As The 100th Anniversary Of The Armistice Day
11/11/1918 at 11 AM Commences-Some Creative Artists Who Fought/Died/Lived
Through The Nightmare That Destroyed The Flower Of European And American Youth
–
By Seth Garth
A few years ago, starting in August 2014 the 100th
anniversary of what would become World War I, I started a series about the
cultural effects, some of them anyway, of the slaughter which mowed down the
flower of the European youth including an amazing number of artists, poets,
writers and other cultural figures. Those culturati left behind, those who
survived the shellings, the trenches, the diseases, and what was then called
“shell shock,” now more commonly Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is
duly recognized, and compensated for at least in the United States by the
Veterans Administration in proven cases reacted in many different ways. Mainly,
the best of them, like the ordinary dog soldiers could not go back to the same
old, same old, could not revive the certitudes of the pre-war Western world
with it distorted sense of decorum and went to what even today seem quirky with
moderns like Dada, Minimalism, the literary sparseness of Hemingway, and so on.
I had my say there in a general sense but now as we are only a few months away
from the 100th anniversary of, mercifully, the armistice which
effectively ended that bloodbath I want to do a retrospective of creative
artistic works by those who survived the war and how those war visions got
translated into their works with some commentary if the spirit moves me but
this is their show-no question they earned a retrospective.
On Receiving News of the War
Snow is a strange word;
No ice or frost
Have asked of bud or bird
For Winter's cost.
Yet ice and frost and snow
From earth to sky
This Summer land doth know,
No man knows why.
In all men's hearts it is.
Some spirit old
Hath turned with malign kiss
Our lives to mould.
Red fangs have torn His face.
God's blood is shed.
He mourns from His lone place
His children dead.
O! ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom.
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