Avant-Garde Presentation

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/>.