ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the notion of “rhythm” as a still unrecorded utopia of interdisciplinarity and an entirely new way of measuring the emergence, eclipses, and reappearances of the Modern at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century. It examines the pre-eminence of “rhythm” in a multiplicity of contexts (painting, dance, literature, psychology, philosophy, sexuality, or linguistics) and how it led to the discovery or rediscovery of formerly submerged aspects of art, science, human consciousness and emotions. It remaps the turn-of-the-century cultural history by uncovering new lines of filiation between such artists, scientists and philosophers as Herbert Spencer, Walter Pater, Alice Meynall, John Middleton Murry, Maynard Ferguson, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Roger Fry and by shedding light on new “vibrations,” “organic processes” and conflicts of forces as so many attempts to resist old classifications and to reclaim or retain the natural rhythms of life.