Search for New Patterns
The disintegration of faith and traditional beliefs had led writers, like D.H. Lawrence, to seek refuge from uncertainty and perplexity, in some “mystic religion of blood,” and W.B. Yeats to build up a personal ‘System’ out of a strange fusion of magic and occultism. T.S. Eliot searches for this pattern in the close similarity between myths of different peoples, and the European literary tradition. Authoritarian systems have found favour on the continent, and Marxism with its emphasis on class war has had a large following even in England. Marxism has provided many with the vision of a New Society which will replace the present one in the not too distant future. As Arthur Koestler emphasizes, every period has its own dominant religion and hope, and Marxist Socialism has become the hope of the early 20th century. Marxism has had a profound impact on social organization. The aristocracy, already degenerate and corrupt by the end of the 19th century, has lost practically all power and prestige with the turn of the 20th century. There has been immense increase in social mobility, the profit-motive is condemned, and prestige goes with merit and education, and not with birth. Attention has been focused on social and economic problems, and planned development is favoured so that there may be no extreme poverty side by side with great wealth. Thus the search for a ‘system’ or ‘pattern’ has resulted in the emergence of Marxism and the concept of economic planning.
Multiplication of Books : Decline on Quality
The modern age has witnessed a phenomenal rise in literacy. Cheap books, magazines, papers, etc., have been pouring out in their tens of thousands with the result that the spread of education has been almost universal. However, there has been a visible decline in quality. The old culture of the people expressed in folk-song, dance, rustic craft, etc., has been destroyed. The cinema, the radio, the popular literature, full of crime or love stories, have exploited the people for commercial purposes. There has been an increase in vulgarity, brutality and coarseness. Human relationships have been coarsened and cheapened: man has become incapable of finer and subtle emotional responses. Further, the cinema, the television, and the cheap novel, have fostered a kind of day-dreaming and a proportionately weakened grasp of reality. “Many people live fantasy existences derived from the shadow lives of the screen”. This lowering of tastes has had an adverse effect on art and literature. Bad art and cheap literature, ‘pot boilers’, have become the bane of the new age. The exploitation of the youth for commercial (as well as political) purposes has tended to assign to them a spurious importance, and hence the antagonism of the old and the young has been accentuated. It has become a century of the revolt of youth. Vigorous experiments are being made in the field of music and other fine arts, and literature, but this is a symptom of the break-down of cultural continuity rather than of cultural vigour.
Modern Literature : Its Representative Character

Generally speaking, the modern writer is intensely conscious of his social milieu and does not fail to reflect it in his works. To what extent the new age is reflected in the poetry of the period would be examined in the following section.