Return to the battlefield of yesteryear

"Tracing the Somme River", by Jeff Dyer, Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, December 2021 edition, 59.00 yuan.

□ Gu Lili

The writing of The Quest for the Somme is based on a past event. Jeff Dale remembers when he was a kid, his grandfather took him to the Museum of Natural History. There, as a young man, he saw specimens of various animals, and the one he remembered most was "the rows of butterfly specimens of different lengths and sizes in the glass box." Small cards detail the names of each exhibiting sample." Row after row, row after row, like medals worn by warriors, recording those distant past events. The same goes for photos. All families have an album. Although due to their age, the photographs are invariably dusty, swollen and old, and can no longer be clearly recognized in their original form, the people in the photographs are still "smiling as always."

For example, his maternal grandfather. In Dale's memory, both his grandmother and maternal grandfather were on the front lines to witness the smoke of the First World War. It is just that the times have passed, and the situation at that time has long been unverifiable, no one knows what they have experienced, and even the exact age of their grandfather has become an inexplicable and unclear mystery. In 1914, he joined the army, returned to his hometown in 1919, got married and had children, and had his own family. To be sure, he, like many young people at the time, hid his true age. So, in the end, true or false, false and true are no longer important. Importantly, all of this has become "part of my grandfather's life.".

Precisely to explore his grandfather's whereabouts, Dale embarked on a journey to the Somme. "Tracing the Somme" is the product of this trip. But from any point of view, this is not an ordinary travelogue. It is like a row of specimens, a photo album, recording the sounds of a bygone era and reminding us how to "remember". Of course, Dale is also well aware that nearly a hundred years later (The Quest for the Somme was written in 1994), he can't take the time machine to go back in time, crawl in the trenches with his grandfather, experience the smoke of war, and talk about the future.

Therefore, all he can do is stand in the present, look back at the past as much as he can, reflect on history with today's eyes, and complete his "trace". Such writing, according to the Dutch linguist and cultural historian Johann Heizienha, is "writing history in reverse." This means that at a time when the dust of the First World War has long been settled, we should re-examine everything that happened in that year. It's like pulling a random book out of a bookcase and browsing through "a story that has an effect and then a cause." However, Dale does not hide the cruelty of war. If war can be compared to a poem, then from the moment of birth, this war poem is destined to run counter to the ordinary romantic and aesthetic.

For every war is an "unspeakable catastrophe." Specific to "World War I". Historians often use the word "big" to describe it. In fact, the 4-year war did set a new record for all the "big": the largest machine guns, shells and mines, the largest mobilization, and the heaviest casualties. Therefore, no matter what the reason and the method used to talk about this war, there is an indescribable "weight". This heavy weight comes first of all from the soldier's equipment. At that time, "everything was made of iron cast wood, and even the clothes looked like they were woven with iron filings."

It's not so much a march as it is a carrying. We then have every reason to believe Dale's judgment that war is a kind of protracted servitude, which throws young lives into vast "open-air factories" (battlefields), where there are no unions, where working hours are excessively long, "historical disregard for safety standards, and thus encompass the worst parts of agricultural labor and industrial shifts." The question is, what is the point of talking about the size and severity of war many years from now? Don't forget Faulkner's words, "The past never dies, it doesn't even pass." In other words, war never ends, it can happen at every stage of human existence.

Like the silhouettes, their eyes "stare blankly at the future, or at the past, or at what has ultimately made the present." Yes, dazed. Faced with this situation, Dale, as a writer, seems to be powerless. Hence the sentiment. "At this moment, I am the only person on this earth who is here and feels this way. At the same time, there is a feeling that is coming to me like a sea of mountains, that is, I am convinced that my presence here will not change anything; without me, everything will still be the same."

Still, Dale was reluctant to follow the usual practice of using "terror" to describe the nature of war. In his view, this word, which has been used countless times by countless people, has long been a cliché today, and has no practical value except to highlight the author's own eagerness to "cater to the public". For if one is to appeal to the masses, "one cannot speak of death, disability, and pain, and does not dwell on fear." Over time, habit becomes natural, but it weakens the cruelty of war.

Today, more than 100 years later, how should we "think" of them and be worthy of those senseless sacrifices? Take a look at Dell's answer. He knows that no matter how hard people today claim that "we will remember them," it is empty and superfluous. Take monuments, for example. The original purpose of the monument was to awaken memories and let people remember the horrors of the war and the sacrifices of millions of people.

Unfortunately, as the poet Sasson said, "We forgot to commemorate". So in the end, these monuments that should not be forgotten are finally forgotten, and all their functions have long been lost, "only the name is left". Since then, "Tracing the Somme" has become a monument on paper. At the very least, Dell is always "remembering" in his own way, preserving the history that is about to be forgotten. In talking about Fitzgerald's novel Gentle Night, he once wrote: "Lost youth is fitzgerald's eternal theme, but our most personal concern often requires a larger historical dimension."

"The Quest for the Somme" is exactly that. Although Dale claims that he tends to have a three-minute heat for the general history of war, this book gives us a glimpse into his enduring passion. Often, he wandered between cemeteries, monuments, battlefield sites, and war museums, picking up books written by writers and poets, watching photos, paintings, sculptures, and documentaries, and from the perspective of literature, images, videos, and audio, he once again returned to the battlefield of the past, standing shoulder to shoulder with his grandfather. At this time, this original "most personal concern" gradually got rid of the commemoration of the personal level and sublimated into an inquiry into human history. And Dale's grandfather is no longer his own grandfather, but has become "the grandfather of each of us".