The Culture of Reconstruction: European Literature, Thought and Film, 1945–50

249 Pages·1989·24.961 MB·English

by  Nicholas Hewitt (eds.)

THE CULTURE OF RECONSTRUCTION
The Culture of
Reconstruction
European Literature, Thought and Film,
1945-50
Edited by
NICHOLAS HEWITT
Professor of French
University of Nottinglulm
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-19730-9 ISBN 978-1-349-19728-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19728-6
©Nicholas Hewitt 1989
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1989
ISBN 978-0-312-03105-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The culture of reconstruction: European literature, thought, and
film, 1945--50 I edited by Nicholas Hewitt.
p. em.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-312-03105-3
1. European literature-20th century-History and criticism.
2. Motion pictures-Europe-History. 3. Reconstruction (1939--1951)
Europe. 4. Europe-Intellectual life-20th century. I. Hewitt,
Nicholas.
PN771. CBS 1989
791.43'09~c19
88--36652
CIP
Contents
Preface vii
Notes on the Contributors viii
Introduction 1
1 The Communist Party and the Politics of Cultural
Change in Postwar Italy, 1945-50 12
Stephen Gundle
2 Writing and the Real World: Italian Narrative in the
Period of Reconstruction 37
Michael Caesar
3 The Making and Unmaking of Neorealism in Postwar
Italy 51
David Forgacs
4 The Place of Neorealism in Italian Cinema from 1945 to
1954 67
Christopher Wagstaff
5 Tradition and Social Change in the French and Italian
Cinemas of the Reconstruction 88
Pierre Sorlin
6 Humanism and National Unity: the Ideological
Reconstruction of France 103
Michael Kelly
7 Les Lettres Fran(aises and the Failure of the French
Postwar 'Renaissance' 120
Nicholas Hewitt
8 The Reconstruction of Culture: Peuple et Culture and
the Popular Education Movement 140
Brian Rigby
v
vi Contents
9 The Chameleon Rearguard of Cultural Tradition: the
Case of Jacques Laurent 153
Colin Nettelbeck
10 German Literature in 1945: Liberation for a New
Beginning? 172
Helmut Peitsch
11 Continuity or Change? Aspects of West German
Writing after 1945 191
Keith Bullivant
12 West German Theatre in the Period of Reconstruction 208
Ursula Fries
Bibliography 222
Index 235
Preface
This volume is based upon papers given at the conference 'The
Culture of Reconstruction' held at the University of Warwick from
1 to 3 May 1987, under the auspices of the European Humanities
Research Centre. I am indebted to the staff of the centre, in par
ticular its director, Dr Tom Winnifrith, for all their help in the
organisation of the conference and the preparation of the manu
script; to the University of Warwick, for its generous financial
assistance towards research for the papers by Brian Rigby and
myself; and to the French Embassy in London for generously
contributing to the expenses of Pierre Sorlin.
N.H.
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Keith Bullivant is Reader in German Studies at the University of
Warwick. He has written extensively on various aspects of German
culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his publica
tions include Literature in Upheaval (with R. H. Thomas, 1974),
Culture and Society in the Weimar Republic (1977), The Modern German
Novel (1987) and Realism Today (1987).
Michael Caesar is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Kent at
Canterbury. He has written particularly on Romanticism and on
twentieth-century Italian literature, and is co-editor of Writers and
Society in Contemporary Italy (1984).
David Forgacs is Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of
Sussex. His publications include a chapter in Modern Literary Theory
(edited by Ann Jefferson and David Robey, 1985), an edited
collection Rethinking Italian Fascism (1986) and editions of two
volumes of Gramsci's writings in translation: Selections from Cultu
·ral Writings (with Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 1985) and A Gramsci
Reader (1988).
Ursula Fries is a researcher at the University of Bochum, West
Germany. She is a member of the joint research team of the
Universities of Warwick and Bochum working on the project
'Urban Reconstruction and Social Change-Bochum and Coventry,
1945-1960'.
Stephen Gundle is a Research Fellow of Churchill College, Cam
bridge. He has published a· number of articles on Italian politics
and culture, and is currently preparing a book on Communism and
cultural change in Italy since the war.
Nicholas Hewitt is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the
University of Warwick. He has written extensively on the literary
and intellectual history of the interwar years and Fourth Republic in
France. His publications include Henri Troy at (1984), The Golden Age of
Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1987) and 'Les Maladies du siecle': The Image of
Malaise in French Fiction and Thought in the Interwar Years (1988).
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Michael Kelly is Professor of French at the University of
Southampton. He has written extensively on literary, intellectual
and cultural movements in twentieth-century France, and his
publications include Pioneer of the Catholic Revival: Ideas and Influence
of Emmanuel Mounier (1979) and Modern French Marxism (1982).
Colin Nettelbeck is Associate Professor of French at Monash
University. A specialist on Celine, he has written widely on French
literature, ideas and history in the interwar years and the postwar
period. His publications include Patrick Modiano: Pieces d'identite.
Ecrire /'entretemps (1986).
Helmut Peitsch is a Lecturer in German at University College,
Swansea. He has written extensively on postwar German literature
and his publications include Nachkriegsliteratur in Westdeutschland
1945-1949, 1: Schreibweisen, Gattungen, Institutionen (with Jost
Hermand and Klaus R. Scherpe, 1982) and Nachkriegsliteratur in
Westdeutschland 1945-1949, II: Autoren, Sprache, Traditionen (with
Jost Hermand and Klaus R. Scherpe, 1983).
Brian Rigby is a Lecturer in French Studies at the University of
Warwick. He is the author of numerous articles on Volney,
Stendhal, Hazlitt, Victor Hugo, and English and French
nineteenth-century periodicals. He is currently preparing a volume
on Hazlitt and France, and a volume on modern French popular
culture.
Pierre Sorlin is Professor of History at the University of Paris VIII
(Vincennes-Saint-Denis). He has published extensively on various
aspects of twentieth-century history and has helped to pioneer, in
France, the use of film by historians. His publications include La
Croix et les Juifs (1967); L' Antisemitisme allemand (1969); Lilzine,
Trotsky, Staline 1921-1927 (with Irene Sorlin, 1972); Octobre: Ecriture
et ideologie. Analyse filmique de /'oeuvre d'Eisenstein (with Marie-Claire
Ropars, 1976); Sociologie du cinema: ouverture pour l'histoire de demain
(1977) and Generique des annees 30 (with Michele Lagny and Marie
Claire Ropars, 1986).
Christopher Wagstaff is a Lecturer in the Department of Italian
Studies at the University of Reading. He has published articles on
Italian avant-garde literature and on Italian cinema.
Introduction
When the Second World War ended in Europe on 8 May 1945,
there was inevitably a profound sense of an ending and of a new
beginning. The sheer scale of the physical devastation of the
continent was such that a return to the past seemed impossible. As
Derek Urwin writes:
In 1918 when the First World War ended, only the battlefields of
Belgium and Northern France lay in ruins: elsewhere war
damage was comparatively negligible. In 1945 the situation was
entirely different. Military and technological development had
made war seem universal. Very few areas in Europe had
remained immune from the conflict and its consequences. The
outlook everywhere was bleak. The development of air warfare
had laid even the British Isles open to destruction. The devasta
tion of northern France between 1914 and 1918 may have been
more intense, but what the Second World War lacked in quality
it made up for in quantity. In every direction whole regions had
been virtually defoliated. Industrial production of the continent
had slumped; in 1945 and 1946 it stood at only one-third of the
1938 figure. Agriculture had also suffered: agricultural produc
tion was down to half the prewar level. Cities had been severely
damaged. Millions of acres of valuable farming land had been
rendered useless, not only from being battlefields but also
through the demands of war. Land was exhausted through
overcropping, while the compensation of fertilisation was lack
ing because commercial fertilisers were unobtainable. Further
more, the death rate of animals had been extremely high. In the
factories and mines machinery had been crippled because it had
been overworked and because it had not been maintained
satisfactorily: in addition replacements were generally unavail
able.
Economic reconstruction after the war started off at a great
disadvantage for additional reasons. The war had disrupted and
destroyed communications networks. Aiming for a speedy end
to the conflict, the Allies had concentrated on the destruction of
communication lines. Hence, bridges, railways, marshalling
yards and shipping facilities had been targets of high priority to
1