On the Brink: Some of the Odd Ideas of 1913

It seems that on the eve of the Great War some were already obsessed with change, modernism, and violence.  And they soon got it. All these quotes are from 1913.

I am like a blind man running with a lighted torch among hay stacks. On whichever side I turn I must set fire on something.

                                                                                ~ King Ferdinand of Bulgaria

I have learnt everything the West can give me. Now I am shaking the dust from my feet and leaving the West, my road runs to the source of all art: the East.

                                                                                            ~ Natalia Goncharova,
                                 Stage and Costume Designer for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes

Wassily Kandinsky's "Composition VII," 1913

The psychology of the unconscious is the philosophy of the revolution...The coming revolution is a revolution for the mother-right [matriarchy]. 

                                                                                         ~ Otto Gross, 1913 

Fear is the beginning of wisdom

                                ~General Joffre, 1913

Each art is isolating itself and limiting itself to its own field. Specialisation is a characteristic of modern life, and pictorial art, like all other manifestations of the human mind, must submit to it.

                                        ~Artist Ferdinand Léger 

Hundreds of millions of people are awakening to life, light and freedom in a movement that will liberate both the peoples of Europe and the peoples of Asia.

                                                                                                     ~ Lenin 

Suffragette Killed by the King's Horse at Epsom Downs, 1913

With the high development of the capitalist countries and their increasing severe competition in acquiring non-capitalist areas, imperialism grows in lawlessness and violence, both in aggression against the non-capitalist world and in ever more serious conflicts among the competing capitalist countries.

                                                                                  ~ Rosa Luxemburg 

Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing.

                                                        ~Patrick Henry Pearse, Irish Nationalist

It was fashionable to be pale and drained; Princess Belgiojoso strolled along the boulevards…pale as death in person.”

                                              ~ Composer Camille Saint-Saens

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

                                     ~ Gertrude Stein 

Crew Aboard New Dreadnought HMS Queen Elizabeth, 1913

There is one point when it is permissible to break up the institution of the family: that is the point when it is changing from an institution to a mausoleum.

                                                                                  ~ Rebecca West

The Slavs were not born to rule but to serve, this they must be taught.

                                                                                                  ~ Kaiser Wilhelm