Traditions of the primitive in the modernist literature

Ambivalent treatment of the primitive in the literary modernism is studied as exemplified by the works of D. H. Lawrence, E. Hemingway, S. Anderson, J. Conrad, G. Stein, K. van Vechten and C. MacCay. The modernist artists viewed the primitive either as a healthy alternative to the morbid Western civilization or as a real threat to the cultural dimension in a human being. The first attitude obviously prevails working for construction of the modernist utopia.