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archimo 's review for:
War and Turpentine
by Stefan Hertmans
Such a valuable book for vivid descriptions of life as a WWI soldier, and how foreign and unexpected this method of war was with all of the new technology and subsequent utter and complete decimation of towns and countryside. The author has done a brilliant job bringing his grandfather's memoir to life, with flavor. Really works quite well in switching POV from the author to the Grandfather. I do wish one of the images shared would have been the sketch of Urbain's first love. And a map would have been nice as well.
(note, not quite nonfiction, but somewhere in the middle)
at times truly evocative language: p 96 As my Aunt Melanie spoke to me, daintily holding her teacup in her wizened hand, adorned with a s single diamond ring, I pictured my grandfather, the little foundryman, with a ratty old blanket draped over his stocky shoulders, posing as Christ in that cold refectory in the quiet years before the Great War, with his father in front of him, sketching away without a word, and it's as if the scene in my imagination becomes a memory, the painter painting a painter, something I seem to have truly experienced and can call to mind right now, right here, now that I too feel the stealthy approach of old age, and the dead grow more and more alive in an ineffaceable fresco, an allegory no living soul can ever revisit or recover, but which has been burned into my being.
p 104 referring to the older generation Their dark forms are larger than life, because memories like that grow along with your body, so that adults from our childhood always resemble an extinct race of old gods, still towering over us.
p 162 The pandemonium died down. Suddenly all we could hear was the flapping of wood pigeons and the crackle of the fires. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled like a wolf. The Milky Way twinkled, endlessly far away from the black hole where this stupid planet was spinning.
p 179 That same morning, the rest of our battalion was massacred by the machine guns and shells of the exceptionally well-entrenched German forces. From Nieuwpoort to Diksmuide, one hundred and fifty thousand young soldiers fell in less than a week.
p 193 We turn tough and get sentimental; we laugh as we cry; our life's a waking slumber, a slumberous wake; we quarrel with our arms around each other; we lash out at each other while shrugging our shoulders; no part of our bodies or minds remains intact; we breathe as long as we live, and live merely because we are breathing, as long as it lasts.
p 212 My story is growing monotonous, just as the war grew monotonous, death monotonous, our hatred of the Huns monotonous, just as life itself grew monotonous and finally began to turn our stomachs.
p 227 The battlefields redolent of crushed grass, the soldiers who saluted even in their dying moments, the rural scenes of hills and glades in eighteenth-century military paintings gave way to a heap of psychological rubble choked with mustard gas, ravaged pastures filled with severed limbs, the physical annihilation of an old-fashioned breed of human being.
p 228 But somewhere a gasket had blown. That much was clear to the soldiers who looked on mutely, without joining in the cheers: the cozy intimacy of Old Europe had been destroyed forever. The war had shot humanism full of holes, and what came rushing in was the infernal heat of a barren moral wasteland that could hardly be sown with new ideals, since it was abundantly clear how far astray the old ones had led us. The new politics that would now flare up was fueled by wrath, resentment, rancor, and vengefulness, and showed even greater potential for destruction.
p 265 As the finely strung philosopher with the hammer once memorably wrote in The Antichrist, I can no longer look at paintings without seeing gestures, because I understand that was has touched my own life is not a book of innocence, but a reading saturated with historical guilt.
(note, not quite nonfiction, but somewhere in the middle)
at times truly evocative language: p 96 As my Aunt Melanie spoke to me, daintily holding her teacup in her wizened hand, adorned with a s single diamond ring, I pictured my grandfather, the little foundryman, with a ratty old blanket draped over his stocky shoulders, posing as Christ in that cold refectory in the quiet years before the Great War, with his father in front of him, sketching away without a word, and it's as if the scene in my imagination becomes a memory, the painter painting a painter, something I seem to have truly experienced and can call to mind right now, right here, now that I too feel the stealthy approach of old age, and the dead grow more and more alive in an ineffaceable fresco, an allegory no living soul can ever revisit or recover, but which has been burned into my being.
p 104 referring to the older generation Their dark forms are larger than life, because memories like that grow along with your body, so that adults from our childhood always resemble an extinct race of old gods, still towering over us.
p 162 The pandemonium died down. Suddenly all we could hear was the flapping of wood pigeons and the crackle of the fires. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled like a wolf. The Milky Way twinkled, endlessly far away from the black hole where this stupid planet was spinning.
p 179 That same morning, the rest of our battalion was massacred by the machine guns and shells of the exceptionally well-entrenched German forces. From Nieuwpoort to Diksmuide, one hundred and fifty thousand young soldiers fell in less than a week.
p 193 We turn tough and get sentimental; we laugh as we cry; our life's a waking slumber, a slumberous wake; we quarrel with our arms around each other; we lash out at each other while shrugging our shoulders; no part of our bodies or minds remains intact; we breathe as long as we live, and live merely because we are breathing, as long as it lasts.
p 212 My story is growing monotonous, just as the war grew monotonous, death monotonous, our hatred of the Huns monotonous, just as life itself grew monotonous and finally began to turn our stomachs.
p 227 The battlefields redolent of crushed grass, the soldiers who saluted even in their dying moments, the rural scenes of hills and glades in eighteenth-century military paintings gave way to a heap of psychological rubble choked with mustard gas, ravaged pastures filled with severed limbs, the physical annihilation of an old-fashioned breed of human being.
p 228 But somewhere a gasket had blown. That much was clear to the soldiers who looked on mutely, without joining in the cheers: the cozy intimacy of Old Europe had been destroyed forever. The war had shot humanism full of holes, and what came rushing in was the infernal heat of a barren moral wasteland that could hardly be sown with new ideals, since it was abundantly clear how far astray the old ones had led us. The new politics that would now flare up was fueled by wrath, resentment, rancor, and vengefulness, and showed even greater potential for destruction.
p 265 As the finely strung philosopher with the hammer once memorably wrote in The Antichrist, I can no longer look at paintings without seeing gestures, because I understand that was has touched my own life is not a book of innocence, but a reading saturated with historical guilt.