"No War on the West Front": Battle One classic masterpiece, I hope there will never be war in the world
summary:
Yi Ge called me and asked me what to write on Double 11. I said what can I write on Double 11? Everyone is shopping. He said that this year's Double 11 is still the centenary of the end of World War I. Many people are familiar with World War II, but they are unfamiliar with World War I. But it is not easy to end the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. You have to write "No War on the Western Front".
I have been brewing for a long time. Today, when everyone is busy shopping, I finally wrote this article in one night.
In a word: We are no longer young people, and we are unwilling to attack this world anymore.
—"No War on the West Front"
Text:
I don't know why, I always think that one of Elvis's songs is an anti-war song.
is the song "Are you lonesome tonight" inserted today.
More than ten years ago, I bought a CD from Elvis. Whenever this song is sung, such a picture will appear in front of my eyes.
The quiet night, the bright moon hangs high. On the front line of the battlefield, a group of young soldiers were lying in the trenches to rest. This song by Elvis came out slowly. He began to sing in a magnetic voice: Are you lonesome tonight.
shot switches to the bedroom of women and children in the city apartment. The women who sent their husbands to the battlefield and the children whose fathers were not around were also listening to the song.
Before writing this essay, I went to Douban to read the situation of this book and found that the rating of this book is very high, but not many people have read it. Maybe it's because of the subject matter. The author Erich Maria Remake is not as famous as Hemingway after all... But I read " Farewell to , Weapons" again. Hemingway's works that also reflect the World War I, and found that there are still very few people who have seen it.
In fact, even I only saw this book last year.
At that time, my book, the novel with the theme of store had just been completed. In early summer, I went to Ideal Valley to read the manuscript for Maijia teacher. During his long reading of manuscripts, I still lived on the second floor of the bookstore and looked for books every day. One day, I pulled it out in the semicircular bookshelf of Ideal Valley. It's thin and can be finished in almost an afternoon. Also because its movie won the Oscars, I want to compare the two forms of expression of novels and movies.
I remembered that I was really surprised by this novel:
We only changed our defense from nine kilometers behind the line of fire yesterday. At this time, my stomach was filled with beans and boiled beans, which felt very comfortable. What's more, there are foods full of rice bowls that can be enjoyed at night, and even the sausage crusts are double-served. This kind of thing has been away from us for too long. The cook with tomato heads kept greeting and scooped an extra spoonful of vegetables for everyone who walked by with a long handle.
What is the beginning of this? Where is this the beginning of a novel?
It lacks a sense of telling the beginning. This start is too casual, like a sentence popping out of the forehead, which is a bit inconsistent with the status of the classics. Then, the novel began to continue this style, writing in the first person "I" what happened to us recruits on the daily life and battlefield on the front line of World War I.
"I" is writing wherever I am, how these soldiers eat, how they go to the toilet, how they talk about women, and how they tease the platoon leader. In daily life, they will be constantly interrupted by various wars, and after a long period of war, they will return to daily trivial matters. Although some people say that this is exactly the author's cleverness and uses the "scattered method" to create, I think this is a manifestation that his novel skills have not reached the maturity stage.
In the first third, we saw the tragic death of comrade Kermerch through the eyes of "I" Paul, and also followed Kaczynsky to see several full meals on the battlefield. In the middle, "I" and my comrades dated a few French women, then went home to visit relatives, and then rushed to the battlefield again, was injured, and sent Kaczynsky away. "I" was also killed. The battlefield news was released that "No war on the Western Front" and the whole book ended.
is such an autobiographical novel. Objectively speaking, you can feel that many places can be written better.
, the beginning of the problem
We all know the importance of the beginning of a novel. I still remember chatting with Teacher Mai after dinner in Ideal Valley. He suddenly said: station is chaotic, so it can't be messy anymore. This is the beginning of Acheng 's novel "The Chess King". The expression he expressed when he read it was a sense of intoxication, and it was the appreciation of another writer's excellent works.
. Overall structure problem
The book is tight in front and loose in the back. The content of the first half is vivid and interesting, shocking, but after he went home to visit his relatives, he began to become loose. He used several parallel sentences in the penultimate section. If I were to write them, these parallel sentences will be used to end the last section. Interested readers may wish to find it, as it will be more infectious than the current ending. Or, changing the two sentences at the end and sending the newspaper message "No war on the Western Front" as the ending will be more like the ending of a great novel.
, climax part
The last section, that is, Kaczynsky died of injury, "I" desperately carried him to the hospital but learned that he had just died, which can be said to be the climax part of the novel. It's a pity to put it here and end in a hurry.
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I concluded based on the above three points that although this book is a famous book, the author Erich Maria Remak was not proficient in writing it. But what we want to talk about below is the key point.
I wrote in the essay "Hid no one wrote to him by ": Skills are nothing great, emotions are. So, below, I will analyze the reason why this book touched me very much, and of course it is also the reason why it touched readers in the world.
. A novel human touch. Battlefield
People who have not died in battle will divide the food and tobacco that the dead deserve. They go to the toilet on the boxes and fight against mice and lice. They are humorous and teasing, and someone will want his leather boots when his comrades are sawed one leg.
. The terrifying battlefield of hell
What I am particularly amazed at is the author's sudden and unreplicable aesthetic experience that the author suddenly had when he wrote about artillery bombing in the first half. How extraordinary that is!
For example, this paragraph:
A fluctuating red light stretches on the horizon, from one end to the other. It was moving there, and from time to time it was cut off by the flames that emerged from the muzzle. The light balls rose high, and the silver and red circles exploded in the sky, and they sprinkled the white, green and red stars like raindrops. The French rocket rushed up, spread a silk parachute in the sky, and then slowly fell down. They shine everything like daylight, and their light illuminates us...
This paragraph:
The horse's back shines in the moonlight, their movements are beautiful, they move their heads up and down, and they can see their eyes shining. These cannons and carriages slid over in front of the dark brown background under the moon. The people riding on the horse in steel helmets were like ancient knights, so beautiful and charming.
and this paragraph:
Once, I also fell asleep. Then I suddenly woke up, not knowing where I was. When I saw the stars and the rockets, I had the impression that I was sleeping soundly in the festive garden. I don't know if it was morning or night. I was lying in the gray and white cradle in the dusk, waiting for the gentle words that would definitely be spoken, gentle and frankly - am I crying? I covered my eyes with one hand. How bizarre it is. Am I a child? The skin is still very tender. It took only one second, and then I recognized Kaczynsky's silhouette. He sat calmly, the veteran was still smoking his pipe, of course a pipe with a lid. When he saw me awake, he said, "You must be shocked.It was just a smokescreen that fell into a bush over there. "
This description is like an upgraded shot in the movie in the live war.
I have been writing a novel about psychic themes for the past four years. Teacher Mai once read the first draft and said that this story is very consistent with my characteristics. During the writing process, whenever that psychic woman goes on the psychic road, the unique, life and death, invisible to the naked eye, and more divine words flowing out from my pen. Sometimes even I am shocked.
And when I saw the passages of "No War on the West Front", I felt that these were so close to what the psychic woman saw in a half-dead state. But this book was actually a war book, and it was completed nearly a hundred years ago.
I was surprised and admired very much. The gorgeous, fleeting, and the blooming feeling of peaceful seemed real and illusory. The neighing of the horse he wrote, spinning like a carousel and dying, The earth was roaring, the coffin exploded into the sky, etc., there was a sense of contrast between heaven and hell. Just as Faurkner said that Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" was written by God for him. I believe it was God who helped him.
. Those young lives lamented
They were all eighteen or nineteen years old children, who were "inspired" by the chauvinist teacher and went to the battlefield one after another.
The book says:
Iron youth. Youth! None of us is over twenty years old. But are we still young? Youth? That was a long time ago. We are all old now.
I was impressed by the fact that when Kermerish was about to die in the hospital bed, "I" wrote:
People all over the world should walk past this bed and say, "That's Franz Kermerch, who is nineteen and a half years old, he doesn't want to die." Don't let him die! ”
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, successful characters
KMurrich, Kaczynsky, the boy who was scared by shells to pull his pants, and his butt was blown to pieces again. There are also some soldiers with no name, who are still running with their feet, and they crawled with their knees and hands for a few miles, biting their arms with their teeth for two hours to prevent excessive blood loss, and the soldier who howled his wife and daughter's names all night on the battlefield, hey, this is only a small part.
5. Realistic picture
A kind of impact power that only documentaries have, and also have surreal meaning.
6. The breath of youth is immortal
I also remembered che Guevara 's "Motorcycle Diary", Yu Hua 's novel " Eighteen Going Out for a Long Time ". The thinking that people should have at this age is also written in "No War on the West Front". For example, "I" wrote: War should be for two The kings and ministers of a country wore swimsuits and fought in a circle. Which side wins is considered a victory. For example, "I" writes about the group of chauvinists:
They are still writing articles and giving speeches, but we have seen field hospitals and death; they are still saying that responsibility to the country is the top priority, but we already know that the pain of death is stronger than before.
This article has been written, and it has been eight o'clock. This essay has been written for more than three hours, and it is time to end. When the sound is heard, let me "skill" and end it with the song Elvis.
It was last May, and Xiaozhuo and I were about to return to Beijing in Bangkok.
approached midnight.
When I walked through the hotel lobby, I suddenly heard someone singing Elvis songs. It was the center of a Western restaurant stage, and a mixed-race man dressed as Elvis was singing affectionately.
I found a seat to sit down.
He asked me what I wanted to hear, and I said I would sing "Are you lonesome tonight.
The song just rang like that.
At that moment, I felt happy.
Because I didn’t have to be on the front line to hear this song.
I also had a lot of feelings in my heart. I have been writing for seven years, and after retiring from the film industry, I have written for another three years.I came here to break through the bottleneck and find the future, but where is the future?
I also long for myself to write good works that touch others, but touching is only one aspect, and I also long for my works to be "useful". It can give the world hope in despair, confidence in humility, and warmth in loneliness. It has some power. But is that OK? If the reading environment continues like this, not many people read books that are truly worth reading, and people don’t need to read, can I still write them?
Some people are born to write books.
is like Erich Maria Remake, the author of this book. I believe that when he is old, he will have such a judgment. He has been struggling for a long time, but his works have been passed down to the world, and this work can make positive changes to the world.
Everyone should read this book.
Everyone who has seen it knows more about what war is, what they want, what we should cherish, and what we should take as our faith in life, and continue to move on no matter what happens.
If everyone in the world could read this book, our world might never have war again.
It has this power.
Today is the first day after the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
I would like to dedicate this article to yesterday.
I hope there will be no war in our world again.
November 11, 2018
Home in Beijing
This article is reproduced from the WeChat official account: Bishan privately read
Next issue trailer:
I will write Mo Yan 's representative work "Big Breasts and Big Buttocks". This is a work that has been misread by many people who have never read it, including me in the past.
