Words Worth Noting - October 16, 2025

“History belongs to an age of rationalism, to the 18th and particularly the nineteenth century. The latter century had shown great respect for its historians. The Guizots, Michelets, Rankes, Macaulays, and Actons were read and appreciated, especially by a bourgeoisie bent on expansion and integration. Our century has, by contrast, been an antihistorical age, in part because historians have failed to adapt to the sentiments of their century but even more so because this century has been one of dis-integration rather than integration. The psychologist has, as a result, been more in demand than the historian. And the artist has received more respect than either. It is noteworthy that among the mountains of writing built up on the subject of the Great War, a good many of the more satisfying attempts to deal with its meaning have come from the pens of poets, novelists, and even literary critics, and the professional historians have produced, by and large, specialized and limited accounts, most of which pale in evocative and explanatory power before those of the littérateurs. Historians have failed to find explanations to the war that correspond to the horrendous realities, to the actual experience of the war. The spate of official and unofficial histories that issued forth in the twenties was largely ignored by the public. By contrast, Remarque’s All Quiet [on the Western Front] became, virtually overnight, the best seller of all previous time.”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era