Post-Modernism and the idea of nothing being new, essentially the death of new ideas, made me think of a comparison written by Virginia Woolf in her essay, “A Room of One’s Own”. The narrator in Woolf’s essay expresses her opinion on the thought that no contemporary can write or come to par with writers like Rossetti and Tennyson. She basically states that this idea is “absurd”. The only reason we feel this way is because we are able to connect with historical poetry, due to its quality of making us celebrate a “feeling that one used to have” (Stallworthy, Ramazani, 2098). She also states that the reason we are unable to appreciate contemporary poetry is because we are unsure of its meaning. This then makes me think that possibly the reason why “original” ideas are non-existent is because we can’t look past the concept that everything “great” has already been done. Rajchman says, “There was the notion that nothing new can happen, and that we must content ourselves with more or less “ironical” recombinations, juxtapositions, quotations of what has been” (Kocur, Leung, 390). So not only did this “notion” take its place in art, but also in literature.
Another point that connected with Woolf’s essay was the statement Rajchman made about the death of moving “thought”. Rajchman says, “Post-Modern theory became so heavy that it lost even the desire to look for those real points that allow thought to move and recreate itself” (Kocur, Leung, 390). Woolf believed in a theory named, “Stream of Consciousness”, which is simply a psychological theory stating how one thought moves or leads to the other. I think Woolf would have been extremely opposed to the idea that thoughts were unmoving because of the lack of seeking truth. Throughout her essay she makes an analogy between fishing and searching for thoughts. She used the technique of finding a thought, however if it were not good enough, she would toss it back, like a fish, and then proceed to find a better more developed thought.
I think that if we look past our first idea, which will most likely come easily and from outer sources, we could create something “original”. However, that would also take being comfortable with the unfamiliar, and believing that with time a connection can form with the “new” as it does the old.
Kocur, Zoya, and Simon Leung. Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Print.
Stallworthy, Jon, and Jahan Ramazani. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006. Print.
Do we really believe that originality is impossible? I certainly don't. The first time anyone told me that "everything has been done before," I told them that was a silly thing to say because we simply don't know about the things that haven't been done yet. This entire postmodernist notion of endless quotation and the impossibility of originality is so tiresome, and I really believe it is just an excuse, in most cases, to avoid having to come up with anything original and to avoid the hardship of coming up with something not only new, but at least as pleasing to the senses as previous movements.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe, however, that the only reason we believe contemporary poets (or artists) can compare to those of the past is because "we are able to connect with historical poetry" (or art), "due to its quality of making us celebrate a 'feeling that one used to have.'" To an extent, this might be true, but I also believe that art (including poetry) of the past focused more of its complexity on beauty, rather than focusing all of itself on an idea (especially on the idea that there are no new ideas). Poets of the passed may have felt somewhat restricted by the incredibly structured nature of their chosen form of art, but completely abandoning that structure removes what made poetry beautiful, beyond the idea that was being expressed, and it also lowered the potential of the standard, so that more common writing, of less practiced skill and learning, still qualified as poetry. No one can tell what "good" art is nowadays because the standards of quality have been abandoned.