MAKE IT NEW

‘a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility which his contemporary history.”

There died a myriad,And of the best, among them,For an old bitch gone in the teeth,For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues,For a few thousand battered books.

Country Mobilized Killed Wounded Total Casualties

Africa 55,000 10,000 unknown unknown -

Australia 330,000 59,000 152,000 211,000 64%

Austria-Hungary 6,500,000 1,200,000 3,620,000 4,820,000 74%

Belgium 207,000 13,000 44,000 57,000 28%

Bulgaria 400,000 101,000 153,000 254,000 64%

Canada 620,000 67,000 173,000 241,000 39%

The Caribbean 21,000 1,000 3,000 4,000 19%

French Empire 7,500,000 1,385,000 4,266,000 5,651,000 75%

Germany 11,000,000 1,718,000 4,234,000 5,952,000 54%

Great Britain 5,397,000 703,000 1,663,000 2,367,000 44%

Greece 230,000 5,000 21,000 26,000 11%

India 1,500,000 43,000 65,000 108,000 7%

Italy 5,500,000 460,000 947,000 1,407,000 26%

Japan 800,000 250 1,000 1,250 0.2%

Montenegro 50,000 3,000 10,000 13,000 26%

New Zealand 110,000 18,000 55,000 73,000 66%

Ottoman Empire 1,600,000 336,000 400,000 736,000 46%

Portugal 100,000 7,000 15,000 22,000 22%

Romania 750,000 200,000 120,000 320,000 43%

Russia 12,000,000 1,700,000 4,950,000 6,650,000 55%

Serbia 707,000 128,000 133,000 261,000 37%

South Africa 149,000 7,000 12,000 19,000 13%

USA 4,272,500 117,000 204,000 321,000 8%

Civilian Deaths

467,000

62,000

100,000

2,000

300,000

426,000

109,000

150,000

589,000

4,200,000

82,000

430,000

1,500,000

450,000

757

Somme, 1 July 1916: 19,240 British deaths in one day

Total casualties 1 July-16 November: 419,654 British Empire; 204,253 French; 465,000 German

Verdun, 21 Feb–Nov. 1916, with no ultimate shift in territory

Casualties: French 540,000; German 430,000

Gallipoli, April-December 1915 Killed Wounded Total

United Kingdom 21,255 52,230 73,489

France (est.) 10,000 17,000 27,000

Australia 7,594 20,000 27,594

New Zealand 2,701 4,546 7,247

India 1,358 3,421 4,779

Newfoundland 49 93 142

Ottoman Empire 55,801 140,000 195,000

Total (both sides) 99,893 237,037 336,930

The new psychology went further, and seemed convinced that it had actually split personality not only into dualism, but also into complex groups, like telephonic centres and systems, that might be isolated and called up at will, and whose physical action might be occult in the sense of strangeness to any known form of force.

“Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.” The assertion, as a broad truth, left one’s mind in some doubt of its bearing, for order and beauty seemed to be associated also in the mind of a crystal, if one’s senses were to be admitted as judge; but the historian had no interest in the universal truth of Pearson’s or Kelvin’s or Newton’s laws; he sought only their relative drift or direction, and Pearson went on to say that these conceptions must stop: “Into the chaos beyond sense-impressions we cannot scientifically project them.” We cannot even infer them: “In the chaos behind sensations, in the ‘beyond’ of sense-impressions, we cannot infer necessity, order or routine, for these are concepts formed by the mind of man on this side of sense-impressions”; but we must infer chaos: “Briefly chaos is all that science can logically assert of the supersensuous.” The kinetic theory of gas is an assertion of ultimate chaos. In plain words, Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

If any analogy whatever existed between the human mind, on one side, and the laws of motion, on the other, the mind had already entered a field of attraction so violent that it must immediately pass beyond, into new equilibrium, like the Comet of Newton, to suffer dissipation altogether, like meteoroids in the earth’s atmosphere. If it behaved like an explosive, it must rapidly recover equilibrium; if it behaved like a vegetable, it must reach its limits of growth; and even if it acted like the earlier creations of energy—the saurians and sharks—it must have nearly reached the limits of its expansion. If science were to go on doubling or quadrupling its complexities every ten years, even mathematics would soon succumb. An average mind had succumbed already in 1850; it could no longer understand the problem in 1900.

Unless poetry can absorb the machine, i.e., acclimatize it as naturally and casually as trees, cattle, galleons, castles and all other human associations of the past, then poetry has failed of its full contemporary function. This process does not infer any program of lyrical pandering to the taste of those obsessed by the importance of machinery; nor does it essentially involve even the specific mention of a single mechanical contrivance. It demands, however, along with the traditional qualifications of the poet, an extraordinary capacity for surrender, at least temporarily, to the sensations of urban life. This presupposes, of course, that the poet possesses sufficient spontaneity and gusto to convert this experience into positive terms.

Unique forms of Continuity in Space (Boccioni)

"With Miss Moore a word is a word most when it is separated out by silence, treated with acid to remove the smudges, washed, dried and placed right side up on a clean surface. Now one may say that this is a word. Now it may be used, and how?"

Ad Reinhart, Abstract Painting, 1960- 1966