Cassandra
Cuddy
Philosophy
408
Dr.
Rex Gilliland
Presentation
#2
26
November 2012
Avant-Garde Presentation
“Avant-garde” comes from the French word, "advance guard" or
"vanguard." The term avant-garde was originally used to
describe the foremost part of an army advancing into battle (also known as the
vanguard, or the advance guard), but now is applied to innovative artists ahead
of the majority. Avant-garde was an art
movement that pushed the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the
status quo, primarily in the cultural realm.
It was based on the belief that the power of the arts is the most
immediate and fastest way to social, political, and economic reform.
Avant-garde literature was one part
of this art movement, and stylistically moves between augmentation (abundance,
immersion, getting more in) and subtraction (minimalism, reduction, lessness)
(James 2). Augmentation in avant-garde
takes the form of an intensification of the sentence rather than
intensification of the things that many people habitually associate with the
novel—plots, characters, objects. A
characteristic of the avant-garde novel is the presence of long, breathing,
unstopped sentences which are meant to reproduce the tiniest qualifications,
hesitations, affirmations, and negations of being alive. These sentences could be as long as an entire
chapter, presented without paragraph breaks.
Avant-garde writers could be called realists, of a kind. However, they are interested in the reality
to the point of madness
Dadaism was an art movement associated
with avant-garde. Dadaism was a part of
European avant-garde in the early twentieth century. It was born out of negative reactions to the
horrors of World War I. The movement
concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards
in art through anti-art cultural works.
It was also anti-bourgeois. This
movement influenced avant-garde, surrealism, and Nouveau realism.
The New Novel movement was also associated with avant-garde,
and began in France during the 1950’s.
This movement was made of a group of writers that rejected literary
traditions of plot, action, and narrative.
These writers wanted to instead present an objective record of objects.
Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French New Novel writer. He quickly became popular throughout the
literary world, became the an extremely famous writer and spokesperson for the
new Novel movement.
Grillet’s writing style has been described as
"realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian
sense). Writing method was extremely methodical,
geometric, and often what characterized by repetitive descriptions of objects
replace (though often reveal) the psychology and interiority of the
character. Often, readers must slowly
piece together his stories because of his writing method. His stories are characterized by repetitive
descriptions, attention to odd details, and with breaks in repetitions; this method
resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious
meanings are contained. His stories are
also difficult to read because they contain fractured timelines and plots. His writing is ultimately characterized by
its ability to mean many things to many different people.
Grillet’s novel, The Erasers, is
a detective story about a man
mysteriously dying, after a series of other politically influenced murders. The local law enforcement, having made no
progress in their investigations, is deemed incapable, so a detective is sent
in to solve the case. This is the simple plot.
However, the mystery is anything but simple. The latest dead man, Albert or Daniel Dupont
(his identity is at first unclear), may not really be dead, and the detective
sent to solve his murder, Monsieur Wallas, may in fact be the killer. But the
central figure in this mystery, the prime suspect, is neither of these men: it
is the narrative.
In The Erasers, the
device of narrative repetition is central. The narrative itself reflects on the necessary
physical efforts of a mind attempting to construct reality. Moreover, the prose is a maze, made up of
various perspectives and retellings of the same events. In addition, the mystery is solved only
through the proper dissection of the small differences in each perspective’s
details, which then leads to the knowledge of what exactly is fact in the story
and what is fiction. Repetition is a
primary focus of most of Robbe-Grillet's work, repetition mixed with at times
monotonous detail concerning ordinary things. An example:
“Several
façades, rows of small, dark-red bricks, solid, monotonous, patient: a penny
profit made by the “Resinous Wood Corporation”, a penny earned by “Louis
Schwod, Wood Exporter”, by “Mark and Lengler” or by the “Borex Corporation”.
Wood export, resinous wood, industrial wood, wood for export, export of
resinous wood, the neighbourhood is completely devoted to this commerce; thousands
of acres of pine trees, piled brick by brick, to shelter the big ledgers. All
the houses are built the same way: five steps lead to a varnished door,
recessed with black plaques on each side showing the firm's name in gold
letters; two windows to the left, one to the right, and four storeys of similar
windows above. Perhaps there are flats among all these offices? They cannot be
discerned, in any case, by any outer sign. The employees, still not wide awake,
who will be filling the street in an hour, will have a good deal of difficulty
despite being used to it, recognizing their doors; or else maybe they enter the
first one they come to, to export at random the wood of Louis Schwob or of Mark
and Lengler? The main thing is that they do their work carefully, so that the
little bricks go on piling up like figures in the big ledgers, preparing still
another storey of pennies for the building; a few hundred tons more of totals
and exact business letters: “Gentlemen, in answer to yours of the...” paid cash,
one pine tree for five bricks.”
This example employs repetitive imagery: the streets are
indistinguishable from one another, so the reader can get easily lost.
Claude Simone is another avant-garde author. One of his novels, The Flanders Road, is representative of the French avant-garde
movement. This novel is about the
death of one aristocratic and thoroughly idiosyncratic World War II cavalry
captain named de Reixach. The story looks
to piece together an account of the mysterious captain through the shared and
personal memories of his war-time subordinates.
Simone’s writing style is characterized by muddled accounts and
interpretations of various acquaintances of the dead captain. These accounts are filtered through the
impressions of those who served under him, from the emotional and poetic
Georges (a member of de Reixach’s company and a distant cousin), to a former
jockey in his employment. Simone mixes
memories and stories, entering into and leaving the thought patterns of
characters, and playing with punctuation in a way that makes the novel
incredibly difficult to follow. For
example:
“He was holding a
letter in his hand, he raised his eyes looked at me then the letter again then
once more at me, behind him I could see the red mahogany ochre blurs of the
horses being led to the watering trough, the mud was so deep you sank into it
up to your ankles but I remember that during the night it had frozen suddenly
and Wack came into the bedroom with the coffee saying The dogs ate up the mud,
I had never heard the expression, I could almost see the dogs, some kind of
infernal, legendary creatures their mouths pink-rimmed their wolf fangs cold
and white chewing up the black mud In the night’s gloom, perhaps a
recollection, the devouring dogs cleaning, clearing away: now the mud was grey
and we twisted our ankles running, late as usual for morning call, almost
tripping in the deep tracks left by the hoofs and frozen hard as stone, and a
moment later he said Your mother’s written me.”
Claude’s storytelling seems to contain several locations and memories. Moreover, he is known for garbling time
frames; this quote encapsulates what Simone looks to do with the idea of the
thought process, of memory and recollection, and of storytelling. Stylistically, there is an uncertainty with
who is speaking, thinking, and whose memories belong to who. Simone also is known for switching from first
person to narrative without warning, which could be very confusing and
disorienting for the reader.
Andre
Breton was a French avant-garde writer and poet,
known best as the founder of surrealism.
He wrote a play called If You Please (S'il Vous Plaît), which
also categorized as dada-surrealist. Breton co-wrote this play with the novelist,
Phillipe Soupault. The play is in four
acts; each act begins a new and unrelated story. Act I follows two lovers, Paul and Valentine,
and Valentine's husband. The play
contains many avant-garde qualities, such as the confusion and disorientation
in the dialogue. For example, in
Act I, the two lovers share a very
confusing dialogue with one another. Paul
says, "I love you." The two lovers
then share a "long kiss." Valentine then replies, "A cloud of milk
in a cup of tea." This act ends
with murder at the hands of a jilted lover, but turned on its head, "Paul
slowly draws a revolver from his pocket, barely taking aim. Valentine falls
without a sound." Act II is a detective story. In the beginning, its protagonist, Létoile,
apparently a private detective, sits in his office with investigator
storylines, which quickly become absurd and are as quickly abandoned. In Scene 4, when a man tries to hire Létoile's
to recover the man's wife's stolen ring, Létoile, instead of pursuing the case,
simply explains, "Matters such as this concern the police," and the
man "rises, bows, and leaves," ending the scene and the storyline. In a subsequent scene a woman enters his
office and explains that her husband "feels an honest and upright love for
another woman" and that she wants to give him a divorce to "grant him
his independence." Létoile presents
reasons why she shouldn't get a divorce but forcefully insists on executing the
divorce for her. Act II features an
encounter between Mixime, a thirty-year-old man, and Gilda, a prostitute, who
meet in a café. They exchange seemingly
incoherent dialogue:
MAXIME:
The kingdom of the skies is peopled with assassins. Higher up there's a swing
which waits for you. Don't lift your head again.
GILDA: The photographer said: Let's not move.
MAXIME: I don't want to die.
GILDA: Someone has dared to sadden you?
MAXIME: I don't think so; I've only just come in.
GILDA: Are your eyes really that color?
The act ends with Maxime asking to go with Gilda to her flat.
"Don't insist, sweetheart," she says. "You'll regret it. I've got the
syph." Maxime replies simply,
"Who cares," and they exit together. This act is followed by "a long
intermission." In the text of the
play, Act IV is only a note, stating "The authors of 'If You Please' do
not want the fourth act printed."
This play shows how avant-garde often tries to portray real-life scenes
in an absurd light. This play shows how
avant-garde writers are interested in reality to the point of madness.
Work Cited
James, Wood. "Madness and Civilization." The New
Yorker. N.p., 4 July 2011. Web. 25 Nov.
2012.
>http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/07/04/110704crat_atlarge_
wood>.
Kelleheller, Damian. "Alain Robbe-Grillet - The
Erasers." Damian Kelleher. N.p., n.d. Web. 25
Nov. 2012. <http://www.damiankelleher.com/drupal/review/alain-robbe-grillet-erasers>.
Siegel, Kristi. "Introduction to Modern Literary
Theory." Introduction to Modern Literary
Theory. N.p., n.d. Web.
25 Nov. 2012. <http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm>.
Woolfrey, Chris. "The Flanders Road by Claude
Simon." Literateurcom RSS. N.p., 16 Mar.
2010. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.
<http://literateur.com/the-flanders-road-by-claude-simon/>.