World+War+I


 * World War I**, also known as The Great War, took place from July 28, 1914 until November 11, 1918. It was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, Bosnia. World War I is considered to be a "classic case of one-thing-led-to-another", in which the tangled alliances of each nation caused Germany, France, Britain, Japan, Italy, and the United States to become involved. The war ended with the Treaty of Versaille, in which Germany was blamed for initiating the war. The civil unrest before, during, and after the war had a great impact on the arts of the 20th and 21st centuries, including the beginning of movements such as Imagism, Dadaism, and words-in-freedom.

=Background=

World War I was the result of a variety of events and ideals, including a fear of war that lead to a series of alliances between major European countries in a race for economic and political gain. In 1908, Austria-Hungary took advantage of a revolt in Turkey to acquire Bosnia (and later Herzegovina), taking a portion of Serbia's people in the process, an event that later became known as the Bosnian Crisis. In retaliation, a Serbian nationalist society called the Black Hand plotted the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The Archduke and his wife were assassinated on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo, Bosnia (a part of Austria-Hungary) by the Black Hand member Gavrilo Princip. A month later on July 28, Austria declared war on Serbia. Because it was in an alliance with Serbia, Russia declared war on Austria. In turn, Germany mobilized against Russia, thus marking the domino effect that expanded into World War I. After Germany came France, Britain, Japan, Italy, and ultimately the United States.

Political Results
The Treaty of Versailles marked the end of the war and also sparked the beginnings of World War II. The Treaty was signed at the Versailles Palace. The primary leaders of the signing were Prime Minister David Lloyd George (Britain), Premier Georges Clemenceau (France), and President Woodrow Wilson (America), known collectively as the "Big Three". Much of the blame for World War I was pushed on to Germany and the treaty greatly reduced Germany's power. Prime Minister George's interests were primarily in retaining his position in office. He was also concerned with the spread of communism and felt that restraining Germany would help contain the movement's spread. Premier Clemenceau and his public harbored vindictive feelings towards Germany due to the destruction it had caused in France. President Wilson responded to the growing ideal of isolation, and felt that "American input into Europe should be kept to a minimum". The treaty also created the League of Nations, an organization that was intended to end warfare around the world and stop the spread of communism. Germany was excluded from joining the League.

The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to admit to full responsibility for the war and greatly reduced its ability to rebuild its economy. Its military was stripped of tanks, air force, and submarines, only allowing "6 capital naval ships." It was also allowed only 100,000 soldiers at a time. Germany was forced to give up many of its territories, including Alsace-Lorraine, Eupen and Malmedy, Northern Schleswig, Hultschin, West Prussia, Posen, Upper Silesia, all of which were divided between France, Belgium, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Though angered by the Treaty, the Germans had been ambushed by its creation and had no choice but to sign it. The other Central powers, Austria-Hungary (treated separately as Austria and Hungary), Bulgaria, and Turkey, also lost substantial amounts of land and military power, forced into signing their own respective treaties. Germany's destitute and demilitarized state left it in a prime position for Adolf Hitler's rise to power, thus sparking World War II.

Technological Advancements and Warfare
World War I is largely known for the use of trench warfare in which battles were fought using trenches as cover. The trenches were highly unsanitary, with swarms of lice and rats along with piles of dead bodies. World War I also used many new technological developments created in the growing 20th century arms race, such as the introduction of tanks and chemical warfare. World War I was the first war to utilize chemical warfare. media type="youtube" key="D6PP_74cLZ0" height="251" width="336" align="right"There were an estimated 37,466,904 total casualties. World War I casualties included what the Project Façade website dubs “an unprecedented number” of horrific facial injuries which often left the soldiers unrecognizable at the least and frequently unable to function at all. In response to this “secondary tragedy” of the war – the surviving soldiers unable to reassimilate – Sir Harold Delf Gillies, a New Zealander, pioneered the field of facial reconstruction surgery. His cousin, Archibald McIndoe went on to pursue it as well with The Guinea Pig Club during World War II. Project Façade itself is Paddy Hartley’s artistic response to Gillies’ work and the men he worked on. It currently consists of sixteen sculptural pieces derived from military uniforms, with the goal of relating the personal stories of the men and how they coped with their injuries after returning home. The website also includes case studies courtesy of the Gillies Archives. Some of the images from the case studies appear in the video to the right (Warning: some of the images in this video may be disturbing to some audiences).

=WWI and the Arts=

Imagism and Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound's poetry collection //Cathay// (1915), is purported to be a veiled reflection of his sentiments on World War I. Pound made several contributions to poetry, including his involvement in the imagist movement. Through his use of imagism in // Cathay //, Pound sought to give clarity to the poems and he wrote in free verse, departing from the traditional romantic technique. This poetic style was strongly influenced by classical Chinese and Japanese poetry - indeed, the collection is a loose a translation of poetry by the ancient Chinese poet Rihaku, whose Japanese name Li Bai appears throughout //Cathay//. Pound's hidden sentiments are hinted at by the analytical note (which can also be read as guide to metonymy) he places at the end of "The Jewel Stairs' Grievance":

"The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew, It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,  And I let down the crystal curtain  And watch the moon through the clear autumn.

Note.--Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of weather. Also she has come early, for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, it has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct reproach."

 The last line of the note is largely the basis for this reading of //Cathay//, that the collection in its entirety constitutes his own indirect reproach of World War I.

//Cathay //as a whole is structured in a way which makes it impossible to dismiss the undercurrent of war, even though it sometimes appears to be lost in individual pieces. It opens with the “Song of the Bowmen of Shu,” which sets the stage for war with its mention of generals, soldiers, and especially “We have no rest, three battles a month.” This line is particularly significant because though “sorrow” is used three times before it, there is no direct indication of wartime; it is acknowledged in the outset colors the “sorrow”-ing in the rest of the piece.

 This is followed by four subtler pieces, “The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance” and then “Lament of the Frontier Guard.” “Lament” is significant because not only does it offer the most direct rebuke, it is situated close to the middle of the collection as a whole. Its confrontational tone – “Who brought this to pass? […] Barbarous kings.” – colors the poems around it, reinforcing the note of “Jewel Stairs,” and makes it more difficult to ignore the subtler hints of rebuke in the other poems. (It is also worth mentioning that Pound includes a footnote in “South Folk in Cold Country,” explaining the lines “Yesterday we went out of the Wild-Goose gate,/To-day from the Dragon-Pen.” He writes: “//I.e.,// we have been warring from one end of the empire to the other, now east, now west, on each border.” Short and easy to miss, it seems to be a reminder to the reader of the poem's tendency towards indirect reproach.

 Following the establishment of metonymy as the dominant mode of interpretation through the note, there are several image sets or themes which appear throughout the collection. One is the concept of separation, especially a wife separated from her husband (or lover). For example, “The Beautiful Toilet” has nothing in it that seems to hint at war. However, the second stanza notes abandonment:

“And she was a courtezan in the old days, And she has married a sot, Who now goes drunkenly out And leaves her too much alone.”

In the context of 1915, this evokes the concept of the wife waiting for her husband-the-soldier, at war, despite there being no mention of battles or soldiers in the piece itself. “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” and “Exile’s Letter” behave in similar ways. In both cases there is no direct address of why the separation has occurred (that the River-Merchant left or why the narrator is in exile), but the separation in and of itself evokes the partings of wartime.

Another theme is that of desolation, especially the desolation of what used to be cities. One of the best examples is in “The River Song.” The phrase “King So’s terraced palace/is now but a barren hill,” is inserted in a poem which is largely about opulent gardens, imagery which does not evoke war, but the concept of a city razed to the ground does, especially with the advent of the tank and the use of artillery. Destroyed kingdoms and/or barren land are also mentioned in “Lament,” “Taking Leave of a Friend,” and “The City of Choan;” of these, only “Lament” deals directly with war.

The last recurring theme is that of opulent generals and nobility. The "Barbarous kings" of “Lament” suggest empire and royalty, evoking the struggles between European empires and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a connection which colors the other mentions of royalty in the collection. In “Poem By the Bridge at Ten-Shin,” for example, the phrase “The lords go forth from the court, and into far borders” suggests royalty going off to war, despite the fact that the poem goes on to describe a party.

The problematic aspect of Pound’s heavy use of metonymy is that it raises questions of orientalism. It is a point of contention, but one argument is that Pound used the cultural backdrop of China as a mirror to reflect the Western experience at the time rather than attempting to actually interact with and understand China’s heritage and culture.

Futurism and Marinetti
The impending arrival of World War I was a prime time for F.T. Marinetti's Italian Futurist movement to thrive, a movement that focused on the glorification of war, speed, and technological developments. Filled with uncertainty, Italy was undergoing radical transitions that thrived on "government scandal, the excitement of minor wars, and harsh labor trouble". @F. T. Marinetti's works were evocatively violent and garnered much scandal that fueled the movement's propulsion. It contributed to the civil unrest prior to the war, such as in his //Founding and Manifesto of Futurism// published on February 20, 1909. //The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism// is laden with warlike comparisons and violent metaphors, going so far as to compare the skies to "an army of hostile stars glaring down at us from their celestial encampments". He called for revolt against literature that portrayed a "pensive immobility." Futurism's downfall was rooted in the end of the war, as it later became associated with the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.



Dada and Hugo Ball
The Dada movement, which was essentially an "anti-everything" movement, was inspired by the frustrations of war. The movement started in 1916, the forefront of World War I. Dadaists ranged from writers to painters, but they all held similar messages against conformity, society, movement, and structure.

Hugo Ball was one of the founders of the Dada movement in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916. Though he wrote many works and was also a performer, he is well known for his poem //Karawane// and for his creation of sound poetry//. Karawane// is a sound poem that also exhibits the poetic technique of words-in-freedom. Sound poetry emphasizes the abstract way words sound rather than their literal meaning by breaking down syllables and letters, and then putting them back together as words without meaning. Often times, several different languages will be used for one poem. By breaking down languages, sound poems were seen as a representation for the destruction of war. Additionally, Dadaists opposed language because of its rigid structure.

Seen here to the left is Ball's poem //Karawane//. When read aloud, it has been noted that the nonsensical sounds mimic warlike machinery, trains, and even bombs and guns in an onomatopoeic fashion. All of the elements that come to mind from hearing the spoken version of //Karawane// are attributed to World War I. Trains carried equipment and soldiers, often going through pristine countryside villages and disturbing everyday life. Bombs were a new destructive technology of the war and though guns were not new, they are inextricably connected with war time.

Cubism and Gino Severini
 Cubism was an avant-garde visual artistic movement developed between 1907 and 1914. It utilized a collage or fragmented effect with many geometric shapes. One painter associated with the movement was Gino Severini, who lived in France during much of the war. His painting was influenced by his observations of passing trains and war supplies, "symbols of war" that displayed a heavy influenced of Symbolist modes of thought. Instead of a more human portrayal of war, he concentrated on the objects of war, an aspect that is clear in his paintings //Plastic Synthesis on the Ideas of War//, //Armored Train in Action//, //Cannon in Action//, and //Red Cross Train Passing a Village,// all painted in 1915. //Armored Train in Action// portrays Severini's spectator role of the war as he viewed it from an "aerial view of the Denfert-Rochereau station and trains transporting soldiers, supplies, and weapons."

 The figures are featureless, with only little blotches of color to portray a face shape, while the angular guns they hold and the cannons firing from the train are the focal point. The steam surrounding the train suggest movement and energy, which also reflects Severini's involvement in the Futurist movement. After the war, Severini concerned himself with the complete harmonization of numbers and how they related to painting. This could be seen as a need for order in a world previously in disarray. He concerned himself with geometric laws such as the "Golden Mean", or the golden section, rigorously reacquainting himself with the foundations of his work.

=External Links=

Germany After World War I  Causes of WWI  First World War  PBS: The Great War  World War I Causes and Effects (a power point slide)  Causes of the First World War

=References=

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