Reading List

January 24, 2010

Rites of Spring by Modris Ekstein

“Witty and perceptive in unearthing patterns of behavior that history has erased, Rites of Spring probes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of World War I – from the premier of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rites of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945.”

So reads a part of the book cover of this “interesting” book. This was my first excursion into the non-fiction section of the 501 Must Read books. I must say that it was interesting in a number of ways. From the book jacket, I was lead to believe it would be about World War I. And it was, but at the same time it wasn’t. Let me explain. It is more about the birth of modernism – and the beginning of the path that we, the livers of history, are on right now. Ekstein sees The Great War as a result of the move toward modernism, and also as a catapult for the world into modernism. The book is written in three acts.

Act one is before the war. It examines the three primary Western combatants in the Great War – France, England and Germany. It looks at these countries from the view point of their perception of the arts – and starts the focus with the premier of The Rites of Spring in Paris. The ballet was seen as either a forefront move in the world of art, or as a joke. The British were too embedded in history to appreciate it. The French were too embedded in their artistic savoir faire to appreciate it. The Germans were just recently united and were without a long standing history. Theirs was the place in history like unto the ballet by Stravinky. Ekstein sees these differences as an indicator of the causes of the war. Germany wanted to move forward but France and Britain saw that as a threat. Germany attacked Brussels and it was on. This was a hard section of the book. Ekstein expects people to understand who all of the artists, musicians, philosophers and historians he mentions are. It wasn’t until I stopped worrying about that , that I began to enjoy the book.

Act two is the war. It is not a move by move, battle by battle description of the war. Again, you are expected to just know that part. It is an examination of the reaction of first of all the soldiers to the essence of “trench warfare” and secondly of the homelands to the war. It starts by focusing on the “Christmas truce” on 1914, and then examines the issues following through the rest of the war. I does leave you with a sense of the overpowering cruelty and destruction and death of modern warfare – but more so wit the psychological damage that was done in the trenches and at home by this long and costly engagement. In the end, it did just end. The question was – what was it for and what the outcome was.

The answer is in Act three, where Ekstein examine three post-war events and how they reveal the real effects of the war. The first was the cross Atlantic flight of Charles Lindberg. The second was the publication of All Quiet on the Western Front. The third, of course, was the rise of fascism and the Nazi’s and World War II.

I did enjoy the book. After I got into it I was captured by where it was going. Where it finally went was what I would call a self-fulfilling prophecy. The premise overall of the book, turns out to be that in the modernism world, where we are living in the resultant post age to modernism, it is not the historian that is important. It is not the person who gives the facts, laying them out in a step by step time line for us to see the result. It is the “poet” the aesthetisist who is important. It is the person who explains and deciphers the events and tells us how and why. That is the premise of what Ekstein was saying – and that is what he did.
I will not recommend this one to the casual reader. Do not put it on your book club list. It is hard reading at best – and at times it is “a ponderous chain” and one most people in today’s world will not want to carry around – unless you want to reflect. It does cause a lot of reflection.