new experiences, rejecting the “fruits of experience” as a ground for knowledge. In contradistinction to this valorization of sensation, I examine the “conservative” decadent aesthetic of Lionel Johnson and Michael Field. These writers’ embrace of nostalgia and jingoistic nationalism, I argue, demands we expand our current critical frameworks to more fully encompass the politics of decadence.

Greek in Their Own Way: Writing India and Japan into the World History of Architecture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

At the turn of the twentieth century, two architects—Itō Chūta in Japan and Rajendralal Mitra in Bengal—sought to counter Eurocentric accounts of aesthetic modernity by insisting on the inclusion of Japanese and Indian building traditions in the world history of architecture. In different and indeed opposing ways, they mobilized the idea of classical Greece; while Itō saw ancient Japanese buildings as directly influenced by Greek models, Mitra denied any such connections. Beyond these differences, however, both scholars were aligned in their effort to use references to “Greece” in order to claim equivalence for their native architecture on a world stage. While invoking a Eurocentric standard to battle Eurocentrism may sound paradoxical, this article shows that a confluence of global forces went into the making of this late Victorian moment of imperial universalism. The globality of the standards both actors referred to should not be imagined as the result of a gradual spread and diffusion from a European center. Rather, actors constantly invented and co-produced these standards as they resonated both with global change and with social dynamics locally.

David Roberts: Images of aesthetic modernity

David Roberts has always had a keen, sharp and even mischievous eye for paradox, for pointing to what used to be termed in Hegelianese, ‘contradictions’ or ‘dialectics’ of modern society and its forms. Roberts’ keen eye has focused on the paradoxes (rather than negative dialectics) of aesthetic modernity and the forms that these paradoxes have taken within the historical time consciousness and self-understanding of modernity. This paper will suggest – although only sketchily and in outline – that Roberts’ keen eye notices and reconstructs three paradoxical models or forms of aesthetic modernity: 1. The total work of art of aesthetic modernism; 2. the contemporary postmodern plurality of the present which is captured as musealization; 3. interpretation, play and humour as the open acceptance of the contingency and paradoxes of the present.

Penčo Slavejkovs „Arbeit in der Gegenwart“

Summary This article focuses on Pencho Slaveykov’s concept of “work in the present,” which forms the core of his definition of modernity, blending together literature and social experience. Slaveykov’s literary project and author persona are viewed in the broader context of aesthetic modernity. The Bulgarian modernist is a cultural engineer pushing the idea of a differentiation of cultural and artistic spheres. His goal is to autonomize literature after the utilitarian imperatives of the Bulgarian National Revival. The author simultaneously embodies a Balkan ‘crank’ and a German conceptualist. Slaveykov’s work not only demonstrates that modernism has broken with the past, but also constructs an alternative cultural memory shaped in the generic modes of the epic, the lyric, and the anthology. The author entitles himself with the power to be a guardian of cultural memory. Pencho Slaveykov’s conceptualizations envisage the creation of the author as an institution pivotal for the construction of a national literature.

Cinema and architecture: Modern perception

Walter Benjamin's essay on cinema expounds his prognostic values. By the time he wrote this article his critique of the capitalistic mode of production showed the direction in which capitalism was progressing: towards an increasing intensity in exploitation of the proletariat, but also its own decline. We are interested in these prognoses that affirm the transformation of art and its function, and which call our attention to the loss of transcendence and the decline of the aura of the work of art. At the same time, they show possibilities that affirm the continuity of art with a different role and the dislocation of the aura. The form of art that is suitable to this reflection is cinema and the parallel drawn by the philosopher between cinema and architecture. Our intention is to reflect on this parallel and the urban interventions as artistic forms of aesthetic modernity: that is, as products of this modernity that at the same time indicate the way the world is given to us and understood by us. We will also reflection cinema and theatre indications as a way to surpass corporal determinations that are imposed on us.