Page 209 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 209
ialist Modernism as Compromise: A Study of the Romanian Literary System
Late modernism Socialist modernism 209
1. Undertheorised 1. Undertheorised
2. Aesthetic autonomism (as 2. Aesthetic autonomism (as
opposed to the politics of high opposed to the ideology of
modernism) socialist realism)
3. Transcendence, myth, 3. Transcendence, myth,
Hermeticism (in contrast to Hermeticism (in
capitalist commodification) contrast to communist
4. Organic community as an materialism)
alternative to institutionalised 4. Individualism
collectivity as alternative to
5. Neo-avant-garde institutionalised
6. Obsolescence and exhaustion collectivity
7. Critique of the capitalist 5. ‘Classicisation’ of high
establishment modernism
6. Inaugural feeling
7. Integrated in the
communist cultural
system
It is evident from the comparison above that, of the seven sets of char-
acteristics whereby I aimed to describe the two paradigms, the first three
(1–3) coincide almost perfectly, although they sometimes apply to dif-
ferent reference points. Yet, notwithstanding the extreme doctrine they
oppose to or the attempt toward homogenisation they strive to distance
themselves from, both (non-socialist) late modernism and socialist mod-
3) The characteristics of late modernism can manifest in different ways and at
different levels of the literary work. There are, of course, significant differ-
ences between Carpentier’s manner of suggesting myth and transcendence as
diffuse presences in his real maravilloso, Barth’s implicit plea for a necessary
‘beyond’ through a reductio ad absurdum of nihilistic thought in The Float-
ing Opera, and Pynchon’s still Joycean perpetuation of the mythical quest
pattern in his V. However, these are no more than ‘stylistic’ differences coex-
isting within the framework of the same paradigm, and they do not challenge
the mentioned writers’ adherence to late modernism. Even when consider-
ing the case of the French nouveau romanciers, who are seemingly poles apart
from our model, we encounter an unquestionable fascination with myth—
expressed either by the dissolution of narrative into a “mythical nebula” (De
Toffoli 265), as is the case with Simon, or, as with Robbe-Grillet’s The Eras-
ers, by the articulation of the narrative itself according to a Lévi-Straussian
dualist pattern of the “structure of myth” (Britton 71–75).
Late modernism Socialist modernism 209
1. Undertheorised 1. Undertheorised
2. Aesthetic autonomism (as 2. Aesthetic autonomism (as
opposed to the politics of high opposed to the ideology of
modernism) socialist realism)
3. Transcendence, myth, 3. Transcendence, myth,
Hermeticism (in contrast to Hermeticism (in
capitalist commodification) contrast to communist
4. Organic community as an materialism)
alternative to institutionalised 4. Individualism
collectivity as alternative to
5. Neo-avant-garde institutionalised
6. Obsolescence and exhaustion collectivity
7. Critique of the capitalist 5. ‘Classicisation’ of high
establishment modernism
6. Inaugural feeling
7. Integrated in the
communist cultural
system
It is evident from the comparison above that, of the seven sets of char-
acteristics whereby I aimed to describe the two paradigms, the first three
(1–3) coincide almost perfectly, although they sometimes apply to dif-
ferent reference points. Yet, notwithstanding the extreme doctrine they
oppose to or the attempt toward homogenisation they strive to distance
themselves from, both (non-socialist) late modernism and socialist mod-
3) The characteristics of late modernism can manifest in different ways and at
different levels of the literary work. There are, of course, significant differ-
ences between Carpentier’s manner of suggesting myth and transcendence as
diffuse presences in his real maravilloso, Barth’s implicit plea for a necessary
‘beyond’ through a reductio ad absurdum of nihilistic thought in The Float-
ing Opera, and Pynchon’s still Joycean perpetuation of the mythical quest
pattern in his V. However, these are no more than ‘stylistic’ differences coex-
isting within the framework of the same paradigm, and they do not challenge
the mentioned writers’ adherence to late modernism. Even when consider-
ing the case of the French nouveau romanciers, who are seemingly poles apart
from our model, we encounter an unquestionable fascination with myth—
expressed either by the dissolution of narrative into a “mythical nebula” (De
Toffoli 265), as is the case with Simon, or, as with Robbe-Grillet’s The Eras-
ers, by the articulation of the narrative itself according to a Lévi-Straussian
dualist pattern of the “structure of myth” (Britton 71–75).
