Rites of Spring

[AndyHollinger]

I got a freebee from the publisher (yes there are a few perks we underpaid professors have) and have started it.

It's not military history, but a kind of social history ... anyone read it. Although it's free, is it worth my time?

[Martin Bennitt]

I bought and read it a long time ago. It's still on my bookshelf so I can't have thought it that bad.

persevere.

cheers Martin B

[Chris Martin]

I found Eksteins' Rites of Spring quite an interesting book. As you have noted, it is not a military history, rather a cultural history dealing with aspects of the war in an attempt to understand the rise of the modern state. He raises some very interesting points on the application of a cultural approach to the study of war and I found his section dealing with Remarque's All Quiet On the Western Front to be quite well put together.

Ekstein's work is important I think in understanding the development of cultural studies of the war that have appeared in the later half of the 90's on. His approach has been reflected in other works, most notably Jonathan Vance's Death So Noble

I think his book is well worth the read.

Chris

[AndyHollinger]

I am ALMOST finished with it. It is long and philisophical ... meaning it is PERFECT for the 3:AM "I can't sleep because of Lauren's incredible sauce and the three helpings I had" type of nights. It is interesting that you mention the piece about All Quiet ... I found this great. After being involved in several threads here about All Quiet AND having read almost all of his later works ... I found it very interesting about the squabble about it's "authenticity"

I actually read All Quiet and Drei Kammeranden in German - boy was that a long time ago - and like reading many things, the original language helps ... but the idea of the WWI experience then I precieved as real now I know it was the author's eyes remembering stories told in hospital ... wow ...

This book is very true to Vonnigut's concept that literature is a better form of history than recounting of events.

The author constantly stresses the homosexual elements of the late 19C ... Thomas Man, Herman Hesse .... that the "Best Friends" of the Kaiser were homosexual ... etc. etc. I took this to emphasize the "over" cosomopolitan nature of society and not stressing the idea of what orientation people had ... but that does lend a flavor to the decedance themes running through the book.

I think this book comes down to the idea that the "soldier's experience" of WWI crowded out almost everything prior in terms of European culture and only in that light can one understand the interum and WWII. My contention would be ... so what (?) Culturally the US takes the lead after 1918 and surely supplants Euroculture in 1946. Disneyland and Blue Jeans to the beat of Elvis ... It's like talking about Europe before Napoleon ...

I wouild have renamed the book ... "The fading glimmer" Europe's last hold on the world's mind.

But ... since you've already accustomed yourselves to $5.00+ a gallon gas, have public transport, sensible gun laws, have learned to more or less live together in a multi-cultural, multi-ethinc closenit resource poor, heavily populated environment ... maybe once again, you'll lead the cultural way ... but then there are those pesky Romanians trying to define marriage ...

Net: Not an important book, but an interesting one for discussions about "experience" and "truth" verses history and accuracy ...

[Chris Martin]

To get at Ekstein's meaning of experience and truth vs. history and accuracy, it is important to properly place his work within the writing of history itself. Ekstein is without a doubt a postmodern historian, his introduction lays this out quite clearly. One of the main tenants of the Postmodernist historians centers on the continual shift in meaning of language over time. The implied meaning of a word changes over time, so to does the way it has been used and the implicet or explicit meaning the author implied through its usage. Postmodernists believe that one can not truly understand the contemporary usage and meaning of a word because they were not present at the time of its uterance. Since language is so subjective, so to must any inferance based on language. Thus for the postmodernist writing history is akin to writing fiction, given that we don't know exactly what an author of a document meant when they put thought to paper.

It's not a school of though that I particularly hold to, but understanding it does help to explain why Ekstien is dismisive of historical accounts as a way to understand the past. He is very much in tune with Paul Fussell's "The Great War and Modern Memory" in the weight he places on "forms" of cultural expression such as, in Fussell's work, poetry etc.

I think Ekstien's work has it's flaws but his attempt to understand or capture the "Spirit of the age" and his recognition that the "spirit" can be found in a society's sence of priorities and that it is through the responce to these symbols of priorities that one can best get at the spirit of the age, is an interesting way to study verious aspects of the Great War.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to state that US culturally takes the lead in the post 1918 era, though there may be more of a case for this post 45. What Ekstein is trying to prove is the rise of the modern state in Germany. He links this to what is going on culturally in Europe pre 1914 and then shows how this and the Great War affected Germany during inter-war period through to the fall of the Third Reich.

His discussion on "All Quiet on the Western Front" was well argued and is much in tune with what Correlli Barrnett said about disolusenment writers in Britain in "The Collapse of British Power."

Its not a book to read if your interested in the purly onfield military aspect of the war and it is far from the best book on the war, but I found it great for offering new ways of thinking on how to approach the social and cultural elements of a war-time society. I don't agree with every aspect of Ekstiens's work but I do think it is an important starting point for understanding the number of social and cultural histories on the Great War that have appeared since he wrote it.

[Arras100]

When I was a student at the University of Toronto Eksteins was my professor of Modern European History, German History and The Weimar Republic. I had to read "Rites of Spring" for his European History course and found it to be quite fascinating, as someone who would go on to study the social side of the First World War. He takes this huge historical event and is able to bring it down to an individual level, something which I find rare among historians. He also successfully takes the reader through the twilight of the growing pains of modernity, and we get a real sense of how much innocence was lost and what sort of brave new world was ushered in under the modern war machine.

I remember during one of his lectures (and by the way, he's the best damn lecturer I've ever seen) he brought up one of his many important points in this book: what would have happened if the weather had been nasty those first days of the declaration of war? What if all those crowds in Germany had not been outside demanding the Kaiser declare war? It's a simple question, but one that could have a huge bearing on the story of the First World War.

[59165]

I know what you & he mean but,the weather was clement & history took place.

To me,its a bit like saying the 'burning of the books' wouldn't have happened if people knew they'd get smoke in their eyes.

'it' happens.

History is just that.

Hypothesy should be left to the inhabitants of a parallel universe.

Peace out,

Dave.

[Chris Martin]

Thanks to AndyHollinger and Sassoon, I love a good discussion, and hearing how other people have read a particular book as it makes me think further on how I have read and interpreted the same work.

Like Dave I'm not a fan of should of, could of, or would of, history. That being histories or statements that assert X would of happened if Y and Z happened. However, I think the hypothesis, or the argument/ thesis question is the main-stay of good history. To borrow from the post modernists, history dosen't just happen, an event happens and it is recorded, how one chooses to record it, what they include or exclued is very subjective, thus history is never objective. Every historian has a bias, and thats not a bad thing, most historian's recognize their bias and work with it.

I find works that simply list detail and "fact" to be quite boring. The historian who questions their subject then sets about researching it to see if they can prove their assumption or not, usually produce solid works, unless they force an interpritation through willfully excluding or trivializing evidence. Ekstien, I think, did a good job of supporting his argument that the Great War gave birth to the modern German state, which inevitably stemed for a question along the lines of what factors led to the rise of modernity in Germany.

[Arras100]

Chris, I agree about the factual histories not being as interesting as a book such as this. Mind you, the facts are important and necessary, but sometimes (and surely you must admit this) the "what if" historians are interesting to read!

[AndyHollinger]

But ... History, to be history, must be the continually increasing focus on facts. Otherwise, it is literature.

It is interesting that you mention Fussel. Talk about a man made by a book. Having read his follow-on where he tries to capture the magic and doesn't.

I like Rites of Spring precisely because of what it's not. It's somewhere between history and diatribe. It is the stuff that keep Graduate Student lounges filled with smoke and coffee.

And I for one would think that the German crowd would have braved the rain.

[Chris Martin]

And I for one would think that the German crowd would have braved the rain.

I agree.

[Arras100]

I too think that the war at that point was inevitable (with the political situation, etc.)...however, I do think that Eksteins was on to something.