Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Szilvia Nagy: I Can Operate in the Dark—Bodies are Phosphorescent... Occult Modernism and Myth-Making in Djuna Barnes 's Nightwood

behind the costume one half of their true androgynous nature. Animals were showcased in a way that accentuated an artificial hierarchy between human and animal whereby the 'human animal' was not allowed to expose existing animalistic impulses within the existing cultural framework. The modernists keenly felt the impact of these dramatic changes. Along with her contemporaries, Barnes felt that the modern enterprise of the beginning of the twentieth century has rendered individuals blind to values they formerly cherished. The broadening human horizon that the emerging possibilities promised was only pretense; the new circumstances thrust many into the pursuit of material wealth, or in the case of World War I, mass killing. Although the conventional notions of development created the illusion of autonomous consciousness, in fact there was no "authentic 'I am' ... only an egoism which masquerades as the authentic self' (Needleman). Thus, as Needleman continues, "modern man's world perceptions and his own mode of living are not the conscious expressions of his being taken as a complete whole. ... on the contrary, they are only the unconscious manifestation of one or another part of him." In this sense, says Gurdjieff, human beings are automatons, giving only mechanical reactions to stimuli coming from the inside and the outside, and are incapable of consciously utilizing and authentically expressing in one gesture their thought, feeling, and will. They do not have control over their situation and thus can only passively suffer the things that are happening to them. The material growth brought with it moral degeneration that went unnoticed for many because of the spell of civilizational progress on the individual. Modernist women did not depend on Gurdjieff for an enumeration of the calamities of the human situation as much as they depended on him for a path that they could follow to regain a lost sense of self. I am turning to Needleman for a paraphrase of the Gurdjieffian idea: "Deeply buried though it is, the awakened conscience ... is the only force in modern man's nearly completely degenerate psyche that can actually bring parts of his nature together." The how of this initiative consisted of "physical work, intensive emotional interactions, and the study of a vast range of ideas about humanity and the universal world," and also movements taken from sacred dances, all toward the ideal of obtaining a sense of cosmic wholeness (Needleman). 69