Modernist literature as a reflection of the experience transformation: Walter Benjamin’s сoncept

This article aims to explore main aspects of the modernist literature phenomenon from the perspective of Walter Benjamin’s concept of experience. The following issues are considered: social and economic changes of the modern time, the growth in importance of the new experience type, the transformation of the verity’s notion and the embodiment of these changes in the modernist literature. The other topics of this research are the connection of modernity and tradition and the problem of creating an author’s myth. Spatial and temporal dimensions of modernist works are considered with their correlation to a life experience in a big city. Changing in the experience structure is also analyzed through its manifestation in motives of modernist works: fear of the unknown, loneliness, alienation from society and one’s own body. The result of the research is a framework for analyzing modernist works of art and the modernism phenomenon as a whole.