Defining Modernism

[poliphilo]

I've been flicking through Cyril Connolly's The Modern Movement (1968) in search of a working definition of Modernism. It's a delightful- and very quotable- little book in which Connolly- the great flaneur- ambles through the decades, scattering apercus, separating the cool from the uncool and constructing a sort of a canon (or list of greatest hits) beginning with Baudelaire and ending with Orwell- than whom I can think of no two writers with less in common.  If both are Modernists then Modernism means whatever you want it mean.