Last month, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the American songwriter Bob Dylan mentioned three works of literature that had inspired him. Dylan, whose recordings and videos are in the collection of the Rewat Buddhinan Media Center of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus, where they may be consulted, discussed how as a songwriter, his works related to literature. Dylan commented:
Specific books that have stuck with me ever since I read them way back in grammar school – I want to tell you about three of them: Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Odyssey.
As readers of Dylan’s biography may already know, he was impressed as a young reader by the novel Moby-Dick by the American writer Herman Melville, Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem The Odyssey, and All Quiet on the Western Front, a 20th century novel by the German author Erich Maria Remarque. Since to Thai readers, All Quiet on the Western Front is probably the least familiar of these books, this blog entry will concentrate on that. All Quiet on the Western Front has inspired film and television adaptations, including one available for viewing in the Rewat Buddhinan Media Center. It is about the tragedy of the First World War, told from the perspective of a young German soldier. It was published in 1929, reflecting the author’s own experience fighting the war. It sold millions of copies and was translated into around two dozen languages, including into Thai language.
Copies of All Quiet on the Western Front in a Thai translation published in 1985 are available to readers at Boonchoo Treethong Library, Lampang, the Pridi Banomyong Library, and the Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit. Its title has an ironic meaning, quoting an official battlefield report to explain that there is nothing new to report in the area, although just as the message is sent, the leading character of the novel is killed. This ironic meaning is sometimes used by other authors to refer to situations in other parts of the world when it appears that nothing looks different, or nothing seems to have changed. This is the case of another book in the TU Libraries collection, All Quiet on the Western Front?: The Situation in Chin State and Sagaing Division, Burma. Images Asia, Karen Human Rights Group, and The Open Society Institute’s Burma Project. This title about a human rights issue in Mysanmar asks if the situation has impressed since people became aware of it. Bob Dylan described Erich Maria Remarque’s novel:
All Quiet on the Western Front is a horror story. This is a book where you lose your childhood, your faith in a meaningful world, and your concern for individuals. You’re stuck in a nightmare. Sucked up into a mysterious whirlpool of death and pain. You’re defending yourself from elimination. You’re being wiped off the face of the map. Once upon a time you were an innocent youth with big dreams about being a concert pianist. Once you loved life and the world, and now you’re shooting it to pieces. Day after day, the hornets bite you and worms lap your blood. You’re a cornered animal. You don’t fit anywhere. The falling rain is monotonous. There’s endless assaults, poison gas, nerve gas, morphine, burning streams of gasoline, scavenging and scabbing for food, influenza, typhus, dysentery. Life is breaking down all around you, and the shells are whistling. This is the lower region of hell…Who knows how long this mess will go on? Warfare has no limits. You’re being annihilated, and that leg of yours is bleeding too much… One of your comrades says, “Wait a minute, where are you going?” And you say, “Leave me alone, I’ll be back in a minute.” Then you walk out into the woods of death hunting for a piece of sausage. You can’t see how anybody in civilian life has any kind of purpose at all. All their worries, all their desires – you can’t comprehend it…You wait to hear the news. You don’t understand why the war isn’t over. The army is so strapped for replacement troops that they’re drafting young boys who are of little military use, but they’re draftin’ ‘em anyway because they’re running out of men. Sickness and humiliation have broken your heart. You were betrayed by your parents, your schoolmasters, your ministers, and even your own government….You’ve been ruled out, crossed out. You’ve been exterminated. I put this book down and closed it up. I never wanted to read another war novel again, and I never did.
The Western Front mentioned in the novel’s title was the main place where fighting happened during the First World War. Armies fighting on this front had high casualty rates. In 1916 and 1917 in three battles, between 600,000 and over one million soldiers were killed in each battle, according to some estimates. The armies tried many different techniques to kill each other more rapidly, including poison gas, aircraft and tanks. The author, Erich Maria Remarque, states at the start of the novel:
This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war.
It expresses the awful experiences of 18-year-old students sent to fight in horrible conditions, and how they are affected. A memorable quote from the novel explains that people tend to overlook the human cost of injuries caused by fighting:
A hospital alone shows what war is.
Even those who survive suffer a great deal in trying to return to everyday life after the war is over. Bob Dylan was not the only singer and songwriter to be impressed by this tragic story. Elton John’s album Jump Up! from 1982 includes a song, All Quiet on the Western Front, describing the battlefields. Other readers have remained interested in the novel, so that an estimated 40 million copies of All Quiet on the Western Front have been sold in different languages since it was first published. In 1931 Remarque was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, by those who believed that his account of war and its awfulness would remind readers of the importance of preserving peace. Although he did not win a Nobel Prize, unlike Bob Dylan, Remarque has continued to influence people through the years since his novel was first published.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)