Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Post-War Geopolitics and 'Eastern Europe'Digressing from decidedly prosaic themes in a letter to his mother in December 1919a lingering cold, Christmas plans and a vague New Year's resolution of writing 'a long poem I have had on my mind for a long time' to include a rousing, two-pronged critique against American apathy towards global peacemaking, and the complicated reconstruction of new nation-states, T.S. Eliot pulls no punches at the state of post-war Europe:The peace treaty seems to be held up indefinitely in America.I hope it will not prevent America from helping in Central Europe; the destitution, especially the starvation in Vienna, appears to be unspeakable.I suppose Americans realise now what a fiasco the reorganisation of nationalities has been: the 'Balkanisation' of Europe. 1 Eliot was commenting on American isolationism and neutrality following the First World War, with Woodrow Wilson's failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and limited American support for the League of Nations.He was also referring to the slow burn and enduringly complex effort to establish the boundaries of the newly appearing nation states of Europe, especially in its east. 2 This is a passage, we might argue, which reveals Eliot's interest in the east of European interest particularly manifesting as a recurrent anxiety about affairs in Vienna, which he pedestals as a site of inarticulable human suffering, reflecting the widespread popularity of support for the city at the time in British cultural and political circles. 3 However, the letter also suggests a certain tension within Eliot's perspective.For whilst he specifies Viennese sympathy, this is counterpointed against a stigmatisation of the wider political difficulties in the region post-war, which were contributing to civic breakdown.Central Europe and Vienna are to be supported, but the wider politics is a 'fiasco'; a word which imagines not only disaster but also sheer ludicrousness, as if it is unreasonable to even think of the possibility of a 'reorganisation of nationalities' in that area in the first place.
Source: Critical Quarterly
DOI: 10.1111/criq.12766
Author: Juliette Bretan
Institution: University of Cambridge
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,760
OpenAlex ID: W4391139729