The appeal of the fragment resonates at different times and in different cultures. John Chapman's work on archaeological fragmentation suggested an interest in deliberately fragmenting objects even in Mesolithic times, while the desire to commemorate incompleteness can be identified in contexts as diverse as Japanese kintsugi and the Gedächtniskirche in Berlin. Nora Goldschmidt's book Fragmentary Modernism investigates not only the artistic potential of fragments, but the desire to link that to a specifically Classical past. It focuses on the concurrence of modernism as an artistic and literary movement with the scholarly developments which foregrounded fragments among Classicists and museum professionals. G. argues that this was a two-way exchange; not only did academic work influence modernist writers and artists, but their creative production fed back into Classical scholarship.
Despite the broad title, G. focuses on Anglophone modernism in the early years of the twentieth century. As she acknowledges in the introduction, there is much that could be explored beyond Britain and America; however, the book's tight geographical focus allows breadth in disciplinary terms. Here, G.'s range is impressive, and by juxtaposing chapters on literature with others on material culture, she allows the reader to reflect more broadly on the nature of fragmentation. Are curators conserving a damaged statue dealing with the same intellectual questions as editors of a lacunose text? How broken does something have to be to count as a fragment? Modern classicists are all too often siloed within our sub-disciplinary boundaries, and the book's invitation to transcend these is welcome.
G. turns first to papyrology, juxtaposing its nascence with the modernist interest in creating fragments. She opens with Pound's poem Papyrus, analysing it as a ‘philologically daring’ reconstruction of Sappho. This is juxtaposed with a wider discussion of the impact of papyrus finds from Oxyrhynchus, felt across genres from music-hall songs to novels. Her discussion highlights how papyri create the illusory impression of direct contact with an ancient poet, and how their perceived modernity overlooks their status as artefacts from a particular time and place. Recent controversies around provenance highlight that this remains an important issue.
Ch. 2 (‘Editions’) investigates the creation of the critical edition and its scholarly procedures such as textual markings and apparatus criticus; while the editor's intent may be to create coherence and reconstruct, the paratexts highlight the fragility of this operation, and can be perceived as destabilising any sense of ‘fixed text’. G. takes Eliot as a central case study, reading The Wasteland in the light of Bücheler's edition of Petronius, and Four Quartets with Diels’ work on the Presocratics. The final section investigates Pound's Canto alongside Homer's Odyssey, in the light of contemporary debates between Analysts and Unitarians, perhaps pushing the book's definition of fragmentariness to the extreme.
Ch. 3 (‘Inscriptional Modernisms’) deals with the epigram, a form which can literally be a fragment of stone, but which as a literary genre relies on a fictive sense of fragmentation. G. skilfully connects the physical inscriptions in the British Museum to the creative inscriptionality used by modernist writers, for whom the Reading Room (accessed via the Hall of Inscriptions) became a ‘foundational site’. The later part of the chapter explores epigrams in anthology form, where the process of modernist writers such as H. D. can be seen as a continuation of the play on decontextualisation already begun in antiquity.
Ch. 4 (‘Modernism and the Museum’) was for me a highlight, with a fascinating account of changing practices around reconstruction and display. While debates around restoration were not new, G. argues that these years saw new emphasis on the fragmentary state of ancient sculpture, fuelled by wider cultural acceptance of the fragment. G. foregrounds the British Museum as her case study, looking at the Parthenon sculptures and the decision to remove them from their plaster casts. Ch. 5 (‘Archaeologisms’) touches on similar debates around archaeological sites, focusing particularly on Evans's controversial reconstruction at Knossos.
There is much to praise and enjoy. G. has been meticulous in her research, and her engaging and clear writing style should not lead one to overlook the rigour needed for such a clear command of sources, archival material and scholarly landscape. Naturally some aspects of the book are more successful than others. I felt, for example, that G. could have done more to expand upon her claim that the modernist engagement with fragmentation is fundamentally different to previous Romantic interest in the fragment. The case that modernism changed Classical scholarship (not just vice versa) seemed to me very convincing in the chapter on museum practice; less so when it comes to editions or epigrams. Finally, the extent to which a text or artefact is fragmented varies throughout the book, causing one to ponder how far one can stretch the meaning of ‘fragment’. A statue with a broken nose, for example, seems to provoke different responses from a torso missing all limbs; similarly, a text with significant problems may be a palimpsest, but is it really a fragment in the same sense as a single line of Sappho? Yet if we make the category of ‘fragment’ too large, should it not include everything from antiquity? These may be quibbles, but are also provocations for further intellectual engagement from the reader after finishing the book. G.'s excellent discussion has much to offer scholars across Classical literature and art, as well as those interested in its reception.
