Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age

Modris Eksteins’s 1989 nonfiction book, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, takes its title from a scandalous 1913 Russian ballet. Critics believed that the ballet’s complex, atonal score, stomping choreography, and the feature of a virginal sacrifice mocked classical ballet conventions. Eksteins—a Canadian historian and author—argues that the juxtaposition of violence and creativity in the ballet echoed in both World War I—“The Great War”—and its aftermath.

Eksteins focuses on prewar Germany—the “belated” technological and cultural innovator that sought to challenge staid champion of 19th century world order, Great Britain (64). In place of Anglo-French reverence for tradition, Germany pursued continuous innovation and authenticity. Ultimately, WWI occurred due to the conflict between Britain and France’s desire to preserve the old world order and Germany’s to change it.

Both sides enthusiastically entered the war, viewing the endeavor as a chance to shake things up and prove their own cultural and ideological superiority. However, as each side realized that the key to victory was exhausting the enemy with an onslaught of trench attacks, the myth of winning the war in a decisive “knockout” battle ended (142). Eksteins examines soldiers’ motivations and methods used to sustain morale when daily existence in the trenches became louse-ridden misery. He determines that, while, on the German side, ideology and the belief in progress guided many soldiers, on the Allied side, a sense of national duty gave way to the sheer grit and determination to persevere until the job was finished.

The postwar era resulted in both sides feeling profoundly disillusioned (207). On the Allied side, soldiers, civilians, and artists rejected prewar ideals and cultural output that sent so many young men to their deaths. On the German side, many felt that the Treaty of Versailles—which ended the war—was a betrayal on the part of their government. This discontentment and impulse amongst right-wing sectors of the population to scapegoat minority groups for Germany’s loss, was fertile ground for Adolf Hitler’s nationalist, anti-Semitic views. Eksteins concludes with the defeat of Hitler’s regime at the end of World War II and the entry of Stalinist Russia’s Red Army into Berlin, implying that the warlike spirit exhibited in The Rite of Spring and set in motion by the Great War, would endure.