Turning Myth into History

...Rather, he has explained and defined the myth, showing how it interacts with society...

...Despite a disconnectedness that is only partially redeemed by a brilliant synthesizing sixth chapter, The Generation of 1914 is a valuable book for its discussion of generational theories and its largely successful effort to relate them to social and political developments...

...The five chapters are so unlike one another that they have to be read as separate essays...

...These extremist philosophies also exploited another feature of the generational movement, the glorification of youth...

...Among the main generational theoreticians in France were men like Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde-who collaborated under the nom de plume of Agathon-And Francois Mentre...

...lost because its history is overlaid with myth," he goes on to state: "My purpose in writing this book was to rescue the generation of 1914 from the shadowiand of myth and to restore it to the realm of history...

...They had come under the influence of writers like Maurice Barres, who inspired younger men to rebel against the positivist complacency of the late 19th century...

...For the distinction between myth and history hardly exists in any clearly definable way...

...But the success of such an inquiry depends on establishing what a generation is, and how the one of 1914 differed from previous generations...

...In his chapter devoted to these writings, "England: Lost Legions of Youth," Wohl shows that insofar as it was an articulate movement, the English generation of 1914 was decidedly an upper- and middle-class phenomenon...

...This class factor, of course, introduces an ambivalence to generational history...

...In France, for example, a great deal of generational theorizing went on, particularly among the young men of the years immediately preceding and following 1914...

...Reviewed by George Woodcock Author, "The Writer and Politics," "Mohandas Gandhi" This book has two purposes...

...This is the book's second purpose...

...The dissimilarity of the chapters is a result, too, of the varying materials available to the author...

...Unfortunately, the intellectuals who harbored such ideas were often-As Wohl demonstrates in his chapters on Germany and Italy-Attracted to Fascism and Communism, at least for a time...

...Partly the differences are due to varying national experiences...

...In the case of all the countries that fought in the Great War, the shared experience of life in the trenches became to a great extent the bond that drew together those who survived and who largely dominated the years between the wars...

...The body of the work consists of five long chapters dealing with the generation of 1914 in France, Germany, England, Spain, and Italy-the countries forming the traditional fabric of European culture...

...In The Generation of 1914 the author has not dispelled the myth of the "lost generation" and replaced it by history...

...History deals with two kinds of actuality: first, specific events in the phenomenal world, objective reality...

...A sense of the need for national revival was an essential part of the movement, as was the idea of a generation of the young who would lead it...

...As Wohl argues: "In most Western and Central European countries during this period the middle classes were torn between their desire to wrest power from the former elites and their fear of a 'rebellion of the masses.' Intellectuals from these classes dreamed of a spiritual revolution that would eliminate the exploiters and the exploited and fuse all sectors of society unto a unified and conflict-free community...

...Massis and de Tarde came closer to the mark when they wrote in the preface to The Young People of Today that a generation 'supposes a community of traits, a bond, a secret entente, a whole within which each individual moves in solidarity with the other's effort.' Hence a common physiognomy, the awareness of a common bond, and a common pattern of action...

...The United States and Russia are left out, appropriately, because neither shared strictly European history: Until 1914 both Russia and the U.S...

...They destroyed by absorption genuine youth movements and genuine attempts of returned soldiers to achieve social regeneration...

...One might even hope that such a history would yield a new perspective on the period as a whole-or at the least, a finer sense of its conflicts and concerns...

...A history of the generation of 1914 might illuminate in unexpected ways the origins of the Great War and its impact on those who fought it...

...Russia, though, suffered social and cultural dislocations that not only ruptured its ties to Europe for 50 years but also created the generation of 1917-into which the men of 1914, if they survived war and civil war and Bolshevik proscription, were eventually absorbed...

...It involves some consideration of the generational theories that began to be developed during the 19th century, as well as an analysis of how these ideas influenced those born between 1880-1900...

...The War did bring America into closer contact, especially with England and France...

...participated in Europe mainly through their expatriates...

...second, images and symbols created by men, subjective reality, another name for which is myth...

...Whether the author has indeed succeeded in turning myth into history is, however, another matter...

...Such a venture seemed well worth undertaking...

...Nevertheless, in so doing, he has rescued the generation of 1914 and realized his intent to "restore it to the realm of history...

...But in fact none of the totalitarian parties represented the desires of the men coming back from the War...

...Mentre's mistake," writes Wohl, "was in trying to locate the unity of a generation in a doctrine or movement...

...It held the promise of helping us to understand such critical developments as the spread of cynicism and despair, the waning of liberal and humanitarian values, the rise of Communist and Fascist movements, and the sudden eruption of violence in Europe's most progressive countries during the wars between 1914 and 1945...

...After saying "one would be tempted to argue that if the War generation is 'lost,' it is lost because it has no history...

...Nowhere was the trench experience-with its fear and its horror, its comradeship and its liberation from the bonds of conventional living?more eloquently portrayed than in the wartime poetry and the novels of the English generation of 1914...

...Spaniards did not participate in the Great War...

...The generational idea appealed to them because it pointed to one way in which this spiritual revolution could be accomplished...

...Robert Wohl presents the first on his second page...

...England's generation of 1914-the first to regard itself a "lost" generation-never became deeply involved in the powerful totalitarian movements that arose in Italy, Germany, Spain, and even France...

...For British casualties in the War were proportionately less than those of other countries, except among the educated and privileged classes from which the officers and poets alike were drawn...