Decadence of an empire: war, heroism and derision

Abstract

First World War is the turning point of building a new era, which will preside over the emergence of new forms of radicalism, of totalitarian regimes. But before that, the First World War closes in a brutal manner the slow decadence of some great empires, including the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Through his totalizing vocation, the novel is the most appropriate document capable of recording this process that leads to finis monarchiae. In the present paper I analyzed three different perspectives on war as a catalyst and expression, face of decadence with Jaroslav Hasek’s novel, Good Soldier Svejk, Liviu Rebreanu’s novel, Forest of the Hanged, and Joseph Roth’s novel, The Radetzky March. From the joyful apocalypse of Hasek’s novel to the “wounded identities” of Rebreanu’s heroes and the aristocratic ethos cultivated among the bourgeoisie on which the empire is based in Roth’s novel, we have a complex picture of the decline of belle époque society and the values on which it relies. The image of the Imperial officer as well as the simple soldier puts into play a code of honor and a kind of solidarity meant to overcome the sensibilities of national identity. I have been pursuing this conflict between unifying, imperial identity and national identities as a factor of the empire’s dissolution, especially where double engagement provokes a tragic tension.