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Literature of the 1st World War in Europe
The First World War is usually regarded as the point of departure for modern literature even if the various influences that characterise the 20th century writing had been at work earlier. The sense of doubt already present at the end of the 19th century, continued in the opening years of the 20th century and developed into a spirit of revolt and experimentation in all artistic fields. The isolation and alienation of modern man became the main themes of literature. Most movements emphasized the loss of the sense of continuity between past and present through a radical break with tradition and innovation were intertwined, as T.S. Eliot
[E1] [I1] [F1] said in “Transition and the Individual Talent” (1917):
“No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone (...) what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it”.
In a century dominated by two world wars and by the growing influence of Freud [E1]
[I1]
[F1] [S1] and Jung [E1]
[I1], art could not be but intense and dramatic, changing with the changes of society. It was testimony or denunciation and developed through currents and experimentations which paralleled what was happening in other arts like painting and music. Nothing seemed to be right or certain; even science and religion seemed to offer little confort or security.
The soldiers and civilians who experienced the First World War recorded their reactions in both prose and poetry. Great poetry and memorable novels are still able that convey the depth of the World War I experience. Some of the written records are informal in the form of diaries, journals or letters and serve as great primary sources recording the actual feelings of the people of the day.
The term “Modernism” [E1] [S1] refers to a powerful international movement reaching through Western cultures. Modernism dominated the sensibility and aesthetic choices of the great artists of the age. It implied a break with traditional values and assumptions, a rejection of Naturalism and Decadence, in favour of introspection and techinical skill. A number of common features can be identified:
- the intentional distortion of shapes;
- the breaking down of limitations in space and time;
- the awareness that our perception of reality is necessarily uncertain, temporary and subject to change;
- the need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life in artistic form;
- the intensity of the isolated “moment” or “image” to provide a true insight into the nature of things;
- an interest in the primitive and a reconsideration of the “past” without the restrictions imposed by national or continental culture;
- the importance of unconscious as well as conscious life;
- the impossibility of giving a final or absolute interpretation of reality.
In painting Fauvism [E1] [E2], [F1] [I1] which developed in France, with its stress on the supremacy of colour to the detriment of form, was a manifestation of the new interest in the primitive and the magical: at this time Pablo Picasso
[E1]
[I1] [S1] [F1]
returned to the pre- Roman art of Iberia; Henry Matisse [E1] [I1] [F1] turned his attention to African masks . In 1907 Picasso and Georges Braque simultaneously and indipendently began to develop Cubism, abstract painting, whose main representative was Kandinsky [E1] [E1]
[I1], focused its attention on a line or sign, a shape, a colour, making them the subjects of the painting.
In England Wyndham Lewis founded Vorticism [E1], which, as its name suggests, tried to incorporate the ideas of violent motion and apocalyptic change with such natural vortices as tornadoes, whirlpools and the like; the image was a vortex from which, through which, and into which, ideas were constantly rushing
Similarly,Italian Futurism, led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, celebrated the power and dynamism symbolised by the new technology, by speed, motion and mechanisation.
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