Tag: WW1

Book Review: The Salt of the Earth by Jozéf Wittlin

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The Salt of the EarthAbout the Book

At the beginning of the twentieth century the villagers of the Carpathian mountains lead a simple life, much as they have always done. The modern world has yet to reach the inhabitants of this isolated and remote region of the Habsburg Empire. Among them is Piotr, a bandy-legged peasant, who wants nothing more from life than an official railway cap, a cottage with a mouse-trap and cheese, and a bride with a dowry.

But then the First World War comes to the mountains, and Piotr is drafted into the army. All the weight of imperial authority is used to mould him into an unthinking fighting machine, so that the bewildered peasant can be forced to fight a war as he does not understand, for interests other than his own.

Format: Hardcover (352 pp.)    Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 29th November 2018[1935] Genre: Literary Fiction

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My Review

The Salt of the Earth is described by the publishers as ‘a classic war novel, a powerful pacifist tale about the consequences of war on ordinary men’.  Although I had never heard of the book or the author prior to coming across it on NetGalley, I can say that it certainly lives up to that description.  If you care to look for equivalents these probably include modern classics such as All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon and Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves.  However, because of its mordant humour, dark satire and ridiculing of those in positions of authority, it also made me think of the film Oh! What a Lovely War.

The book satirizes the absurdities of war and the pompousness, self-importance and (often) ineptitude of those in positions of authority.  These include: Emperor Franz Joseph, ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, presented as a buffoon-like figure, full of puffed-up pride who shows no hesitation in consigning hundreds of thousands of his citizens to war and certain death; and Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk, ‘the fanatical expert and high priest of Military Discipline’ who sets more store by precise adherence to military regulations than to the welfare of his soldiers.

The only sympathetic character is poor Piotr, something of an ‘Everyman’ figure.  An illiterate peasant unable to tell his left from his right, he is nonetheless, like many of his fellow Hutsul villagers, drafted into the army of the Emperor.  Piotr is determined to do his duty even though it becomes obvious his trust of those in authority is completely misplaced.  They don’t value him as a human being; he’s just another cog in the machine of war.

I mentioned previously the dark humour and satire in the book, exemplified by the following passage: ‘Newspapers throughout the monarchy were publishing enthusiastic reports from the “theatres of war”, which differ from other theatres in that the actors are also the audience and the audience are the actors.  Every day, images of their directors and prima donnas of the war looked out at you from the newsprint, profiles of old men in uniform, avidly seeking applause, flaunting their immortality gained at the expense of the deaths of other.’  

Because the book is the first in a planned trilogy which was never completed, the reader doesn’t get to learn the fate of poor Piotr, although it is probably correct to assume it wouldn’t have been a happy one (like so many millions of others).

The Salt of the Earth has a fable like quality at time, some imaginative descriptive writing and a dark undertone, all of which it seemed to me was rendered in an accomplished manner by the translator, Patrick Corness.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Pushkin Press, and NetGalley.

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In three words: Satirical, dark, tragic

Try something similar… less satirical but no less tragic, The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason (read my review here)

Jozef WittlinAbout the Author

Wikipedia  ǀ  Goodreads

These For Remembrance: John Buchan and The Great War

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Poppies

John Buchan writes in his autobiography, Memory-Hold-The-Door, ‘The outbreak of War in 1914 found me a sick man’. At thirty-nine, he was too old to enlist and in any case, as he ruefully observes, ‘no recruiting officer would have me’.

Although he did not see active service, he did serve in various capacities during the First World War and became its chronicler. The first part of what became Nelson’s History of the War (which Buchan wrote virtually single-handed) was published in February 1915. Shortly afterwards, in May 1915, The Times invited him to visit the Western Front as its special correspondent for the second Battle of Ypres.

John BuchanIn October 1915, he was back in France, this time for the War Office and with the rank of lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps. In February 1916, he was asked by the Foreign Office to take a Russian delegation to Scapa Flow.  He made further visits to France throughout 1916 where he assisted the British Army’s General Head Quarters with drafting official communiqués for the press.

Buchan was appointed Director of Information under Lord Beaverbrook in  June 1917.  The department he was part of was responsible for innovations such as the use of documentary film and the commissioning of paintings by official war artists.  In January 1918, Buchan became Director of Intelligence in the newly formed Ministry of Information.

Buchan lost a brother and several close friends in the First World War. ‘My youngest brother and my partner in business fell at Arras. Hugh Dawney, whom I put first among the young soldiers, died at First Ypres; Cecil Rawling, with whom, before the War, I had made plans for an attempt on Everest, fell as a brigadier at Passchendaele; my wife’s cousin, Jack Stuart-Wortley, disappeared in the German advance of March 1918; Oxford contemporaries like Raymond Asquith and Bron Lucas, and younger friends like Charles Lister and the Grenfell twins, were all dead.’

Buchan’s writing about The Great War.

Nonfiction

These For Remembrance (1987) [privately printed 1919] – Memoirs of six of Buchan’s friends killed in the First World War

A History of the First World War (1991) – Abridged edition of Nelson’s History of the War illustrated with paintings by war artists.

 

Fiction

Greenmantle [1916] – Set in November 1915, Richard Hannay is tasked with investigating rumours of an uprising in the Muslim world.  He undertakes a perilous journey through enemy territory to Constantinople and, along with his friend Sandy Arbuthnot, sets out to thwart the Germans’ plans to use religion to help them win the war.

Mr. Standfast [1919] – Set partly in World War One France, Hannay comes up against an old foe with the book’s climatic ending taking place on the battlefields of the Western Front.

 

Sources:

John Buchan, Memory-Hold-The-Door (Hodder & Stoughton, 1964 [1940])

Janet Adam Smith, John Buchan: A Biography (OUP, 1985 [1965])