Wow, I finally finished this. Not that it was badly written, in fact it was an excellent work of literature. It's just that it was such an overwhelming and unrelenting depiction of the horror that was life on the Western Front in WWI. I found it less novel like than
All Quiet on the Western Front, more like Barbusse organized and expressed in such vivid terms entries from a diary kept.
Many specific passages struck me, but this one in particular:
Spoiler:
Quote:
Women and children are waiting for them, in pretty and happy clusters. The commercial people are shutting up their shops with complacent content and a smile for both the day ended and for the morrow, elated by the lively and constant thrills of profits increased, by the growing jingle of the cash-box. They have stayed behind in the heart of their own firesides; they have only to stoop to caress their children. We see them beaming in the first starlights of the street, all these rich folk who are becoming richer, all these tranquil people whose tranquillity increases every day, people who are full, you feel, and in spite of all, of an unconfessable prayer. They all go slowly, by grace of the fine evening, and settle themselves in perfected homes, or in cafes where they are waited upon. Couples are forming, too, young women and young men, civilians or soldiers, with some badge of their preservation embroidered on their collars. They make haste into the shadows of security where the others go, where the dawn of lighted rooms awaits them; they hurry towards the night of rest and caresses.
And as we pass quite close to a ground-floor window which is half open, we see the breeze gently inflate the lace curtain and lend it the light and delicious form of lingerie—and the advancing throng drives us back, poor strangers that we are!
We wander along the pavement, all through the twilight that begins to glow with gold—for in towns Night adorns herself with jewels. The sight of this world has revealed a great truth to us at last, nor could we avoid it: a Difference which becomes evident between human beings, a Difference far deeper than that of nations and with defensive trenches more impregnable; the
clean-cut and truly unpardonable division that there is in a country's inhabitants between those who gain and those who grieve, those who are required to sacrifice all, all, to give their numbers and strength and suffering to the last limit, those upon whom the others walk and advance, smile and succeed.
Some items of mourning attire make blots in the crowd and have their message for us, but the rest is of merriment, not mourning.
"It isn't one single country, that's not possible," suddenly says Volpatte with singular precision, "there are two. We're divided into two foreign countries. The Front, over there, where there are too many unhappy, and the Rear, here, where there are too many happy."
"How can you help it? It serves its end—it's the background—but afterwards—"
"Yes, I know; but all the same, all the same, there are too many of them, and they're too happy, and they're always the same ones, and there's no reason—"
"What can you do?" says Tirette.
"So much the worse," adds Blaire, still more simply.
"In eight days from now p'raps we shall have snuffed it!" Volpatte is content to repeat as we go away with lowered heads.
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The disorienting shock the soldiers feel on a brief trip to Paris away from all mud, death, and corpses at the front.
Like Bookpossum I did not like the final chapter, or rather I felt it just did not fit with the rest of the book.
Anyway I'm glad I read this and thanks again to Billi for nominating. Now I think I need to read something light next.
The Cricket on the Hearth will do.