The Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia

392 Pages·2008·23.215 MB·English

by  William Pfaff

Call, .r 4 0,50
A hidden moral history of the twentieth century
*
unfolds in William PfafF’s fascinating story of
writers, artists, intellectual soldiers, and religious
revolutionaries implicated in the century’s phys¬
ical and moral violence. They were motivated
hy romanticism, nationalism, utopianism—and
the search for transcendence. To our twenty-first
century, already plunged—once again—into
visionary terrorism and utopian quests, they
leave a warning....
The account begins with Italy’s Futurists, who glorified
war as “the world’s only hygiene”; painted speed, action,
and noise; invented “found sound” and chromatic
pianos; thought violence sublime; and demanded
“reconstruction of the universe.”
Gabriele D’Annunzio, poet, playwright, and
nationalist buccaneer, created a revolutionary utopia
in a Dalmatian city stolen in 1919 from Woodrow
Wilson and the Versailles Treaty makers. In doing so,
he invented the political style and rituals of Fascism,
as well as Third World liberation. T.E. Lawrence,
archaeologist and spy, guided the Arab revolt against
the Turks, becoming both “Uncrowned King of Ara¬
bia” and masochist secular saint. Ernst Jiinger, artist
and scientist, the German army’s most decorated hero
of World War I, made heroism a political ideology
and became intellectual leader of the National Cause.
Hitler was a follower. In World War II Jiinger plotted
Hitler’s assassination and survived to become a symbol
of Franco-German reconciliation. Willi Miinzenberg,
Lenin’s propaganda genius and an original member
of the Comintern, invented the political “front” orga¬
nization, created the Sacco and Vanzetti case, and
seduced a generation of “innocents” to the Communist
cause before becoming a dissident himsd il . rf*.! waj;
(continued on back flap)
acpl item
REA
discarded
NOV 1 1 2004

Other Titles by \^^iam Pfaff
Fear, Anger and Failure: A Chronicle of the
Bush Administration'’s War Against Terror,
from the Attacks of September ii, 2001 to
Defeat in Baghdad (2004)
Barbarian Sentiments: America in the
New Century (2000)
The Wrath of Nations: Civilization and the
Furies of Nationalism (1993)
Barbarian Sentiments: How the American
Century Ends (1989)
Condemned to Freedom (1971)
with Edmund Stillman:
Power and Impotence: The Failure of
Americans Foreign Policy (1966)
The Politics of Hysteria: The Sources of
Twentieth-Century Conflict (1964)
The New Politics: America and the End of th
Postwar World (1961)
T. E. Lawrence
Gabriele D’Annunzio
Ernst Jiinger
Willi Miinzenberg
Andre Malraux
Arthur Koestler
Vladimir Peniakoff
Benito Mussolini
Eilippo Tommaso Marinetti
Che Guevara
Charles de Eoucauld
Simone Weil
The Bullet’s Song
Romantic Violence
and Utopia
William PfafF
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Copyright © 2004 by William Pfaff
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
Parts of Chapters 3,8, and 10 appeared originally in a different form as
“The Fallen Hero,” ^^L’Homme Engage, ” and “Terrorism” in The New Yorker.
Part of Chapter 11 appeared originally in a different form as “Progress”
in World Policy Journal, Vol. XII, No. 4 (Winter 1995-96).
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of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pfaff, William, 1928-
The bullet’s song: the romance of violence and utopia / William Pfaff.
p. cm.
Includes bibliogaphical references and index.
I. Social history—20th century. 2. Intellectuals—Political activity—
History—20th century. 3. RadicaUsm—Ehstory—20th century. I. Title.
HN16.P483 2004
303.6'o94'o904—dc22 2004049167
ISBN 0-684-80907-9