Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Mount TBR #41

I read this book for Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2019.

The Debacle – Emile Zola

During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, two soldiers befriend each other. Jean Macquart is the personification of rural values such as frugality, caution, and cool-headedness. Maurice Levasseur is an intellectual who has been educated enough to be anxious about a coming revolution that will sweep away a corrupt world. The reader follows them through the boredom and horrors of war until the Paris Commune incident affects their friendship that has been forged during their shared ordeal of battle.

But Zola’s intention, I think, was to write an epic about ordinary people and show us an entire nation – its people, their fields and works, the ecology – murdered by idiotic leaders. He juxtaposes scenes of military and civilian life, showing unedited all the sufferings of the human body and nature. He narrates the painful chronicle which will lead to the humiliation of the Battle of Sedan. Our protagonists run for their lives through a wood of despair and death being shelled:

A venerable oak, directly in Maurice's path, had its trunk shattered by a shell, and sank, with the stately grace of a mailed paladin, carrying down all before it, and even as the young man was leaping back the top of a gigantic ash on his left, struck by another shell, came crashing to the ground like some tall cathedral spire. Where could they fly? whither bend their steps? Everywhere the branches were falling; it was as one who should endeavor to fly from some vast edifice menaced with destruction, only to find himself in each room he enters in succession confronted with crumbling walls and ceilings. And when, in order to escape being crushed by the big trees, they took refuge in a thicket of bushes, Jean came near being killed by a projectile, only it fortunately failed to explode. They could no longer make any progress now on account of the dense growth of the shrubbery; the supple branches caught them around the shoulders, the rank, tough grass held them by the ankles, impenetrable walls of brambles rose before them and blocked their way, while all the time the foliage was fluttering down about them, clipped by the gigantic scythe that was mowing down the wood.

In this 1892 story to rank with the greatest war novels, Zola’s stance is that all war, whatever the lofty justifications from canting leaders, will result in the slaughter of the innocent and the destruction of their prosperity. Killing is not only acceptable but admired and required if dehumanized enemies are killed in war. As Seneca said of war, “Deeds that would be punished by loss of life when committed in secret, are praised by us because uniformed generals have carried them out.”

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