“There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought.” 
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora never traveled outside of the United States but she was still a major Modernist writer. Unlike other Black writers of the time, Zora didn't believe black people needed to be uplifted. She saw the beauty in her race without the need to hear or write about the beauty from anyone else. Because of this, Zora's characters range from good and bad, weak and strong. 

Zora experimented with language in her writing. She used Vernacular English that captured black culture at the time. Zora knew that to understand a culture, you had to understand the language of the culture. Zora also used vivid, drawn-out descriptions. Some called these descriptions "rambling," but the wordiness allows the reader to create an image in their heads.

Zora was optimistic about the future of black Americans. Although she traveled through the Deep South and interviewed many black people who told of unsurmountable obstacles, Zora still believed that the future of black people was bright.

Zora Neale Hurston Video

Zelda's Life and Work

“She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.” 

― Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda Fitzgerald was known best as F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife but that is not all that she was. She was a writer, artist, dancer, and a mother. She wrote her only novel, Save Me the Waltz, while in a mental hospital. The novel was heavily edited by F. Scott, who was upset that Zelda used moments from her life that he wanted to use in his own novel.

Zelda was the epitome of the flapper girl.  Her cut, bobbed hair, shorter skirts, and (oftentimes) excessive drinking made her a well-known woman in the New York City social circles. Zelda liked attention and is said to have danced fully clothed in fountains.

Despite Zelda's fiery disposition and love of the limelight, her marriage to F. Scott was tumultuous and she suffered with mental illness. Many people attribute Zelda's mental illness to her trying to maintain the carefree, flapper girl image. 

Save Me the Waltz is based upon Zelda's life and marriage to F. Scott. According to the Penguin Modern Classics edition of the book, "Zelda Fitzgerald’s book emerges as much more than a document of spite.  It is a forceful, truthful picture of legendary marriage in a fabulous age: one of the most shattering self-portraits of a woman ever committed to paper."

Mina Loy's Place in Modernism

“If this is madness,” I said to myself, breathing his atmosphere exquisite almost to sanctification, “madness is something very beautiful.” 
― Mina Loy, Insel

Mina Loy embodied a modern woman because of the topics she chose to write about, the most controversial one being female sexuality. In her writing, Mina expressed her love, heartbreak, confusion, disdain, and many other feelings. She never did fit into what was expected of women at the time. In "Feminist Manifesto", Loy encouraged to women what had never been encouraged before. Some include, "there is nothing impure in sex — except in the mental attitude towards it, "Leave off looking to men to find out what you are not — seek within yourselves to find out what you are." 

Loy wrote her "Feminist Manifesto" in response to the misogyny she experienced with the Futurists and Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism." She wrote that it was only through "absolute demolition" of the current state that kept women in a place of inferiority to men would women get their equal status. The Modernist Movement served as the catalyst for Loy to broadcast her ideas on feminism, but it also makes her less radical because several other women were beginning to make the same change as she was.

However, Loy is incredibly effective and inspirational because she used the Modernist Movement's radicalism to work with her and not against her.

Mina Loy

Another longer video but well worth watching if you care to :)

The End of Extravagance

This is a longer video and you don't have to watch the whole thing. 

I just found it interesting :)

"The Stein Salon Was The First Museum of Modern Art"

So says James Mellow. But this isn't a saying to be debated. 

Stein said she wanted to be historical, and there is no doubt that she was. Her salon in Paris attracted the modern thinkers of the time and it is where Stein cultivated her love for art, writing, and modernism. Visitors included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. 

In her salon, Stein became a mentor and critic to the people who visited her. Hemingway even talked about the salon in his memoir A Moveable Feast.

I find Stein to be a modern-day Germaine de Stael. De Stael, a fierce opponent of Napoleon, was considered a modernist of her time. De Stael also had salons, which attracted the educated and open-minded.