1. introduction main part

5.Conclusion

The Great War was a strong presence in modernist novels. The canonical novels written in the aftermath of the war were being shaped by and shaping the zeitgeist of their period. Hence, they were utilizing the public reaction to the war and recording its diverse effects and simultaneously forming the way we see modernism through them. We see in them the sensibility associated with modernism in the form of a multifaceted cultural crisis. The presence of the war in these novels indicates that they were not concerned simply with experimentation and self-conscious construction of art. Rather, they still had a valid social vision. In fact, modernism itself began as a violent movement, especially in art, in line with the violence to come during the war years. Modernist artists used aggressive rhetoric and paintings before the war, especially between 1909 and 1914. Futurism called for violently doing away with tradition and celebrating the violent dynamism, speed, and machinery of modern life. Vorticism’s magazine issued by Wyndham Lewis between 1914 and 1915 was called Blast. Therefore, Milton Cohen (2001) calls the modernists’ relation to war “symbiotic” and explains that “as they drew energy from these constructions of war, their own energies, in turn, were quickly sucked into the real war’s immeasurably larger vortex—with profound sequences for the arts” (emphasis original; p. 160). However, the metaphorical war these artistic movements called for became an actuality. The novels written about the war in the 1920s lament the war and discuss its socio-cultural repercussions rather than document its violence as an end. Many poets, novelists, and painters took part in the war, some were killed in action, some were maimed, and some survived with nervous breakdowns or changed for life. As Cohen states, “modernism itself became a war casualty: it survived, but profoundly changed” (p. 165).

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