News at Eleven: In such a disenchanted world,

the world we inhabit now, it's not only pointless but dishonest to write or paint or compose in traditional ways, as though nothing had changed. The old human narrative has been fatally disrupted; it is false to pretend otherwise. Modernism is the anguished response--for Mr. [Gabriel] Josipovici, the only valid response--to this irreparable fracture of the world and the self.

He begins his account with some astute observations on two famous engravings by Albrecht Dürer (his "Melancholia I" and "St. Jerome in his Study" from 1514). Dürer intended the engravings to be complementary; but in fact, as Mr. Josipovici argues, "Melancholia," with its shadows and dozing bats, has come to depict our present state, while "St. Jerome" in its sunny serenity reveals all that we--we moderns--have lost.

from The Wall Street Journal: A Literary Revolution

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