Il tempo e lo spazio: La percezione del mondo tra Otto e Novecento

by Stephen Kern

Stephen Kern writes about the sweeping changes in technology and culture between 1880 and World War I that created new modes of understanding and experiencing time and space. To mark the book's twentieth anniversary, Kern provides an illuminating new preface about the breakthrough in interpretive approach that has made this a seminal work in interdisciplinary studies.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Sociology, 19th Century, European History

435 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[John David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This could have been a truly impressive book. I have a deep, abiding interest in intellectual history, and the subjects set forth in the title provide a fertile field of interdisciplinary study. The ideas themselves are interesting, if only Kern could have synthesized them in a new way or said something about them that hadn’t been said before, or more intelligently – but he simply doesn’t. In fact, the book is a little list-y, and what he chooses to write about becomes fairly predictable.

To begin with, Kern presents a clumsy methodology in his forward, in which he tries to explain what originally piqued his interest in the topic, and how he has organized the book. He states that he got his organizing principle and some of his themes from the realm of philosophical phenomenology (that is, the philosophy of perception). He breaks up the chapters thus: 1) The Nature of Time, 2) The Past, 3) The Present, 4) The Future, 5) Speed, 6) The Nature of Space, 7) Form, 8) Distance, 9) Direction, 10) Temporality of the July Crisis, and 11) The Cubist War. The only problem is that the topics discussed in the book make these categories much less useful or intelligible than you would otherwise think. He never discusses why “Temporality of the July Crisis” (the events directly following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in July, 1914) couldn’t go into chapter two, three, or four, or why “The Cubist War,” which mostly discusses changing perspectives of time in Cubism, couldn’t be presented in chapter six.

Kern’s interdisciplinarity is impressive, though, but this is countered by his unfortunate inability to rally the history into anything cohesive or compelling. He draws from the visual arts, philosophy, psychology, music, literature, the natural sciences, geographical and international relations theory, cinematography, communications and communications theory, and diplomacy, but leaves the threads all dangling at the end of the text.

The book does have its moments. The chapter on distance discusses how changing perceptions of this quantity shaped the bourgeoning field of geographic theory and international relations. The chapter on the outbreak of the First World War looks at how time greatly contracted after the invention of the telephone and radio, and how this affected diplomacy (or attempts at it) leading up to the declaration of war. Both of these are topics which you rarely see dealt with in detail in intellectual history of this type, so I especially appreciated these parts.

If you’re familiar with the generation of cultural and intellectual history leading up to the end of the WWI, this book isn’t the kind of revisionist history that would enable you to re-conceptualize the way you think about these ideas. You get all the standard questions: Is time continuous or atomized? How do Proust and Joyce create a sense of private time (as opposed to a public time) in their novels? How did inventions like the telephone and bicycle change the public’s view of time and speed? These are fascinating questions, but ultimately nothing new to someone who is moderately familiar with the better books in the genre.

Readers looking for a quick-and-dirty intellectual and cultural history of the time could certainly do worse than Kern’s book, however they could also do better. Some of the better attempts that I’ve read recently are George L. Mosse’s absolutely stunning “Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars,” Modris Eksteins’ dependable but conservative “Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age,” and William M. Johnston’s dry-as-hay but necessary “An Intellectual and Social History, 1848-1938,” all of which I have reviewed on this site. None of share Kern’s methodology or cover the same territory, but parts of them discuss some of the material much better than Kern does.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

At this point I want to recommend MY TWENTIETH CENTURY, a puzzling and sizzling Hungarian film from 1989 in which two young twin sisters decide to separate and go their separate ways at the toss of a coin. This dare is a metaphor of how chance, randomness and outright quirk can change the fate of a family or even an entire continent. Typically, World War I and Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, proved empirically after the war by way of a solar eclipse, are taken for the twin watersheds that forever destroyed absolutist thought, from science to art to politics. (O, if only people had known what was coming up in 1933!.) In THE CULTURE OF TIME AND SPACE Stephen Kern asks us to consider the opposite proposition. What if the Twentieth century, the century of breakdown and implosion, truly began before World War I and in fact the changes from 1880 to 1914 paved the way for Sarajevo and the explosion that followed? Kern is wise enough to focus on what others have overlooked: cartographers finished mapping the world and in that sense motivated global conquest; the bicycle, more than the automobile or the airplane, cut short distances and altered everything from our notion of distance to gender relations---women proved to be greater bike enthusiasts than men, plus it freed them from mom and pop. The Cubists were already breaking down the barriers between time and space before Einstein discovered space-time. Anarchists used the "propaganda of the bomb" to decapitate regimes a generation before the Great War swept away the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires. THE CULTURE OF TIME AND SPACE is spine-tingling intellectual history; a history that may be repeating itself in the first generation of the twenty-first century.

[Anna Hiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, while very erudite and well-researched, is actually only a very shallow analysis of the major shifts in world-view that occurred at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th centuries. I was expecting a more theoretical approach, I suppose, and those expectations were decidedly not met. But if you're interested in reading a very broad cultural history of Europe between 1880 and 1918, this would probably be a good place to start. Just don't expect any mind-blowing theories about the actual nature of these changes in world-view amid page after page of close readings of the usual suspects: Kafka, Proust, Mann, Stein, and the visual artists Picasso, Cézanne, Braque, etc. IMHO, Marinetti deserved a lot more space than he actually got. But kudos to the author for leaving the Britain-France-Germany paradigm to include work by Ortega y Gasset in his analysis.

[William Stobb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about how the concept of time changed in the early twentieth century. It draws from a wide variety of arts & humanities sources. It's one of those books that helps you imagine how different your world could be if you had different social constructs. That's useful for imaginative people.

[Andrew Nolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have become increasingly biased against cultural histories, though i wasn't always this way.

Kern offers a largely superficial list of expanding/ changing modernist views on the meaning of time and then the meaning of space.

Like most cultural histories it's a bland and endless list with occasional pitstops at a piece of art/ literature/ film/ etc that you don't necessarily need to know about, a few modernist thinkers along the way, and very little substance to grasp a hold of. Perhaps that's a condition of modernity? Endless listing and connecting lines, but little to stop the free fall into panic of "gosh, truth is all subjective and i'm lost in the information overload". Maybe.

This another long book that you could probably read in a few hours and would never come to mind again.

[Historygirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting approach to modernism in literature and link to World War I. Very influential when published in 1980s, although by now ideas have been picked up and used frequently. Recommended for those interested in the period, Proust, Joyce and cultural history.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended by a student. This is good but dense. Done with the first two chapters, so we move on from the history of timekeeping and the past and now we are 'present'.

[Jenni Link · Rating 5 out of 5]

This engaging cultural history details how a rapid succession of scientific, administrative, and intellectual innovations - from the theory of relativity to the telephone, standardized time zones to Freudian psychology - profoundly altered the concepts and everyday experiences of time and space from the late Victorian age through WWI. These changes were reflected not only in the art, architecture, and literature of the period (Kern gives ample and fascinating examples), but in the frenzied activity of July 1914 that led to declarations of war. I really enjoyed this book and regret that I wasn't aware of it when I had time to study art and literature in more depth as a student. This was written in the 80s, before the internet and smart phones transformed the experience of time and space all over again, and the obvious parallels between the era being examined and the present day, in terms of a general sense of dislocation and uncertainty about the future, were hard to ignore. I see that the author is working on an updated version focused on the present day, and I look forward to reading it.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-written and thoughtful exploration of the different ways that different facets of life adapted to new technologies. Kern looks at distance, speed, form, and space (among other notions) and relates shifts in how they were all perceived to emerging technologies such as the telephone, the cinema, and so on. In the undertaking, he looks at a diverse spectrum encompassing psychology, painting, physics, music, and so on, to show how the shifts in perception were elucidated and acted on. It seems redundant at times (eg Proust and/or Joyce figure in just about every chapter) and arguably esoteric but Kern admits that he draws no connections between any of these strands, only that they happen to be happening at the same time (there are some links, like de Scevola's development of camouflage based on Cubism). Great book on a pivotal time, with WWI serving as the main axis of the themes discussed.

[Ned · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Culture of Space and Time often works better as a compendium of facts and quotes rather than a more engrossing historical narrative. This problem is largely caused by the structural separation of time and space in the text, instead of analyzing these two forces together Kern splits them. This tactic often forces him to repeat himself and disjoints the flow of his argument. In spite of this, his work still constructs a particularly original view of the dissolution of time and space that culminates in the cataclysm of WWI. He also vividly captures the simultaneous disorientation and invigoration that such radical conceptual shifts engendered. Overall a dense, but ultimately useful and informative, view of the role time and space played in the development of 20th century culture.

[Joshua Buhs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps the problem is so much time has passed since the book was published.

Kern starts out arrogantly enough, suggesting that all other cultural studies are inferior to his because they do not deal with fundamental categories--time and space.

What follows, though, reads like a college paper, with one example listed after another (and each chapter mostly focusing on the same few people, especially Proust.)

Can be read, though, as an extension of Marx's old comment about the annihilation of space and time.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's shocking how many ills of the millennial generation existed over a hundred years ago. While the text message is obliterating the English language today, in 1880 the telegraph was doing the same. Today kids rot their brains with video games, in the 1880s the poison of choice was the serial novel. Go figure.

[Andrew Dolbeare · Rating 4 out of 5]

I accidentally finished this book when I was supposed to be using to for research for something else. It's incredibly informative. Anyone who is interested in literature, art or anything for that matter from the late 19th/early 20th century should read this. You'll be surprised and how different the concept of time was and how it changes the way you look at work and invention from that period.

[Anthony Zupancic · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cultural history with a unique structure that makes it seem complete and entertaining while it remains particularly interesting. His look at the July Crisis and Europe's fall into WWI is fascinating.

[ejl · Rating 4 out of 5]

a fantastic intellectual history of how the culture of time and space was shattered at the turn of the century. Non-specialists may welcome his inter-disciplinary approach.

[Gabriella · Rating 4 out of 5]

totally fascinating look at the implications of the machine age, the scheduling of time and workdays, mechanized transportation, and early technology. i did not expect to love this book, but i did.

[Cath Holden · Rating 5 out of 5]

On my second read, I really appreciated it

[Chiara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Molto interessante, collegamenti a volte forse azzardati tra fatti e correnti storiche, ma piacevole. Peccato averlo conosciuto solo con l'ansia di un esame...

[Michael Primiani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this read on how time and space impacts our culture. Preferred the time section over the space section. Also, the chapter on the start of WWI (The July Crisis) seemed out of place.

[T.R. Ormond · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book's strength is its comprehensive presentation of all the relevant intellectual, scientific and cultural developments in concepts of time and space in the decades leading up to WWI. There are many luminaries -- Nietzsche, Freud, William James, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Einstein, Ortega y Gasset, Henri Bergson. The list goes on... and on ... and on...

Which, I suppose, is the book's main weakness. It is thorough, but there is not a lot of synthesis. It is a great book for reference.

Maybe it would have been stronger if he had chosen a few representative figures to centre his argument. For example, if he had put, say, Marcel Proust, or Henri Bergson at the centre of the analysis and then discussed how others responded to these seminal ideas on space and time, then I think the book would have felt more grounded and focused.

[Andrew Carr · Rating 4 out of 5]

An erudite and fascinating examination of how changes in the understanding of time and space at the turn of the twentieth century affected culture (especially literature), technology, society, literature, politics and military affairs.

A broad deep cultural study that reminds of the power of ideas, including those most essential to us, such as our concepts of space and time. And a model study for anyone similarly wanting to write about how a few big ideas weave their way through and are reflected back by the rest of society.

[David Spanagel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I assigned this as a required reading in my History of modern cosmology (Space-Time) course this term. It certainly expanded my undergraduate history of science students' intellectual horizons. I am curious to see how the book fares in their end of term course evaluation feedback. I suspect it will have inspired extreme reactions between a subset who really liked thinking about complex cultural interactions and another subset who are only comfortable dealing with abstract social forces in their most concrete manifestations.

[Timbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The advent of World Standard Time, the automobile, the telephone, and other technological and scientific developments altered the world's perception of time and space, for good and for bad. Kern is particularly deft at positing the case for a new Cubist construction of reality, multiple facets and dimensions apprehended at the same time, culminating in the great disaster of 1914-1918, in which oppsing armies used these new ideas to maximum and devastating effect.

[Phoenix Without · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 1st half of the book is a brilliant exposition on how communication and transportation technology has altered our modern sense of time and space reflected in philosophy, literature and art. Kern The last few sections were an exposition on how these perceptions contributed to the crisis of WW I which I found less compelling.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

An easy introduction to the theory of modernism.

[Miriana Cavallo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indescrivibile. Davvero illuminante e utile

[Bregoli Francesco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saggi di questo genere sono esattamente quello di cui si ha bisogno per capire un determinato periodo. Nessun compartimento stagno ma ogni capitolo permea gli altri nonostante il tentativo di suddividere l'opera in modo ordinato. Emergono tutte le sfaccettature della società a cavallo tra Otto e Novecento grazie all'utilizzo di esempi concreti e rimandi alla filosofia, alla letteratura, al cinema, alla fisica, alla matematica, all'architettura, all'arte, alla guerra, all'ingegneria, alla psicologia, alla scienza, alle testimonianze dei protagonisti.
In una parola: completo.

P.S. è utilissimo anche perché suggerisce tantissimi nuovi libri da leggere

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cultural history has come a long way since 1983, when Kern's book was first published. It may draw more criticism for its approach and style now, but it was crucial in helping to solidify and expand the field at the time, and it's still worth reading.

I used it in my graduate historiography class in Fall 2013, and that experience definitely drove home the point that the book requires significant prior knowledge of turn-of-the-century art and science.




Read the 2003 edition for HST 301: Graduate Historiography in Fall 2013.