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An Avant-garde for Today: ‘the Ally of its Own Gravediggers’? Some Thoughts on Apollinaire and Kundera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

Timothy Mathews
Timothy Mathews*
Affiliation:
University College London, UK. E-mail: t.mathews@ucl.ac.uk
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Abstract

This essay is concerned with the power of art to effect change, but also to show attachments to existing ways of understanding. Avant-garde art from Cubism to Surrealism seeks to transform the shapes in which we see the world. But change may simply create blindness to the past, and to what is, and to the way our chains are yanked by the lures of domination whether economic, social or emotional. Kundera's novelistic meditation on the canonical and radical poets Rimbaud and Éluard encourages us to wonder whether the obsession with change is an investment in the powers of oblivion and ignorance.

Type
Focus: Avant-garde/Arriere-garde
Information
European Review , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , 14 April 2011 , pp. 321 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2011

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References

Notes

1.Apollinaire, G. (1965) Œuvres Completes, edited by M. Décaudin, preface by M.-P. Fauchet, iconography assembled by M. Adéma (Paris: André Ballard & Jacques Lecat) vol. 4, p. 30.Google Scholar
2. Author's own translation: ‘We will be absolutely modern.’Google Scholar
3.Kundera, M. (1991) Immortality, translated from the Czech by P. Kussi (London: Faber & Faber), pp. 155–159.Google Scholar
4.Kundera, M. (1991) Immortality, translated from the Czech by P. Kussi (London: Faber & Faber), pp. 136–137.Google Scholar
5.Benjamin, W. (1979) Surrealism. In: One-way Street, and Other Writings, translated from the German by E. Jephcott and K. Shorter (London: New Left Books), p. 27.Google Scholar
6. See Taylor, R., (trans., ed.) (1980) Aesthetics and Politics, afterword by F. Jameson (London: Verso, 1980), p. 128–129. The author has addressed these issues with regard to Benjamin's thoughts on Kafka, in T. Mathews (2009) Trauma, Witness, Form: Thinking Walter Benjamin with Alberto Giacometti. Guilt and Shame. Essays on French Literature, Thought and Visual Culture, edited by J. Chamaratte and J. Higgins (Oxford: Peter Lang, Modern French Identities) 79, pp. 161–176.Google Scholar
7.Kundera, M. (1991) Immortality, translated from the Czech by P. Kussi (London: Faber & Faber), pp. 126–131.Google Scholar
8.Benjamin, W. (1982) Illuminations, edited and with an introduction by H. Arendt, translated by H. Zohn (London: Fontana/Collins).Google Scholar
9.Benjamin, W. (1982) Theses on the Philosophy of History. In: Illuminations, edited and with an introduction by H. Arendt, translated by H. Zohn (London: Fontana/Collins), pp. 259–260.Google Scholar
10.Rimbaud, A. (1998) A Season in Hell & Illuminations, translated by M. Treharne (London: Dent).Google Scholar
11.Apollinaire, G. (1965) Lettre-Océan. In: Œuvres poétiques, edited by M. Adéma and M. Décaudin (Paris: Gallimard/Pléïade), pp. 183–185. See also T. Mathews (2010) Lettre-Océan. In Twentieth-Century French Poetry. A Critical Anthology, edited by H. Azérad and P. Collier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 33–43.Google Scholar
12.Krauss, R. (1977) Passages in Modern Sculpture (London: Thames and Hudson); Y.-A. Bois and R. Krauss (1997) Formelss: A User's Guide (New York: Zone).Google Scholar
13. The author is adapting this little word-play from J.-F. Lyotard, Les trans-formations DUchamp.Google Scholar