Age of Anxiety in the West

The Time Between Two Wars:

1920-1940

Philosophy and Science Friedrich Nietzsche

Rejection of Common Morality

“God is Dead.”--If Human existence is meaningless then how should we live our lives?

Existentialists: “Man is Condemned to be Free”--J.P. Sartre

Albert Einstein--New theory of Special Relativism

Potential energy in universe around us.

Psychology Shell shock shows new

vulnerable mentality of modern mind.

Freud’s theories, (known as psycho-analysis) which used dream theory and the unconscious mind to define human behavior, became popular during this era.

Freud stresses irrationality of human mind.

Freud and followers’ theories become accepted and undermine the traditional optimism of human nature and mind.

World Depression Massive global economic recession (or "depression") that ran from

1929 to approximately 1939. Numerous bank failures, high unemployment, as well as dramatic

drops in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), industrial production, stock market share prices.

The Wall Street crash of 1929 is widely considered to be the foremost event which marked the start of the world-wide financial crisis. In fact, in the United States unemployment soared from approximately 3% to over 25%.

Art: Expressionists, Cubism, and Surrealism Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903)

Expressionism

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Cubism

Salavdor Dali (1904-1989) Surrealism

Paul GauguinHaystacks in Brittany, 1890

Originating in Germany, Expressionism encompasses all art in which the artist is free to move beyond the limitations of objective subject matter and to concentrate on the feeling and impact derived from the artist’s inspiration.

Expressionist sought to reveal inner, spiritual and emotional foundations of human existence, rather than the external, surface appearances depicted by the Impressionists.

Man in a Café, Picasso

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The key concept of Cubism is that the essence of objects can only be captured by showing it from multiple points of view simultaneously.

Guernica, Picasso, 1937

Surrealism

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Surrealism: movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement, which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied reason; but Surrealism's emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression

Literature Modern novel

Stream of consciousness

V. Woolf, Faulkner, J. Joyce

Modern hopelessness T. S. Eliot Post WWI Poetry

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet

and meaningless As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without

form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without

motion; Those who have crossed With

direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men The stuffed

men.