"Is the purpose of geography to make war?" An exhibition of Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche in Treviso

Panorama - Montello hill

"Is the purpose of geography to make war?" This is the question coming from the exhibition at Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, curated by Massimo Rossi and held in Palazzo Bomben, Treviso (Italy). The exhibition will be open from Sunday November 6 2016 to Sunday February 19 2017. Through three closely linked layouts that remain in constant dialogue, maps, atlases and works of art speak of the great communicative and persuasive force of geographic maps. Maps are a powerful means of non-verbal communication and the scenario of the celebrations of the Great War offers a valid opportunity for investigating their ability to condition public opinion when they back the point of view of the Major Nations. This is why the layout of the exhibition focuses on the historical period between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, but which actually spans from ancient times all the way to modern day, to tell the story of another possible geography and not necessarily based on military logics.

1918 - Italian positions along the river Piave

The exhibition begins with "Rocks and water", where we see how maps use a simple and preemptory sign - the natural border - to turn mountains and rivers into tools that are able to separate and offer physical shape to ethnic, linguistic groups, nations to transform them into the “geographical expression” of states. The second section, "Human signs", recounts the use of geographical knowledge for propagandist purposes to forcibly convey the idea of nation even before its official political proclamation. The third part, "War maps", highlights the co-existence of two seemingly irreconcilable cultural approaches, in the context of the First World War: graphic symbols representing the vast war industry disseminated on the Piave front, along with signs that bear witness to the presence of thousands of homing pigeons that by flying at more than one hundred meters of altitude and travelling great distances in short amounts of time, inform and send orders. 305 mm mortars that discharge projectiles weighing 400 kg and as big as a man, and tethered balloons suspended hundreds of metres above the ground «swaying in the sky in a long line along the Piave» as described by writer-tenant Fritz Weber, the enemy on the opposite bank.
 

A picture of the exhibition

At the exhibition visitors can appreciate how the maps provide order in an otherwise chaotic world, making it more understandable and familiar, distinguishing the objects, but most of all naming the places allowing us to recognise every single one of them. In every era, as quintessential social and human products, maps have also told the story of places through toponyms, sometimes playing an aggressive power over them. Especially when they alter the original spelling of centuries-old names or replace them altogether with new ones to make them more akin to the most recent dominators: the Dutch Niew Amsterdam becomes the English New York; the German Karfreit turns into the Italian Caporetto to then become the Slovenian Kobarid; the Hapsburg Sterzing becomes the Romanised Vipiteno. Or yet, to fulfil impellent social urgencies and to give a voice to hitherto unexpressed territorial hopes: “Alto Adige”, “Venezia Tridentina”, “Venezia Giulia”, or simply, in the case of a river, by changing its gender.

 

The century-old Piave of the log drivers changed gender in 1918 to offer greater virile resistance to the Austrian invasion, becoming “Il Piave” (male gender), to reassure the collective imagination of the young Italian nation.

 

But is it actually true that the purpose of geography is to make war? Certainly, without geography wars would not even be conceivable, but man has always been the one to make war, and is willing to use all the available knowledge of physics, chemistry, geometry or mathematics to achieve his objectives.

 

NASA Blue Marble from Apollo 17 (December 1972)

This exhibition also looks into another possible geography, a geography that urges us to reflect and act on the world when we try to observe it from above when leafing through the pages of the renaissance atlas of Abramo Ortelio, or pondering The Blue Marble, the first photograph of planet Earth taken from the lens of the astronauts of Apollo 17. A geography that multiplies its potential every time an artist decides to partake in a dialogue with a geographic map - and the exhibition displays geographic rugs and a number of works by contemporary artists.

But most of all it offers the opportunity to consider another geography, that is able to teach us to know places through an uninterrupted dialogue with the historical processes and to persuade us through the example of two authoritative pieces of evidence dating back by a century, geographer Cesare Battisti and historian Gaetano Salvemini, that «there are no natural political borders, because all political borders are artificial, meaning that they are created by the conscience and will of man».

 

Finally a few words about the set-up created by Fabrica: it is an experiential journey, on the discovery of the various geographical maps and the places that inspired them, through the creation of areas that urge visitors to follow them and interact with them. Elements with a linear and clean design, minimalist to focus solely on the works on display, combined with a graphic design that reinterprets the elements of traditional cartography in a modern style.

 

The entire design of the exhibition - set-up and communication - is combined with the spaces of Palazzo Bomben, rich in frescoes and history, in a dialogue of mutual accentuation.

 

The event, funded by the Regional Government of Veneto, is part of the programme commemorating the centenary of the Great War.

 

Info:

La geografia serve a fare la guerra?  
("Is the purpose of geography to make war?")
Representation of human beings

an exhibition of Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche

curated by Massimo Rossi and with the partnership of Fabrica

inauguration Saturday 5 November at 6:00 pm

open from Sunday 6 November 2016 to Sunday 19 February 2017

Tuesday-Friday 3:00pm-8:00pm, Saturday and Sunday 10:00am-8:00pm

Treviso, Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, via Cornarotta 7

tel. 0422.5121, fbsr@fbsr.it. www.fbsr.it

regular entry: 7 euro, discounted entry: 5 euro, school discount: 3 euro 

Press Office:

Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche

Silvia Cacco, tel. 0422.5121, cell. 331.6351105, silvia.cacco@fbsr.it

Studio ESSECI, Sergio Campagnolo

tel. 049.663499, gestione2@studioesseci.net (Simone Raddi)

 

The poets and the world war: "Si je mourais là-bas" by Guillaume Apollinaire

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 - 1918)

A new English translation of the poems by Guillaume Apollinaire was published at the end of 2015 by Oxford University Press. The title of the book is Selected Poems, (with parallel French text) translated with an Introduction and Notes by Martin Sorrell (you see the cover below, in the middle of this post). Among these poems, a relevant group of compositions belongs to the war time and is about the love story with Louise deColigny-Châtillon. It's the second time we choose a poem by Apollinaire. The first one dates back to this old post. Particularly meaningful, also in the study of the war months, is the correspondance between Apollinaire and Lou.

 

[IF I DIED UP THERE...]

If I died up there at the front

One day Lou my love you'd weep

And my memory would fizzle out

The way a shell-burst dies at the front

A lovely shell like mimosa in flower

And then that memory that bursts in space

Would cover the globe in my blood

The sea the hills the valleys and the flying star

The marvellous suns that ripen in space

Like golden fruit round Baratier*

Forgotten memory alive in all things

I'd redden the nipples of your pretty pink breasts

I'd redden your mouth and your blood-soaked hair

You'd not age a jot all these beautiful things

Would forever grow younger ready for gallant destinies

My fatal blood splashing the world

Would give the sun more brilliance

Flowers greater colour waves more speed

A rare love would fall on the world

The lover would be stronger in your body pushed away

Lou if I die up there memory that gets forgotten

—Remember me in those mad moments

Of youth and love and bursting ardour—

My blood's the ardent fountain of happiness

And because you're the prettiest be the happiest

O my unique love and my grand folly

                                             30th January 1915 Nimes 

[From Guillaume Apollinaire, Selected Poems, with parallel French text, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Martin Sorrell, Oxford University Press] 

[SI JE MOURAIS LÀ-BAS...]

Si je mourais là-bas sur le front de l’armée

Tu pleurerais un jour ô Lou ma bien-aimée

Et puis mon souvenir s’éteindrait comme meurt

Un obus éclatant sur le front de l’armée

Un bel obus semblable aux mimosas en fleur

Et puis ce souvenir éclaté dans l’espace

Couvrirait de mon sang le monde tout entier

La mer les monts les vals et l’étoile qui passe

Les soleils merveilleux mûrissant dans l’espace

Comme font les fruits d’or autour de Baratier

Souvenir oublié vivant dans toutes choses

Je rougirais le bout de tes jolis seins roses

Je rougirais ta bouche et tes cheveux sanglants

Tu ne vieillirais point toutes ces belles choses

Rajeuniraient toujours pour leurs destins galants

Le fatal giclement de mon sang sur le monde

Donnerait au soleil plus de vive clarté

Aux fleurs plus de couleur plus de vitesse à l’onde

Un amour inouï descendrait sur le monde

L’amant serait plus fort dans ton corps écarté

Lou si je meurs là-bas souvenir qu’on oublie

– Souviens-t’en quelquefois aux instants de folie

De jeunesse et d’amour et d’éclatante ardeur –

Mon sang c’est la fontaine ardente du bonheur

Et sois la plus heureuse étant la plus jolie

Ô mon unique amour et ma grande folie

                                               30 janv. 1915, Nîmes

"Wacht im Osten: German Encounters with the East in World War I". Special exhibition opens Oct. 25 at National World War I Museum and Memorial

Press release:

 German soldiers excavating a Japanese 28 cm. siege howitzer near Grodno; 

a munitions or spare parts crate sitting to the side.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – When the German army advanced into the western territory of the Russian Empire in the spring and summer of 1915, soldiers encountered a physical and cultural environment quite different from what they previously encountered. Those experiences are told through the eyes of German soldiers in Wacht im Osten: German Encounters with the East in World War I, a new special exhibition at the National World War I Museum and Memorial.

As historian Vejas Liulevicius describes, the German soldier formed a “mindscape” of the vast, sparsely populated, underdeveloped, alien landscape in which he found himself—something conquered by armed force, but beyond his power to fully understand and control. This landscape challenged him with a psychological learning curve beyond his capacity as a soldier or administrator to comprehend a completely new environment.

Constantly aware of this, the German occupier coped with his disoriented feelings by scrutinizing his environment more thoroughly than he might have in more familiar surroundings. The Germans’ “mindscape” transitioned from being a way of understanding the physical nature of this environment to understanding how to interact with it and eventually subdue it, by constant guarded watchfulness.

 “This special exhibition is unique in that we share the stories and experiences of common soldiers tasked with overseeing the occupation of foreign lands,” said National World War I Museum and Memorial Archivist and Edward Jones Research Center Manager Jonathan Casey. “Through their own personal photographs and diary entries, we’re able to gain an understanding of everyday life for soldiers in those circumstances.”

Wacht im Osten (“Watch in the East”) explores this encounter between the German soldier and the land and people he found himself trying to understand. An example of this is the Belarusian village of Iwje, which is depicted using commercial photo postcards illustrating its diverse mix of religious cultures, including Christian, Jewish and Muslim.

“Through Wacht im Osten, we’re able to explore an aspect of the Great War not commonly examined broadly: what life was like for soldiers serving as occupiers in lands previously unfamiliar from a cultural and environmental standpoint,” said National World War I Museum and Memorial President and CEO Dr. Matthew Naylor.

 The exhibition’s narrative unfolds mainly through the stories of two German soldiers: Georg Oertel and Friedrich Volkmann. Oertel served as a medic in a field hospital in Poland and once helped deliver a farmer’s baby during the Christmas holiday. Volkmann was a father with two small children who served in the infantry in Poland and was killed there. They are experiences of two soldiers, far from home in a foreign land, caught up in war. 

Wacht im Osten is open from Oct. 25, 2016 – March 12, 2017 in the Ellis Gallery. 

The National World War I Museum and Memorial holds the most diverse collection of World War I objects and documents in the world and is the second-oldest public museum dedicated to preserving the objects, history and personal experiences of the war.

Media interested in covering any of the Museum’s offerings should contact Mike Vietti at 816-888-8122 or mvietti@theworldwar.org. 

About the National World War I Museum and Memorial

The National World War I Museum and Memorial is America’s leading institution dedicated to remembering, interpreting and understanding the Great War and its enduring impact on the global community. The Museum holds the most diverse collection of World War I objects and documents in the world and is the second-oldest public museum dedicated to preserving the objects, history and experiences of the war. The Museum takes visitors of all ages on an epic journey through a transformative period and shares deeply personal stories of courage, honor, patriotism and sacrifice. Designated by Congress as America’s official World War I Museum and Memorial and located in downtown Kansas City, Mo., the National World War I Museum and Memorial inspires thought, dialogue and learning to make the experiences of the Great War era meaningful and relevant for present and future generations. To learn more, visit theworldwar.org.

"Representing the unrepresentable: the Great War". An international conference at University of Messina

Thanks to professor Pierandrea Amato for sharing with us the program of the coming international conference "Representing the unrepresentable: the Great War", 24-26 October 2016, University of Messina (for the PDF click here).

B#SIDE WAR FESTIVAL - VENICE STAGE

A special thanks to iodeposito.org for sharing the below press release with World War I Bridges

B#SIDE WAR FESTIVAL - VENICE STAGE

(A SPECIAL Opening WEEK for the 3° edition OF THE FESTIVAL)

the artist ANA MROVLJE PROTAGONIST IN the international B#SIDE WAR festival

From October the 14th - to October the 22th, 2016 / Venice (Italy)

The B#SIDE WAR is an artistic and cultural festival of spread art, diffuse in 12 territories of Italy and Slovenia, thanks to artistic exhibitions and installations, performing, talks and conferences, researches and publications. The festival covers the area from the Mediterranean Sea to the Julian Alps, in addition, special events in Toronto (Canada), Kansas City (USA), Canberra (Australia), Verdun (France), Ieper (Belgium) and London (UK) take place every year.

Designed with the main scope of investigating the legacies that connect the First World War to our everyday life, the B#SIDE WAR project has then been devoted to the analysis of the relationship between the Human Being and the ‘900 conflicts, as well as to the examination of the kinship between our war past and the vision of the world we nowadays have. The third edition of the festival will takes place thanks to the artistic and curatorial work of several contributors belonging 39 different country: 68 artists from all round the world, 17 national museum directors, 25 researchers, a team of 25 cultural organizers.

Key themes for the third edition of the festival are: captivity, prisons, multi-vocal and poly-focal vision of history.

For the opening (called "Venice Stage"), the art direction has involved the international artists Ana Mrovlje, Manca Bajec and Dan Allon, which will inaugurate the third edition creating a week of intense and unique performative acts, interconnected by a common necessity of re-reading the war stories the artists have experienced on their skin (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in the Balkans), or the war stories of which they are heirs (the first and the second world war).

The Opening Week wants to involve the audience in exploring issues related to repression and inheritance of the conflict, entering into a contemplative space in which to undertake new interpretations and relive a necessary poly-focal and multi-vocal perception of war facts.

Ana Mrovlje, author of the installation Peacestool (Sit Down and Deal with War Inside of You), artist who studied as psychoanalyst, investigates something that is still part of our collective memory, lying in the subconscious and in everyone's inheritance: the lagacy of war. A chair shaped with 3000 bullet shells from the World Wars coming from different countries, appears as a witness of conflicts that with their echo nowadays are able in influencing other wars (as the Balkan conflict, of which the artist was a witness). The chair evokes also the path of introspective investigation that the artist pursued, sitting in the studio of her analyst every week, questioning herself about war from a chair. Putting the visitor in the centre of the artistic action, he becomes the protagonist of a war that takes place intimately in his/her mind and that becomes collective again in virtue of its “silent presence” in each of us.

The opening week will continue with the performance Witness Corner Marked by Manca Bajec: internationally renowned for her poetics and her research about the movement defined by James E. Young the ‘Counter-Monument’, the artist shows how contemporary art may act as an intruder, clarifying element for the grey areas of history writing. Witness Corner Marked focuses on the transmission and perceptions of multi-voice war stories (immaterial monuments of a collective past), feeding in this way
a pluri-focal vision of history which still is a necessity today.

In a vacant space animated by floating voices, querying the memory of the past, sounds and objects become carriers of the experiences people endured in war. The visitor will share universal symbols and emotions, being a witness of individual moments that have never been “monumentalised”.

Than, the Israeli artist Dan Allon, who, in the performance All in Order Mr. General ponders upon the topic of repression, which is one of the principal instruments in the struggle for power. During the 7-day performance, the artist will step into the shoes of a dictator in captivity, imprisoned in a uneasy place, under everyone's eyes (being at the same time victim and executioner), creating a reverberation about some archetypal figures and re-elaborating the intense experience he lived as jailer in Kzioth (Israeli-Palestinian conflict).

Being aware of the relationship between the most powerful and the weakest in societies in war, the artist sheds a light on the complex relation between the military and civil world that are divided, so in wars of yesterday as today, by a very thin line. The performance concerns the complexity and the ambivalence of history, creating relationships and tensions with the visitor, starting from the asymmetric relation that binds the visitor to the prisoner.

Talk with the artists: saturday, october 15th, 6 PM (free entrance, booking is recommended)

THE B#SIDE WAR OPENING WEEK WILL TAKE PLACE @ CAOS ART GALLERY

Calle lunga San Barnaba (Dorsoduro), 2687, 30123 Venice, Italy

www.iodeposito.org

info@iodeposito.org +39 348-7768935

Press: press@iodeposito.org +39 349-0526136

IoDeposito Ngo - Founded in 2009 with the aim of contributing to
the advancement of the cultural welfare and of the young people’s cultural well-being, IoDeposito NGO works nowadays on an international scale together with a network of partners from Italy and the World (Museums, Universities, Academy, Public Institutions). It has involved around 150.000 people in its projects (workshops, laboratories, cultural events, conferences, publications). Mostly, it has developed a unique expertise in the organisation of artistic and cultural events as well as in the research field dealing with
the theme of memories and legacies of the the World Conflicts.

"Lands of memory. International contemporary artists revealing war legacies". An exhibition in Vittorio Veneto (Italy)

b#side war festival presents:
lands of memory
international contemporary artists
revealing war legacies
vernissage invitation:
October, the 6th 2016 - Battlefield Museum in Vittorio Veneto (Italy) - 6 pm
(the exhibition will run until October, 25)

 

Cosima Montavoci - Vanitas - Site specific - 2016

An initiative by:

iodeposito.org

Museo della Battaglia Vittorio Veneto

CEDOS Grande Guerra

Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia

Council of Europe/Conseil de l'Europe

Centenario Prima Guerra Mondiale 2014/2018

Imperial War Museum

The National WWI Museum and Memorial

In Flanders Fields Museum

Connecting images of the war time with contemporary works of art, opposed and united by the represented subject, the legacies of the First World War emerge, enlightening the places that were most intense battlefields. The exhibition shows how these territories have assimilated the tragic events of the War, consciously or unconsciously: the landscape, its natural elements and material objects (both organic and anthropized), have absorbed the grief. Burying and incorporating remains and memories, the soil have became an authentic physical body of the conflicts memory. The symbology of the natural elements is developed by contemporary artists in videos and installations, in a kind of prophetic way, not necessarily reassuring, decreeing the protagonism of the soil’s organicity, which is evoked as an element of protection and survival, but also of concealment and suffocation. 

Artists: Ilisie Remus, Claudio Beorchia, Nathalie Vanheule, Jane Glynn, Gordon Belray, Victoria Lucas, Cosima Montavoci, Luca Terenzi.

Fur further information:
www.iodeposito.org
info@iodeposito.org
press@iodeposito.org
facebook/iodeposito

Hollywood and American War (CfP)

Among the dozens of Call for papers that we monthly sift, this seems to be more attractive and promising than others. The deadline is approaching fast, so we invite you to take it into account. It's about all the American Wars (The Great War, World War II, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, The Cold War, The First Gulf War and The Iraq War). 

A frame from Wings (1927) by William A. Wellman,

one of the first films to show two men kissing

Hollywood and American War
deadline for submissions:
November 1, 2016
full name / name of organization:
Andrew Rayment / Chiba University
contact email: rayment13@chiba-u.jp

Call for papers
Hollywood and American War (Edited Collection)
Edited by Andrew Rayment and Paul Nadasdy
Contemporary Cinema (Brill) (tentative)
Submission deadline for abstracts (400-600 words): November 1, 2016
rayment13@chiba-u.jp

“Most men would rather die than think. Many do”. – Bertrand Russell

This edited collection will critique Hollywood representations of American war in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by providing critically substantial commentaries on films representative of each major conflict in which the U.S. Military has been involved. Covering films that depict The Great War, World War II, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, The Cold War, The First Gulf War and The Iraq War, Hollywood and American War will subject the notion that war films ought to be considered ʻthe war memorials of today’ to critical scrutiny. Topics may include (but are not limited to): memorialization and romanticism; memorialization and glorification; memorialization and silence; memorialization and appropriation; the ideology of memorialization; memorialization and power; memorialization and entertainment; memorialization and masculinity; memorialization and comedy; the aporia of memorialization.

Abstracts should include: 1. a proposal for the critique of a particular Hollywood film in relation to its status as a ʻwar memorial’ (or anti-memorial) of the war it depicts; 2. a short commentary of a particular scene from the proposed film that should illustrate both how it develops the themes, tropes, motifs (and so on) in the film as a whole and how it might relate to the broader topic of memorialization through film.

In the final submission, commentaries will vary in length depending on the run-time of the film under discussion but, as a rule of thumb, approximately 5,000 words of analysis will cover each hour of film.

The commentaries will be theoretically substantial but also accessible, written to engage both academics and the intelligent lay reader.

Novels of the Great War: "Three Soldiers" by John Dos Passos

Three Soldiers is one of two early novels that John Dos Passos (Chicago 1896 - Baltimore, 1970) wrote about his experience in the First World War. Precisely it is the second one, since the first is One Man's Initiation (1917). Three Soldiers was published in 1921 in New York by Doran (below is the cover of the first edition). The book tells the stories of three American soldiers while they train and prepare to travel to one of the main fronts of the "European" War, namely the French one. The three are Fuselli, an Italian American coming from San Francisco, Chrisfield, a farmer from Indiana and the talented Andrews, who studied at Harvard and that can be considered under many aspects as the author's alter ego. The three represent a significant "sampling" of the white America back at the time the country was facing the global conflict originated in the heart of Europe. In Three Soldiers different imaginaries clash in the sprockets of military life, in the bureaucracy, in the boredom and finally in the lies and in the carnage of war. The narrative device of Dos Passos aims to show the dehumanizing effects of war on the fear, on the instinct of rebellion and on the individuality of each of the protagonists, who move in a kind of triangulation and therefore give life to a "triple novel" in one.

Rather than a novel of the Great War, Thee Soldiers can be approached as a novel born within this new warfare, one of the first works of fiction that tries to catch the meeting and clash between America and Europe at a time when an European war turns into a global war. The three protagonists show very distinct psychological characterizations and to give life to one of the first effective portraits of the loneliness of the contemporary man, in that particular moment when two worlds - America and Europe – meet because of the war that starts a new era. It’s particularly interesting, in addition to the above mentioned psychological and linguistic characterizations of the protagonists, to fix what we could call the geography of the novel, as well as the first appearance of a new yet already well-shaped cinematic imagery, almost unique feature of the novel. [You can find the page that Project Gutemberg dedicated to Three Soldiers at this link, while the public domain audiobook is available here.]

Philosophy and the Great War. An interview with professor Pierandrea Amato

The below interview with Pierandrea Amato is dedicated to the Italian book La filosofia e la grande guerra ("Philosophy and the Great War", Mimesis, 2016) he recently edited with contributions of Luigi Alfieri, Alain Brossat, Giulio Maria Chiodi, Sandro Gorgone, Giuliana Gregorio, Gianluca Miglino, Giuseppe Raciti, Caterina Resta, Francesca Rizzo, Luca Salza and Pierandrea Amato himself. After many posts on literature, sociological and historical interpretation of the First World War we wanted today to give evidence to philosophy and its meeting with the global war of 1914-1918.

Q: Can we consider three different "philosophies": before, during and after the Great War? In other words and in order to keep the question simple, is there a philosophy that prepares to war, a philosophy that changes during the war years and a philosophy born in the battlefields?

A:It is certainly possible to establish a relationship between philosophy and the First World War, paying attention at the risk of a too simple determinism. Anyway it is true, as Gianluca Miglino (who teaches German Literature at the University of Messina) clearly demonstrates in his essay, that in Germany the philosophy of Erlebnis contributed – through a particular interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought – to create the cultural conditions for the beginning of the war. In this climate, for example, a philosopher like Troeltsch signed manifests pro-war. On the other hand, it is true (in the volume we remember Heidegger’s name) that the First World War creates a revolution of the philosophical grammar, giving to philosophy the task to elaborate the conjunction between thought and existence.

Q: Which is the main goal of this "composite" book about the philosophy and the Great War that you have curated?

A: First of all, the aim of the book is trying to demonstrate that the cultural problems, raised by the First World War, in occasion of its centenary, are extremely actual. In this sense, we would like to demonstrate that paradoxically nowadays the First World War is not the main object of historical knowledge. In particular, it was our intention to point out that the Great War opens one of cultural fundamental problems of the Twentieth century: how to think the unthinkable, namely the catastrophe.

Q: Could you mention the main philosophers and writers studied in the book and could you summarize their positions in front of the war?

A: It is notpossible for me now to summarize the different positions of philosophers and writers contained into the volume. But I can add that a lot of the authors( Benjamin, Breton, Freud, Thomas Mann, Tzara, Zweig, Heidegger, Croce e Gentile) are discussed starting from a precise point of view: how to tell, represent, think the horror of the end of an era?

Q: Which is according to you and all the contributors of this book the most relevant help that philosophy gives in the understanding of the reasons of the First World War and also in the understanding of what comes after?

A: The First World War is the apex of the triumph of modern industrialization and of State political hegemony. In this perspective, I will say that philosophy let us see that the Great War is, at the same time, the completion and the sunset of modern humanism. This means that it is not a kind of pathology, but the extreme and destructive expression of modern humanism.

Q: Any reading suggestion to go further with this topic of philosophy and the Great War? Thanks.

A: After the publication of the book, our research has expanded to the study of other disciplines (cinema, literature, photography, linguistic, archeology, geography). In purely philosophical field, compared to the authors discussed in the book, I would add only two other names: the 1918 first edition of Ernst Bloch’s Geistder Utopie and Paul Valery's considerations about the First World War (La crise d’esprit, 1919).

"Prophets" of the Great War: the modern warfare according to Jan Gotlib Bloch

The titles says “prophets” but as everybody can easily figure out it doesn't make much sense to use the category of "prophet" to write about the historians, philosophers or writers somehow able to predict what happened in Europe between 1914 and 1918. It’s not a matter of being like the Cumaean Sibyl or Nostradamus but it’s rather the result of a deep analysis made possible by the use of all the tools and the knowledge (and also the creativity of thoughts) that one has. Beside Friedrich Engels, whose predictions about a new annihilating global war are well known, there is also a Polish banker, particularly active in the construction and development of the modern Russian railways, who can be ascribed to the list of “prophets”. His name is Jan Gotlib Bloch (1836 – 1902). Strongly impressed by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 he is the author of La guerre future (Paris, 1898). His contributions to the study of the modern warfare and military thought is relevant in the analysis of what the Great War turned out. We would like to suggest this online resource, namely the book of his renown English book Is War Now Impossible? (London, 1899).

The poets and the world war: "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger

Alan Seeger

This American poet, a class mate of  T.S. Eliot, was killed in action in France almost one hundred years ago, precisely on July 4, 1916 in Belloy-en-Santerre. He was 28 (he was born in New York in 1888) and he had started serving in the French Foreign Legion in 1914. The accounts we have say that he was smiling before dying. The splendid and lively literary commonplace of the "appointment with the Death" gives the title of the following poem. "I have a rendezvous with Death" is for sure his most popular poem, appreciated by the president of United States J.F. Kennedy who was used to ask his wife Jaqueline to recite it.
About his experience of war in France we would like to remind you the Letters and Diary of Alan Seeger you can find here in several formats. In one of the latest letters, addressed to a friend and dated June 28, 1916, Alan Seeger wrote: "We go up to the attack tomorrow. This will probably be the biggest thing yet. We are to have the honor of marching in the first wave. No sacks, but two musettes, toile de tente slung over shoulder, plenty of cartridges, grenades, and baïonnette au canon. I will write you soon if I get through all right. If not, my only earthly care is for my poems. Add the ode I sent you and the three sonnets to my last volume and you will have opera omnia quæ existant.  I am glad to be going in first wave. If you are in this thing at all it is best to be in to the limit. And this is the supreme experience."

I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH


I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air-
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath-
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Women Writers of World War I. Interview with Margaret R. Higonnet

We are very pleased to host here below an interview with Margaret R. Higonnet, professor of English and Comparative Literature at University of Connecticut, Storrs. Our starting point is Lines of Fire. Women Writers of World War I, a very rich book she published in 1999.

Q: What was your main purpose when you started writing Lines of Fire. Women Writers of World War I?

A (MRH): When I decided to edit a collection of women’s texts about World War I, I was motivated in good part by my desire to write about some of these works and share their power. In order to reach my audience, I needed to make a group of those texts available. While certain major authors such as Virginia Woolf and Vera Brittain in England, or Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and  Katherine Anne Porter in America were readily available, even famous authors such as Colette or Anna Akhmatova were harder for an Anglophone audience to track down. At the time, little work had been done to reprint women’s writings about the Great War. Among feminist critics, Jane Marcus, Claire Tylee, and Nosheen Khan had focused on English and American writers. As a comparatist, I was eager to bring to light those who wrote in other languages. While I wanted to include better known writers, I also was eager to include new names. Luckily, I could use the old card catalogue at Harvard’s Widener library, and call up books from the deposit library that had not been read for decades--not since they were first bought by librarians or donated by Harvard alumni in the years following the war. One of my favorite finds was a small selection of wartime issues from Anna Kuliscioff’s La difesa delle lavoratrici, which was lying on metal shelving in Harvard’s Littauer library. It was the only copy mentioned in the Library of Congress World Cat bibliography. Articles had been snipped out, perhaps even before the paper was acquired by Harvard. There I found the typical mix of material published in a women’s journal: political articles and poems, as well as advertisements.

Part of my interest in the project arose from the question, “What is a war text?” When Jean Norton Cru wrote his famous overview, Témoins (1929), which weighed the veracity of war memoirs and fiction, it never occurred to him that women might have anything to say about the matter. “War” meant “combat.” The underlying issue was whether a civilian population (whether female or male, adult or child) encountering war right on their doorstep might have “authentic” (and significant) experiences to recount. Should the record of a “total” war include the dramatic changes in women’s labor that had been precipitated, whether on farms, in factories, or in medical units on hospital trains? As it happens, the Great War was marked by the institutionalization of women soldiers on the Eastern Front, but their record had been largely forgotten, since the Russian Revolution and postwar political upheavals had refocused attention on other historical events.

At the same time, I belong to a generation of critics for whom the lines between “literary” texts and other kinds of discourse had been redrawn. Autobiographies were being reconsidered from aesthetic rather than historical perspectives. Critics reached back to a broader definition of “literature” that predated Immanuel Kant. Students of oral history had begun to interview women as well as men—and I was able to profit from the generosity of the historian Melvin E. Page, who sent me copies of interviews he had done in Malawi in 1973, but never used. Thus when I cast my net, I found myself reaching into territory that was largely unknown to me. Without the help of scholars like Page or translators like Ellen Elias-Bursac, I could never have put together this anthology. 

Katherine Anne Porter

Q: Could you briefly illustrate the structure of this book?

A (MRH): One historian recommended that I organize the selections by the proximity of their authors to the battlefront, a principle that would have reinforced the conventional focus on combat as the defining feature of war. Instead I followed a map of different kinds of public and private discourse to which women turned, at a time when their voices might have been repressed by traditional attitudes or censorship. My coeditors for Behind the Lines, Sonya Michel and Jane Jensen, urged me to include important political and historical texts. Political examples would be Klara Zetkin’s August 5, 1914, call for a mass protest by German workers against the war; the invitation by Dr. Aletta Jacobs to women to attend the International Congress of Women held at The Hague in April 1915, to urge the warring nations to use continuous negotiation in order to achieve peace; and the testimony of Hélène Brion at her trial for pacifist activities, considered to be treasonous. My first criterion of selection was a combination of historical significance and rhetorical power; I read one hundred pages for each page I included—and my editor at Penguin forced a further reduction, completely eliminating the genre of women’s drama and many of the images. By serendipity, I discovered that my five groupings of political texts, journalism, testimony (including diaries, memoirs, letters and interviews), short fiction, and elegiac poems corresponded roughly to five groups of women’s images, which range from political posters, to children’s literature, photographic documents, artistic lithographs and engravings, and memorial sculpture. 

Amy Lowell

Q: Different types of writing, this is the leitmotiv of your book. So not only poetry, but diaries, medical accounts, journalism etc. Is there a genre where the contribution of women writing is more meaningful according to your standpoint? If so, why?

A (MRH): You are quite right that the volume offers a broad spectrum of texts that address different kinds of audiences, in different voices, often hortatory, and sometimes in favor of war but most often opposed to it. One kind of meaning exposed is the gap between the responses by men and women; thus Zetkinand her female socialist colleagues opposed the war, while the German socialists in the Reichstag voted for the war credits. Another is the significance of the female body in wartime, both as a physical object of rape and as a political symbol. Women’s testimony brings their neglected experiences to the foreground. But from my own standpoint, the texts to which I keep returning are remarkable artistic responses to the impact of war, many of them written by women who had actually served in medical units. Some of my favorites are Mary Borden’s “Moonlight,” which explicitly describes the night-time dynamo of a hospital where sexual identities have been erased by cruel wounds; Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s “The Man Whose Heart They Could See,” which confronts a beating heart exposed by the slice of a shell across a man’s chest; or Gertrud Kolmar’s “November 9, ‘Eighteen,” which points toward the nostalgia for war that would erupt in the 1930s. A succinctly intense poetic form distinguishes the brilliance of Anna Akhmatova’s “Prayer” to God, to accept her sacrifice of all she holds dear, in order to halt the war. A two-line imagist description by Amy Lowell of a butterfly on a cannon projects the possibility of a peacefire, foreshadowing the conclusion of the movie, All Quiet on the Western Front. And the Malawi lament sung by Olivia Tambala poses the most important question we can ask: Why? 

Q: Finally, could you kindly share the titles of other studies on the topic? Thank you.

A (MRH): Probably my best known text about World War I is an essay I co-authored with my historian husband, Patrice Higonnet, entitled “The Double Helix,” in Behind the Lines. There we argued that in spite of women’s entry into new economic, social, and even military roles during the war, often replacing men who had previously held those positions, gender hierarchies tend to be reproduced. Recent work includes Margaret Hall’s Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country, 1918 – 1919 (2014), where I juxtapose the verbal narrative of a memoir with a visual narrative. Less familiar studies that I enjoyed writing might include "Civil Wars and Sexual Territory" in Arms and the Woman, edited by Helen Cooper, et al (1989), “The Great War and the Female Elegy,” which appeared in The Global South (2007), and “War Toys: Breaking and Remaking in Great War Narratives,” in The Lion and the Unicorn (2007), as well as “Child Witnesses: The Cases of World War I and Darfur,” in PMLA (2006). Outside the terrain of the war, I’ve enjoyed working on the relationships between words and images, as in a short essay, “Music Albums: A Tiny Gesamtkunstwerk” in Arcadia, ed. Mieke Bal (2003), as well as on the topic of suicide, for example, in “Frames of Female Suicide,” in Studies in the Novel (2000).