Otto Dix, Trenches, 1917
"At that moment, another whistling sound rang out up in the air; we all felt it, our hearts in our mouths, this one's for us. Then a huge, deafening din - the shell had landed right in the midst of us.
Half-dazed, I got to my feet. In the huge shell-hole, machine-gun cartridge belts set off by the explosion glowed with a crude pink light. They lit up the heavy smoke where a mass of twisted blackened bodies lay and the shadows of survivors were running away in every direction. At the same time many appalling screams of pain and appeals for help could be heard.
The dark mass of people turning around the bottom of this glowing, smoking cauldron opened out for a second almost like the vision of a hellish nightmare, the deepest abyss of horror."
Ernst Jünger, Storms of Steel
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ReplyDeleteOh oh I forgot that my user name was "arbalette" (V-Marie) ;)))
ReplyDeleteLooking at WW1 art, and imagining what it was for this sacrificed generation is certainly gazing at the abyss.
"I cannot refrain from doubting that there exist any genuine realizations of our deepest character except war and illness, those two infinities of nightmare"
Louis Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night.