Aesthetic modernism as a macro-epoch. Part 1

I. Plurality of Modernisms - Micro- and Macro-Epochal Concepts

Literary studies, just like other historical sciences, has two entirely different ways of applying the concept of “modernism”. The diverse meanings must be strictly separated with reference to the concept of the “macro-epoch of aesthetic modernism”, which will be more closely defined as a guiding analytical category in the following text.

In the first instance, we encounter an astounding plurality of modernisms. German literary history is familiar with a modernism located in Berlin around 1900. In other approaches, there is talk of a Viennese or a Prague modernism. Musicology knows its own modernism, as do art history and of course architecture, to which field we owe the concept of post-modernism. In all of these cases, “modernism” is not primarily used to describe an epoch but rather is related to concepts pertaining to style or “programme”. Only in the second instance does a time-based notion emerge that allows it to be applied as a chronological category of order, albeit connected and subject to the dominant apparition of a given style or programme. The three fundamental features that define such a concept of epoch - i.e. beginning, end and the coherency of the marked time continuum - are all connected to the dominance of a certain given style or programme. The first formulation or realization of such a programme or style marks the beginning of an epoch thus defined; the loss of its dominant position might indicate the end, and its function, which steers aesthetic discourse pertaining to it,

guides and guarantees its internal content and cohesion. In principle, infinitely many thusly constituted epochs can be seen to coexist simultaneously on an equal logical and hierarchical level, or indeed to overlap.

Such a historicizing application of “modernism”, which describes it as a discreet and past unit, must be differentiated from that concept of modernism which can be described as open to the present and based on an awareness of the respective present, which is equally established in numerous historical scientific fields. When speaking of the philosophical discourse of modernism [Habermas 1986] or of the aesthetic communication of the modern [Plumpe 1993], the “modern” indicates a long-term historical context which includes the genesis and history of a given phenomenon or problem that is also seen as definitional or influential for the present. Or from a reversed historical perspective: the continuum of each respective “modernity” arises in the process of questioning the defining contemporary factors in the light of their origins and development. Two conditions must be fulfilled in order for a historical phenomenon to appear relevant to our own epochal situation: first, any engagement must be characterized by a feeling of mea res agitura - which is to say, a feeling that the historical situation under consideration contains a visible problem that is still relevant to us - even if this problem pertains to historical moments and is described in other terms. If, furthermore, a perspective emerges that reveals this problem to either repeat itself or to have remained virulent, or to have re-emerged repeatedly in various different forms over a certain period of time through history up to the present, then both conditions for the sense of a historical phenomenon belonging to the respective modernity are fulfilled. Hans-Georg Gadamer proffers the category of melting horizons to describe such a process:

In truth, the horizon of the present is in a constant and ongoing process, to the extent that we must continually test all of our prejudices. Such testing pertains not least to our encounters with the past and understanding of the heritage we come from. The horizon of the present thus does not form itself without the past. [...] Rather, understanding is always the melting process of such existing horizons. [Gadamer 1972, 289].

In other words: our own consciousness of epoch only starts to form in an engagement with the past, shaping itself whilst we question past phenomena in the light of whether we can find in them any of the structures or problems pertaining to our own consciousness, or horizon of the present.

The defining features of a concept of an epoch as explicated above pose particular problems to a concept of modernity that is open to the present. It is per defnitionem evident that in this usage it is impossible to speak of an end of the modern, insofar as the respective present is always included in the modern and can furthermore imply projections into the future. However, this point seems to be called into question by the so-called post-modern, post-historical debate. These discussions can nonetheless be excluded from the context of a formal definition of a concept of modernism that is open to the present because, to put it simply, both positions can be described as competing models of a consciousness of the present, albeit derived from different historical contexts. From

a formal perspective, both in fact construe concepts of modernity that are open to the present, whereby the one side refers to a fairly established content-filled “modernism” and thus forces the other to look for alternative terminologies.

An even greater problem than the end of the modern is the question of its beginning. Even within literary studies, the breadth of competing models is extraordinary: modernism might be the “modern age” [Elm, Hemmerich 1982, 17], which is to say, beginning the middle of the 15^th century, as maintained by Theo Elm and Gerd Hemmerich, who must then however concede that with this assumption, we could do without one of the concepts and choose between “modernism” and “the modern age”. Hans Robert JauB [JauB 1987, 243-268] places the beginning of modernism in 1750, Silvio Vietta [Vietta 1992] sees it fifty years later in the epochal wave around 1800 and Karl Heinz Bohrer sees it thirty years after that, focussing on the concept of Imagination inherent to High Romanticism [cf. Bohrer 1989]. Rolf Grimminger argues in the radio programme Funkkolleg Literarische Moderns for the late 19th century as the beginning of modernism [Grimminger et al. 1993-1994]. This plurality of theses mirrors the diversity of research interests and methodologies. All of them nonetheless share the same question of where to seek the historical roots of a present-related and in this sense “modern” phenomenon.

Historicizing concepts of modernity and those that are open to the present also differ in relation to the third defining factor, the coherence of an epoch. The historicizing concept of modernity orientates itself according to the terminologies of the literary programme represented before 1900 by figures like Eugen Wolff, Hermann Bahr or Samuel Lublinski [cf. Wunberg 1971]. At its core, it contains a conceptual programme developed at the time which, like many other similar descriptions (that were also used retrospectively to name epochs), were initially developed as a combative notion against the dominating programme, which was perceived to be in direct competition. In this sense Adorno is right when he notes that modernism “is from the very beginning more a negation of that which should no longer be, rather than a positive parole” [cf. Adorno 1970, 38]. The historicizing concept of modernism that orients itself according to given programme thus contains a certain tendency - which is also demonstrable through Viktor Sklovskij’s and Jurij Tynjanov’s automatisation theory [cf. Striedter 1981] - towards a negative definition, where difference and innovation are emphasised in opposition to the old establishment. In contrast, the long-term conception of modernism that is open to the present seeks inter-connections between numerous different short epochs of literary history. This conception is not so much a static classification category as a hermeneutic construction through which any consciousness of the respective present can reassure itself of itself with reference to history. Such an application of the concept thus primarily focuses on the process of seeking connections rather than a strict establishment of difference to the non-modern. Consequently, the modernist concept that is open to the present can barely tolerate other descriptions of epochs on the same hierarchical logical level. However, there are indeed research perspectives that describe the anti-modern as a long-term epoch too [cf. Klinger 1995].

The differentiation between historicizing short-term epochs of the modern and long-term models that are open to the present corresponds with the terminological differentiation between micro- and macro-epochs as developed in the realm of historical research [cf. Vietta, Kemper 1998, 1-56]. This differentiation of epochal scale is firmly rooted in numerous historical disciplines and practices and might be seen to include widely different approaches. There is a general consensus, both across interdisciplinary boundaries and within various different methodical approaches in literary studies, to see the beginning of the macro-epoch of modernism in what Reinhart Koselleck termed the “Sattelzeit” (saddle period) around 1800; in its broadest sense, at some point between 1750 and 1850. This accords both with Jurgen Habermas’ [Habermas 1986] concept of modernism in the history of philosophy and with Niklas Luhmann’s [Luh-mann 1980-1995, III, 155] modernism is sociology. Within the field of German literary studies, system-theoretical [cf. Plumpe 1995], problematic-historical [cf. Vietta 1992], production-theoretical and reception-theoretical [cf. Bloom 1994] approaches all focus on the epochal threshold around 1800.

In the following, a genesis of the macro-epochal concept of modernism will be reconstructed in section II in order, in section III, to demonstrate that the self-description of the constant and ongoing new definition of modernism around 1800 underwent decisive changes that continue to influence our ideas about the present and about modernism today. Finally, diverse exemplary understandings of “tradition” will be used to demonstrate which consequences this shift brought about in relation to the aesthetic discourse pertaining to modernism (IV).

IL A history of the older macro-epochal concept of modernism

The adjective “modern” or “modernus” is far older than the ensuing substantives “modernism” and “modernity” [cf. Freund 1957; JauB 1979, 11-66; Gumbrecht 1978, 93-131]. The adjective, in connection with such substantives as “tempus”, “saeculum”, or in the substantiated form as “moderni” was used to describe time periods and epochs from the very beginnings of the history of the concept. The oldest uses of “modernus” [Thesaurus Linguae Latinae 1936-1966, VIII, 1211-1212] are to found in two of Pope Gelasius’ letters from the years 494-495. Here, he differentiated between the “admontiones moder-nae” of the time as compared to the “patrum regulae” [Epistolae Romanorum 1867, 389]. However, in this earliest instance of usage, “modernus” is not yet used to describe an epochal concept. Rather, following its etymology from the Latin “modo” (just now, just recently), it describes the “just created, the new” in reference to a single given topic without any indication of referring to an entire new epoch. Such documents are therefore omitted from the following, as is the use of “modernus” to describe certain phases in the history of science and research, which was particularly common in the context of medieval philosophical schools and remained in use into the Renaissance [cf. Deutsches Fremdworterbuch 1913-1988, II, 134; Gumbrecht 1978, 98].

The history of the macro-epochal concept of modernism starts early, though, barely a decade later in the first decade of the 6th century. The earliest available documents are two letters of Cassiodor from the years 507 and 511. The historical break that occurred with the decline of the Western Roman empire was of particular significance for Cassiodor, the compiler of the twelve-volume Historia Gothica and employee of the East Gothic court of Theoderich. In this situation of historical upheaval, Cassiodor tried to communicate an awareness and assertion of ancient Roman attitudes, statesmanship and culture. The concept of the past he used to describe these ideals is “antiquitas”, with reference to the implicit value of “antiquitatis auctoritas”. However, he does not see the authority of antiquity as guaranteed by tradition. Rather, he identifies a need for renewal and restauration: “ut [...] nostris temporibus videatur antiquitas decen-tius innovata” [Cassiodor 1894, 139 (4, 51, 12)]. The awareness of discontinuity formulated here in opposition to antiquitas demands, in its differentiation from the conception of the past contained in the notion of antiquitas, a concept of time or epoch for the respective present, which Cassiodor describes as “nostra tempora” or “nostra saecula” but he also uses the substantive form of “moder-nus” [Cassiodor 1894, 138 (4, 51, 2)].

This awareness gives rise to the particularly effective dichotomy between “antiqui” / “moderni” or “antiquus” / “modernus”, which dominated the epochal discourse pertaining to modernism well into the late 18th and early 19th century [cf. Gossmann 1974]. The decisive condition for the constructions and descriptions of modernisms in the following centuries appears to have been the original development of epochal concepts against the background of this feeling of discontinuity, an awareness of cultural loss which the current time is required to recover in a process of imitatio. Only those who have lost any awareness of an uninterrupted temporal continuum underpinned by tradition are qualified to speak of “moderni” or “tempi moderna”.

In this early phase of the history of the concept, modernism is not yet directly connected with any given historical model, which is to say that the concept of epoch implies neither a decadent nor a progress-oriented model as being inherent to the logic of the progression of epochs. Nevertheless, as the temporal distance to the past epoch of antiquity grew, and as the state organisation of Romance-Germanic ethnic groups developed, the general awareness of the historical distance to antiquity grew, opening up the possibility of describing an ever-larger time period of the present using the term “modernism”. In the Carolingian era, which saw the first broader use of epochal concepts, the term “modernum saeculum”, such as for example in Heito and Walahfrid Strabo’s [Walahfrid Strabo 1884, 271, 318, 453 ff.] 9^th century “Visio Wettini” editions, was already used to describe long periods, drawing a line between Charlemagne’s universal monarchy and the early Christian period and late antiquity. A narrower but equally inclusive macro-epochal concept of the present is evident in Notker Balbulus’ use of “tempora moderna” in his Gesta Caroli 884, where he links the beginning of modernity to Charlemagne [Notker Balbulus 1929, 731, 30 ff. (1.2)], who was celebrated as the “lux clara moderni / Temporis” by

Wilhelm Оеке, better known as “Poeta Saxo”, in his writings from around 809 [Poeta Saxo 1899, 5, 44 fF., 576 f.].

The further division between pagan or early Christian antiquity on the one hand and modernity including the respective present on the other gave rise to an increasing tendency, starting in the 9th century, to structure the period in between and to put it into perspective along temporal lines of development. An early decadent model of modernism emerges with the 11^th century Investiture Controversy, where the lay investiture at the time seemed to the Papal side to be divergent from the canonical prescriptions of the Church Fathers. From this perspective, Bertold von der Reichenau’s Annales makes a deteriorating historical connection between the Roman Lenten synod of 1975 and the “sanctorum patrum constitutiones” [Bertold von Reichenau 1844, 277, 25]. The opposing perspective model that holds modernism to be the transient pinnacle of a progressive development first blossomed in the 12th century in the renaissance of the high middle ages. Of particular significance is the image postulated by Bernard de Chartres and transmitted by John of Salisbury of “modern!” as dwarves that sit on the shoulders of giants, and thus see further [Ghellinck 1945, 25-29; Map 1914, 158]. This particular awareness of the superiority of the current time as opposed to past epochs re-emerges in the cyclical historical approaches of the Renaissance, although here the exemplary role of antiquity and the ensuing epochal metaphor of “renasci”, the rebirth, in fact precludes the epoch from describing itself as modern [cf. Schlobach 1980]. It is important for a further exploration of the history of the concept to consider the fact that the Renaissance no longer looked at the relationship between the present and antiquity under the aspect of imitatio but strove towards aemulatio, a conscious emulation of a model which, it was believed, could certainly be surpassed. Thus at the end of the first major period of the history of the concept there stands a typology of modernism as a reference to the present epoch. This remains a defining factor for further developments: beside the relatively (in comparison to broader historical and philosophical models) neutral concept used to describe the youngest and ongoing epochs, we encounter models such as cyclical repetition, decadence or progression, all of which describe modernism in terms of the end of historically renewing, disintegrating or advancing developments.

This first great phase of the history of the concept from late antiquity until the Renaissance is characterized by the relational nature of epochal concepts: after Cossiodor, “modernus” was defined in opposition to “antiquus”. As such, “modernitas” meant the other and the new, in direct retrospective and contrasting reference to some kind of “antiquitas”.

This strict retrospective relationship dissolves gradually in the course of the second great phase, the Enlightenment. The catalyst for this development, as demonstrated by Hans Robert JauB, can be identified as the “Querelle des Anciens et des Moderns” [JauB 1964; JauB 1979, 67-107], whereby the epochal significance of this discourse for the theory of modernism and for the history of aesthetics in the 17th and 18th centuries can hardly be overstated. It is well known that this argument, which extended across Europe, pertaining to the rel-

In their rejoinders, opposing thinkers from the team favouring the Anciens, led by Boileau, focussed on the argumentation that Perrault had simply turned the normative arrow around: if until then modernity had been measured in terms of the norm-setting ancient world, he was now trying to evaluate antiquity according to the norms of French classicism. This apparent evaluative disjunction led, in the results of the Querelle, to a more or less clear acceptance of the notion that every epoch ought to be evaluated according to its own specific benchmarks. As self-explanatory as this might sound - in the aftermath of the victory of historicism in the 18^th and 19^th centuries - this position at least paved the way for the possibility in the early 18^th century to understand and define the modern age according to its own benchmarks without necessary recourse to any given antiquity.

In the three-phase model of the history of the concept of modernism postulated here, we can thus identify the Enlightenment as the second step: whilst

“modernus” and “moderni” remained strictly related to “antiquus” and “antique”, and as such in the first phase, from late antiquity until the Renaissance, modernism was always construed in terms of its difference to something earlier, the Enlightenment, the second phase of the history of the concept, created possibilities for an autonomy of modernism, comprehensible according to its own terms without any defining relational recourse to other epochs.