“Tell me, is it possible to see this and not go crazy?” – Weekend – Kommersant
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All Quiet on the Western Front will be released on Netflix at the end of October. In anticipation of the film, they re-read the front-line diaries and letters of writers, philosophers and artists who made up the generation that could survive the First World War, but could not return from it.
one
I haven’t had dry feet since I came here. <...> I sleep on the stone floor, the batman has soiled my things with dirt. We eat and drink from old cans. There is a haunted expression on the faces of all the officers, which I have never seen before, and which cannot be found in England except in prison.
Wilfred Owen, poet, letter to his mother, January 4, 1917
2
They say there is nothing funny about this war. And it is. I won’t say that war is hell, such words have been very hackneyed since the time of General Sherman, but eight times I would prefer to end up in hell. Maybe it’s not as bad there as in this war.
Ernest Hemingway, writer, letter to family, August 18, 1918
3
The more serious the situation, the rougher non-commissioned officers become. They feel that now they can show all their baseness with impunity, since the command has lost its head and is no longer in control of the situation. Every word that can now be heard is rude. After all, decency is no longer worth anything, and people give up the smallness that they still possess.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher, diary, November 12, 1914
four
The most ordinary morning: first you are on your feet and you freeze to the bone, and then you go for a run, you will warm up a little, but only then to freeze again. And in the end – for an hour we practice throwing training grenades. Lunch and frosty evening. we stand as if rooted to the spot in icy groups in the wind, while we are being told something! Tea, another dump — I made my way to the stove and toasted myself a piece of toast on the tip of a knife; well, days!
John R. R. Tolkien, writer, letter to Edith Brett, November 26, 1915
5
This time my nerves died before I saw the front line, the decaying corpses and the barbed wire; for a while I was disarmed and locked up in order to examine and evaluate my combat capability. Every nerve, down to the last neuron, in me resists.
Otto Dix, artist, letter to Leonora Gordon, 1917
6
The corpses lay both on the left and on the right, lay both ours and the enemy, lay fresh and many days old, whole and mutilated. <...> One Austrian was apparently buried alive, but buried shallowly. Having regained consciousness, he began to tear himself off, managed to free his head and hands, and died with his hands and head sticking out of the grass. <...> Well, tell me, for God’s sake, is it possible to see this and not go crazy? It turns out that you can, and you can not only not go crazy, you can do much more, you can eat, drink, sleep on the same day and even not see anything in a dream.
Fyodor Stepun, philosopher, letter to his wife, October 28, 1914
7
War does not turn me into a realist, on the contrary: I feel so keenly the meaning behind every battle, behind every bullet, that materialism and realism completely dissolve. Battles, injuries, movements – everything seems mystical, unreal.
Franz Marc, artist, letter to his wife, September 12, 1914
eight
It’s funny that the peaceful life that we complained about and cursed was now elevated to the status of paradise.
Max Beckmann, artist, notebook, April 1915
9
Feelings flow – I just soak them up like a sponge. Horror is overwhelmed with horror so much that more is simply impossible. Despair is replaced by psychotic laughter.
John Dos Passos, writer, diary, July 31, 1917
ten
For 12 days I did not wash my face, did not take off my boots and did not sleep soundly. For 12 days we lay in holes, and at any moment a shell could fly there. <...> Perhaps this time when we were left without help was inevitable, but we still feel bitterness towards those in England who could help us, but did not want to.
Wilfred Owen, poet, letter to mother, April 25, 1917
eleven
Lice, rats, barbed wire, fleas, shells, bombs, dugouts, corpses, blood, alcohol, mice, cats, gas, artillery, dirt, bullets, machine guns, fire, steel – that’s what war is! And it’s all the work of the devil.
Otto Dix, artist, diary, 1915-1916
12
For several days in a row I saw nothing but the most monstrous scenes that the human mind can imagine.
Franz Marc, artist, letter to his wife, March 2, 1916
13
He worked in trenches, sketching the remains of a Bosch and an Englishman – just skulls, bones, clothes, rifles, a bottle of water.
William Orpen, artist, letter to his father, 1917
fourteen
The trenches are winding and pale faces peek out from the dugouts, many were still preparing their positions, and there were graves all around them. They sat at their dugouts, and crosses stuck through the bags of earth. It sounds like a fairy tale, but one man fried potatoes right on the grave near his dugout. The very existence of life here has long since become an absurd paradox.
Max Beckmann, artist, letter to his wife, May 21, 1915
fifteen
The difference between Cossacks and soldiers lies only in the fact that the Cossacks, with a clear conscience, drag everything: necessary and unnecessary; and the soldiers, though experiencing some pangs of conscience, take only the things they need. I can’t be too strict about this. A person who gives his life cannot spare the well-being of the Galician and the life of his heifer and chicken. A person who experiences the greatest violence against himself cannot but become a rapist.
Fyodor Stepun, philosopher, letter to his wife, November 20, 1914
16
War is complete fucking nonsense, a vast cancer fueled by lies and self-serving malice by those who don’t fight. Of everything in this world, the last thing worth fighting for is the government. None of the poor souls whose mutilated, dirty bodies I take to the hospital care about the aims of this ridiculous business.
John Dos Passos, writer, letter to Ramsay Marvin, August 23, 1917
17
Just don’t think that the German youth suffer and die for the “Kaiser and the Reich” out of patriotic feelings. Patriotism is declared exclusively by speculators profiting from the war.
Erich Maria Remarque, writer, diary, summer 1918
eighteen
Is it a worthy step if I sacrifice my life for the sake of an absurd idea, paying for the stupidity of statesmen, in the name of a man whom I have long rejected? Is this war not an insane perversion of the natural order of things?
Erich Maria Remarque, writer, diary, summer 1918
19
We were shelled yesterday. I’m desperate. I was afraid of death. Now I have only one desire – to live! And it is very difficult to give up life if you love it so much.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher, diary, July 29, 1916
twenty
Can we ever be the same again? <...> Think of the things we did together: how we walked along the valley in the rain, how we walked along the field of Tiglath at dusk, how I showed you some of my text for the first time, and you played me excerpts from unwritten operas. And now – well, this … However, maybe we will still have good times, even though I was at war.
Clive Staples Lewis, writer, letter to Arthur Greaves, February 12, 1918
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