Night again. We are deadened by the strain – a deadly tension that scrapes along one’s spine like a gapped knife. Our legs refuse to move, our hands tremble, our bodies are a thin skin stretched painfully over repressed madness, over an almost irresistible, bursting roar. We have neither flesh nor muscles any longer, we dare not look at one another for fear of some miscalculable thing. So we shut our teeth – it will end – it will end – perhaps we will come through.
The devil take all conventions, they were made for other times.
Ravic emptied his glass. He got a package of cigarettes out of his pocket, took one out and lit it. His hands were not yet steady. He flung the match on the floor and ordered another calvados. That face, that smiling face which he thought he had just seen again – he must have been.
One lost easiest what one held in one’s arms – never what one left.
We get back pretty well. There is no further attack by the enemy. We lie for an hour panting and resting before anyone speaks. We are so completely played out that in spite of our great hunger we do not think of the provisions. Then gradually we become something like men again.
There’s something good about unpleasant memories: they make you think you’re happy when a moment before you were convinced of the contrary.
I soon found out this much: – terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks; – but it kills, if a man thinks about it.
No one will understand us – because in front of us there is a generation of men who did, it is true, share the years out here with us, but who already had a bed and a job and who are going back to their old positions, where they will forget all about the war – and behind us, a new generation is growing up, one like we used to be, and that generation will be strangers to us and will push us aside.
Well, she can go to hell with her whispering and her words. You believe in a miracle, but really it just comes down to loaves of bread.
Jugend! Wir sind alle nicht mehr als zwanzig Jahre. Aber jung? Jugend? Das ist lange her. Wir sind alte Leute.
That’s how we are! Afraid of our feelings. And when we become aware of them we immediately think we are swindlers.
Erst das Lazarett zeigt, was der Krieg ist.
We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.
The war has ruined us for everything.” He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war. The.
He did indeed always refer to us as swine, but there was, nevertheless, a certain respect in his tone.
Those who consider themselves fair, are particularly ruthless.
A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.
A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the world’s condemnation and severest penalty fall, becomes our highest aim.
But is the primary law of this world, where the old rule the young, that one must serve one’s time. It is no question of ability. Else what would become of old dodderers who cling to their power?
The facts of life are simple and trivial. Only our imagination gives life to them. It makes the laundry pole of facts a flagstaff of dreams.