1910

by Harrison, Thomas J.

• ISBN13: 9780520200432
• ISBN10: 0520200438
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

The year 1910 marks an astonishing, and largely unrecognized, juncture in Western history. In this perceptive interdisciplinary analysis, Thomas Harrison addresses the extraordinary intellectual achievement of the time. Focusing on the cultural climate of Middle Europe and paying particular attention to the life and work of Carlo Michelstaedter, he deftly portrays the reciprocal implications of different discourses--philosophy, literature, sociology, music, and painting. His beautifully balanced and deeply informed study provides a new, wider, and more ambitious definition of expressionism and shows the significance of this movement in shaping the artistic and intellectual mood of the age. 1910probes the recurrent themes and obsessions in the work of intellectuals as diverse as Egon Schiele, Georg Trakl, Vasily Kandinsky, Georg Lukagrave;cs, Georg Simmel, Dino Campana, and Arnold Schoenberg. Together with Michelstaedter, who committed suicide in 1910 at the age of 23, these thinkers shared the essential concerns of expressionism: a sense of irresolvable conflict in human existence, the philosophical status of death, and a quest for the nature of human subjectivity. Expressionism, Harrison argues provocatively, was a last, desperate attempt by the intelligentsia to defend some of the most venerable assumptions of European culture. This ideological desperation, he claims, was more than a spiritual prelude to World War I: it was an unheeded, prophetic critique.

Author Biography

Thomas Harrison is currently Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction	p. 1
The Emancipation of Dissonance	p. 18
Gorizia, Judaic Indeterminacy and Triestine Art	p. 20
The Chimera	p. 32
Poetic Duplicity	p. 40
Decentralized Music	p. 46
Spirituality and Materialism	p. 52
Destiny at Odds with Itself	p. 60
An Ontology of Opposition	p. 66
Persuasive Life-Experience	p. 77
The Deficiency of Being	p. 85
Three Women	p. 85
A Deadly Vocation	p. 91
In the Beginning Was the End	p. 97
Life as Abstraction	p. 101
Sociology of Death	p. 105
Decrepitude in Body and Soul	p. 108
Cosmic Guilt	p. 117
Impotence	p. 121
Loss of Self	p. 136
The Hole Called the Soul	p. 139
Autoscopy	p. 141
Qualitative Individualism	p. 146
Subjective Transcendence	p. 149
Self-Possession	p. 154
Pictures of Soul	p. 164
An Ethics of Misunderstanding	p. 182
Ethical and Aesthetic Transcendence	p. 184
Spiritual Poverty	p. 189
Tragic Acquiescence	p. 195
Ecstatic Confessions	p. 202
Intransitive Love	p. 205
Ladies of the Unicorn: Structive Art	p. 210
Afterword and Aftermath	p. 216
Primary Sources	p. 227
Secondary Sources	p. 241
Index	p. 259
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