As an adult, you may be a parent, brother, sister, teacher, uncle, aunt of an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old child who has not yet really reached adulthood... 一个个称呼背后，你可知道你在他们心里的真正分量？ Have you really thought about the portraits you project in the minds of children, intentionally or unintentionally?
They should have led us, the eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, to the adult world, and they should have been our leaders in our careers, responsibilities, cultures, and a progressive world and the future. Although we occasionally laugh at them and tease them, we trust them in our bones. The "authority" represented by them is in our minds intimately connected with greater judgment and a more human nature.
It was the inner confession of nineteen-year-old paul Boymer, a nineteen-year-old high school student, and the trust that everyone in that age group once had in adults. If the whole class had not been forced to join the army at the instigation of the teacher, perhaps this trust would continue, and even be derived and sublimated into another attitude towards life. Regrettably, the harsh reality on the battlefield shattered their beliefs in an instant. This is the beginning of the story of No War on the Western Front and the beginning of the author's journey back to Erich Maria Remak.
In November 1916, Remark enlisted directly from school and fought in World War I, when he was 18 years old. He was injured several times in battle. After the end of the war, Remark, like many young people in Germany who experienced the economic depression of the 20s and had a difficult life, did various livelihoods. He once said: "Sometimes I run around, carrying a suitcase and selling scattered things... Later, I worked as a stonemason, did other things, and worked as an organist in a mental hospital. But the experience of war, like the indelible bullet scar on his right wrist, always reminded him in a striking way. In the second half of 1927, "No War on the Western Front", based on the experience of World War I, finally took six weeks to complete in one go. After the manuscript was completed, it was finally published in January 1929, and caused a sensation in Germany and many other countries around the world, with a total circulation of more than 5 million copies. In Germany alone, 1.2 million copies were sold in the first year. This is unprecedented in the history of publishing.
Why is "No War on the Western Front" so popular, especially among young people? I think it is not because of its scattered narrative skills, not its somber, calm brushstrokes, or even its ubiquitous humanitarian feelings, but because it uses the lowest narrative perspective to portray the irrefutable real experience of war and express the voice of the young generation of Germany that was destroyed during World War I.
Yes, Paul Boymel, as narrator of No War on the Western Front, was the representative of all the children of the same age of that era. Through Paul Boymer's account, we can clearly see how different educations are added to them layer by layer, and how they either fall apart or leave traces on them.
Paul Boymer is just one of the protagonists in No War on the Western Front. I say "one" because before joining the army, he was one of the students in The Class led by Teacher Cantorek.
Paul and his classmates were at school
The twenty children of this class, at the repeated instigation of the stern teacher Cantorek, either voluntarily or by necessity, went to the barracks. After joining the army, Paul Boymer was one of 150 soldiers in the Second Company. The second company went to the front line for the first time, and when it returned, the number was halved, and when it went to the front line again, when it came back, it was thirty-two, and finally it became two people and one person after the reorganization...
Before entering the war, Paul immersed themselves in various formulas, grammar, exams, reading their favorite books and writing poems in their own small study... Yes, seventeen or eighteen years old, it is the time to stand on the edge of the juvenile era and look at adulthood, they are full of hope for the future, full of respect for adults - although they may be arrogant in front of adults, they are actually strong, they will secretly smoke, drink, and imitate adults in their own way. Adults, they may be teachers, they may be parents, or they may be all the elders who are closely related to children of this age, they are leading this group of children with their own worldview and values, and outlook on life. In a sense, they are extraditors of children from juvenile to youth. Teacher Cantorek was the spokesman of education at that time, and he emotionally encouraged preaching again and again, and ignited the enthusiasm of the children to sacrifice their lives for the country with his unquestionable heroism.
Passionate teacher Cantorek
At that time, the men in the society who were nostalgic for bars were talking on paper, indulging in romantic war imaginations and emotional excitement.
Gustav Le Pen said in The Ragged Crowd: "The group drowns the rationality of the individual, and once the individual classifies himself into the group, his otherwise independent rationality is drowned by the ignorant madness of the group."
Paul's father was proud that his son could go to the front. Paul went home to visit his family, the father was not concerned about whether his children were living well on the front line, he was not interested in listening to the real feelings of his children, and he was intoxicated in the hero tower he had built, and it was difficult to extricate himself.
Only the mother, with her own instinctive maternal love, nourishes the child. Even though the mother was in the advanced stage of cancer, on the night when the child was about to leave the house for the front line, she still sat on the side of the child's bed in pain, waiting all night for her son who did not know whether he would see each other again. This kind of lingering maternal love, in the face of the teacher's passionate "heroism" and the blind "patriotic feelings" of the fathers, seems so small and humble, but it is this gossamer-like maternal love that gives the child a warm life background.
当这些十八九岁的孩子走向军营，数周的后方预备军训练，英勇精神替代了传统教育，那些驯化者，如下士西摩尔史托斯，严苛、傲慢，带有“某种屠夫才有的幸福喜悦”不停地折磨着这群孩子们。
Recruits who are ordered to lie in the muddy water
"Eight weeks later, it (what it had learned before) vanished in salutes with guns, crouching on knees, and marching in separate columns." Thousands of insults, difficulties, and the stifling of individuality quickly disintegrated the traditional concepts acquired in the previous school. In No War on the Western Front, Paul says:
"We have to recognize that our generation is more honest than their generation; they transcend ours with nothing more than empty words and clever slickness. The first rain of artillery fire pointed out the mistakes we had made, and under the fire the worldview they had so earnestly taught us crumbled. ”
The training of the reserve army is only the prelude to life in the field, and the real front line will reveal the real hideous face of this life.
When war becomes the main theme of life, when shrapnel falls like rain, when poison gas is like fog, when hunger and fear become the only evidence of the existence of life, when the whole meaning of life lies in "I am still alive", who will use age to define life on the battlefield? There, there is only a vague enemy and self, only the persistence of the ant. There is no sublime, there is no beauty, there is not even a reason to sustain it.
"The front line is a terrible whirlpool. Even standing in the calm water far from the center of the whirlpool, I could feel its power sucking people away: slow and irresistible, and the struggle was in vain. ”
When the fierce artillery fire exploded the air, they were extremely frightened, and they could only bury their faces and limbs deep into the earth, crawling for a long time, protecting themselves with the instincts of movements that had been rooted in their bodies thousands of years ago, and allowing themselves to be tricked by the god of death. All previous emotions must be left behind, otherwise there is only one way to die. Paul had returned home from vacation, but when he returned to the battlefield, the warmth that remained in his heart had become a bond, making him afraid of the grenade that fell not far away, and in the darkness and loneliness, he lost the instinct to be keenly aware of his surroundings, every pore was oozing sweat, his hands were trembling, he was breathing softly, and all kinds of hallucinations came and went, and "tension tormented me like a paste.".
Soldiers creeping forward under artillery fire
They are "held tightly by the war".
Battlefield, domesticated into "humanoid beasts".
The experience of the front line has transformed them into "steel youth". Both Carter in his forties and Paul, nineteen, no longer seem to care about the boundaries of age, the same circumstances, the common suffering, the similar fate, and forged their friendship.
Comrades in arms of the Second Company
There is a moving clip in the text, where Paul and Carter steal the goose from the regimental headquarters. Carter put on the whistle, Paul jumped into the shack to steal the two geese, and when Paul struggled to catch the two geese who were trying to resist and was ready to jump out, a fierce dog rushed in, Paul circled with the dog, and then successfully jumped out, found a secret place, and took turns on duty at midnight to roast goose meat. After that, they humbly gave way to eat the goose meat, and did not forget to share the rest with the other two companions. Because they understand that they are always in a state of hunger, and goose meat is so rare, "they shine a glimmer, illuminating life in danger, and removing the intensity and desolation of death." The very meaning of being alive is to be alive, and there is no point other than that. If I had to add a meaning to it, it would be to eat to live.
However, as soon as they leave the battlefield, they will still have hidden worries, so Miller will ask the people around him over and over again, what will he do after the war? Yes, from school to battlefield, all their previous beliefs, beliefs, and ideals were in vain, and they were like flying puffs.
"Older people are closely connected to their past. They have a home, a wife and children, a career and needs. All this is too powerful to be destroyed by war. ...... For the elderly, war is nothing more than a pause in life. The post-war days are still to be expected. ”
And the war is enough to destroy all the children of eighteen or nineteen years old—the weak influences of their parents, the passions, the hobbies, the schools that store the meaning of their lives...
"No fighting on the Western Front"
When the fierce battles were reduced to only a few words in the battle report, those blood-stained ponds, the disappearing forests, the corpses everywhere, the wounded soldiers... All of this seems to have lost its meaning. Remembering Lu Xun's words:
"The history of human bloody warfare is like the formation of coal, when a large amount of wood was used, but the result was only a small piece."
But wood was also once a living tree, and after the war, these children will never return to the original. They have experienced the agitation of the leaders before the war, the torture of the domesticated people in the army, the fierce baptism of the battlefield, the affectionate support of comrades-in-arms, the past has long been lost in the years, and those who can survive can only carry the trauma of war forever and walk alone...
Bleak times, bleak lives.
(The picture in this article is from the movie "No War on the Western Front")
我是怜子如许，喜欢读书，喜欢电影；期望我的文字能给您带来愉悦与温暖。