THE BIRTH OF AVANT-GARDE FROM THE SPIRIT OF MODERNISM

• Main Author: Yuri N. Girin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences 2016-12-01
• Series: Studia Litterarum
• Subjects: avant-garde; tradition; modernity; modernism; deformation; art; spirituality; creative work; Mystery
• Online Access: http://old.studlit.ru/1-3-4/Girin.pdf

The article focuses on the problem of spirituality in the avant-garde culture of the beginning of the 20 th Century. Everyone — artists, writers, theologians, philosophers, and reformers — wrote about the peculiar spirituality of the New World. At the same time, the concept of the spiritual was as widespread and universal as it was controversial. The interest in the peculiar spiritual situation of the avant-garde epoch in the public conscience since the end of the 20 th Century is symptomatic — a man of the Novecento haven chosen the sign of modernity as an emblem endeavors to understand his age and his place in it. That is why it seems extremely important to be able to find a proper balance between the negative and the assertive tendencies of the avant-garde culture that formed the cultural basis of the 20 th Century. The author attempts to understand the meaning of Spirituality at the beginning of the 20 th Century. The essay suggests that the entire avant-garde age, taken broadly, may be considered as a great Mystery act given the inherent inseparability of the intuitive and the sensory, on the one hand, and historical and social aspects, on the other hand: creative work was understood in terms of Creation.