Eksteins, Modris.  Rites of Spring.  Boston:  Houghton Miflin. 
1989.  Pp xvi, 396.

     Eksteins brand of history is a collection of reflections. 
Memories-reflections, certainly, but more importantly perception-
reflections.  Because we are doomed to know events only as we
perceive them and not as they actually are (Kant's phenomena versus
noumena) human knowledge is fragmented and illusory.  Even so,
there are loci where observation concentrates, where collective
perception resides.  For Eksteins, these foci were Stravinsky's
"Rite of Spring,"  Anglo-German Christmas fraternization in 1914,
Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.
     At these events Eksteins records the thoughts and reactions of
various critics, audiences and participants.  Eksteins records
without moral comment, reminding us of the idea of acte gratis.
They are existential "projects" without meaning, except that which
may be applied by errant onlookers who cannot resist the hard-wired
tendency toward gestalt creations in their heads.  The absence of
meaning does not dictate or require a corresponding or causally-
related lack of consequences.   Eksteins' book is a litany of
events that may be causally (or perhaps just serially) related. 
The obedient particles of the Greek Atomists and of Hobbes, and
Leibnitz' monads have no mission, only direction and force. 
Likewise, Nijinsky, Remarque, and the soldaten did as they had to,
doing, being, creating and/or destroying, and eventually dying.  
     
"History existed only as spirit and not as an objective reality; 
its truths could be approached only through intuition, not by a
critical method," he quotes on page 79.  Then he quotes H. A. L.
Fisher:  
     "Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned a
     history in plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. 
     These harmonies are concealed from me.  I can only see
     one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon
     wave (page 291)."
Rites of Spring is a slideshow without a moral commentary. 
Eksteins shows us these collected perceptions so we may catalog
them, like so many vapor trails, instead of trying to distill truth
and meaning from the raw data.  Either Eksteins subscribed to
Hegelian/Existential philosophy or he related events in that format
because it was a predominate form of thought among the characters
and bit players in his history-cinema.  Truth and morals in
historical analysis are to be squashed in the manner the trenchman
who quelled their parasitic emotions (" . . . he clearly saw that
feelings were vermin, and that there was nothing to do but treat
them as such" page 174).
     The realization follows that Eksteins' history is also a
creation without any real meaning or purpose.  As repugnant as this
concept may be to the orthodox relationship between the author and
his perception of the value of his work, it may be here instructive
to recall yet another of Nietzsche's positions.  Nietzsche, quoted
liberally throughout Rites, knew that life was futile, that death
and obscurity were imminent, but still advocated a fierce,
aggressive stance.  He advocated that we face factic realities with
a "barbarous howl," that the ubermann should go down fighting.  
     Eksteins' treatment of the Nazis indicates his approach to
history.  The Nazis appear at the end of the book; their presence
seems required by fate due to the events and evolution of the
previous fifty years.  Rather than Bad, they are more Confused, or
"totally incomprehensible (page 320)."  This must be Eksteins' idea
of bad art:  the totally incomprehensible.  The Nazis, German
mystic barbarians in the extreme, had a vision but were too
"kitschy" to transform that vision into a sustainable and coherent
art form.
Jason Carr
http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/