The European avant-garde is marked by an intriguing paradox: on the one hand, it defines itself in terms of an unequivocal polemics against time-honored cultural traditions and a complete break with the past; on the other hand, as has recently shown systematically and from a cross-disciplinary perspective, its programmatic iconoclastic rupture with tradition is often informed or even shaped by a close, complex dialogue with important paradigms of the European cultural and intellectual ancient heritage. Pre-Socratic thinkers (broadly defined) were such an influential paradigm (e.g. in the works of Surrealists), which, however, has by and large been neglected in discussions of the European avant-garde and, more broadly, modernism.

Our conference aims at a systematic, interdisciplinary, and comparative exploration of the complex impact of the figures and thought of the pre-Socratic thinkers (early Greek philosophers and cosmologists such as Anaximander, Herakleitos, Parmenides, and Empedokles, including the intricate ‘movements’ of Orphism and Pythagoreanism for which our sources are most often late) on modernism and the avant-garde in Europe. The main focus of the papers will be on the period between 1900 and 1950, although discussions of significant predecessors and successors (e.g. Nietzsche or deconstructionists) are not excluded either.

Venue:
FU Berlin

Organisation:
Prof. Dr. Barbara Ventarola (FU Berlin)
Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Yatromanolakis (Johns Hopkins University)

Schedule (provisional)

Thursday, January 14, 2016
(Venue: Rostlaube, Seminarzentrum, L 116)

10:00 – 10:15
Welcome and Introduction

Panel 1: Surrealism Revisited I: Philosophy, Art and Science

10:15 – 11:00
DIMITRIOS YATROMANOLAKIS (Johns Hopkins University)
The Presocratics and Early Surrealism Revisited

11:00 – 11:45
WOLFGANG ASHOLT (HU Berlin / Osnabrück)
Contradictory concepts of unity or unity of contradictions? Breton, Berkeley and the Pre-Socratics

11:45 – 12:15
Coffee Break

12:15 – 13:00
PANAGIOTIS ROILOS (Harvard University)
Georges Bataille and the Pre-Socratics

13:00 – 15:00
Lunch Break

Panel 2: Surrealism Revisited II: Literature and Visual Arts

15:00 – 15:45
NEIL COX (University of Edinburgh)
Pre-Socratic Surrealism: Bataille and Masson with Nietzsche, Sade and Heraclitus

15:45 – 16:30
ASTRID RUFFA (Université de Lausanne)
The Pre-Socratics and the Surrealist Dialectic: Dalí Facing Breton

16:30 – 17:00
Coffee Break

17:00 – 17:45
BARBARA VENTAROLA (Freie Universität Berlin)
Guillaume Apollinaire and Orphism

Friday, January 15, 2016
(Venue: Rostlaube, J 32/102)

Panel 3: From Russian Symbolism to Avant-Garde

10:00 – 10:45
NINA GOURIANOVA (Northwestern University, Illinois)
Pre-Socratics, Nietzsche, and the Dichotomy Between Harmony and Dissonance in Russian Modernism and Early Avant-Garde

10:45 – 11:30
RAINER GRÜBEL (Universität Oldenburg)
The “Third Renaissance” and the Pre-Socratic Parmenides in Russian Modernism and Avant-Garde

11:30 – 11:45
Coffee Break

11:45 – 12:30
AAGE ANSGAR HANSEN-LÖVE (LMU München)
Pre-Socratic Philosophy and Russian Modernism

12:30 – 14:30
Lunch Break

Panel 4: Between Sense and Non-Sense

14:30 – 15:15
GEORG WITTE (Freie Universität Berlin)
Pre-Socratic Elements in Experiments of Writing of the Russian Avant-Garde

15:15 – 16:00
HUBERT VAN DEN BERG (Adam-Mickiewicz-Universität Posen)
Back to the Origins – Dada and Pre-Socratic Philosophy

16:00 – 16:30
Coffee Break

16:30 – 17:15
HARRY VANDERVLIST (University of Calgary)
Mapping a Distinctive Literary Territory: Samuel Beckett’s Uses of the Pre-Socratic Writers

17:15 – 18:00
Final Discussion: Modernity and Pre-Socratic Antiquity. Reflections on a Complex Dialogue