Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism,
Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch,
Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987. 395p.
MODERNITY, THE DEATH OF GOD AND UTOPIA
Relationship between modernity and Christianity
1. Medieval use of modernus as opposed to
antiquus
Modernus - a newcomer
Antiquus - one whose name had come down from the past
- sense of essential oneness of tradition
i>2. Starting with Renaissance, extending through
Englightenment, gradual separation of modernity from Christianity
At first modernity only in nonreligious matters - philosophy
of nature, science, poetics
Antiquity still positive, but referred to a privileged and
exemplary portion of past - pagan classical autors of Greece and
Rome
Moderns first imitated ancients, later proclaimed themselves
superior - principle of authority challenged directly only
outside religion
End of rationalist and empiricist period of the Enlightenment
conflict with religion came out into the open - modern equivalent
to being a "free thinker"
3. Romantic period
Late eighteenth-century religious revival in literature
cult of originality and imagination = reaction against dry
intellectualism
enlargement of modernity's concept to cover the whole
romantic
Identiy modern genius with the genius of Christianity
fatalistic historicism stressing total discontinuity
betweencultural cycles.
Consciousness of living toward the end of the Christian cycle
[61] S
Modernity is an "exclusively Western concept - possible only
with conception of irreversible time [61] S
Death of God is a romantic theme
Octavio Paz writes that "Within the concept of time as a
linear and irreversible progression, the death of God is
unthinkable, for the death of God opens the gates of contingency
and unreason." [61]
4. From middle of nineteenth-century - reaffirms the death
of God - explores consequences of God's unthinkable yet already
banal demise.
But modern authoris in incomprehensible outside the Judeo-
Christian tradition or practice a passionate atheism
Modernity did not succeed in suppressing man's religious
need, may have intensified them by diverting them from their
traditional course - lead to flourishing of heterodoxies.
Became obsessed with the idea and myth of Revolution S
Utopia - since eighteenth century = proof of modern
devluation of the past and growing importance of the future.
Orthodoxy has become pejorative [64]
Utopia is the sole legitimate heir of religion after the
death of God. [65]
Modern artist is torn between his urge to cut himself off
from the past and his dream to found a new tradition
THE IDEA OF MODERNITY
Modern Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Ancient Giants
The Problem of Time: Three Eras of Western History
It is We Who Are the Ancients
Comparing the Moderns to the Ancients
From Modern to Gothic to Romantic to Modern
The Two Modernities
Baudelaire and the Paradox of Aesthetic Modernity
Modernity, the Death of God, and Utopia
Literary and Other Modernisms
Comparing the Moderns to the Contemporaries
Links and Abbreviations (links are abbreviated by using the initials)