Post-War Literature The Great War (as World War One was originally titled) was the definitive event of modern times. Not even World War Two – which involved more nations and soldiers, as well as advanced weaponry – was as significant as The Great War in changing people’s perception of themselves and their world. The literature of the post war period clearly displays the broad cultural impact of The War and the overall sense of disillusionment that spread from soldiers to civilians once it ended. “On May 29, 1913, in Paris, the most shocking artistic event of the age ignited a new attitude toward the future. It was the premier performance of Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps, produced by the Ballets russes de Diaghilev.” So says Modris Eksteins in the introduction to his book “Rites of Spring – The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age”. Eksteins goes to great lengths to impress on his readers the atmosphere of that night and the sociological significance of Le Sacre. The ballet’s plot reduced to a phrase would be Life is born only out of Death. Eksteins goes on to show how this idea was beginning to take hold all over Europe, and how paradox contributed to the causes of WWI. It is this prewar theme of paradox that interests us. While discussing the German motives behind declaring war on France and the Allies, Eksteins sites letters and journal entries from both sides stating how sure they were of a quick and inevitable victory. He describes what happens as the war progressed: As the myth of inevitable victory fragmented, the fragments became new, even larger, even brighter myths. In a prolific spasm, illusion gave birth to a host of illusions. Horror was turned into spiritual fulfillment. War became peace. Death, life. Annihilation, freedom. Machine, poetry. Amorality, truth. The war was generally viewed as a positive and necessary thing. For only when the old had been washed away could the new and beautiful truly thrive. But the war was not only about paradox, it was also about Tradition. Germany saw itself doing a good and noble deed in fighting Britain. “Britain was the foremost representative of a life-denying order that Germany had to break out of – a world that stifled true enjoyment, inspiration, and spirit.” Britain, on the other hand, was a land steeped in tradition. Even language had become a tradition. In 1914 words such as Honor, Duty, and Glory were enough to go to war for. Britain saw itself as the embodiment of law, order, and civility in the world. “For the Germans this was a war to change the world; for the British this was a war to preserve a world. The Germans were propelled by a vision, the British by a legacy.” The connection between tradition and paradox became increasingly apparent as the war progressed. The social and political control within the countries became increasingly strict for fear of spies, informants, and the like. Passports, rations, heavier taxes, conscription, and economic control (so that the war could actually continue) were standard practice. Ekstein points out how most countries came to resemble Thomas Hobbes Leviathan (total autocratic control over state and citizens). The paradox emerges when the realm of spirituality comes into play. Any former spiritual reality that existed before the war was shattered by the war. However, that common thread of morality (which more or less existed on either side and what Ekstein refers to as ‘the external world’) was morphed and twisted until only a false image remained. The participants in the war deluded themselves. The source of delusions were basic issues such as the causes of the war, what the enemy was like and certain grotesque stories concerning him, why they were fighting (to punish, to protect, to spread the gospel of, etc.), and the grandest delusion was that every party believed themselves to be the civil and righteous ones amidst all this. The government fed stories and mottos to the press. These were meant to enforce the delusions and thus “keep up morale”. Was it possible that Those In Charge had a premonition of what would happen when the soldiers and citizens began questioning the causes of the war, their participation in it, and the astonishing waste of human lives and potential? Did they know what effect the war would have once the general populace started thinking again? Whether they did or not, the propaganda kept soldiers fighting and civilians cheering. But all the while, the realm of delusion was growing and eventually someone would notice. “Within this paradox, as the social and cultural realms seemed to split away from each other, would lie the essence of the modern experience.” The War Book Boom would come ten years after Armistice and the resolution. From 1918 until 1928, the world tried to continue on as before, knowing that absolutely nothing was as it was before. War Hero’s came home; shell shocked, sober and silent. Unwilling to discuss the most horrible side of human nature which they had spent four years bearing witness to. Or, if they were willing to discuss, others did not want to hear it. This phenomenon takes place in Ernest Hemmingway’s short story “Soldier’s Home”. At first Krebs, who had been at Belleau Wood, Soissons, the Champagne, St.Mihiel and in the Argonne did not want to talk about the war at all. Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it. It wasn’t until 1928 that society at large was ready to come to grips with the war. The decade is often referred to as The Roaring Twenties and saw a world struggling to regain its lost sense of identity. “Old authority and traditional values no longer had credibility. Yet no new authority and no new values had emerges in their stead.” (ek,256) No one knew how to interpret the war. No one knew what to do with it. Eight million people had died, and yet no overwhelming good had come of the war. The realm of delusion began to break, and all that was left on the inside was a nihilistic void. Finding some way to cope with the sudden onslaught of meaninglessness (not only a spiritual, but mental crisis) has been the bane of our society ever since. The postwar generation became obsessed with youth, beauty, and indulging in life. There had been a “sacrificial death” and now western society was waiting for the life that was to become of it. And if the outpour of life didn’t take place on its own, they were willing to create it. Ekstein stresses societies craving for newness. History had caused the war, history had failed them somehow, and so history was cast aside in favor of an impetuous lifestyle. However, the unexplained and seemingly unresolved war was hiding around ever corner, and lurking in everyone’s minds. The fascination with newness affected the literary world in substantial ways. Many authors focused writing on themes such as lost innocence, the untrustworthiness of older (deceitful) generations, and the seeming meaninglessness of life. Some of the more prominent names from the twenties are Aldous Huxley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Agatha Christie, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. Meanwhile, war poets were still searching for words with meaning, and war dairies were waiting to disgust and/or enlighten mankind. T. S. Elliot aptly phrased the frustration with language that many writers of the era must have felt, especially those who had actually fought in the war. He writes: … Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. Eksteins relates Elliots poem to the mud of the battlefield. Traditional language seems to have drowned out there. Words lost their significance. The shocking reality of the trenches slowly destroyed the power of words like honor, duty, and glory. In his book “The Great War and Modern Memory” Paul Fussell provides a clear sample of how language changed after the war. He compares the flowery, almost Arthurian, diction used in England in poetry and prose before the war to the flat and severe language adopted after it. Some examples that he lists are: A friend is a comrade Friendship is comradeship, or fellowship A horse is a steed, or charger The enemy is the foe Danger is peril To conquer is to vanquish The author goes on to point out some more specific examples of words that now “constitute obvious double entendres” which before the war were used in perfectly innocent and genteel ways. His examples were intercourse, erection, ejaculation, etc. Language and connotations changed dramatically because of the Great War. Erich Maria Remarque’s “Im westen nichts Neues” (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) started the War Book Boom in 1928. Suddenly war novels, dairies and poetry were flooding stores. Some of the more recognizable names are Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Charles Sorley, Robert Graves, Ford Madox Ford, and Ernest Hemmingway. Alfredo Bonadeo studies one of the major recurring themes in war literature. His essay “War and Degradation: Gleanings from the Literature of the Great War” discusses the idea of the degradation of the human consciousness and the necessity for this relapse into animality during a war. He states that “A man with his faculties intact could not face the horror of the battlefield.” Captain Liddell Hart is quoted: “The was to endurance lay primarily in deadening reflection with action”. Erich Remarque says “Terror.. kills if a man thinks about it.” In order to continue fighting, soldiers had to detach that part of them which objected to the horror of war. They were forced to stop thinking about such things as moral right and wrong. Bonadeo goes sites Bertrand Russel’s view of war and its impact. Russel argued that belief in nationalistic superiority proven through physical force (ie. Through war) was barbaric and uncivilized. He points out the falsity of heroism in war and describes how men must relapse into a savage frame of mind merely to exist. Russel believes the transformation is moral murder and that it has permanent effects. Some recovered from the transformation and were able to continue rather normal lives when they went home. Bonadeo sites other examples of the permanent displacement of soul and spirit that was felt by some. “He (referring to T.E. Lawrence) discovers that the strength of the animal instinct, the force that drives the soldier in the European fronts, drives him too against the enemy in the desert: “While we rode we were disembodied, unconscious of flesh or feeling.”” Bonadeo shows how this savagery caused Lawrence’s disillusionment with the war effort: And when at an interval this excitement faded and we did see our bodies, it was with some hostility, with a contemptuous sense that they reached their highest purpose not as vehicles of the spirit, but when, dissolved, their elements served to manure a field. This quote shows the soldiers feeling of uselessness and meaninglessness in the war. Lawrence’s disillusionment with the spiritual purpose of the war is obvious. He sees through the propaganda and the lies that circulated about war being noble and good, and he sees the violence as a degradation of humanity. Because human life came to be so cheap (it was normal for thousands of men to die everyday) it also came to lose its significance. How can life hold meaning in a war which itself seems to hold very little meaning? Eksteins says “The language and literature of disillusionment would be on the whole a postwar phenomenon - everywhere.” But it took until 1928 for veterans and civilians to come to grips with the causes of disillusionment and to find suitable language with which to express it. War novels are often very similar. The authors use crisp, harsh language to express the attitudes and atmosphere of the war. “Generals die in bed” by Charles Yale Harrison was described in the New York Evening Post as “the best of the war books” when it was published in 1930. It is a prime example of the simplicity of language used in war literature. “It is a dead body. It is wearing the field-blue French uniform. Wee see the thing red stripe wriggling up the trouser-leg. … In the water it looks bloated and enormous.” The lack of unnecessary adjectives presents a frank and honest portrayal of life in the trenches. No frills, no disguise, merely blunt honest existence. (It was the idea of a completely honest existence which supported the paradoxes stated earlier “War became peace. Death, life. Annihilation, freedom. Machine, poetry. Amorality, truth.) Many people were offended by the brutal honesty of the war novels. The authors seemed obsessed with clearly portraying the horrendous conditions they lived in. Recurring images in the novels are that of the lavatory, the undefeatable mud, the brothels, and the former trees of the countryside. The lavatory showed the lack of glamour and the savagery that soldiers were forced into. The image of the mud is significant because it portrays the struggle against the elements and the confusion of the war cause - more often men were fighting against these things than against their actual enemies. The brothels signify the death of morality as well as how it changed and secularized society. The image of the stubs of former trees which could be found anywhere in the battlezone show the beauty and simplicity of life before the war, the simple faith which was destroyed by it. Poetry still thrived throughout war time. T.S. Elliot, Rupert Brook, Wilfred Owen, and Siegfried Sassoon are some of the more famous soldier poets. The poetry was usually from during the war but it shows the same disillusionment and search for meaning that the literature of the post war period portrays. In his poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” Wilfred Owen describes an attack of 1917. He describes a soldier killed in a gas attack. If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs Bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, - My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old lie: Dulce et deorum est Pro patria mori. The last line is a quote from Horace, a first century Roman. It translates “Sweet and proper it is to die for ones county.” This is among the many myths that were killed in the war and which resulted in widespread disillusionment and quest for true meaning in life. The Great War had an enormous impact on western thought and culture. Life was cheapened in the war, man was diminished into something incredibly savage, and many soldiers didn’t recover from their experience in the trenches. Many myths were formed and circulated by citizens as well as the press in the effort to uphold the morale of the soldiers. The cause of the war and the reason for fighting became clouded and confused. When the war ended in 1918 it seemed to go out with “a whimper instead of a bang” and left almost all participants with the feeling that nothing was really accomplished. The widespread disillusionment and search for meaning is reflected in the literature of the time. The diction and imagery in war novels shows how trench life affected soldiers psychologically and spiritually. The idea of that Life is born only out of Death proved false. Since The Great War mankind has been plagued with the quest for meaning and truth which the war abolished. Wir werden solchen Fruhling, bald verschattet, Nie wieder auf der weiten Welt erleben. - Ernst Blass Such a spring, soon in shadows,/ Never again shall we experience in the entire world.

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