Ford Madox Ford's "Parade's End": Modernism and the First World War. A conference at the University of London (and a BBC adaptation)

Ford Madox Ford
(1873-1939)

Largely considered one of the best novel of the Twentieth century (W.H. Auden among the others) and one of the finest about the Great War (Anthony Burgess), the tetralogy of Parade's End (Some Do Not . . ., No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up and Last Post the four titles coming out from 1924 and 1928) will be the leitmotif of the upcoming international conference to be held at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, from the 27th to the 29th of September 2012. The topic seems to be hot, since an adaptation from this tetralogy, a BBC miniseries scripted by Tom Stoppard, was recently aired. From what we can learn from The Guardian, the adaptation has generated a "tipically British debate". Probably the adaptations from Parade's End cannot compete with the book. It happens. Anyway, coming back to the conference, for further information you can visit the dedicated website. To contact the organisers, Rob Hawkes and Ashley Chantler, please use this email address.

www.twitter.com/fordmadoxfordie
www.facebook.com/groups/fordmadoxfordies
Here you can download the program which is posted also below.


Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End:
Modernism and the First World War

Day 1: Thursday 27 September

11:00-11:30 Registration and Tea/Coffee
11:30-13:00 Panel 1
Christos Hadjiyannis (Institute of English Studies) – ‘Ford Madox Ford, T. E.
Hulme and the First World War’.
Rob Spence (Edge Hill University) – ‘Ford and Lewis: The Attraction of
Opposites’.
John Attridge (University of New South Wales) – ‘Englishness and Taciturnity
in Parade’s End and Andre Maurois’s Les Silences du Colonel Bramble’.
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:00 Keynote Address
Adam Piette (University of Sheffield) – ‘War and Division in Parade’s End’.
15:00-15:30 Tea/Coffee
15:30-17:00 Panel 2
Seamus O’Malley (City University of New York) – ‘All That is Solid Turns to
Mud: Parade’s End and the Liquidity of Landed Relations’.
Austin Riede (North Georgia College and State University) – ‘“Cleaned, Sand-dried
Bones”: Christopher Tietjens, Vera Brittain and the Anodyne of War’.
Isabelle Brasme (Université de Nîmes) – ‘Articulations of Modern Femininity in
Parade’s End: Womanhood as a Projective Space for Ideological
Ambivalences’.
17:30-19:30 Parade’s End: A Celebration
Q&A session with special guests including the BAFTA award-winning director of
the BBC/HBO adaptation of Parade’s End, Susanna White, and Rupert Edwards,
producer/director of Who on Earth Was Ford Madox Ford? A Culture Show Special.
Launch of the new Carcanet critical editions of Parade’s End, followed by a wine
reception, kindly sponsored by Carcanet Press and Oxford University Press.

Day 2: Friday 28 September

09:30-11:00 Panel 3a
Dominique Lemarchal (Université d’Angers) – ‘When I is Others: Parade’s End
and the Impossibility of Autobiography’.
Alec Marsh (Muhlenberg College) – ‘“Rossetti”, “Better Far” and Overcoming the
Pre-Raphaelite Inheritance in Some do Not… and The Good Soldier’.
Sara Haslam (Open University) – ‘“Hops, cannon, kettles and chimney backs”, or
From Conversation to Humiliation: Parade’s End and the Eighteenth
Century’.
Panel 3b
Christopher MacGowan (College of William and Mary) – ‘William Carlos
Williams and Parade’s End’.
George Wickes (University of Oregon) – ‘Hemingway’s Literary Godfather’.
Joseph Wiesenfarth (University of Wisconsin-Madison) – ‘Death in the Wasteland:
Ford, Wells and Waugh’.
11:00-11:30 Tea/Coffee
11:30-13:00 Panel 4a
Michael Charlesworth (University of Texas at Austin) – ‘The View from Montagne
Noir: Ford’s Panoramic Metaphor in No More Parades, No Enemy and It
Was the Nightingale Compared to Works by J. R. R. Tolkien’.
Liz Hodges (Merton College, University of Oxford) – ‘Sight and Scale in Parade’s
End’.
Alexandra Becquet (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3) – ‘Structure and
Memory in Parade’s End: (De)Composing the War’.
Panel 4b
Barbara Farnworth (University of Rhode Island) – ‘The Self-Analysis of
Christopher Tietjens’.
Erin Kay Penner (Rothermere American Institute) – ‘Swearing by Ford’.
Paul Skinner (Independent Scholar) – ‘Tietjens Walking, Ford Talking’.
13:00-14:30 Lunch
14:30-16:00 Panel 5a
Max Saunders (King’s College London) – ‘Sexuality, Sadism and Suppression in
Parade’s End’.
Sarah Kingston (University of Rhode Island/University of New Haven) – ‘“Sick
bodies are of no use to the King”: Insomnia in British Literature of WWI’.
Karolyn Steffens (University of Wisconsin-Madison) – ‘Freud Madox Ford:
Parade’s End, Impressionism, and Psychoanalytic Trauma Theory’.
14:30-16:00 Panel 5b
Tom Vandevelde (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) – ‘“Are you going to mind the
noise?” Mapping the Soundscapes of Parade’s End’.
Nathan Waddell (University of Nottingham) – ‘Ford Madox Ford’s Musical War’.
Angus Wrenn (London School of Economics) – ‘The World-Ash and Groby Old
Tree: Wagner and the Hueffers’.
16:00-16:20 Tea/Coffee
16:20-18:00 Film Screening – Part 1 of the 1964 BBC adaptation of Parade’s End, starring Judi
Dench.
19:30 Conference Dinner (Location TBC)

Day 3: Saturday 29 September

10:00-10:40 Round-table discussion with the editors of the new Carcanet critical editions of
Parade’s End: Max Saunders (King’s College London), Joseph Wiesenfarth
(University of Wisconsin-Madison), Sara Haslam (Open University), and Paul
Skinner.
10:40-11:00 Tea/Coffee
11:00-13:00 Panel 6
Eve Sorum (University of Massachusetts-Boston) – ‘Empathy, Trauma, and the
Space of War in Parade’s End’.
Meghan Hammond (New York University) – ‘Modernist Empathy in Ford’s Last
Post’.
Gene M. Moore (Universiteit van Amsterdam) – ‘Impressionism as Therapy’.
John Benjamin Murphy (University of Virginia) – ‘“The ’ind legs of the elephink”:
Pantomime, Prophecy and Tosh in Parade’s End’.
13:00-13:40 Ford Madox Ford Society AGM
13:40-14:40 Lunch
14:40-18:00 Film Screening – Parts 2 & 3 of the 1964 BBC adaptation of Parade’s End.

Photo reportage #2: the trenches of Castel Cesil (Monte Grappa)

Professional and amateur photographers that are willing to share their images in a 100% First World War dedicated platform can write to this email address giving a small abstract of their work (place, country, main features, reasons of interest) and a zipped folder with the images in *.jpeg format in video resolution 72dpi (please in your email consent to World War I Bridges publishing your photos). It goes without saying that the long term purpose of this little digitale initiative is to crowd-source digital stuff to preserve the memory of the Great War and to channel the energies of professional or amateur photographers on this.

The following photo reportage about the trenches of Castel Cesil was kindly offered to World War I Bridges by Ugo Agnoletto. We thank him for his precious help in the start-up of this unit of World War I Bridges.

If you descend Cima Grappa towards the village of Pederobba (location of a WWI French memorial), you can take a little time to visit the well preserved trenches of Castel Cesil on the peak with the same name belonging to the Grappa mountain range. These were located in that front which ran from Cima Grappa to Monte Tomba at an average altitude of 1100m a.s.l. This grid of trenches might be taken into consideration in a wider itinerary including a deeper knowledge of Cima Grappa and its open-air museum.

Commonwealth Cemeteries of World War I on Google Earth

Tezze British Cemetery
(Piave area)

A new set of digital resources is now available to map and localize the WWI British cemeteries, burial plots and memorials around the globe. The project was possible thanks to the joint efforts of CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) and World War One Centenary - Continuations and Beginnings by University of Oxford. The application, based on Google Earth, allows to search among the First World War cemeteries, to locate the one nearest to you (thanks to a typical service based on geolocalization) and to obtain information from the CWGC site about the specific site you're interested in. Secondly, this becomes also a way to map the impact of the Great War in some specific areas as well as the movements and the presence of the British Army. The project enables you to find also burial plots and war memorials thanks to overlaid pins on the map. There is also a tutorial video you could watch to learn more (for instance, you can sometimes go down to a Google Street View level and explore the area).

First World War one day itineraries through Italy. Suggestion no. 5: Monte Pasubio and the "52 Galleries” Road

Fortifications. Austrian Tooth

Among the excursions, which combine historical importance and landscape interest, the Monte Pasubioand its “52 Galleries” Road may be noticed by all those who are fascinated by WWI history as one of the most interesting high level paths in the Dolomites. 

As Monte Grappa, Monte Pasubio held a high strategic role during the Great War, since both of them represented the last defensive position of the Venetian Plain. Occupied by the Italians short after the start of the war, Monte Pasubio became a strategic point of the trench line on south eastern borders of Trentino and Veneto region. In 1916, after the Austrian Strafexpedition, an Italian contingent was urgently transferred from the Isonzo Front and under the command of General Papa stopped the Austrian Army at Cima Palon, occupying the southern peak, known as the Italian Tooth (Dente Italiano), separated to the Austrian Tooth only by a small saddle (Selletta dei Denti). This was the background of bloody battles till the end of the conflict.

Originally the Italian front line was supplied trough the Scarubbi Road; this 8 Km long and easy military road was located on the northern side of the limestone ridge of the mountain and exposed to the enemies’ fire, so that Italian vehicles could not drive during the day and at winter time. That’s why in March 1917 the Italian 5th Engineering Regiment built in only 11 months on the southern side of the ridge a new safer trail: the "Strada delle Gallerie" included fifty-two tunnels and ran for more than 2 km in length.

This masterpiece of war and mountain engineering offers nowadays a wonderful chance to walk through history and rocks. The itinerary offers no difficulties and requires only proper trekking equipment and a torch (some of the tunnels are dark and even 300m long).
Drive to Passo Xomo, walk to Malga Campiglia (you can also drive to Malga Campiglia, there’s a payment parking, 5 Euros, but it may be full) and then to Bocchetta Campiglia. From here starts a large path (n.366); it runs through the 52 galleries road. Take time to read the informative boards, which illustrate the history of the road and of the battles of the region and to watch the fortifications. In about 3 hours you can easily reach the Rifugio Papa (1929m) and take a rest (note, please, that the refuge in summer time and especially at weekends is quite crowed; Plan-B: you may have a chilled pic-nic on the near meadows!). The way back runs along path n.370, mostly on the former Strada degli Scarubbi and leads with a 2.30 hours walk to Passo Xomo.

The following itinerary extension could be undertaken only if you have a good training and endure the longer tour and if you start walking quite early in the morning, reaching so Rifugio Papa before midday. From Rifugio Papa starts the path n. 105, which leads to Cima Palon in about an hour. Fortifications are everywhere and the ascent to this summit offers a unique view over part of the Venetian Plain, and north on Dolomites of Brenta, Lagorai and – on the horizon line – the Pale di San Martino and the Marmolada. From Cima Palon you can walk to the Italian and Austrian Tooth, and then back to Rifugio Papa; it takes about 2 hours in total. From Rifugio Papa, the way back always through path n. 370.

If you want to discover more about Monte Pasubio and the 52 galleries road, you may visit the exposition at Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra in Rovereto, Trento. Here a short presentation (only in Italian) of the exposition, opened till December 2013.

Communications during the Great War. An exhibition at Villa Manin in Passariano, Udine

We all know the impact of all wars in communication. The new exhibition we would like to highlight is hosted in the wonderful venue of Villa Manin in Passariano, Udine. It is a kind of journey through the different types of communications: magazines, trench newpapers, the huge flood of correspondence from the front, propaganda and war photography are the main themes that the curators of Consorzio Memoria Storica developed. And if you plan a visit, don't forget to check the website of Villa Manin, where interesting and well curated art exhibitions are often hosted.



The exhibition
COMUNICARE NELLA GRANDE GUERRA
Stampa, giornali di trincea, corrispondenza, propaganda e fotografia
28 July - 2 September, 2012
Villa Manin, Passariano di Codroipo, Udine, Italy
From Friday to Sunday, 10:30am-6:00pm (guided tours on Saturdays and Sundays at 4:00pm)
Info: T. +39.0432.481528, consorziomemoriastorica@gmail.com

The poets and the World War: "Arsiero, Asiago" and "Killed Piave-July 8-1918" by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway on crutches

There is absolutely no need to add new words on Hemingway's prose. Not now and not here, at least. Probably not everyone knew that Hemingway wrote poetry. The "problem" with Hemingway is that a novel like A Farewell to Arms overwhelms and obscures his verses. Of course you can find his poems translated into many languages, and among his verses, there is a substantial group of poems dedicated to the Great War time and his experience in Italy. What we may notice is that his poetry is probably an example of "remembered war". It is not the same situation we may find in a poet like Ungaretti, who wrote live at night or at the first light his fragmented verses and kept the collection of sheets inside his haversack, preserved by his friend and officer Ettore Serra (publisher of Il porto sepolto in 1916). If we look at this group of poems they often report a place and the date at the end. The place is not in the front line and the date is after the end of the war, usually early in the 1920s. Their brevity and the fact that they are already in English allow us to post two poems (and not only one like we have done so far).


ARSIERO, ASIAGO


Arsiero, Asiago,
Half a hundred more,
Little border villages,
Back before the war,
Monte Grappa, Monte Corno,
Twice a dozen such,
In the piping times of peace
Didn't come to much.

Paris ca. 1922


KILLED  PIAVE-JULY-8-1918


Desire and
All the sweet pulsing aches
And gentle hurtings
That were you,
Are gone into the sullen dark.
Now in the night you come unsmiling
To lie with me
A dull, cold, rigid bayonet
On my hot-swollen, throbbing soul

Chicago 1921

The above poems were taken from 88 poems of Ernest Hemingway edited by Nicholas Gerogiannis.

"War Trauma and English Modernism: T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence". The groundbreaking study of Carl Krockel

Since the Seventies the debate on war literature and English Modernism has become more complex. Especially Paul Fussell’s thesis, contradicting the mainly demythologizing role of the war literature, took the debate in new direction and focused on the role of a certain art of “fiction” in it, reassessing also the relationship between soldiers and civilians. Carl Krockel’s new book – War Trauma and English Modernism: T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, Hampshire, UK, 2011 – attempts to carry on this perspective and questions how WWI shaped English Modernism, focusing on S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. In many respects opposed figures of Modernism, neither of them saw active service, both of them testimony yet in their work the trauma of WWI, being threatened by a society fixated upon war (and we may find here some suggestion to think about what “global war” means).

Krockel compares Eliot and Lawrence to other war writers (among them, Owen and Sasson as prototype of the soldier-poet) in order to prove that both authors – despite not participating in war events and being so unable to represent the conflict realistically because they had not witnessed it – they opposed to realism, appearing it even inadequate for representing the war horrors, a new aesthetic technique. According to Krockel, literary innovation of Modernism represents so for both Eliot and Lawrence a new strategy to resist at the impact of war upon their lives.

We suggest this book not primarily for the debate on literary criticism, which seems to be sometimes too detailed for not insiders, but for the “multilevel reading” of this study. Referring to D. H. Lawrence’s and T. S. Eliot’s biographical and psychological attitude toward WWI and their indirect, yet painful experience of it, the book offers an interesting analysis of the relationship between soldier and civilian, physical and psychological traumatism of WWI on English society and depicts so how the legacy of the conflict goes beyond the trenches and spreads violence in the everyday life of veterans and civilians. Above all we recommend this study for the investigation of Lawrence’s (for instance, in The Rainbow and Women in Love) and Eliot’s (among all, The Waste Land or The Hollow Men, but also Ash Wednesday) works. It may be a good incentive to read once again their masterpieces and try to feel – not just understand – what WWI really meant. It may be a good incentive to listen once again to Eliot’s voice telling us: “[…] Son of man, / You cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, / And the dry stone no sound of water. Only / There is shadow under this red rock, / (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), / And I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; / I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

Writings of the Great War: the censor Leo Spitzer and "Italienische Kriegsgefangenenbriefe"

Leo Spitzer (1887-1960)

There is also a "silent explosion" occurring during the First World War. It is the explosion of writing, at all levels, in many forms, in all the classes of the population. Historians might have told the story of the war from this perspective of letters, of big masses of population writing letters and postcards (the stumbling grammar, the influence of spoken language on the syntax, the relationship between contents and the awareness of undergoing the censorship).
And someone started this venture. Well, not any Tom, Dick and Harry could do this: the man we're introducing now was one the most brilliant minds of his time. The most of Italian school books faces the above mentioned topic starting from a basic book of the Austrian romanist Leo Spitzer, author of an incomparable study on the letters that Italian war prisoners wrote. Spitzer was a censor enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army and he was able to turn his war experience into one of the unforgettable studies blossoming after the end of the war. The book he published in 1921, Italienische Kriegsgefangenenbriefe. Materialien zu einer Charakteristik der volkstümlichen italienischen Korrespondenz, was revolutionary both from the point of view of the approach and from the one of the subject.

It is logical and normal to start this unit dedicated to the writing outcomes of World War I bringing him back to mind along with his lucky book. At a first deep glance, the innovation coming with this work is already given in its structure. See for instance the titles of the chapters and you get, already systemized by Spitzer's analysis, the typical situations (frames) to which the huge quantity of letters refers: how to start and to end a letter, how to say goodbye, the embarassment for the bad writing, the distance, the dream, children and wives, the resignation, the wait for peace, the requests for money and clothing, the relationship with censorship, the starvation, the humour etc. His analysis was the origin of a once in a century book. We still have difficulty in finding good disciples around: it's really a pity, because in Spitzer's book everybody could track the source a new discipline that we might call the "philology of the Great War". Wouldn't it be by far more interesting to investigate the war starting from the huge collection of available texts instead of daydreaming about the newest war relic?

Photo reportage #1: Forte Leone in Arsiè, Belluno

Photography is still today one of the main medium with relation to the story of the Great War. This post is first of a series that aims to gather small photo reportages (with a maximum of 8 pictures each) of peripheral or even unknown landmarks of the First World War. Professional and amateur photographers that are willing to share their images in a 100% First World War dedicated platform can write to this email address giving a small abstract of their work (place, country, main features, reasons of interest) and a zipped folder with the images in *.jpeg format in video resolution 72dpi (please in your email consent to World War I Bridges publishing your photos). It goes without saying that the long term purpose of this little digitale initiative is to crowd-source digital stuff to preserve the memory of the Great War and to channel the energies of professional or amateur photographers on this.


The following photo reportage about Forte Leone was kindly offered to World War I Bridges by Ugo Agnoletto. We warmly thank him for his gift.
 

This fort is located in Arsiè (Belluno). It was built between 1906 and 1912 as part of the so called defensive line "Brenta-Cismon" and armed as follows: 6 Armstrong 149/35, 6 pieces of 75/27 and 17 machine guns. Unarmed in 1916, it was defended by 242 members of the Italian alpine troops in 1917. After the battle of Caporetto, early November 1917, it was conquered by the Standschützen Meran and the Tiroler Landsturm corps. One year later, during the Austro-Hungarian retreat of November 1918, it was partially destroyed.

The poets and the World War: the Montello hill in "Passing to the Etching" by Andrea Zanzotto

Andrea Zanzotto (1921-2011)
and his cat

The Italian literary critic Andrea Cortelessa, in his important anthology of First World War Italian poets entitled Le notti chiare erano tutte un'alba (from a verse of Valmorbia by Eugenio Montale saying "The luminous nights were all a dawn"), first wrote about the "posthumous war", meaning the presence of the Great War in the poets who did not fight it. Andrea Zanzotto, probably the most important italian poet of the second half of the Twentieth century, was born in Pieve di Soligo in 1921, three years after the armistice. His village is located in a nice hill landscape on the left bank of the river Piave. It was an area of battles, occupied by the Austro-Hungarian army after the retreat of Caporetto, and is not far from the Montello, a wooded hill that together with the pivoting fulcrum of the whole front, the Monte Grappa, is saldly reknown for being a theatre of bloody battles. In his most meaningful and penetrating work of poetry, Il Galateo in Bosco, published sixty years after the end of the war, we experience the highest example of what Cortelessa meant with "posthumous war". This post is also a tribute to the poet who died only a few months ago, in October 2011, at the age of 90.


PASSARE ALLA MORSURA


Rivolgersi agli ossari. Non occorre biglietto.
Rivolgersi ai cippi. Con il più disperato rispetto.
Rivolgersi alle osterie. Dove elementi paradisiaci aspettano.
Rivolgersi alle case. Dove l’infinitudine del desìo
(vedila ad ogni chiusa finestra) sta in affitto.

E la radura ha accettato più d’un frondoso colloquio
ormai, dove, ahi,
si esibì la più varia mostra dei sangui
il più mistico circo dei sangui. Oh quanti numeri, e rancio speciale. Urrah.
Vorrei bucarmi di ogni chimica rovina
per accogliere tutti, in anteprima,
nello specchio medicato d’infinitudini e desii
di quel circo i fermenti gli enzimi
dentro i succhi più sublimi dell’alba, dell’azione, in piena diana. E si va.
E si va per ossari. Essi attendono
gremiti di mortalità lievi ormai, quai gemme di primavera,
gremiti di bravura e di paura. A ruota libera, e si va.
Buoni, ossari – tante morti fuori del qualitativo divario
onde si sale a sicurezze di cippo,
fuori del gran bidone (e la patria bidonista,
che promette casetta e campicello
e non li diede mai, qui santità mendica, acquista).
Hanno come un fervore di fabbrica gli ossari.
Vi si ricevono ordini, ordinazioni eterne. Vi si smista.
All’asilo, certi pazzi-di-guerra, ancora vivi
allevano maiali; traffici con gli ossari.
Mi avete investito, lordato tutto, eternizzato tutto, un fiotto di sangue.
Arteria aperta il Piave, né calmo né placido
ma soltanto gaiamente sollecito oltre i beni i mali e simili
e tutto solletichìo di argenti, nei suoi intenti, a dismisura.
Padre e madre, in quel nume forse uniti
tra quell’incoercibile sanguinare
ed il verde e l’argenteizzare altrettanto incoercibili,
in quel grandore dove tutti i silenzi sono possibili
voi mi combinaste, sotto quelle caterve di
os-ossa, ben catalogate, nemmeno geroglifici, ostie
rivomitate ma come in un più alto, in un aldilà d’erbe e d’enzimi
erbosi assunte,
in un fuori-luogo che su me s’inclina e domina
un poco creandomi, facendomi assurgere a
Così che suono a parlamento
per le balbuzie e le più ardue rime,
quelle si addestrano e rincorrono a vicenda,
io mi avvicendo, vado per ossari, e cari stinchi e teschi
mi trascino dietro dolcissimamente, senza o con flauto magico
Sempre più con essi, dolcissimamente, nella brughiera
io mi avvicendo a me, tra pezzi di guerra sporgenti da terra,
si avvicenda un fiore a un cielo
dentro le primavere delle ossa in sfacelo,
si avvicenda un sì a un no, ma di poco
differenziati, nel fioco
negli steli esili di questa pioggia, da circo, da gioco.

(The following translation is taken from Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto, Edited and Translated by Patrick Barron With Additional Translations by Ruth Feldman, Thomas J. Harrison, Brian Swann, John P. Welle, and Elizabeth A. Wilkins, 2009, University of Chicago Press.)

PASSING TO THE ETCHING

Apply to the ossuaries. No ticket is needed.

Apply to the headstones. With the most desperate respect.

Apply to the taverns. Where heavenly elements await.

Apply to the houses. Where the infinitude of desire

                                  (see it at every closed window) is for rent.

And the glade has accepted more than one leafy talk

by now, where, ah,

there is offered the most varied show of bloods

the most mystical circus of bloods. Oh how many, and a special mess.

    Hurrah.

I’d like to shoot up with every ruining chemical

so to receive them all, in preview,

in the medicated mirror of infinitudes and desires

of that circus the ferments the enzymes

inside the most sublime suckings of dawn, of the action, in full

   reveille. And off we go.

And off we go to the ossuaries. They await

overcrowded with mortality, lightened by now, almost springtime

   buds,

overcrowded with bravura and fear. Freewheeling, and off we go.

Calm, ossuaries – so many dead outside the qualitative difference

                          Whence one rises to headstone safeties,

outside the great swindle (and swindler nation,

that promises a humble home and garden

and never grants them, here holiness begs, acquires).

The ossuaries have a factory-like fervor.

There one receives orders, eternal ordinations. There one is sorted.

At the asylum, certain war-crazed veterans still alive

raise pigs; trafficking with the ossuaries.

You knocked me down, dirtied all, eternalized all, in a gush of blood.

The Piave an open artery, neither calm nor placid

but only gaily solicitous beyond the good the bad and similar

               and all pricked with silvery glimmers, in its intents, out of

                   all proportions.

Father and mother, perhaps united in that numen

                  amidst that incoercible bleeding

                  the green and the glimmering equally incoercible,

in that grandeur where all silences are possible

you entangled me, under those heaps of

bo-bones, well catalogued, not even hieroglyphics, hosts

        revomited but now in a higher-up, in an other-world of

            assumed grasses

                                              and grassy enzymes,

                                 in an outer-place that leans over me and

                                      dominates

                                 a bit creating me, making me rise up

So that                 I summon words

for stuttering and the hardes rhymes,

which train and pursue one another,

I take turns with myself, I wander through ossuaries, and dear

   shinbones and skulls

I drag myself along so gently, with or without magic flute

                       Always more with them, so gently, into the heath

I take turns with myself, amidst pieces of war protruding from the

   earth,

a flower takes turns with a sky

inside the springtimes of the decomposing bones,

a yes takes turns with a no, but little

differenciated, in the faint

in the slender stems of this rain, of the circus, of the game.

The First World War in music: "Let England Shake" by P.J. Harvey

2011, Island/Universal

Anyone who knows P. J. Harvey won’t be surprised to follow in this new album the experimentation of such an eclectic artist. Anyone who is interested in WWI will probably be charmed by noting how even contemporary music – and in this case, even alternative rock music, if we need to use a label – does not neglect the topic and finds on the contrary source of inspiration in Great War. For sure, anyone who loves P. J. Harvey and is fascinated by WWI history will enjoy with her eighth studio album Let England Shake (Island Records, 2011) an unexpected combination of music and history.

It is not the case to tell here why and how P. J. started to work at this project in 2008 (hearing about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq) or to describe accurately the different songs, the instrumental experimentation (even a cavalry trumpet and an autoharp) and the lyrics. And it will be also not suitable, to remind how the album took shape – so the Artist – in researching on WWI history and in reading the poetry of T. S. Eliot and H. Pinter. We recall at least the short films which Seamus Murphy made for every track on the album (anyway, further details in PJ homepage), before focusing on the album and pointing out the ancient, suspended, even foggy atmosphere, on the one hand; the precise, finely inlaid design of the narration, on the other hand. It could seem contradictory, yet these two features go together and this is the key we suggest to approach this work.

The album talks about conflict, patriotism (not demagogic, but as positive love toward one’s own land), desperation, mutual support, death; references to England and to the Gallipoli campaign in particular are clear in the lyrics. Yet, roaming across centuries and places, there’s no fixed point of view, no rhetorical attitude towards the conflict, and even the WWI as historical setting of the narration, that runs through the different songs, gets sometimes lost in the fog. Following the rhythmical and lyrical fluctuation from track to track, even inside the same song (take for example All and Eveyone or On Battleship Hill) you may feel transported on the battlefield, somewhere, some when, advancing in the sand, no matter if on the Dardanelles frontline or on a more recent frontline.  From this point of view, the album creates a rarefied atmosphere which, starting from WWI, depicts the breathtaking and bloody experience of all wars. Yet Harvey’s skill in drawing and painting feelings and situations in rhythm and lyric remains and interweaves this suspended atmosphere: Each single song shows the ancient taste – which is a form of respect – in looking for the “right word”, the most suitable tone (in sounds, words and colors; yes, even colors) to describe the reality, the objectivity of the bodies and the places: physical sensations, fear and exhaustion, the cliffs of Dover, sounds, feet, the scent of Thyme, sand and wind, bones and blades of grass, blood. The suspended atmosphere does not collapse in rhetoric just because well-grounded on this marble triviality of experienced things, of unrepeatable moments and real feeling, on the intersection of voices and glances of those, who walked such days, who walked the Colour of the Earth.

We may talk about that still for a long time, without succeeding in giving a satisfactory description of what we mean. So, have a look to the lyrics and then just listen to this album.

World War One posters. A project by Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

A queer poster saying
"Books wanted..."

We all have in mind the impact of posters in the collective thought of the last century. Some posters became icons. The influence and the relevance of posters were common to all countries and a deep study of these complex creations, pioneer mixture of visual and copywriting, is often the proper way to discover an unexpected nuance or maybe a slight difference between two countries/governments around the same theme of propaganda. So, there's more than one reason to be happy with what the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division did, making available online approximately two thousand posters created between 1914 and 1920. The most are related to the Great War, but you will find also a cospicuous part of German posters dating from the post-war years (and we know what those years meant for the German population, they all knew already from 1919, from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by J.M. Keynes). The digitalization encopasses posters from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia and the collection is constantly growing.

The time and space of the Great War. Some notes on Stephen Kern's book "The culture of time and space, 1880-1918"

We stated that the military equipment was not on the top of our minds when we launched this web adventure called WWI Bridges. If that was and is true, we should step by step indicate what moves and motivates us towards the Great War, without running the tremendous risk of intellectualizing a tragedy (unfortunately not so infrequent, even in the publishing industry or in the above suspicion academic environment). For sure the First World War was a kind of historical "crest" of the modern times. And it was a crest also in the conception of time and space, a turning point, no way back. Sometimes we should go beyond the titles of the books. Take for example The Culture of Space and Time, 1880-1918, published nearly thirty years ago, in 1983. It’s not a book fully dedicated to the First World War, even if the period mentioned in the title is pretty meaningful, but inside this book you will probably discover one of the most memorable analyses of space and time of that Europe sinked in the trenches. The pages dynamically resolve through a careful meditation that goes back and forth between the technological changes and the new culture embracing the last two decades of the Nineteenth century up to the end of the Great War. Kern keeps a constant cross-reference to the notions of form, distance, limit. In this frame, we can read the thirty page chapter dedicated to the crisis of July 1914 and to the subsequent outbreak of the war. What is really impressing in Kern’s prose is the contrast between the exact, precise time of diplomacy, ultimatum and of the attacks (all watches were synchronized to guarantee the simultaneous assault of the troops) and the “remaining” time of wait and inactivity. The time of diplomacy on one side and the time (and space) of the trenches on the other. It was a kind explosive mixture, among many others. All is condensed in that final image of the chapter: a continent - Europe- moving towards the war at a ragtime rhythm. The final chapter, The Cubist War, is the natural attempt to close his analysis, in a square bounded by space, time, speed/slowness and technologies.