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Title: 'Nothing new on the Western Front'

Author.

Genre: Novel

Score (1 to 6): 6

On a gloomy day like today, I feel like talking about great literature. And gloomy weather (and a gloomy mood) makes associations with Remarque. The writer who skillfully stretches the thin string of our hearts reserved for life's dark moments and the result strikes deep into our souls. Remarque understands human nature and explores in detail the depths of the human soul. To serve us the results on a platter, raw, fresh and very real. His words hook you there, under the spoon, and stay with you through the years.

"Nothing new on the Western Front" is a war story, there is no doubt about that. But not about the poetic side of war, about the heroism sung about in songs, but about its ugly simplicity. The one that devastates you from the inside, even if it has spared you from the outside.

We were waging war against ourselves without knowing it! And every accurate shot was killing one of us! Listen to me, I'll shout it in your ears: the youth of the world went to war and in every country believed they were fighting for freedom! And in every country it was lied to and abused, in every country it fought for interests instead of ideals, in every country it was mowed down by bullets and it killed itself! Do you not understand? There is only one struggle: the struggle against falsehood, half-heartedness, compromise, against the obsolete!

Erich Maria Remarque was born on 22 June 1898 in Germany. At the height of the First World War he turned 18 and was mobilised to the Western Front in Flanders. An 18 year old boy, nowadays we would say "child", growing up in the time of Belle Epoque - the peak of culture, knowledge, values and ideals in human history. Otherwise known as: the time before the war.

A time in which people have forgotten the ugly face of eternal struggle, live peacefully, beautifully, dream, believe in ideals. (It seems to me that this time reminds us to some extent of ours.)

To the point where human greed trumps (as it always has) ideals (nature instead of culture) and the world finds itself in the greatest and most devastating battle it has ever seen. The greatest and saddest human degradation.

In On the Western Front Nothing New, Remarque lays himself bare. He describes the war as he experienced it. From the side of a boy who was forced and cheated to fight, who longed only to live out his youth - to study, to fall in love, to find his calling in life and follow it. Things we take for granted, not realizing how quickly they can be taken away from us. Yes "taken away", because when humanity enters into such a war, at the forefront are some children who have no choice, who are not making a revolution for their ideals, for their freedom, but are fighting for people who are greedy for power and money, people devoid of humanity. There is nothing beautiful in this war, nothing poetic. And Remarque makes sure we understand it.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about this image of war - we see films like Jojo Rabbit, 1917, etc., writers like Remarque keep getting reprinted and screened, but somehow humanity doesn't learn its lesson. We little souls in the political hierarchy (the common people) take in content about the war, maybe "process" it emotionally, suffer with it, talk about it, and then turn on the TV and can't recognize it there in front of us in reality. And even if we do recognize it, what can we do?