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What was the metropolitan aesthetic of Blitzed London as represented in literature? The 'Big City' is often seen as displaying a number of key characteristics. These include the drumbeat regularity and monotony of everyday life, the cold concrete indifference of people and buildings and the sense of alienation these factors can bring about. A bombed 'Big City', having been stripped of its earlier facade both in terms of the ones its inhabitants carry and in material terms must look towards redefining and rebuilding itself and in constructing a new ideology or reaffirming an old one. This essay will look primarily at two works written during the Blitz of London, 'The End of The Affair' by Graham Greene, published in 151 and Elizabeth Bowen's 'The Heat of the Day', first published in 148. The essay will seek to examine how the novels may represent this idea of a new metropolitan aesthetic or a poetic vision of the city arising out of its destruction. The metropolis is defined [Collins Dictionary] as 'the main city of a country or region'. Bier and Finlay describe London as having turned into a true 'metropolis' between 1550-1700 when it suffered a fourfold expansion in terms of population growth and area. The metropolitan aesthetic can be broadly defined on one level as referring to the physical appearance of a city and the presence of artwork, statues, parks and those things that exist to 'speak for' the city in terms of its history, its politics and its status as a cultural centre. On another level, the aesthetic lives in the imagination and an idealised sense of things and feeds on inspiration from existing works of beauty. Buried in the Blitz, which started on the 7th of September 140 thus, was more than the present day lives and livelihood of a population, but history and as Angus Calder argues in the 'Myth of the Blitz', an ideological structure. It was the seat of a nation's identity, albeit one that was seeped at the time in political and nationalist myths about the sense of British ascendancy especially over its colonies. Wartime serves as a good medium for a novelist to tell a story as the everyday life of the civilian population may be seen as heroic in itself. Civilians may be either heroes or spies and betrayers in peacetime, but in war the stakes are higher and so dramatisation of the civilian spirit, one that is unique as it emerges in unique circumstances is one that is much documented and dramatised. Peter Ackroyd in his 'Biography' of London speaks of London's innate theatricality remarking that ' there was never any conflict in the city's history to match the drama of the Second World War. One reason for dramatising it, as Calder argues, is for propagandist purposes, that is, to create an ideal of what things were 'really like' in terms of a strong sense of community and people coming to the aid of one another, the 'British spirit'. Humphrey Jennings in his films portrays a celebratory vision of Britain. In his films 'Listen to Britain' and 'Fires Were Started' the city is as orderly a place as is possible and people are making the best of things, as is evident in the fairly un-technological but good spirited Auxiliary Fire Service. Jennings' perspective was influenced perhaps, not just by what appears to be a genuine desire to represent Britain as he saw it, but also perhaps in some way to guard against the sense that the collapse of the material structures of ideology would not in any way bring about moral decline.Buy cheap What was the metropolitan aesthetic of Blitzed London as represented in literature? term paper
The desire to represent the situation of the Blitz in poetic terms was something that Graham Greene desired to do, stating that in some ways the war made a poet out of everyone. Greene's view, in the thick of the bombing in 140 was that 'life had become just and poetic…we needn't feel pity for any of the innocent and as for the guilty, we know in our hearts that they will live just as long as we do and no longer'. In Greene's view there is no simple dividing line between the innocent and the guilty and in both novels there is the presence of the lurking 'enemy within'. In Greene's novel, these are inner demons and in Bowen's it is the one who is closest to you who betrays you. Both novels play on the heightened sense of fear in the city-of outside enemies and more strongly fear of the self as with the bombings came a sense of displacement, a loss of identity that both was frightening and liberating. In Bowen's novel Stella meets her lover in the 'heady autumn', 'never had any season been more felt; one bought the poetic sense of it with the sense of death'. It is as though the bombing catalyses a kind of heightened awareness in the inhabitants of the city. Combined with the sleeplessness of the people, Bowen's use of impressionistic descriptive force brings our attention to this kind of 'felt life', different from that of peacetime, 'for as the dust settled.. you felt more and more called on to observe the daytime'. City life was beginning to be seen in the period as unnatural, as in T.S Eliot's 'The Wasteland' it was the 'unreal city'. During war, this sense was intensified and the existing aesthetic took on an apocalyptic tone. Peter Ackroyd points towards comparisons that were made between London and Pompeii during the time, and Bowen talks of the ghostly sense of the remains of the 'torn of senses', and eeriness of presences so suddenly dispatched. The natural world, often seen as being encroached upon by the growing concrete entities, now suffered collapse and a further disfiguration of a nature that was previously either obscured or manicured to suit the necessities of the growing metropolis. The natural world, encompassing the sky, night and day and the air, are all suffused with the scars of war and weaponry. For instance, the air is the cause of an 'acridity' in Bowen's novel and the ash that was historically present covering everything, is gestured towards in Greene's writing as Bendrix remarks to Henry that he has some ash on his sleeve when he is trying to burn the detective's card. This echoes Eliot's 'Little Gidding' 'ash on an old man's sleeve Is all the ash burnt roses leave'. In the sky, Stella observes is a 'slow, stealthy massing of clouds' and streets are 'extinct' and 'mute'. It is as though the sense of transparency between people that emerges, something Bowen mentions in her novel, 'the wall between the living and the living became less solid…in that September transparency, people became transparent' is the same transparency between the earth and clouds and people. There is a unity in destruction that is more comprehensible than an enforced 'man-made' and therefore, inevitably short lived sense of order. Fire and the ashes of the hallmarks of 'civilisation' carry their own sense of horror and release. The burning and extinction both carry connotations of extermination and a cathartic purification. 0,000 Londoners were said to have been killed, and there is perhaps a sense of returning to a pagan or mythic idea of the basic components of life, that is, air, water, fire and earth. The bomb that injures Bendrix serves to create this sense of a new birth; Sarah believes he has been given a new lease of life that she must pay for. The role of God is pervasive in both novels as it is not easy to place responsibility squarely on anyone's shoulders, and so the 'ideal', whose role, Pater had prophesised would shrink with the passage of time, is re-evoked in the whole drama of destruction, the ill temper of the Gods, and the lack of 'reasonable' explanations. Fire also has connotations of a Christian hell. The barbarism seen in the butchery of 'civilised' populations for 'the sake of civilisation' seems to suggest that we create, in a Sartrean sense, our own hells as well as being each other's. Both novel's say a great deal about beginnings and ends. Greene starts at the end of one story and so at the beginning of another, whilst Bowen comments when Harrison has come to see Stella a second time that ' the beginning, in which was conceived the end, could not help but shape the middle part of the story'. Both novels raise the question of the nature of the aesthetic pleasure involved in creating and being a part of creation through reading of it and so making it your own. The slightly misshapen or awkward beginnings and endings raise the sense that we cannot see our own end, and do not know the narrative of our own lives. The narrative of the Blitz is also testament to the enduring qualities of the human spirit and in Bowen's ending there is birth of a baby, perhaps a positive sign for the value of human tenacity. Civilisation however, does not always outstay its makers illustrating the fundamental uncertainty of any premise of life, or promise of it following a set example. Many of the characters in both novels possess self-destructive qualities. Bendrix practices in perfecting the art of negativity revelling in what he sees as the purity of his hatred. Sarah commits herself to a slow suicide by walking in the rain and refusing the doctor. Robert too, is not astute enough to protect himself adequately in the event of his capture, which is a strong likelihood in the prevailing climate of suspicion. Freud called this the death instinct or the desire towards a kind of self-sabotage. Death does not come to all the characters; in the words of Oscar Wilde though all men kill the thing they love 'all men do not die'. Similarly, the stabbing of the picture in 'Dorian Gray' represents the death of surface 'personality' or persona or in the established order of things. In this there is a sense of the ultimate aesthetic goal that is, the final search for truth or purity. In Greene, wartime is in some way right. Bendrix and Sarah both dislike peacetime, not merely because they cannot meet but because in some way it does not correspond to the inner battles that rage within them. The wartime 'aesthetic' or the regular appearance of bombs and the experience of houses that once were is perhaps something that the imagination and the violence of human feeling can grasp. The unfamiliar and somewhat unexpected disfigurement of 'reality' becomes like that of the imagination as much lives on in our imaginations that may have no direct correlation to actuality. The mind, in this way, becomes overtly the only place where you can live, and in many ways, boundaries between reality and the imagined disappear and fictions become the solutions. In Greene, Sarah tells herself the story of the miracle to solve a long-term dilemma about religion and its place in her life. Perhaps this is why Robert too takes on a double role. On the other hand, perhaps this human trait is made easier in wartime as Bendrix says to Sarah of his last book [which Sarah says she dislikes], "it was a struggle to write at all just then-peace coming…'And I may as well have said peace going". Peter Ackroyd suggests that the destruction of the city in the minds of Londoners was never a complete one. He quotes Stephen Spender talking of the 'dark immensity of London' as if it was that that was a security against complete annihilation. What is destroyed in the novels is the sense of the assurance of a timely benevolence of fate or the hand of God. It may be argued that it was with the destruction of the larger mythic structures [Angus Calder points to the exception, a glimmering St Paul's the symbol of high Anglicanism and high Art that survived the bombing] that drew people to localising their observations and feelings, aesthetic or otherwise. Bowen speaks of the 'dazzling silent lakes' in Parks that had been shut 'because of time bombs', the appreciation for daylight and finding beauty in the 'phantasmagoric', a word that Bowen uses repeatedly to describe the feel of the unreality of London. Locality is also an important factor in Greene, as all the drama takes place around Clapham Common. This centre to the story does act as a contrast to the whirling questions that surround their relationship and the immensity of a war that spans all of Europe. Stella begins to feel that it is 'occupied Europe that occupies London' as foreign-ness becomes just the same as the incomprehensibleness of the present situation. The locality of Stella's residence in Weymouth Street is also significant. She cannot create her own surroundings as she likes and must live with someone else's aesthetic taste, 'where Regency goddesses hang on the walls', and the sofas are covered by 'feather etched chintz'. This is an apartment where 'every mood' of London's weather is reflected on the white walls and the city encroaches inside on her disrupting any sense of ownership, aesthetic or otherwise. People, it seemed, could claim the locality to be their own if they could not claim anything else as it gave them a sense of identity. Time, during the Blitz, may well have been measured by the length of time between bombs, but more likely as suggested by the novels it was between the last time you saw a loved one and when you would see them again. Time, in Bendrix' world is entangled with Sarah, 'in his blackness' he says, 'one can no more tell the days than a blind man can tell the light'. He marks the years by the strength of his hatred and not his material environment. He comments that his main problem with his novels is 'how to disinter the human character from the heavy scene-the daily newspaper, the daily meal'. This too, it may be argued, is Greene's problem, that is, to represent a narrative of a character who lives out of pace with his environment and who's momentum, other than being bombed, is dictated entirely by his own strength of feeling. His feeling is not dictated by British victory or defeat, 'there was something infinitely more important to me than war…the end of love'. 'Every love has a poetic relevance of its own', says Bowen, and it is this elevated state of being that is emphasised in the novel, a ticking internal narrative, greater than that of falling buildings, or blasted stairways. The uncertainty and strategy involved in human relationships are almost warlike, and Bowen suggests the topographical connection with the city when she speaks of war moving finally during the receding bombings, 'from the horizon to the map' Both novels use the idea of the destruction of moments to introduce new ways of looking at time. This relates our own sense of who we are to our material environments and the structures of life that we take for granted contain meaning or established truth. The structure of linear time is one of these things, as is our own refusal to seriously acknowledge or consider our own mortality for as long as we are alive and healthy. Bowen seems to examine this sense in her description of the 'demolition of an entire moment' when 'four walls of in here yawped in then bellied out'. In George Dickies' essay 'How Buildings Mean', he says that ' A building alters physical environment as a work of art…it can give new insight, advance understanding, participate in our continual remaking of the world'. It could be said that despite the sense that we may constantly remake our world, making things our own through our impressions of them and the individuality of our voices, it is only in the destruction of established structures of meaning that most strongly affects perspective. Bowen uses the modernist technique of juxtaposition of impressions like a shifting focus of a camera lens to draw our attention and give impact to the passage, mimicking the impact of the action. She says 'bottles danced on glass', 'the barrage, banged, coughed, retched…a distortion ran through view'. Similarly the pace of the Greene narrative, the alternative diary entries with Bendrix' own highly personal voice, gives a momentum comparable to the jerky narrative of the war. The uncertainty, the stopping and starting, are all like the volatile affair itself, and all like the pace of modern life and the 'face' it appears to adopt. Bowen's narrative is slower and with Jamesian subtlety the characters shy away from saying what they really think, veiling the narrative in the mystery of human contact. Each narrative opens immersed in wartime London, and so is a cold plunge into the climate of the time. This is suggestive of the idea that life happens before there is time to comprehend the relevance of it, that the aesthetic is fleeting and transitory and like in Bowen, is caught in the snatches of daytime and light. The metropolis is humanity functioning in mutual co-operation and largely assenting terms of ideas about culture and civilisation. It is self conscious in the representation of these ideas into solid blocks of meaning, in architecture and art, law and even modes of transport. The structure of the city is thus directly representative of the collective of ideas and philosophies about the nature of the human condition. The aesthetic of the city both reflect and cater to this. The aesthetic consideration is nearly always seen as one that needs to be merged with the practical or at least to be subordinate to it. Thus the city may be seen as a body that builds and rebuilds itself, adapting and being adapted upon. The shock of the Blitz for the capital and for the nation served to undermine much of this ideology and so forcibly created a need, it may be argued, for regeneration and reconsideration. It is difficult to merge aestheticism with ideology, political or moral or both, and cities try to succeed in this regard without compromising either previous traditions or anticipated trends. On one level the blitz collapsed civilisation but arguably it was found again in stalwart civilian attitudes. Subjectivity is central to the nature of the metropolitan aesthetic as people are permitted to like or dislike what they choose as they pass it on busy streets. The presence of the object however, usually forms a frame of reference for a larger cultural context of the area or locality. The object of art criticism, Arnold argued, was to see the object for itself whilst James argued that 'humanity was immense and reality had a myriad forms', emphasising the value of the impression things gave you and not just their physical form. According to Kant's theories it is a priori knowledge, or that which has not come from experience, that lends itself to the creation of art. Whatever the true nature and source of the aesthetic impulse , the function of the metropolitan aesthetic appears to be a social one. It binds histories and cultural threads together to form an at least, partially cohesive sense of what it may mean to be a part of a civilisation or a particular nationality. Civilisation in terms of its aesthetic produce once unbound, blitz literature appears to tell us, does not cause the whole structure to collapse, but that experience may be intensified.Matthew Arnold wrote that he feared that we were headed as a civilisation into the 'drab of the earnest, prosaic, practical, austerely literal future'. The blitz, I do not believe, was a happy time despite the light headed gaiety of the stayers-on in London, but it was not, literal, prosaic or as earnest as artists like Jennings may have wished to portray. Greene in his epigraph to the novel opens with a quote by Leon Bloy who tells us that 'man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, but suffering comes into them so that they may have existence'. Suffering and cleansing appear to be a dual force in Greene's writing. Destruction also appears to be an opportunity to make alive again, what may have died or never even had birth before it had been blitzed. It is, it may be argued, the finding of the individual voice in a situation such as the blitz that gives the aesthetic representations of the experience authenticity and originality as both Greene and Bowen's characters are part of a transitory world, a very temporary phase as by the end of both novels there is the sense that civilisation changed, must reassert itself. BibliographyEssays in Criticism I-Matthew ArnoldThe Art of Fiction-Henry JamesCritique of Pure Reason-KantElizabeth Bowen-An Estimation-Hermione LeeInterview with Graham Greene [168]-V. S NaipaulGraham Greene-edited by Jeffrey MeyersThe Myth of the Blitz-Angus CalderLondon-The Biography-Peter AckroydLiving through the Blitz-Tom HarrisonIntroductory Readings in Aesthetics-John HospersLiterary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics-MatzThe Making of the Metropolis London 1500-1700-edited by Beier and FinleyAesthetics-A critical Anthology-George Dickie, Rees Sclafani and Ronald Roblin Please note that this sample paper on What was the metropolitan aesthetic of Blitzed London as represented in literature? is for your review only. In order to eliminate any of the plagiarism issues, it is highly recommended that you do not use it for you own writing purposes. In case you experience difficulties with writing a well structured and accurately composed paper on What was the metropolitan aesthetic of Blitzed London as represented in literature?, we are here to assist you. 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