Everything to Nothing

The Poetry of the Great War, Revolution and the Transformation of Europe

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 01 Dec 2015 | Archive Date 03 Nov 2015

Description

The poets’ Great War: violence, revolution and modernism

The First World War changed the map of Europe forever. Empires collapsed, new countries were born, revolutions shocked and inspired the world.

This tumult, sometimes referred to as ‘the literary war’, saw an extraordinary outpouring of writing. The conflict opened up a vista of possibilities and tragedies for poetic exploration, and at the same time poetry was a tool for manipulating the sentiments of the combatant peoples. In Germany alone during the first few months there were over a million poems of propaganda published. We think of war poets as pacifistic protestors, but that view has been created retrospectively. The verse of the time, particularly in the early years of the conflict—in Fernando Pessoa or Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, for example—could find in the violence and technology of modern warfare an awful and exhilarating epiphany.

In this cultural history of the First World War, the conflict is seen from the point of view of poets and writers from all over Europe, including Rupert Brooke, Anna Akhmatova, Guillaume Apollinaire, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Rainer Maria Rilke and Siegfried Sassoon.

Everything to Nothing is the award-winning panoramic history of how nationalism and internationalism defined both the war itself and its aftermath—revolutionary movements, wars for independence, civil wars, the treaty of Versailles. It reveals how poets played a vital role in defining the stakes, ambitions and disappointments of postwar Europe.
The poets’ Great War: violence, revolution and modernism

The First World War changed the map of Europe forever. Empires collapsed, new countries were born, revolutions shocked and inspired the world.

...

Advance Praise

“Truly magnificent ... A choir of voices streamlined in a narrative discourse which shatters the monolithic image of the John McCrae–like melancholic War Poet.”
—Tom de Keyzer, De Leeswolf

“Reads like a novel ... A story that has never been told before ... The book shows how poets all over Europe were co-responsible for the cultural crisis that lead to this war and how they were important critics of the idea of Europe.”
—S. Bru, Spiegel der Letteren

“Truly magnificent ... A choir of voices streamlined in a narrative discourse which shatters the monolithic image of the John McCrae–like melancholic War Poet.”
—Tom de Keyzer, De Leeswolf

“Reads like...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781784781491
PRICE $34.95 (USD)

Average rating from 3 members


Readers who liked this book also liked: