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Body Ascendant: Modernism and the Physical Imperative . By Harold B. Segel. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Pp. i + 282 + illus. $35.95 Hb.

In this book Harold B. Segel brings his broad scholarship to a complex and controversial subject: the parallel between the rise of the cult of the body in the modernist period in Eastern and Western Europe and in the United States (with its corresponding mistrust of European intellectual and literary tradition and of a growing feminism) and the rise of Nazism and Fascism. As Segel notes, 'the vast subject of this book does not lend itself to easy systematization' (8). He does not, therefore, approach his subject chronologically but focuses on instances of the body's ascendancy throughout an extended period: the revived interest in pantomime and silent drama, the development of modern dance, 'language scepticism' in philosophy and the unprecedented interest in physical fitness, both as an individual and national imperative. He sees the increased popularity of pantomime at the turn of the nineteenth century as a symptom of the modernist 'retreat from speech', and offers examples in modernist theatre where 'a conscious effort is made to undermine the role of traditional dialogue' (62). Segel connects 'the emergence of the modern dance phenomena' (80) to the 'culture of the physical in the modernist period' (81), linking American 'dance innovators' such as Loiie Fuller, Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, Mary Wigman's Ausdrucktanz (expressive dance), Grete Wiesenthal's dance and pantomime and the theoretical work of Rudolf Laban and Emile JaquesDalcroze, and demonstrates that modern dance as a metaphor for rebellion and freedom emerges as well in the work of such diverse authors as Ibsen, Strindberg, Sologub, Hofmannsthal, Wilde, Yeats and Keats. Moving from the aesthetic to the social sphere Segel shows how the 'new thematics of war and sport' and a corresponding emphasis on masculinity and virility affected all levels of society, citing the careers of Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway as examples of an international enthusiasm for 'physical fitness, the great outdoors, [and] blood sport' (130); he also deals with the Italian Futurists, who sought to demolish traditional art 'within the framework of a demolition of the status quo in general' (136) with war as 'the world's only hygiene' (137). Segel argues that the rejection of intellectualism paradoxically extended to the philosophical and intellectual milieu, and that 'the language of scepticism' of Nietzsche, Mauthner and Wittgenstein, and Henri Bergson's rejection of the intellectual in favour of the instinct as evidence of a modernist privileging of bodily, as opposed to rational, knowledge, belong to the modernist 'retreat from speech'. While the physical culture movement began to develop before the rise of modernism, Segel sees that the 'rise of popular interest in the care and nurturing of the body and in physical prowess' set the stage for a new privileging of gesture over language, instinct over rationality, masculine over feminine, action over intellect and paganism over the traditional religions of the book. He connects the 1908 founding of the Boy Scouts in England to the British Army's poor showing in the 1899-1901 Boer War, and compares the scouting movement in England to the Turnverein movement (1811) in Germany (in spite of the nearly one hundred years separating them) and to the Czech Sokol movement (1862). The 'rebirth of the Olympics' in 1896 becomes a persuasive example of the growing link between the culture of the body and a corresponding tide of nationalism, since 'physical culture as a mass movement came to be looked upon as a source of national pride, but perhaps even more important, as a source of national strength' (208). One of the most interesting aspects of Segel's project is his contention that the modernist cult of the body opened the door to extremists of Fascism and Nazism. Segel suggests that Nietzsche's rejection of traditional religion in general opens the door for more specifically anti-Semitic writings; Jewishness came to be associated with eighteenth-century rationalism and intellectualism: a 'feminine' element in a 'masculine' society. The Berlin Olympic games of 1936 offer an excellent example of the conjunction between the 'modernist obsession with the physical' and the rise of Nazism, as it culminates in the 'extremist cultivation of the body as a symbol of racial superiority' (251). War is transformed from metaphor to terrible reality.