too rite

In the preface to Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, author Modris Eksteins writes: Like the avant-garde in the arts, Germany was swept by a reformist zeal at the fin-de-siècle and by 1914 she had come to represent both to herself and to the international community the idea of sprit at war. After the trauma of military defeat in 1918, the radicalism in Germany, rather than being subdued, was accentuated. The Weimar period, 1918 to 1933, and the Third Reich, 1933 to 1945, were stages in a process. Avant-garde has for us a positive ring, storm troops a frightening connotation. This book suggests that there may be a sibling relationship between these two terms that extends beyond their military origins. Introspection, primitivism, abstraction, and myth making in the arts, and introspection, primitivism, abstraction, and myth making in politics, may be related manifestations. Nazi kitsch may bear a blood relationship to the highbrow religion of art proclaimed by many moderns. there's something happening here but you don't know what it is do you... Mr. Jones? ~ dylan

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