Re: Sunrise, sunset
Larry, there's so much in your last post I hardly know where to start. Let me try with this:
The implication of Fussell’s claim is that we shape the world according to the way we view it, and the Great War altered everything of traditional value. How is a future contemplated beyond an experience that destroyed such things as sunrise and sunset? It’s like Newton’s simple revelation that the rainbow is not God’s promise set in the sky but an optical illusion; it no longer has ethical value, ie, value in determining our gestures toward the future. Is that an explanation of why Nature no longer holds a moral check or restraint on us? Maybe we can consciously decide that we no longer believe in this or that, but what would it take to give Nature back to us beyond the “value” of Hallmark sentimentality?
A few years back, papal biographer George Weigel came out with a book called "The Cube or the Cathedral," which examined Europe's dying culture and spirituality. Europe has abandoned its traditional Christian faith, and has substituted for it an ersatz faith in the future -- which, on evidence of its birth dearth, it doesn't believe in. As I recall, Weigel said that the two world wars killed something vital in Europe's spirit. Of course if God exists, He exists whether or not any Europeans believe in Him. But -- and I'll say this as a believing Christian -- the point to be taken is that the experience of the wars made it difficult, and perhaps impossible, for people to see reality.
Not to get too far afield from the topic of war, but I found that my intense experience covering the Catholic sex abuse scandal, and related phenomena, so shattered my ability to believe in the Catholic faith that what I'd once held precious slipped through my fingers. It was not a decision to quit believing, so much as losing the ability to believe it. That's the closest thing I've personally experienced to what Fussell talks about, old verities being shattered by the trauma of war.
I used to think that the nihilism of the 1920s -- the Weimar Republic stuff, primarily, but also the Lost Generation phenomenon -- was mostly a matter of easy cynicism. Not after reading Remarque and Fussell. As you point out, Fussell shows us how the wartime experience robbed the English of the ability to see the sunrise and the sunset as they formerly had. I don't know how an individual, or a generation, gets that back, though I suppose the passage of time could restore one's vision, or one's children's. Perhaps that accounts for the resurgence of religious faith now -- though not (or not yet) in Europe. People cannot live without hope. People cannot live without sunrises and sunsets. Either it takes a heroic effort of the will to see those things, or it takes time, and the passing of generations.
People forget. That's a curse, but also a blessing.
Comments
Yes, these posts are rich. Is it possible, Dr. Allums, to discuss more in-depth the meaning of "irony?" You seem to be indicating that the ironic is a condition created out of surplus.
Posted by: laray polk | July 24, 2007 07:27 PM
Like Fussell, Weigel focuses primarily on World War I, especially in the chapter of The Cube and The Cathedral appropriately titled "The Trapgate of 1914." The chapter is particularly interested in examining why the Great War happened -- both why it started and why it continued, even though it quickly became apparent, mere weeks into the war, that the western front would be a bloody stalemate.
Weigel leans heavily on David Fromkin's analysis of the origins of WWI, who "stresses that the arms race that preceded the Great War 'took place in a civilization in which it was widely believed that only destruction could bring regeneration.'" (David Fromkin, Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914 (2004)). Weigel's analysis here is a bit elliptical, but the primary point is his assertion that the "nihilist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche . . . was the true prophet of the age aborning in the early years of the twentieth century." This obviously differs from Fussell's reading of pre-WWI culture, i.e., "the prevailing Meliorist myth which had dominated the public consciousness for a century."
I probably shouldn't venture much further comment, not having read either Fussell or Fromkin.
Posted by: Ron Kerridge | July 25, 2007 06:12 PM