Modris Eksteins - Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age

First Mariner Books edition 2000

Copyright 1989 by Modris Eksteins
All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Eksteins, Modris.
Rites of spring : the Great War and the birth of the Modern Age / Modris Eksteins
p. cm.
A Peter Davison book.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index
ISBN 0-395-93758-2
1. World War, 19141918 Influence. 2. Civilization, Modern20th century. I. Title.
D523.E37 1989 88-29401
909.82 DC 19 CIP

e ISBN 978-0-547-52552-5
v5.1116

Excerpts from The Waste Land in Collected Poems 19011961by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., copyright 1963, 1964 by T. S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd. Excerpt from Burnt Norton in Four Quartets,copyright 1943 by T. S. Eliot, renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Ltd. Excerpts from The Dead Fox Hunter by Robert Graves reprinted by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of the executors of the estate of Robert Graves. Excerpts from The Collected Poems of Wilfrid Owen1963 Chatto & Windus Ltd., reprinted by permission of the estate of the author; the estate of the editor, New Directions Publishing Corporation, and Chatto & Windus Ltd. Excerpts from the papers of Percy H. Jones, copyright Paul P. H. Jones, 1973, reprinted by permission. Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office is reproduced by permission of the Controller of Her Majestys Stationery Office.

For Jayne

As one approaches the outskirts of Verdun on the Route Nationale 3 from Metz, having enjoyed a serene Vosges countryside of rolling hills and meadows, and a steady honor guard of sturdy oak trees, one is struck suddenly, a few kilometers outside the town, by a dreary sight. A blot on the surroundings. A graveyard. Piled high and in full view of the road are smashed corpses, crumpled bodies, glistening skeletons. This is, however, a graveyard without crosses, without headstones, without flowers. There are few visitors. Most travelers probably do not even notice the place. But it is a prominent memorial to the twentieth century and our cultural references. Many would say that it is a symbol of modern values and aims, of our striving and our regrets, the contemporary interpretation of Goethes invocation stirb und werde,die and become. It is an automobile graveyard.

If you continue into Verdun, pass through the town, and then proceed northeast by minor roads, you can find your way to a larger graveyard. This one has crosses. Thousands of them. Row upon symmetrical row. White. All the same. More people today pass the automobile graveyard than this one. More people can identify with the crushed cars than with the now impersonal horror that this cemetery recalls. This is the memorial cemetery for those who fell during the battle of Verdun in the First World War.

This is a book about death and destruction. It is a discourse on graveyards. As such it is also, however, a book about becoming. It is a book about the emergence, in the first half of this century, of our modern consciousness, specifically of our obsession with emancipation, and about the significance of the Great War, as it was called prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, in the development