Gayle Rogers
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199914975
- eISBN:
- 9780199980192
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199914975.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter examines the efforts of Stephen Spender, Manuel Altolaguirre, and several of their associates to create a European anti-fascist poetic community for which the bonds between the Auden ...
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This chapter examines the efforts of Stephen Spender, Manuel Altolaguirre, and several of their associates to create a European anti-fascist poetic community for which the bonds between the Auden Generation and the Spanish Generation of ’27 would be central. The frames for this work are the claims by Ortega, in several articles in English, and Altolaguirre, in his journal 1616: English and Spanish Poetry, that England and Spain shared a unique history that compelled cooperation; the attempts, led primarily by Spender, to channel Spanish voices of the conflict through British literary culture; and the battles over the political and cultural significance of Lorca’s assassination. Spender, one of Lorca’s earliest translators, found himself defending his view of the Spaniard’s mutable, populist figure against its misappropriation. With the aid of two Spanish collaborators, Spender influentially characterized him instead as an apolitical Spanish-European poet, and he edited the volume Poems for Spain, which intercalated British and Spanish voices on the war. At the same time, while Poems for Spain evinces the mutual influences of two literary generations, its publication in March 1939, when Franco’s victory was ensured, made it an elegy for the lost Republic. The awkward and ultimately failed literary endeavors taken up in this chapter underwent significant revisions both in Spender’s poetry and in later translations of Lorca.Less
This chapter examines the efforts of Stephen Spender, Manuel Altolaguirre, and several of their associates to create a European anti-fascist poetic community for which the bonds between the Auden Generation and the Spanish Generation of ’27 would be central. The frames for this work are the claims by Ortega, in several articles in English, and Altolaguirre, in his journal 1616: English and Spanish Poetry, that England and Spain shared a unique history that compelled cooperation; the attempts, led primarily by Spender, to channel Spanish voices of the conflict through British literary culture; and the battles over the political and cultural significance of Lorca’s assassination. Spender, one of Lorca’s earliest translators, found himself defending his view of the Spaniard’s mutable, populist figure against its misappropriation. With the aid of two Spanish collaborators, Spender influentially characterized him instead as an apolitical Spanish-European poet, and he edited the volume Poems for Spain, which intercalated British and Spanish voices on the war. At the same time, while Poems for Spain evinces the mutual influences of two literary generations, its publication in March 1939, when Franco’s victory was ensured, made it an elegy for the lost Republic. The awkward and ultimately failed literary endeavors taken up in this chapter underwent significant revisions both in Spender’s poetry and in later translations of Lorca.
Michael O'Neill
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199299287
- eISBN:
- 9780191715099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299287.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses the poetry of W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, exploring the complicated response of both to the Romantic bequest. The first section focuses on a variety of texts by Auden, ...
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This chapter discusses the poetry of W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, exploring the complicated response of both to the Romantic bequest. The first section focuses on a variety of texts by Auden, including his Letter to Lord Byron, in order to bring out the intricately post-Romantic nature of his voice in his Thirties poetry. The section examines early poems such as ‘Who stands, the crux left of the watershed’ for their evidence of thwarted post-Romantic longing, as well as later poems such as ‘In memory of W. B. Yeats’ for the ways in which Auden reinvents for the modern age a poetry akin to the Romantics' in its concern to be both undidactic and ‘A way of happening’. Auden's practice in Letter to Lord Byron is compared with Byron's comic mode, and a mixture of admiration and necessary distance in Auden's view of Byron is discovered. The second section looks at Spender's attempts to preserve a Romantic lyric voice in the modern age; it compares, for example, his poem ‘Moving through the silent crowd’ with Blake's ‘London’, and sees his poetry voicing doubts about poetry of a kind inaugurated by the Romantics.Less
This chapter discusses the poetry of W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, exploring the complicated response of both to the Romantic bequest. The first section focuses on a variety of texts by Auden, including his Letter to Lord Byron, in order to bring out the intricately post-Romantic nature of his voice in his Thirties poetry. The section examines early poems such as ‘Who stands, the crux left of the watershed’ for their evidence of thwarted post-Romantic longing, as well as later poems such as ‘In memory of W. B. Yeats’ for the ways in which Auden reinvents for the modern age a poetry akin to the Romantics' in its concern to be both undidactic and ‘A way of happening’. Auden's practice in Letter to Lord Byron is compared with Byron's comic mode, and a mixture of admiration and necessary distance in Auden's view of Byron is discovered. The second section looks at Spender's attempts to preserve a Romantic lyric voice in the modern age; it compares, for example, his poem ‘Moving through the silent crowd’ with Blake's ‘London’, and sees his poetry voicing doubts about poetry of a kind inaugurated by the Romantics.
Andrew N. Rubin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691154152
- eISBN:
- 9781400842179
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691154152.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter details the correspondence between the author and the Central Intelligence Agency regarding the release of information in line with the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time the ...
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This chapter details the correspondence between the author and the Central Intelligence Agency regarding the release of information in line with the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time the chapter builds on an emerging body of scholarship that examines the relationship between American postwar ascendancy and “cultural diplomacy” in the early years of the Cold War and decolonization. Few studies have considered how the Congress for Cultural Freedom's (CCF) underwriting reshaped and refashioned the global literary landscape, altered the relationships between writers and their publics, and rendered those whom it supported more recognizable figures than others. These practices were conceived as part of an orchestrated imperial effort to occupy a global public space that by 1948 had been largely dominated by the socialist rhetoric of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform).Less
This chapter details the correspondence between the author and the Central Intelligence Agency regarding the release of information in line with the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time the chapter builds on an emerging body of scholarship that examines the relationship between American postwar ascendancy and “cultural diplomacy” in the early years of the Cold War and decolonization. Few studies have considered how the Congress for Cultural Freedom's (CCF) underwriting reshaped and refashioned the global literary landscape, altered the relationships between writers and their publics, and rendered those whom it supported more recognizable figures than others. These practices were conceived as part of an orchestrated imperial effort to occupy a global public space that by 1948 had been largely dominated by the socialist rhetoric of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform).
Lara Feigel
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748639502
- eISBN:
- 9780748652938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748639502.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter examines the British literature responding to the cinematic and photographic qualities of the Blitz. The cinematic properties of the Blitz were perhaps best captured in literature by ...
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This chapter examines the British literature responding to the cinematic and photographic qualities of the Blitz. The cinematic properties of the Blitz were perhaps best captured in literature by three wartime firemen: Stephen Spender, Henry Green, and William Sansom. The wartime fiction of Elizabeth Bowen had always had an unnerving propensity to stir into life. Sansom's ‘Fireman Flower’ turns both the living and the dead into ghosts. Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear and Bowen's The Heat of the Day expose the arbitrary nature of international politics in a war that is fought by automata in the sky and by ghosts on the ground. The Blitz literature was necessarily cinematic because the bombing, like the film and the photograph, thrust its victims into the deathly tense of the has-been-there.Less
This chapter examines the British literature responding to the cinematic and photographic qualities of the Blitz. The cinematic properties of the Blitz were perhaps best captured in literature by three wartime firemen: Stephen Spender, Henry Green, and William Sansom. The wartime fiction of Elizabeth Bowen had always had an unnerving propensity to stir into life. Sansom's ‘Fireman Flower’ turns both the living and the dead into ghosts. Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear and Bowen's The Heat of the Day expose the arbitrary nature of international politics in a war that is fought by automata in the sky and by ghosts on the ground. The Blitz literature was necessarily cinematic because the bombing, like the film and the photograph, thrust its victims into the deathly tense of the has-been-there.
Lara Feigel
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748639502
- eISBN:
- 9780748652938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748639502.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter explores the 1930s experiments with camera consciousness. Christopher Isherwood has Edward Upward's tutor's capacity to magnify and distort objects. The hyperreality of 1930s Germany is ...
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This chapter explores the 1930s experiments with camera consciousness. Christopher Isherwood has Edward Upward's tutor's capacity to magnify and distort objects. The hyperreality of 1930s Germany is made explicit by Stephen Spender in his 1951 autobiography. In Spender's account, the party is not merely unreal because it is filmed. Louis MacNeice's former Birmingham student Walter Allen shared the poet's fear that the ghostly, nightmarish aspects of cinema were rendering experience unreal. Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square is an account of life in the seedier parts of London and Brighton in the lead-up to war. Joris Ivens depicted the civilians' and soldiers' struggle to survive in The Spanish Earth. Robert Capa's controversial Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death or The Falling Soldier typify the hyperreal aspect of the Spanish Civil War. Like Albert Speer's chimeric buildings, which reconstitute architecture as light, the political itself has been redefined in terms of cinema.Less
This chapter explores the 1930s experiments with camera consciousness. Christopher Isherwood has Edward Upward's tutor's capacity to magnify and distort objects. The hyperreality of 1930s Germany is made explicit by Stephen Spender in his 1951 autobiography. In Spender's account, the party is not merely unreal because it is filmed. Louis MacNeice's former Birmingham student Walter Allen shared the poet's fear that the ghostly, nightmarish aspects of cinema were rendering experience unreal. Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square is an account of life in the seedier parts of London and Brighton in the lead-up to war. Joris Ivens depicted the civilians' and soldiers' struggle to survive in The Spanish Earth. Robert Capa's controversial Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death or The Falling Soldier typify the hyperreal aspect of the Spanish Civil War. Like Albert Speer's chimeric buildings, which reconstitute architecture as light, the political itself has been redefined in terms of cinema.
Steve Swayne
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195388527
- eISBN:
- 9780199894345
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388527.003.0017
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, History, Western
The late 1940s brought Schuman back in touch with his Jewish roots through various encounters and queries that occurred. Leonard Bernstein, in particular, was in a state of wonderment at the birth of ...
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The late 1940s brought Schuman back in touch with his Jewish roots through various encounters and queries that occurred. Leonard Bernstein, in particular, was in a state of wonderment at the birth of Israel, and he tried to interest his good friend Schuman in it. Notwithstanding these various reminders of his own background and heritage, Schuman reaffirmed his coolness to organized religion. He expressed himself through his music, and the Sixth Symphony (1948) is a major testament to Schuman's ideas and ideals. During this period of time, Koussevitzky died, and with him Schuman lost a champion of his music. He gained, however, another champion in the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy. This chapter includes a cameo by English writer Stephen Spender and a look at a withdrawn work that would become the nucleus of the Seventh Symphony (1960).Less
The late 1940s brought Schuman back in touch with his Jewish roots through various encounters and queries that occurred. Leonard Bernstein, in particular, was in a state of wonderment at the birth of Israel, and he tried to interest his good friend Schuman in it. Notwithstanding these various reminders of his own background and heritage, Schuman reaffirmed his coolness to organized religion. He expressed himself through his music, and the Sixth Symphony (1948) is a major testament to Schuman's ideas and ideals. During this period of time, Koussevitzky died, and with him Schuman lost a champion of his music. He gained, however, another champion in the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy. This chapter includes a cameo by English writer Stephen Spender and a look at a withdrawn work that would become the nucleus of the Seventh Symphony (1960).
Nathan Waddell
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- August 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198816706
- eISBN:
- 9780191858338
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198816706.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter addresses the question of how modernist writers represented in literature the idea and phenomenologies of Beethoven masks and portrait busts. Many writers in the period referred to ...
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This chapter addresses the question of how modernist writers represented in literature the idea and phenomenologies of Beethoven masks and portrait busts. Many writers in the period referred to Beethovenian portrait busts and masks because they brought with them a ready-made set of allusive undertones. They knew that such objects are freighted with symbolic meanings and that mentioning them at key moments in a novel or poem allowed them to draw on an established history of social and cultural associations. Many of the writers who used the Beethovenian iconography in this way did so to help them comment satirically on the nature of bourgeois culture. Others did so to evaluate the nature of the Beethovenian iconography itself. Two works in particular appear to do both: the revised edition of Wyndham Lewis’s novel Tarr (1928) and Stephen Spender’s poem ‘Beethoven’s Death Mask’ (1930).Less
This chapter addresses the question of how modernist writers represented in literature the idea and phenomenologies of Beethoven masks and portrait busts. Many writers in the period referred to Beethovenian portrait busts and masks because they brought with them a ready-made set of allusive undertones. They knew that such objects are freighted with symbolic meanings and that mentioning them at key moments in a novel or poem allowed them to draw on an established history of social and cultural associations. Many of the writers who used the Beethovenian iconography in this way did so to help them comment satirically on the nature of bourgeois culture. Others did so to evaluate the nature of the Beethovenian iconography itself. Two works in particular appear to do both: the revised edition of Wyndham Lewis’s novel Tarr (1928) and Stephen Spender’s poem ‘Beethoven’s Death Mask’ (1930).
Andrew Thacker
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780748633470
- eISBN:
- 9781474459754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633470.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter explores the cultural history of Vienna as a story of modernity, space, and power, from the late nineteenth century construction of the Ringstrasse to the postwar building of Red Vienna. ...
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This chapter explores the cultural history of Vienna as a story of modernity, space, and power, from the late nineteenth century construction of the Ringstrasse to the postwar building of Red Vienna. It traces the city’s particular version of the geographical emotions of modernism, concentrating upon how the city’s architectural spaces helped shape an ‘inward turn’ in the mood or stimmung (Heidegger) of the modernism produced here, often producing notions of spatial phobias. It also analyses the importance of coffee houses as cultural spaces, and the ‘outsider’ figure of Jewish writers and thinkers in the city. After discussion of key Viennese figures such as Sigmund Freud and Robert Musil, it then traces how Anglophone visitors such as John Lehmann, Naomi Mitchison (in her Vienna Diary), Jean Rhys, and Stephen Spender (in his neglected long poem Vienna) represented the mood of the city in the interwar years. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Carol Reed’s 1949 film The Third Man.Less
This chapter explores the cultural history of Vienna as a story of modernity, space, and power, from the late nineteenth century construction of the Ringstrasse to the postwar building of Red Vienna. It traces the city’s particular version of the geographical emotions of modernism, concentrating upon how the city’s architectural spaces helped shape an ‘inward turn’ in the mood or stimmung (Heidegger) of the modernism produced here, often producing notions of spatial phobias. It also analyses the importance of coffee houses as cultural spaces, and the ‘outsider’ figure of Jewish writers and thinkers in the city. After discussion of key Viennese figures such as Sigmund Freud and Robert Musil, it then traces how Anglophone visitors such as John Lehmann, Naomi Mitchison (in her Vienna Diary), Jean Rhys, and Stephen Spender (in his neglected long poem Vienna) represented the mood of the city in the interwar years. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Carol Reed’s 1949 film The Third Man.
Vincent Giroud
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199399895
- eISBN:
- 9780199399932
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199399895.003.0015
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Nabokov’s first opera, on a libretto he wrote jointly with Spender, was premiered, as Rasputin’s End, in Louisville, in 1958, and, in a revised and expanded version, in Cologne the following year. In ...
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Nabokov’s first opera, on a libretto he wrote jointly with Spender, was premiered, as Rasputin’s End, in Louisville, in 1958, and, in a revised and expanded version, in Cologne the following year. In addition to the long genesis of the work (also covered in the previous chapter), this section discusses his other two important works of the period, the cantata Symboli chrestiani and the Pasternak Songs. It describes his second trip to India (and Burma), the main outcome of which was his meeting with the French Indianist Alain Daniélou. On the CCF side, he spoke at the Future of Freedom conference in 1955 and, following the crushing of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, he played a key role, with the help of Mehuhin and Dorati, in the establishment of the Philharmonia Hungarica, an orchestra regrouping exiled musicians who had fled their country.Less
Nabokov’s first opera, on a libretto he wrote jointly with Spender, was premiered, as Rasputin’s End, in Louisville, in 1958, and, in a revised and expanded version, in Cologne the following year. In addition to the long genesis of the work (also covered in the previous chapter), this section discusses his other two important works of the period, the cantata Symboli chrestiani and the Pasternak Songs. It describes his second trip to India (and Burma), the main outcome of which was his meeting with the French Indianist Alain Daniélou. On the CCF side, he spoke at the Future of Freedom conference in 1955 and, following the crushing of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, he played a key role, with the help of Mehuhin and Dorati, in the establishment of the Philharmonia Hungarica, an orchestra regrouping exiled musicians who had fled their country.
Ian Patterson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- August 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198806516
- eISBN:
- 9780191844126
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198806516.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
In the (often left-wing) writings on the Spanish Civil War, the idea of sacrifice (both transitive and intransitive) is intertwined with theories and practices of class conflict. The secular bent to ...
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In the (often left-wing) writings on the Spanish Civil War, the idea of sacrifice (both transitive and intransitive) is intertwined with theories and practices of class conflict. The secular bent to much left-wing thinking did not preclude using associations with religious sacrifice to characterize the war’s fatalities; the bombing of Guernica and Madrid, for example, were both described as ‘martyrdoms’. Even in those views of the war that emphasized the importance of dialectical materialism, there is often an inherent logic of self-sacrifice—particularly for those middle-class and intellectual members of the Communist left whose commitment to revolution included a commitment to the supersession of their own individuality in the name of the party. This chapter examines how such ideological figurings of sacrifice are presented in lyrical and elegiac poems by poets such as W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Clive Branson, George Barker, Margot Heinemann, and Cecil Day Lewis.Less
In the (often left-wing) writings on the Spanish Civil War, the idea of sacrifice (both transitive and intransitive) is intertwined with theories and practices of class conflict. The secular bent to much left-wing thinking did not preclude using associations with religious sacrifice to characterize the war’s fatalities; the bombing of Guernica and Madrid, for example, were both described as ‘martyrdoms’. Even in those views of the war that emphasized the importance of dialectical materialism, there is often an inherent logic of self-sacrifice—particularly for those middle-class and intellectual members of the Communist left whose commitment to revolution included a commitment to the supersession of their own individuality in the name of the party. This chapter examines how such ideological figurings of sacrifice are presented in lyrical and elegiac poems by poets such as W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Clive Branson, George Barker, Margot Heinemann, and Cecil Day Lewis.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Four examines the BBC's role as a major patron of Caribbean writing in the 1950s and 60s through Caribbean Voices, a weekly literary program. Using extensive archival sources, this chapter ...
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Chapter Four examines the BBC's role as a major patron of Caribbean writing in the 1950s and 60s through Caribbean Voices, a weekly literary program. Using extensive archival sources, this chapter argues that the BBC served both imperialist and anti-imperialist agendas at the same time. Although the BBC, through its overseas programming, was designed to maintain a cultural empire of English speakers, Caribbean writers used the organization for their own purposes, allowing them to subtly criticize metropolitan dominance. Additionally, important "Windrush" writers such as George Lamming, VS Naipaul, and Sam Selvon parlayed their experience at the BBC into concrete professional opportunities in London.Less
Chapter Four examines the BBC's role as a major patron of Caribbean writing in the 1950s and 60s through Caribbean Voices, a weekly literary program. Using extensive archival sources, this chapter argues that the BBC served both imperialist and anti-imperialist agendas at the same time. Although the BBC, through its overseas programming, was designed to maintain a cultural empire of English speakers, Caribbean writers used the organization for their own purposes, allowing them to subtly criticize metropolitan dominance. Additionally, important "Windrush" writers such as George Lamming, VS Naipaul, and Sam Selvon parlayed their experience at the BBC into concrete professional opportunities in London.
Vincent Giroud
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199399895
- eISBN:
- 9780199399932
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199399895.003.0014
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Nabokov’s next initiative was the organization of another festival, in Rome in 1954, this time devoted largely to new music, and in which, in addition to Stravinsky, friends such as Blacher and ...
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Nabokov’s next initiative was the organization of another festival, in Rome in 1954, this time devoted largely to new music, and in which, in addition to Stravinsky, friends such as Blacher and Dallapiccola were involved, though it provoked a contretemps between Nabokov and Pierre Boulez. This chapter also deals with Nabokov’s involvement in the CCF’s science programs and the founding of the Congress-sponsored London magazine Encounter, edited jointly by Lasky and Stephen Spender. It ends with Nabokov’s first trip to India, where he met with Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi.Less
Nabokov’s next initiative was the organization of another festival, in Rome in 1954, this time devoted largely to new music, and in which, in addition to Stravinsky, friends such as Blacher and Dallapiccola were involved, though it provoked a contretemps between Nabokov and Pierre Boulez. This chapter also deals with Nabokov’s involvement in the CCF’s science programs and the founding of the Congress-sponsored London magazine Encounter, edited jointly by Lasky and Stephen Spender. It ends with Nabokov’s first trip to India, where he met with Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi.
Greg Barnhisel
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162302
- eISBN:
- 9780231538626
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162302.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book reveals how the U.S. government reconfigured modernism as a trans-Atlantic movement, a joint endeavor between American and European artists, and shows that this had profound implications ...
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This book reveals how the U.S. government reconfigured modernism as a trans-Atlantic movement, a joint endeavor between American and European artists, and shows that this had profound implications for the art that followed and for the character of American identity. It draws on interviews, rare archival materials, and the stories of such figures and institutions as William Faulkner, Stephen Spender, Irving Kristol, James Laughlin, and the Voice of America. The book starts by showing how European intellectuals in the 1950s dismissed American culture as nothing more than cowboy movies and the A-bomb. It then details how American cultural diplomats tried to show that the United States had something to offer beyond military might and commercial exploitation. It shows how they deployed the revolutionary aesthetics of modernism to prove—particularly to the leftists whose Cold War loyalties they hoped to secure—that American art and literature were aesthetically rich and culturally significant. The book argues that, by repurposing modernism, American diplomats and cultural authorities turned the avant-garde into the establishment. It shows how they remade the once revolutionary movement into a content-free collection of artistic techniques and styles suitable for middlebrow consumption. It also documents how the CIA, the State Department, and private cultural diplomats transformed modernist art and literature into pro-Western propaganda during the first decade of the Cold War.Less
This book reveals how the U.S. government reconfigured modernism as a trans-Atlantic movement, a joint endeavor between American and European artists, and shows that this had profound implications for the art that followed and for the character of American identity. It draws on interviews, rare archival materials, and the stories of such figures and institutions as William Faulkner, Stephen Spender, Irving Kristol, James Laughlin, and the Voice of America. The book starts by showing how European intellectuals in the 1950s dismissed American culture as nothing more than cowboy movies and the A-bomb. It then details how American cultural diplomats tried to show that the United States had something to offer beyond military might and commercial exploitation. It shows how they deployed the revolutionary aesthetics of modernism to prove—particularly to the leftists whose Cold War loyalties they hoped to secure—that American art and literature were aesthetically rich and culturally significant. The book argues that, by repurposing modernism, American diplomats and cultural authorities turned the avant-garde into the establishment. It shows how they remade the once revolutionary movement into a content-free collection of artistic techniques and styles suitable for middlebrow consumption. It also documents how the CIA, the State Department, and private cultural diplomats transformed modernist art and literature into pro-Western propaganda during the first decade of the Cold War.
