Text/Po Mu laughs
Last year, the war movie "1917" received extremely high praise. Some say it's the best war movie after Saving Private Ryan. This evaluation is not an exaggeration, if "Saving Private Ryan" uses a "hot" narrative to show the tragedy of World War II, then "1917" is more like using a "cold" tone to show the sad song of World War I. The 20-minute Normandy landing at the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan" has become an eternal classic in the history of cinema with its extremely naturalistic flesh and blood, which is a "dynamic" live broadcast of war. And the one-shot "1917" is destined to become another classic through the ubiquitous corpses, that is, the "static" tombstone of life.
In recent years, the First World War has gradually been re-recognized by people and has gradually become a hot spot. Many people will compare World War I and World War II, and veteran military fans will generally say that although World War II was more advanced in terms of weapons, although the number of people killed in World War II was nearly ten times that of World War I, the cruelty of war is not necessarily higher than that of World War I, which was dominated by trench warfare. According to statistics, in World War I, a young soldier could only survive less than ten minutes at most during a certain battle. The "Battle of Verdun" alone killed nearly 1 million casualties on both sides, and because it was too tragic, it was also known as the "Verdun Meat Grinder". At that time, the German "Mark" mg 08 heavy machine gun killed 60,000 British and French troops in one day. And the Battle of the Somme caused a total of 1.3 million casualties on both sides...
If the famous German writer Erich Maria Remack had seen us here discussing the comparison between World War I and World War II, perhaps a wine bottle would have hit us on the head. Frankly speaking, I think that Remarck's right bottle of wine can at least sober up many people: what qualifications do we have to comment on war when we enjoy a peaceful life? Of course, Remarck will also add: "Do you know the cruelty of war?" Do you really want to experience that cruelty? Because of this, the classic "No War on the Western Front" is still suitable for becoming a weapon for keyboard heroes to self-reflect nearly a hundred years later, or an ark for countless "996s" in the cement forest to redeem themselves.
In November 1916, at the age of 18, Remarque, like many of his peers, enlisted directly from school and fought in World War I, during which he was wounded five times and died nine times. After the war, Remark experienced a long period of recovery from the war, or he never recovered, and the physical pain, especially the mental damage, was always tightly wrapped around him. In the second half of 1927, after a long gestation, Remarck wrote No War on the Western Front. In 1929, "No War on the Western Front" caused a sensation as soon as it was published, and 1.2 million copies were sold in Germany alone in its first year. In the years that followed, the book was translated into twenty-nine languages and became loved by readers around the world.
Erich Maria Remak
In fact, Remark, like many great writers, did not think of any "bestsellers" before the birth of the classic. "No War on the Western Front" is largely his autobiography, the crystallization of Remarck's painful memories of the war. It's not so much that he's writing a war novel as he's trying to heal his wounds with words. This process is bound to be full of hardships and pains, not only in the reproduction of purgatory-like war scenes, but also in the reliving of the disillusionment of youth ideals.
The protagonist, Paul Boymel, is the novel version of Remarck at the age of 18. He and his classmates and friends were in the most youthful youth of their lives, full of passion and dreams, and grew up in the atmosphere of militarist propaganda in Germany at that time. In their hearts, as a man, dedicating himself to the Imperial War is an honorable mission, an unshirkable responsibility, and the most romantic heroic act.
With the praise and encouragement of teachers and family members, and in the adoring eyes of the girl next door, they changed into handsome military uniforms and embarked on the battlefield of World War I with passion and heroism. In the process, Remarque essentially quietly paints the reader with an epochal cross-section of a grand narrative—Boymer as if it were a drop of water that was actively rushing somewhere. Remack never sets up the characters in isolation, and he reflects the grand narrative itself all the time through the words and deeds of countless ordinary people.
Historian Alexander Watson, in the book "The Siege of the Iron Wall", also takes the Allied perspective, depicting Germany and austria-Hungary in World War I through a large number of historical materials. Watson's historical materials have a good interpretation of the grand narrative hidden in Remarck's "No War on the Western Front". In our "common sense", the First World War is the standard "Spring and Autumn War without Righteousness". However, the grand context of the times was a different one, most typical of which was General Ludendorff, who became an icon of the German people alongside Hindenburg during the war, who said with great emotion: "The world wars of 1914 and 1918 were very different from most of the previous wars... It is a battle of survival, a war of peoples through and through. ”
Alexander Watson uses a wealth of historical sources to reveal a fact that is astounding to us today: "What really keeps the masses in support of the war is love, not hate—love for the fatherland, love for the community to which the individual belongs, and— most importantly—love for husbands, fathers, sons in the military." The whole society and the whole nation are frantically cheering for the war on the front line, as one cleric told his parish faithful in October 1914: "Love is the main element of all things, and without love we can do nothing." If the brave brethren who fought for us on the battlefields of the Eastern and Western Fronts did not shoot with great love for the motherland, then the result of the war would be burning and plundering. ”
It's like the environment around Boymer and his classmates and friends in "No War on the Western Front", an environment that envelops everyone like air, and like a powerful magnetic field everywhere. In Boymer's hometown, all the teachers, led by the principal, painted the war as a beautiful one, and participating in it was a matter of honor and pride. Although people are also concerned about the children who are on the front line, they are more concerned about whether the emotions of those children fighting on the front line are high enough. And those old gentlemen did not care about the life and death of the neighbors' children, and what they liked to do most was to spread out the map like a card game and fight for the current war situation...
In such an epic heroic romantic atmosphere created by such a "grand narrative", boy Boymel and these big boys sang battle songs, held flowers in their hands, and excitedly stepped onto the battlefield... "No War on the Western Front" is worthy of the status of a literary classic, and if we look at this novel with our opening film theory, we will even find that it is an organic fusion of "1917" and "Saving Private Ryan". "No War on the Western Front" is "1917" in the whole story atmosphere, but in the details of the war, it adopts a complete "Saving Private Ryan" style.
Remarck's naturalistic depiction of the violence and brutality of war is a thorough taste, which has made "No War on the Western Front" controversial. Raymark's strong sense of substitution is shocking people by the war scene in front of them: some soldiers' bodies are blown to pieces, Boymer's comrade-in-arms Chaton said that they can be dug out of the trench wall with a spoon and buried in a lunchbox; people with two feet with broken feet are running against the stumps of their feet; some soldiers have their skulls blown off but are still alive; some people have dragged their blown knees and climbed two kilometers forward with two hands; and some people walked step by step towards the first aid station with their intestines slipped out of their stomachs...
This is the head-to-head drink that Remark and "No War on the Western Front" gave to the world. Remark used his painful memories to tell the world, especially the cruelty of the war for posterity. Boymer and his classmates were stunned by what they saw, and the beautiful image of the war in their minds was completely subverted—behind the casualty figures advocated in the newspapers and in the schools, there were living lives. The human body can be torn apart to such an extent, and the enemies who have long been demonized on the other side are ordinary people like themselves.
Among them were young students who liked literature and were full of romantic heroism as Mucher, coal miners like Fuwest, peasants like Detlin, and workers like Chaten... The enemy who had caused Boymel to have a nervous breakdown, the man who had been killed by Boymer, was actually a typestreaker. Boymel eventually discovered that these men, like his own side, were husbands, fathers, and sons of the family, but had killed the husbands, fathers, and sons of other families who had no conflict with him on the battlefield. No one asked why, because the war didn't give anyone the energy or time to think.
Of course, no one thinks about this anymore. The individual lament under the grand narrative board of "No War on the Western Front" is essentially disillusionment and confusion. These eighteen- and nineteen-year-old young men, who had originally dreamed of heroes, came to the front line with passion, energy and enthusiasm, and they were greeted by a meat grinder-like battlefield and were bitten by lice all day. They are constantly worried, afraid that one day they will be gassed to death, becoming dead bodies without jaws and faces. They learned the bad taste of low-level and inferior people, regarded playing cards and smoking as the best enjoyment of life, and stole military food to go to the enemy-occupied areas to meet girls who sold themselves for food...
What made Boymer feel even more disillusioned was when he had a hard time walking away from his luck and returned home from illness. He found that the people of his hometown still lived in a "grand narrative", and their views on war were completely different from those of those who went to the battlefield. The "individual lament" did not exist there, and people paid no attention to the great pain in Boymer's heart, and even his father was still chattering about war and politics. In that instant, like all "lost generations," Boymer fell into a complete inner breakdown.
Boymer lost his purpose in life and didn't know what he could do to live. He returned to the battlefield in the "grand narrative" of his hometown, never asked why, grew up deformed, and then died quickly - "our age will grow year by year, some will adapt, others will obey, and the majority will be helpless, the years will pass, and eventually we will go to destruction". Boymer's "individual lament" finally came to an abrupt end on a certain day in October 1918. On that quiet autumn day when the war was coming to an end and peace was coming, he was killed: "He fell down in front of him, lying on the ground as if asleep, and there was not much pain on his face, but some of it was composed, almost satisfied. A new message was published in the war newspaper: there was no war on the Western Front.
……
The white colt has crossed the gap and the vicissitudes of a hundred years. For us, the biggest reading obstacle of "No War on the Western Front" may not be its naturalistic and spicy writing, nor is it the analysis and torture of human nature, but the preservation of the land under our feet and the defense of the homeland have long become the soul of our nation that has penetrated deep into the marrow of our bones. In fact, Remak's original intention is not contradictory to our spirit of loving the motherland and defending the homeland, and even in a sense it is a blessing of another dimension.
There is no doubt that "No War on the Western Front" has been regarded as the pinnacle of anti-war fiction for a hundred years. However, the real core of this classic is by no means as simple as anti-war. Remark has never denied patriotism, he just wants to evoke the rational and independent thinking soul in people's hearts through such a somber and frustrated work. In the final analysis, Remarack's criticism has always been directed at those interest groups that use certain "grand narratives" to create "individual laments", such as the Juncker landlord class in Germany at that time, such as the capital predators who manipulated The political and military affairs of Europe at that time.
Why do we still need to re-read "No War on the Western Front" today?
Perhaps, we have long been wrapped up in another cruel battlefield where the smoke of war cannot be seen...
A female employee (born in 1998) who joined Pinduoduo in July 2019 suddenly covered her stomach and fainted on December 29, 2020 at 1:30 a.m. on the way home with her colleagues. Colleagues immediately called 120 to send to the local hospital in Urumqi, after nearly 6 hours of emergency treatment is still ineffective, unfortunately died. The Paper
"Heartache! Pinduoduo's 22-year-old employee died suddenly, and his account read "Guard the frontier for Duoduo", and the company apologized for improper comments... Huang Zheng: The most valuable asset is "people"- Sohu.com
"Pinduoduo employee sudden death, "996" is a struggle or an overdraft of health? "------------------------
"In 2020, Pinduoduo's stock price performed well, soaring by 370%, and its market value has exceeded the $200 billion mark, surpassing the sum of JD.com and Baidu." —Securities Times
"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." - Gustav Le Pen, The Ragtag
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