Eros in the metropolis: Bartok's The 'Miraculous Mandarin'

Barttk's essay 'The Relation of Folk Song to the Development of the Art Mus ic of our Time', published in 1921, was written as he was working on the sc ore of The Miraculous Mandarin. Three main issues in the essay, the questio n of origin, the position of the creative subject with relation to 'Nature' and 'Culture', and the character of the music of Stravinsky and Schoenberg , are given fresh contexts by the musical work's emphasis on the character and function of differing types of eroticism. The possibility of cultural r enewal based on the recovery of erotic self-expression in the face of the o ppressive, objective conditions of the modern metropolis emerges as a centr al concern. This links Barttk's work to that of the Sunday Circle group of intellectuals, including Karl Mannheim, Gyorgy Lukacs and Bola Balpzs, who sought an affirmative alternative to Georg Simmel's pessimistic view of the 'tragedy of modern culture'.