Modernism and the Occult [electronic resource] /
Bramble, John.author.
This study of modernism's high imperial, occult-exotic affiliations presents many well-known figures from the period 1880-1960 in a new light. Modernism and the Occult traces the history of modernist engagement with 'irregular', heterodox and imported knowledge.
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Contents; Series Editor's Preface; Preface; Acknowledgments; 1 Empire and Occultism; The Shock of the Old: Empire and Myth-making; The Crisis of the Modern World; Bernard Smith's High-Imperial, Occult-Exotic Theory of Modernism; 'Symbols of the old noble way of life'; Imperial Gothic; 2 Modernist Interworlds; Codes of the Soul and the Culture of Trance; Psyche, Cosmos, Mythos: The Modernist Canon; The Modernist Unconscious; The Self-Ancestral; 'Alternate' Consciousness: Critique from the East; The German Expressionist Cultic Milieu; Modernist Meta-languages
3 Destruction - Creation: From Decadence to DadaDestruction - Creation: A Bipolar Rhythm; Decadence: Decomposition in a Foundationless World; 'Occult Revival'; The ' Disintegrative Vibration': Nordau and Bely; 'Creation' in Whitman, Expressionism and Cubo-Futurism; Ordinary Magic: Dada; 4 Call to Order, Occultist Geopolitics, Spirit Wars; Out of Asia: Prophecy and World Politics; Pan-coloured Exoticism: The Rest against the West; Wild Jews and Muslim Pretenders; Germano-Asiatic Offensive against the West; Tantra in Bloomsbury; Genuine Fake: The 'New Jersey Hindoo' Ruth St Denis
5 'Zen' in the Second AbstractionPacific Axis Art; East Asian Influences on Pre-forties Modernism; Suzuki Zen; The Second Abstraction: A Synoptic Approach; American Pioneers; European Intermediaries; From Myth and Symbol to the Ground of Being; Conclusion: A Turbid Transmission; 6 Owning, Disowning and Trivializing the Occult; The Downfall of the Modernist Culture of Soul; The Modernist Meta-world; Notes; Select Bibliography; Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.
This study of modernism's high imperial, occult-exotic affiliations presents many well-known figures from the period 1880-1960 in a new light. Modernism and the Occult traces the history of modernist engagement with 'irregular', heterodox and imported knowledge.
Europe—History.
Civilization—History.
Religion—History.
World history.
Social history.
History, Modern.
European History.
Cultural History.
History of Religion.
World History, Global and Transnational History.
Social History.
Modern History.