Europe in the Belle Époque, 1871–1914527The birth of the twentieth century seen in architec-
ture had parallels throughout the arts. Startling innova-
tors broke with tradition. In music, the rejection of the
nineteenth-century symphonic heritage led after 1900
to efforts to compose atonal music, culminating in 1914
with Arnold Schonberg’s system of composing to de-
stroy the feeling of tonality. Other composers, such as
Igor Stravinsky, boldly created dissonant harmonies.
Such music so offended traditional tastes that perfor-
mances were sometimes met with howls of protest from
the audience; the first performance of Stravinsky’s ballet
The Rite of Springprovoked a riot in Paris in 1913. Horri-
fied traditionalists even saw the rules of dancing begin
to break down as free dance abolished the following of
steps or prescribed positioning.
The breakdown of traditional styles was especially
controversial in the visual arts where the popularity of
photography and the cinema pressed painters to find
artistic expression that these new arts could not rival.
The nonrepresentational styles of painting that
emerged still evoke hostility from traditionalists a cen-
tury later. The most inventive artist of the twentieth
century, Pablo Picasso, began his career producing
works of emotional realism, but after 1904 he pio-
neered a style known as cubism in which shapes and
structures (such as the human face) were simplified into
geometric outlines. Picasso pushed the breakdown of
realism so far that a face might have two eyes on the
same side of the nose. Denounced for his nonrepresen-
tational styles, Picasso responded that his art was “a lie
that tells the truth.” Painting was no longer a simple de-
piction of the physical world; it revealed hidden truths
about a two-faced world.
European thought during the Belle Époque fol-
lowed a similar course. The most influential works of
the era drew upon the new discipline of psychology.
Novelists from Feodor Dostoevski (whose The Brothers
Karamazovappeared in 1879–80), through Joseph Con-
rad (whose Lord Jimappeared in 1900), to Marcel Proust
(whose first volume of Remembrance of Things Pastap-
peared in 1913) relied upon psychological detail and
insight. The inner life of characters and their subcon-
scious motivation gained emphasis as central features of
the novel. Psychology also reshaped European philoso-
phy. Friedrich Nietzsche, a pastor’s son who reacted
against the piety of his home, was such a brilliant stu-
dent that he became a professor at the University of
Basel at age twenty-four. Nietzsche wrote with psycho-
logical insight about the sublimation of passions and in-
stincts, the relativity of morals, and what he called “the
will to power.” He had contempt for contemporary cul-
tural and moral values and, in works such as Thus Spoke
Zarathustra(1883), argued that “God is dead” and Chris-
tianity is based on the mentality of slaves. Such argu-
ments did not have much immediate impact, but they
grew increasingly influential in European thought.
Perhaps the most influential thinkers of the Belle
Époque were two scientists: Sigmund Freud, the Aus-
trian neurologist who founded the science of psycho-
analysis and Charles Darwin, the English Naturalist who
developed the theory of evolution by Natural Selection.
Freud’s study of psychoneuroses in the 1890s led him to
an analytic technique of the “free association” of
thoughts, a process that he named “psychoanalysis.”
This, in turn, led him to the analysis of dreams. The Inter-
pretation of Dreams(1900) stated his first model of the
workings of the mind, a model that evolved into a de-
scription of three competing subconscious elements of
the mind: the ego, the superego, and the libido (or id).
Freud’s attention to the libido as the seat of emotional
(and especially sexual) urges led to his famous stress
upon sexual explanations (especially those with origins
in infantile sexuality) in Three Contributions to the Sexual The-
ory(1905). Many of Freud’s theories have been contro-
versial, and some are simply wrong, but Freud’s impact
upon European thought has been so enormous that he
remains the most influential author of his era.
Darwin had presented his theories in two contro-
versial works, On the Origin of Species(1859), which
demonstrated how natural selection worked, and The
Descent of Man(1871), which applied evolution to hu-
manity. The theory of evolution—that plants and ani-
mals naturally experience a process of gradual change
into a more complicated or advanced state—was ad-
vanced by many scientists. Darwin’s greatest contribu-
tion was to demonstrate natural selection as the means
of evolution. He first did this by studying the evolution
of the beaks of birds in the Galapagos Islands, showing
how the environment favored certain shapes of beaks,
thus birds with such an advantage were naturally se-
lected for survival and reporduction. Darwin’s applica-
tion of evolution to human history was enormously
controversial because it conflicted with the biblical ac-
count of human origins, but scientists steadily accepted
his theory. Social theorists in many fields soon appro-
priated (and misappropriated) Darwin’s ideas. The most
wide-spread derivation during the belle époque was
known as “social darwinism.” This doctrine applied a
crude version of natural selection to human society and
then asserted that certain people were suited for domi-
nance and they would triumph, following what Herbert
Spencer called “the survival of the fittest.” Such social
darwinism was used to justify the class system, unregu-
lated capitalist competition, racism, and imperialism.