French Modernists and the Mass Media: A Love-Hate Relationship
This essay explores the complex relationship between 19th-century French modernist writers and the mass media, particularly newspapers. From Baudelaire to Proust, they both loathed the negative impacts of newspapers (e.g., inciting crime, suppressing literature) and were deeply influenced by them, utilizing their platforms for creation and promotion. Newspapers served as both a crucible of modernity and a laboratory for literary innovation. Writers struggled against them while actively integrating them into their work; Mallarmé's groundbreaking poem *A Throw of the Dice* was published in the commercial magazine *Cosmopolis*. Ultimately, the author argues that in the face of the internet's information deluge, we can learn from the French modernists' experience, maintaining artistic independence while skillfully leveraging new media.