Line underneath
Line underneath! ( Good-bye to All That ) is an autobiography by Robert Graves . The work, published for the first time in 1929, whichdepictseveryday life in trench warfare during World War I , is considered a milestone in English anti-war memoirs. The title expresses Graves' disillusionment with the existence of traditional, stable values in European and English society. Graves wrote the work at the age of 33, when he still had a long and eventful life ahead of him. The book mainly covers his childhood, youth and military service.
He devotes a large part of the book to his experiences in World War I, in which he describes in detail the trench warfare and in particular the nonsense of the Battle of Loos. This battle on the Western Front was the first time that poison gas was used on the British side in 1915. Many readers will find the second-hand narratives of the murder of German prisoners of war by British, Canadian and Australian troops of interest. Although he had not witnessed such incidents himself and was not aware of any large-scale massacres, he was aware of a number of incidents in which prisoners were killed individually or in small groups. He believed that many Germans who surrendered never got into the POW camps .
Graves was traumatized by his war experience. After he was wounded, he had to get by on a train ride for five days with dirty and unchanged bandages. The phone in the ditch scared him so much that he never trusted this technology again. He also suffered an electric shock once because the line was struck by lightning. After he returned home, he said he was haunted by ghosts and nightmares. He praises his lover, the American poet Laura Riding, as the "spiritual and intellectual midwife" of the work that made him famous.
After a major revision, Graves republished the book in 1957. Many significant events and people have been removed or added. A translation reviewed and revised by Birgit Otte was published by Rowohlt Verlag in 1990 . The first German edition was published in 1930 in translation and with a foreword by GR Treviranus in Berlin's Transmare Verlag.
Release history
Although Good-Bye to All That was highly praised by critics when it was first published in 1929 for its ruthless settlement with the trench warfare of the First World War, Graves completely revised the text in 1957. In doing so, he removed the harsh, snappy style that had earned the original so many admirers. At this time Graves no longer lived with Laura Riding, to whom the original edition was dedicated and who was influenced by it. Their relationship had failed. Graves removed all references to Riding and edited the text beyond that. He removed much of the context in which the original was written, including accounts of the mental stresses he was suffering from. The original has been published several times recently, but the revised version is currently more popular (as of August 2008).
Summary of contents
Chapters I-XIII
For Graves, the goals of his autobiography, written at the age of 33, are simple:
... an opportunity for a formal good-bye to you and to you and to you and to me and to all that; forgetfulness, because once all this has been settled in my mind and written down and published it need never be thought about again.
(dt .: ... a chance for a formal adieu to you and you and you and me and to all of this; forgetfulness, because all of this has once settled in my mind and, written down and published, never has to be thought about again . )
Graves belonged to the von Ranke family through his maternal grandfather. Leopold von Ranke , his great-uncle, was the first modern historian. His mother was sent to England at the age of 18 to accompany an old lady, where she met his father, a widower with five children. His father's (Graves) family came from Ireland, and his grandfather was Bishop of the Church of Ireland in Limerick. His father, who grew up on the family seat at Wimbledon, was a poet and school inspector for the London borough of Southwark . The family vacationed at their mother's house in Harlech , North Wales, where Graves began to overcome his fear of heights.
He became the Charterhouse School in Godalming ( Surrey sent), where he was bullied on the school list as "R. R. Graves" because of his originality, his love of literature and its registration. He joined the Poetry Society, but the seven-member poet community was closed due to a scandal. On the advice of a friend, he began boxing training to deal with the harassment. Here he was more successful and won two school cups, fortified by cherry whiskey. He also developed a friendship with a much younger boy who lived in a different house, whom he named Dick. Thanks to the prevailing private school ethos, this generated a great deal of hostile comments and scandal at Graves' expense. The principal raised concerns but ultimately accepted that the relationship was harmless: 'a rare example'. His life at Charterhouse was made a little more bearable by another friendship, namely that with George Mallory , an unconventional teacher with whom he went climbing in Wales. Nonetheless, he grew increasingly angry and dissatisfied during his senior year at school, but eventually managed to leave school in good shape and without eviction. Graves wasn't sure of his future. Although he had a scholarship to St. John's College in Oxford, he did not want to take this up. He had "a vague thought about fleeing to the sea".
When war was declared Graves was in Harlech. He registered and justified it as follows:
... I thought it might last just long enough to delay my going to Oxford in October which I dreaded ... I entirely believed that France and England had been drawn into the war which they had never contemplated ... I was outraged at the cynical violation of Belgian neutrality.
(Eng .: ... I thought it might last just long enough to delay my trip to Oxford in October, which I feared ... I fully believed that France and England had been drawn into a war that they had never thought about ... I was shocked by the cynical violation of Belgian neutrality. )
At the regimental depot in Wrexham, Graves enrolled for the Royal Welch Fusiliers , but the manager of a golf secretary in Harlech set up a committee for him. He performed his first duty as a guard at an internment camp with 50 special reservists in Lancaster. In 1915 he was sent to France. As one of six officers, much to his initial displeasure, he belongs to the Welsh regiment, whose recruits were mostly either too old or too young. Graves graphically describes his first months in the war trench near Cambrin, where he tried to avoid contact with impacting grenades and bullets. His life was made easier by the fact that he had a civilized commander, Captain Dunn, who took his junior officers into his confidence and established a good relationship with the Welsh infantrymen.
Chapter XIV – XX
As the summer progressed, new types of bombs and mortars and improved gas masks were introduced. The fire increased. Graves also describes the continual burial of the British and Germans in the Cambrin-Cuinchy area. At the end of July, he and another officer were ordered to go to the Laventie area to join the second battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. The reception by the adjutant there was rather cold, and both learned that special reservists were not very much appreciated by the regular officers. There was no trace of the formlessness that they had got to know in the second Welsh regiment. Junior officers below the rank of captain - newcomers were referred to as "warts" - were not allowed to speak or use the gramophone in the mess. Still, Graves found the warfare to be highly professional here. As a new officer, he also had to patrol at night - a risky undertaking: a German patrol would slit open the neck of a wounded and captured soldier, just as a British patrol would break the skull of a German to take his badge from him and thus help the secret service. Graves mentions that the Germans commissioned their non-commissioned officers (NCO) with patrols: "They didn't think much of, as one of our sergeants put it, saving a dog and barking themselves."
When an offensive against La Bassée was planned as part of the Battle of Loos, Graves was given leave, which officers were allowed every six to eight months. The 'general indifference and ignorance of the war' in London surprised him, and he decided to spend the remainder of his leave from the front hiking in the mountains around Harlech. The Royal Welch relieved Middlesex at Cambrin and got new targets. The use of gas - at that time known as an accessory - was planned. The attack took place with the Royal Welch backing the Middlesex (with whom they were friendly because of their mutual dislike of the Scots ('jocks') in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Infantry Regiment), but it ended in disaster. The men did not get their normal rum rations, and the gas spread in their own trenches due to the lack of wind. Most of the companies in this assault got stuck in the barbed wire, the Middlesex and the B and C companies of Royal Welch as well as the Argyll and Sutherland. But the Germans were generous and allowed the wounded to be rescued that night. The attack continued the next day at 4 p.m., but stopped at 9 p.m. Only at that time was Graves' relationship with his men comparable to that with the Welsh regiment. His adjutant z. B. he called Charley. However, the discipline resumed later.
A restructuring was then initiated at Annezin. Graves here expresses his general aversion to the French: "We thought they were thoroughly different people, and it was difficult to relate to their misfortune." The peasants in the village were greedy: although they received financial aid to billet and benefited from the soldiers' expenses - they received 4 shillings every ten days - Graves watched as whole kegs of beer that had already been adulterated were thinned out further.
The rest of the trench service with the second battalion that fall was uneventful. Graves had now spent five months in the trenches and now confessed that he was no longer in his prime:
For the first three weeks an officer was not much good in the trenches; he did not know his way about, had not learned the rules of health and safety, and was not yet accustomed to recognizing degrees of danger. Between three weeks and four months, he was at his best, unless he happened to have any particular bad shock or sequence of shocks. Then he gradually began to decline in usefulness as neurasthenia developed in him. As six months he was still more or less all right; but by nine or ten months, unless he had a few weeks' rest on a technical course or in hospital, he began to be a drag on the other members of the company. After a year or fifteen months he was often worse than useless.
(German: The first three weeks in the trenches were not very good for an officer; he did not know his way, had not learned the health and safety rules and was not yet familiar with assessing the degree of danger. Between three weeks and four months was the best time for him, unless he had one or more shocking experiences. Then the gradual decline in fitness began as neurasthenia developed. At six months he was still more or less okay, but at nine or ten Months, unless he had spent a few weeks in a technical course or in the hospital, it began to get boring to the other members of the company. After a year or fifteen months, it was often more than useless. )
In November, Graves joined the first battalion, which reorganized after the battle at Loos. He was more comfortable here, as life was simpler than in the second battalion, less old-fashioned when it came to militarism, and more humane. At this time Graves met Siegfried Sassoon and also got his first book of poems ready for printing ( Over the Brazier ). His battalion got a long-deserved break with division training in Montagne in the hinterland. There the war was discussed in a much more informal manner, and everyone agreed that the gun drill was one of the main contributors to good regimental morale.
Graves pushed back to the first battalion at the Somme front . Here his friend, David Thomas, was shot through the neck and killed. Graves left the front and returned to London in April 1916. At a military hospital, he underwent nose surgery so that he could use the newly introduced gas masks (his nose was broken while boxing, his nasal septum had shifted shortly before). He also bought a country house near Harlech, which became part of his mother's property and where he wrote three poems. He rejoined the third battalion. The raid on the German lines was planned there as revenge for a German mine that had wiped out most of the B Company. Graves' job, however, was simply to write down the regimental record plan. Four days after the raid, members of the battalion found out they had to go to the Somme, and Graves joined D Company, which, along with the Cameronians and the Public Schools Battalion, would attack High Wood. During this attack, Graves was wounded by an 8 "grenade and taken to the hospital. His colonel believed he was dead and wrote to his parents. But Graves met an aunt who was visiting the hospital and who informed his mother that Graves was there is very much alive.
Chapter XXI – XXV
Graves and Sassoon met in Harlech, where Sassoon was working on his Old Huntsman . In December, Graves was found fit by a medical commission and returned to the second battalion in January 1917. One night he and Sergeant Meredith had to look for two valuable horses that had escaped from a bombed transport cart. In the process, Graves caught bronchitis. The horses were eventually found, hidden by a machine gun company of the fourth division. Graves was sent to Somerville College , Oxford , which was a hospital at the time. There he was able to drink tea with the pacifists Philipp and Lady Ottoline Morrell at Garsington Manor and meet writers like Aldous Huxley , Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell as well as Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy . Graves was then transferred to an officers convalescent home at Osborne House , where he befriended the French Benedictine Fathers in their new Abbey at Quarr . However, he managed to fend off their attempts to convert him to Catholicism.
Sassoon was shot in the neck during heavy fighting at the Siegfried Line. While recovering in England he wrote 'Finished with the War - A Soldier's Declaration' (July 1917). Graves had declared himself fit for Homeland Service (although he wasn't) to support Sassoon, and he managed to get him before a medical commission. As a friend of the patient, Graves was able to convince the three commissioners to send Sassoon to a convalescent home for neurasthenics in Craiglockhart, near Edinburgh. The home was run by the neurologist, ethnologist and psychologist WHR Rivers. It was here that Graves also met Wilfred Owen , whom he describes as 'a quiet little man [with] a round face'.
Graves was eventually sent to Oswestry, where he made ties with the Nicholson family. An exchange of letters began between im and Nancy Nicholson, the daughter of the house, about nursery rhymes she was illustrating. On his next vacation in October 1917, Graves found that he was in love with her. He visited her on the farm at Hilton in Huntingdonshire, where she worked as a country girl. At Rhyl, Graves got his first independent command, launched out of fear of an invasion on the north-east coast of Wales. When he saw Nancy again in London in December, the two decided to get married (she was eighteen years old, he was twenty-two) and George Mallory became their best man. Nancy found a job with a vegetable farmer near Rhyl's camp and moved to Graves. Soon she became pregnant, gave up her work in the country and returned to painting. Sassoon wrote that the "hospitable life was almost unbearable; the feeling of isolation was the worst". He asks to be transferred to France instead of a training battalion. Graves noted:
The fact was that the direction of Siegfried's unconquerable idealism changed with his environment; he varied between happy warrior and bitter pacifist.
(German: The fact was that the direction of Siegfried's invincible idealism changed with his surroundings; he wavered between the happy warrior and the rough pacifist. )
Graves continued his work in the Cadet Battalion 'mechanically', his plans to go to Palestine were thwarted, as well as those to work on his collection of poems Country Sentiment - until the ceasefire in November 1918, to which he commented: 'The News drove me out for a walk, alone along the dam over the marshes of Rhuddlan (former battlefield, Flodden of Wales), cursing and sobbing and remembering the dead. '
Chapter XXVI – XXXII
After the birth of his daughter Jenny, Graves joined the Third Battalion of the Royal Welch. After a while, however, he gave up command. He, Nancy, and the baby moved to Harlech to a house that Nicholson rented to them. In October 1919 he went to Oxford and rented a country house from John Masefield which was at the end of his garden on Boar's Hill - an area where many poets lived, including the poet Laureate Edmund Blunden (who followed the same course) and Gilbert Murray . On a guest-night at All Souls College, Oxford, of which he had just become a member, he also met TE Lawrence . The two became close friends, and Lawrence improved on Graves' book The Pier Glass . On a bike ride to Devonshire, Graves and Nancy also met Thomas Hardy at his house in Dorchester. After Nancy helped out her old nurse at the gift shop, they decided to open a shop on Boar's Hill. Business was good at first, but the pressures of the growing family meant that a manager had to be hired. Still, after six months, they had to sell everything at a loss of £ 500. Completely disaffected, they both decided to look for another country house and finally found one in Islip, which Graves' mother bought and rented to them for 10 shillings a week. Through his association with the local Labor Party , Graves' relationship with the people in the village was severed and his relationship with his parents was also strained.
Graves failed to graduate from Oxford after his tutor, Sir Walter Raleigh, died. He confessed that his works - he published a volume of poetry every year between 1920 and 1925 - fell short of the standard given the fact that he had to support four young children, combined with the distraction it created. Nevertheless, during this time he became interested in dream psychology, with which he wanted to cure himself. By 1926 most of the friends were either overseas or dead (Rivers, Mallory, Sam Harries, a young Balliol student). Since Nancy's health was poor and the couple's financial situation was poor, Graves completed his thesis of the "Poetic Unreason" (Eng. About "poetic irrationality" or "Un-reason") and took a position as a professor of English literature at the to the newly established Egyptian University in Cairo (one of his recommendations came from Colonel John Buchan ). Although he enjoyed life in this country, he did not like working there and he and his wife returned to Islip at the end of the academic year. After finishing a book on TE Lawrence (published in 1927 under the title Lawrence and the Arabs , very successful commercially), Nancy and Graves separated on May 6, 1929 , and he finished this autobiography within about a month. In his own words, he 'learned to tell the truth - almost.'
subjects
The main themes of the book are growing up, war and the military, the importance of classes in life in England and the individual search for meaning in life.
The restless pursuit of prophecy that preceded the great war had little to do with actual reality. When the great war came it became more terrible, more inhuman than any dystopian fantasy, more destructive to the political and social order of Europe than foreseen. The writers who documented this, including Robert Graves, felt that they had to forego all poetry, sentimentality, and romanticism. The "Great War" ( Great War ) plunged not only the Roman topics in a crisis - heroism and courage, the value of individual life and society history - but also the sheer power of representation.
The great war, with its massive butchery without victory, also challenged all traditional ideas of warfare and also brought down the honor with which all war poetry and death had previously been afflicted. The German critic Walter Benjamin noted in a lively comment:
A generation that had taken the horse-drawn tram to school stood in the open air in a landscape in which nothing had remained unchanged but the clouds, and in the middle, in a force field of destructive currents and explosions, the tiny frail human body.
The fiction of the twenties was dominated by war novels. It is estimated that around 700 books had been written about the war by 1930. Towards the end of the decade, when it became clearer how little the war had managed to achieve European stability or noteworthy social change, the climate of historical consternation, impotent outrage and worried pessimism among Graves and his contemporaries had intensified. This became clear in a number of war and anti-war books, such as B. Edmund Blunden's Undertones of War , Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man , RC Sherriff's The Other Side ( Journey's End ), Henry Williamson's The Wet Flanders Plain and Robert Graves' Strich underneath! ( Good-bye to All That ). Most of these works showed that the war had left its survivors and successors in a shaken, uncontrollable, directionless world. Graves himself describes his own torn state on his return to civilian life:
I was still mentally and nervously organized for war; shells used to come bursting on my bed at midnight, even when Nancy was sharing it with me; strangers in day-time would assume the faces of friends who had been killed ... I was very thin, very nervous and had about four years' loss of sleep to make up ... if I saw more than two new people in a single day it prevented me from sleeping. I was ashamed of myself as a drag on Nancy ... I knew that it would be years before I was fit for anything besides a quiet country life.
(Eng: I was still mentally and nervously prepared for the war; at night, grenades usually exploded in my bed, even if Nancy shared it with me; strangers took on the faces of friends who had been killed during the day ... I was very thin, very nervous , and had about four years to catch up on sleep ... if I saw more than two strangers in one day it kept me from sleeping. I was ashamed of myself, being a bore for Nancy ... I knew it It would be years before I was fit enough for anything other than a quiet country life. )
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Goodbye to All That , published by Jonathan Cape, Second Impression, November 1929; Translation from English and with a foreword by Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus , Berlin 1930. (Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon, CD-ROM edition 2000)
- ^ Richard Perceval Graves, 'Graves, Robert von Ranke (1895–1985)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, September 2004; Online edition, October 2006.
- ^ The Modern British Novel , Malcolm Bradbury , Penguin Books, 1994; German quote from Rainer-ME Jacobi, The Truth of Encounter: Anthropological Perspectives of Neurology , Königshausen & Neumann, 2001, p. 220. Retrieved October 18, 2009.
- ^ The Modern British Novel , Malcolm Bradbury , Penguin Books, 1994