we are slaying the Present with bayonets, to put the Future on its throne." Before he fell, Oxilia left the refrain: Viva, viva la vita! Viva! The men in the trenches died thirsting for life; the new generation is doing its utmost to find life, in literature and in life.[1]
It has seemed to many that the War struck at the very bases of civilization, and that the superstructure is today tottering, if not fallen.[2] This, with the young has produced an intellectual crisis. The older ones might go on; they might go back and pick up where they had left off in 1914; they might go back to the rear-guard of Symbolism or the advance-guard of a prematurely slain Imagism; they might, like M. Paul Claudel, write charming introductions to Rimbaud—but the younger man will tell you[3] that it is a hopeless bourgeois vulgarity to make any further reference to the "bateau ivre!" The young demand certitude,—the certitude, in any event, of the uncertain,—and certitude is another name for faith; the smiling, the "elegant," the "pretty" and the indifferent scepticism of an Anatole France is not for them. But certitude? Where is it to be found in the world left by the War? In this world, an utter disorientation would appear to be the keynote. Jean Cocteau, facing a cosmos of unclassifiable bric-à-brac, takes refuge in the Church;[4] and whatever the refuge, whether a haven be sought or disdained, it is in a manner a universe of bric-à-brac which the writer who has come up, say, since 1920 (Cocteau, of course, dates from much further back) looks out upon and endeavors to portray, when he does endeavor to portray it—he is, as a rule, little concerned with setting it to rights.
There is, then, something "in the air." There is a vast unrest and a vast despair, but one for which it is extremely difficult to discover a common denominator.[5] There is, for one thing, a tremendous appe-
- ↑ War memories persist, needless to say; they will be found throughout this anthology.
- ↑ For one description of the spiritual effects of the War, see Alberto Consiglio's Itinerario romantico (Naples, 1930), particularly the section entitled Ragioni dell' Apocalisse," which has been partly translated for the Italian section of the present work.
- ↑ M. Louis Aragon, for example (see his Traité du style), and the other Surréalistes. The Surréalistes claim Rimbaud as one of their "precursors," but object to the cult, which they look upon as bourgeois, that has grown up about the poet.
- ↑ It is of interest to compare Giovanni Papini's flight from a world of conflicting "minds."
- ↑ Notre Inquietude, Daniel Rops, 1929. The author speaks of the "Hamletisme" of the age (on which, compare M. Valéry). The period of after-the-War unrest may be definitely dated from the year 1916. It was
