I also read the Wheen translation, the one I've had since first reading it in high school about 40 years ago. This must be at least the fifth time I have read it, and as others have said it remains one of the best indictments of patriotic and military madness ever.
I've always been struck by the episode where Bäumer stabs the French soldier who stumbles into the crater that Bäumer has crawled into to take cover in the middle of the battle field. Alone there Bäumer briefly recovers his humanity as he first tries to save the French man's life, then resolves to write his wife telling her of his death, and then resolves:
Quote:
|
“to-day you, tomorrow me. But if I come out of it, comrade, I will fight against this, that has struck us both down; from you, taken life—and from me—? Life also. I promise you, comrade. It shall never happen again.”
|
All forgotten once Bäumer makes it back to his unit and continues the business of war.
This quote about how Bäumer and his young comrades have been forever altered always gets to me as well:
Quote:
|
He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by fantasyfan
This book is even more powerful than the film--and that film is one of the greatest war films ever made But then this is perhaps the greatest Anti-War novel in European Literature. I read the older standard translation by A.W. Wheen done in 1929. In 1993 Brian Murdoch published a new translation and I toyed with getting it. But after reading a number of quite mixed reviews, I decided to stick with the older version as it has stood the test of time.
All Quiet . . . is a devastating attack on the glory of fighting for the "honour" of one's country. It is filled with horror and soul-destroying events. It is also filled with compassion for the innocent young lives that were sacrificed on this terrible altar of blood. Yet there is a kind of consolation. Even in this cauldron it is possible for true heroism to exist--the heroism of validating the self--not through blood-letting but through a recognition of the falsehood of a mirage of glory. Wilfred Owen put this recognition powerfully:
"My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori."
|
Yes, and it seems that things never change. I was reminded by this of a poem from
Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. A different war in a different country [the US Civil War]:
Quote:
Knowlt Hoheimer
I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
Instead of running away and joining the army.
Rather a thousand times the county jail
Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."
What do they mean, anyway?
|
And this NPR (US) radio program that I recently listened to:
Kamikaze Diaries Reveal That Many Pilots were Coerced.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jj2me
P. 72 When talking about why he might stay in the army and giving its good points:
"In the army in peace-time you've nothing to trouble about," he [Haie] goes on, "your food's found every day, or else you kick up a row; you've a bed, every week clean under-wear like a perfect gent, you to your non-com.'s duty, you have a good suit of clothes; in the evening you're a free man and go off to the pub."
If that means one pair per week of clean underwear, and it's worth listing as a benefit? Yikes, we've got it good!
|
Yes, today we can not well imagine how tough life was for the typical working class person in European countries before WWI.