8/11/2019 Expressionism Essay Prompt

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Music Literature IV Music from the 20th Century to Today

Syllabus Fall 2014 7th Period, MWF 1:50PM, Room 246

Notes on Expressionism

I thought the truest way to explain expressionism would be to quotes by those who are

considered to be expressionists as they describe what it is they are artistically doing. Those

without citation come from one of Barbara Tuchmans The Proud Tower, Peter Gays Weimar

Culture, or Glenn Watkins Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century.

To imitate the disconnected but seemingly logical form of the dream. Anything may happen,

everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist. On an insignificant background

of reality, imagination designs and embroiders novel patterns; a medley of memories,

experiences, free fancies, absurdities and improvisations. The characters split, double, multiply,

vanish, solidify, blur, clarify. But one consciousness reigns above them allthat of the dreamer;

and before it there are no secrets, no incongruities, no scruples, no laws. There is neither

judgement nor exoneration, but merely narration. And as the dream is mostly painful, rarely

pleasant, a note of melancholy and of pity with all living things runs right through the wobbly

tale. Sleep, the liberator, plays often a dismal part, but when the pain is at its worst, the

awakening comes and reconciles the sufferer with reality, which however distressing it may be,nevertheless seems happy in comparison with the torments of the dream. Johann August

Strindberg

The spiritual bias attendant on all Expressionist urges echoed more than a personal ego,

involved collective aspirations that transcended the burgeoning national conscience of the

nineteenth century, and sought a union of the people in a high cosmic awareness.

Am I not an animal? A reality! The cycle A and O says: you can be one. The animal breaks

through in Munch, as a full expression of his wholly unbroken essence. The Impressionists didnot know quite what to do with it. Bu now, once again, we are on the track of animal categories

Tierbestimmheiten. Above all, what monumentality: every animal an undeniable grasping at

life. A consequential self-determination. The return to the animal through art is our decision in

favor of Expressionism. Theodor Dubler, Expressionist novelist

What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. I am

seeking for the bridge which leads from the visible to the invisible.Max Beckmann

- The fundamental principle of expressionismis the representation not of the appearance of a

scene, but its meaning. - TIME Vol. 1, No. 1 3/3/1923

The Expressionist feels obliged to struggle with forces of which the Impressionist isoblivious. Richard Samuel and R. Hinton Thomas, Expressionism in German Life,

Literacy, and the Theater

8/11/2019 Expressionism Essay Prompt

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Loosely based on historical incidents or dialogues carried on by abstractions in mens

minds, optimistic or resigned, violently anti-capitalist or simply humanitarian, their hope was

always the same: that man must be converted through suffering and living be purified and give

birth to a higher species.

It is only in the total context of the poem that the chaos of the poets images begins to

assume clearer meaning. Since it is the readers mind that must, in the end, achieve the synthesis

of all these disparate images, he has to become much more intimately and actively involved in

the poetic process in this kind of poetry than in more conventional verse. He must rethink the

images of the poem at each stage of its development and then its totality at the conclusion, when

he is forced to return to the beginning in the title and start responding to it once more. Roy

F. Allen, German Expressionist Poetry

Descriptions of Expressionism

Strident and utterly direct, a cry for help and an emphatic, impatient demand for reformation.

Longing for renewal

Discontent with actuality

Yearning for a breakthrough from convention to Nature.

Unremitting search for reality behind appearance.

Deliberately distorted; realistic enough to convey dreadful scenes

Sought to convey an unprecedented intensity of feeling, unheard-of purity of conviction

An eroticism that often had morbid overtones. Emphasizes the act of looking.

Deployed the most directeven drasticmeans, no matter how unappealing, to convey extreme

and irrational states of mind.

Tried out new techniques to rescue the world from itself

A unanimous repudiation of the past, an aspiration to a new reality

Subversive of established tradition Self-consciously spontaneous

Sought to capture and convey the human condition as it was perceived in the early twentieth

century.

Wrestles with the monster of war and dimly looks to a new day and a new man.

Strenuously individualistic

Rebellious

Longing for communication