Trechos de Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir (1916), de Ezra Pound.
(WRITTEN FROM THE TRENCHES.)
I have been fighting for two monhts and I can now gauge the intensity of life.
Human masses teem and move, are destroyed and crop up again.
Horses are worn out in three weeks, die by the roadside.
Dogs wander, are destroyed, and others come along.
With all the destruction that works around us nothing is changed, even superficially. Life is the same strength, the moving agent that permits the small individual to assert himself.
The bursting shells, the volleys, wire entanglements, projectors, motors, the chaos of battle do not alter in the least the outlines of the hill we are besieging. A company of partridges scuttle along before our very trench.
It would be folly to seek artistic emotions amid these little works of ours.
This paltry mechanism, which serves as a purge to over-numerous humanity.
This war is a great remedy.
In the individual it kills arrogance, self-esteem, pride.
It takes away from the masses numbers upon numbers of unimportant units, whose economic activities become noxious as the recent trades crises have shown us.
My views on sculpture remain absolutely the same.
- - -
Just as this hill where the Germans are solidly entrenched, gives me a nasty feeling, solely because its gentle slopes are broken up by earth-works, which throw long shadows at sunset. Just so shall I get feeling, of whatsoever definition, from a statue according to its slopes, varied to infinity.
I have made an experiment. Two days ago I pinched from an enemy a mauser rifle. Its heavy unwieldy shape swamped me with a powerful image of brutality. I was in doubt for a long time whether it pleased or displeased me. I found that I did not like it. I broke the butt off and with my knife I carved in it a design, through which I tried to express a gentler order of feeling, which I preferred. But I will emphasize that my design got its effect (just as the gun had) from a very simple composition of lines and planes.
- - -
I have been slightly wounded in the night of Sunday 8th, on patrol duty, I have been at rest since and am returning service within two or three days.
- - -
[...] the thoughts of an artist who had a mystical and beautiful mind and who had been long under fire. Is it not interesting and valuable to observe what such a mind selects?
- - -
I do not despair of ever reaching Dusseldorf and bringing back the finest Cezannes and Henri Rousseaux to be found up there. We are not very far from the German frontier as it is.
If you send anything, send chocolate.
- - -
October 24th, 1914.
I am writing from a trench, I have spent four hours of the night on sentry duty before the lines, I have not had the luck of sighting an enemy patrol, tho' at a time I saw several men move, at sunrise I made out what it was: barbed wire nets stuck on stout posts. For the day we have to stay inside this beastly hole without even having the satisfaction of firing a shot. Perhaps to-night we shall have greater fun, anyway it is a happy life, there are hardships but sometimes we can steal away two or three with a sergeant and bring back wine, beer, etc.
- - -
Sunday. A fine sunshine and better mood than yesterday. I have even been thinking about writing a short essay on sculpture for the Blast Christmas No. Please let them reproduce in it a photo of your bust. I shall send the essay as soon as finished, but all depends upon the fighting. If we have a few quiet days you'll have it soon.
- - -
November 7th.
My dear Ezra,
Yes I have survived and will continue to do so, I am absolutely sure. We are at rest to-day after a week's trench life. We have had rain, mud, sunshine, bullets, shells, shrapnels, sardines and fun. I am well weathered and covered ... have more socks, etc. than I ever shall wear out within the next six months. Please keep the sweater, don't have it dyed, send it when the winter has set in really, etc.
- - -
The only things he wants are numbers of the Egoist, cigarettes, chocolate, poems. He promises the article before next Monday.
As I am ordered for a night patrol, it will be the 12th that I do. We are only four in the company for this work. We set out at sun-down and come back at dawn. This time we must go to explore an old bombarded mill within the German line where a maxim-gun section is in position. We shall have luck I have a good presentiment.
I have not received any news since October 5th, etc.
I am writing this on the back of a book pinched from the "Boches," it is a cheap edition of Wallenstein, I am trying in vain to interest myself in its complicated nonsense.
- - -
November 9th.
Dear Ezra,
I have had the greatest fun this night of all my life. I started with two men under my command to reinforce wire entanglements at a few yards off the enemy. We were undisturbed for a long time, my fellows went on driving in poles and I was busy setting wires lying on my back when the silly moon shone out of the mist. The Germans caught sight of me and then pumpumpumpumpumpum then bullets cut four barbed wires just above my face and I was in a funny way indeed caught by the loose wire. I grasped my rifle at last and let them have the change, but it was a signal: my men lost their heads, one let his rifle fall into his wire coil, threw away the wooden mallet and jumped into the trench as a wild rabbit, the other in his wake, but this latter did not forget the gun. When they came in they said I was dead, and to avenge me my lieutenant ordered volley firing, the boches did the same, and I got between the two. At great risk, I came back to the trench, where my lieutenant was very astonished. When the row ceased and the fog set in again I went back with my two chaps, found everything back and completed the wire snares. I got your letter and replied. I am beginning the essay now.
- - -
December 1st.
(Post-card, of the ruins of Rheims, with a gargoyle of "le coq gaulois" left intact) containing thanks for cigarettes, sweater, etc., and the phrase, "I don't deserve so much, as the suffering is very restricted"...
Nothing new, we killed a German a few days ago.
- - -
December 18th.
[...] Before Rheims we had dug hibernating trenches which we had accommodated with all possible care, and we only slept once in this seeming comfort to be ousted over here. I was spying a German through a shooting cranny and loading my rifle when the order came to pack up and get ready to start on a night march. We did not know the destination: some were sure we went to rest some 20 miles behind the lines, others said we were led to the assault of a position, and this seemed confirmed when they took away our blankets to lessen the weight of the knapsack. Anyway, no one foresaw the awful ground we had to defend. We must keep two bridges and naturally as usual "until death." We cannot come back to villages to sleep, and we have to dig holes in the ground which we fill with straw and build a roof over, but the soil is so nasty that we find water at two feet six inches depth; and even if we stop at a foot, which is hardly sufficient to afford cover, we wake up in the night through the water filtering up the straw. We have been busy these last nights bringing in lots of materials, stoves, grates, etc., to make decent abodes, and unhappily they will be done just in time for us to go, as we are relieved of the post within three weeks. The beastly regiment which was here before us remained three months, and as they were all dirty northern miners used to all kind of dampness they never did an effort to better the place up a bit. When we took the trenches after the march it was a sight worthy of Dante, there was at the bottom a foot deep of liquid mud in which we had to stand two days and two nights, rest we had in small holes nearly as muddy, add to this a position making a V point into the enemy who shell us from three sides, the close vicinity of 800 putrefying German corpses, and you are at the front in the marshes of the Aisne.
It has been dry these last three days and the 1st Battalion has cleansed up the place, I believe. Anyway we are going back to-night, and we shall finish the work.
I got a sore throat in this damned place and lost my knife while falling down to avoid bullets from a stupid German sentry, whom I subsequently shot dead, but the stupid ass had no knife on him to replace mine, and the bad humour will last another week until I receive a new one from my people.
Anyway the three weeks here will pass away soon. I take the opportunity to wish you and your wife a Merry Xmas and a prosperous 1915.
- - -
January 27th, 1915.
My dear Ezra,
I was writing you a post-card to Stone Cottage when your last turned up. We are at rest again in the same farmhouse for six days and we are glad of it. These last 12 days in the trenches were hard, it has been raining and every night we had to puddle ankle deep; in the daytime we had to empty ditches and dry our clothes. I have heard from Hulme when he was at Havre on the way to the trenches; it will change him a bit from the comfort he had at Frith Street. I had the luxury of only one patrol, we had to wait for a beastly night to do it as the Germans are too near us.
I started with a sergeant and it was so dark that walking side by side we had difficulty to see each other. We went all along their barbed wires, paid visits to all their sentry posts, which we found empty, and only got one shot fired at us when we got at the corner of a burnt farmstead within their line. The bullet whizzed past our heads and stuck itself in the ground splashing our faces with mud. We had just come from this little emotion when we crossed our own wires and came near our sentries. There was a youngster on duty and my sudden appearance surprised him so much that he let me have a bullet at five yards which missed the mark. The poor fellow got such a fright that he shivered for two days, but of course he had to enjoy a first rate licking with the butt end of a rifle from the angry corporal on the spot. Since we only had only a sham attack the night we were leaving for rest, attack in which my company was not engaged. All the time there have been violent artillery duels in which nobody got the better. [...]
I believe I shall develop a style of my own which, like the Chinese, will embody both a grotesque and a non-grotesque side. Anyway, much will be changed after we have come through the blood bath of idealism. Wadsworth has told me in a letter that Dunoyer de Segonzac fell in Lorraine; he leaves a complete work. His end may have been a great fact. [...]
It is as bloody damp here as it was with you a week ago when you wrote, and I again indulged in the luxury of "mud baths," very good for rheumatisms, arthritis, lumbago and other evils. But nowadays I am a trench veteran. I have experienced all sorts of weather in these hellish places, so that I can stand a night under a heavy rain without sneezing the next day, and sleep beautifully a whole day on hard frozen ground without any ill result to the "abdomenalia." Nevertheless I am writing from a barn behind the lines, a good old sheepfold full of straw where one is warm, and needless to say I enjoy it and appreciate the happy position, especially as I have been able to find good cigars and wine in the village.
Let all the hordes of city clerks and kilted Highlanders come to reinforce us and take up the offensive when the weather is fine again. I dislike rotting away in a ditch like an old toad. Our army is forming behind us, we are being re-equipped with better fighting clothes, soft greys instead of bright blues and reds. We get American boots and socks, English gloves and scarves. We'll do fine work soon.
- - -
14/3/1915.
I am at rest for three weeks in a village. [...]
I am about to be made a sergeant. ... The weather is now magnificent and I am astonished to have been through such a badly wet winter practically in the open air without getting any the worse for it. I have been patrolling lately; we had lively volleys in the early hours. I threw a bomb also in a very black night into the German line: all great fun. It will be a little harder when we have to pierce thro' then three lines of trenches soon; but thereafter the pursuit will be quick and decisive, and I shall get to Dusseldorf perhaps in a week after having waited six long months in the damp.
As we are here six comrades and we can get wine and other suitable liquids, could you send me a couple of pounds during the 21 days we have to stay?
- - -
20/3/1915.
[...] In the night we can go on top of the hills and see the fireworks all along the line from Soissons to Rheims. It is so calm to-day and the fellows are writing and reading so quietly that it's difficult to imagine one's self at war. But I have some presentiment it is the great calm preceding violent storms, for which we are now well prepared.
- - -
May 25th.
There is nothing very special here. Spring in all its beauty, nightingales, lily-of-the-valley in the trenches, and the Germans have been routed. They dared attack our entrenchment. We killed 1.250, but the horrid side is the stench now. We had a handful of prisoners. We are far away from the lines resting. I shall write soon to Wadsworth. Tell me of anything that may happen in London.
- - -
3/6/1915.
Dear Ezra,
It becomes worse and worse. It is the 10th day we are on the first line, and the 10th day we are getting shells on the cocoanut without truce. Right and left they lead Rosalie to the dance, but we have the ungrateful task to keep to the last under a hellish fire.
Perhaps you ignore what is Rosalie? It's our bayonet, we call it so because we draw it red from fat Saxon bellies. We shall be going to rest sometime soon, and then when we do come back it will be for an attack. It is a gruesome place all strewn with dead, and there's not a day without half a dozen fellows in the company crossing the Styx. We are betting on our mutual chances. Hope all this nasty nightmare will soon come to an end.
[...] (The Germans are restless, machine-gun crackling ahead, so I must end this in haste.)
Yours ever,
Henri Gaudier.
- - -
* His premonition of a head wound is curious, for this letter was written I believe only two days before his death. His sister tells me that years ago in Paris, when the war was undreamed of, he insisted that he would die in the war.
Mais:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/04/henri-gaudier-brzeska
http://frenchsculpture.org/en/artist/gaudier-brzeska-henri
I have been fighting for two monhts and I can now gauge the intensity of life.
Human masses teem and move, are destroyed and crop up again.
Horses are worn out in three weeks, die by the roadside.
Dogs wander, are destroyed, and others come along.
With all the destruction that works around us nothing is changed, even superficially. Life is the same strength, the moving agent that permits the small individual to assert himself.
The bursting shells, the volleys, wire entanglements, projectors, motors, the chaos of battle do not alter in the least the outlines of the hill we are besieging. A company of partridges scuttle along before our very trench.
It would be folly to seek artistic emotions amid these little works of ours.
This paltry mechanism, which serves as a purge to over-numerous humanity.
This war is a great remedy.
In the individual it kills arrogance, self-esteem, pride.
It takes away from the masses numbers upon numbers of unimportant units, whose economic activities become noxious as the recent trades crises have shown us.
My views on sculpture remain absolutely the same.
- - -
Just as this hill where the Germans are solidly entrenched, gives me a nasty feeling, solely because its gentle slopes are broken up by earth-works, which throw long shadows at sunset. Just so shall I get feeling, of whatsoever definition, from a statue according to its slopes, varied to infinity.
I have made an experiment. Two days ago I pinched from an enemy a mauser rifle. Its heavy unwieldy shape swamped me with a powerful image of brutality. I was in doubt for a long time whether it pleased or displeased me. I found that I did not like it. I broke the butt off and with my knife I carved in it a design, through which I tried to express a gentler order of feeling, which I preferred. But I will emphasize that my design got its effect (just as the gun had) from a very simple composition of lines and planes.
- - -
I have been slightly wounded in the night of Sunday 8th, on patrol duty, I have been at rest since and am returning service within two or three days.
- - -
[...] the thoughts of an artist who had a mystical and beautiful mind and who had been long under fire. Is it not interesting and valuable to observe what such a mind selects?
- - -
I do not despair of ever reaching Dusseldorf and bringing back the finest Cezannes and Henri Rousseaux to be found up there. We are not very far from the German frontier as it is.
If you send anything, send chocolate.
- - -
October 24th, 1914.
I am writing from a trench, I have spent four hours of the night on sentry duty before the lines, I have not had the luck of sighting an enemy patrol, tho' at a time I saw several men move, at sunrise I made out what it was: barbed wire nets stuck on stout posts. For the day we have to stay inside this beastly hole without even having the satisfaction of firing a shot. Perhaps to-night we shall have greater fun, anyway it is a happy life, there are hardships but sometimes we can steal away two or three with a sergeant and bring back wine, beer, etc.
- - -
Sunday. A fine sunshine and better mood than yesterday. I have even been thinking about writing a short essay on sculpture for the Blast Christmas No. Please let them reproduce in it a photo of your bust. I shall send the essay as soon as finished, but all depends upon the fighting. If we have a few quiet days you'll have it soon.
- - -
November 7th.
My dear Ezra,
Yes I have survived and will continue to do so, I am absolutely sure. We are at rest to-day after a week's trench life. We have had rain, mud, sunshine, bullets, shells, shrapnels, sardines and fun. I am well weathered and covered ... have more socks, etc. than I ever shall wear out within the next six months. Please keep the sweater, don't have it dyed, send it when the winter has set in really, etc.
- - -
The only things he wants are numbers of the Egoist, cigarettes, chocolate, poems. He promises the article before next Monday.
As I am ordered for a night patrol, it will be the 12th that I do. We are only four in the company for this work. We set out at sun-down and come back at dawn. This time we must go to explore an old bombarded mill within the German line where a maxim-gun section is in position. We shall have luck I have a good presentiment.
I have not received any news since October 5th, etc.
I am writing this on the back of a book pinched from the "Boches," it is a cheap edition of Wallenstein, I am trying in vain to interest myself in its complicated nonsense.
- - -
November 9th.
Dear Ezra,
I have had the greatest fun this night of all my life. I started with two men under my command to reinforce wire entanglements at a few yards off the enemy. We were undisturbed for a long time, my fellows went on driving in poles and I was busy setting wires lying on my back when the silly moon shone out of the mist. The Germans caught sight of me and then pumpumpumpumpumpum then bullets cut four barbed wires just above my face and I was in a funny way indeed caught by the loose wire. I grasped my rifle at last and let them have the change, but it was a signal: my men lost their heads, one let his rifle fall into his wire coil, threw away the wooden mallet and jumped into the trench as a wild rabbit, the other in his wake, but this latter did not forget the gun. When they came in they said I was dead, and to avenge me my lieutenant ordered volley firing, the boches did the same, and I got between the two. At great risk, I came back to the trench, where my lieutenant was very astonished. When the row ceased and the fog set in again I went back with my two chaps, found everything back and completed the wire snares. I got your letter and replied. I am beginning the essay now.
- - -
December 1st.
(Post-card, of the ruins of Rheims, with a gargoyle of "le coq gaulois" left intact) containing thanks for cigarettes, sweater, etc., and the phrase, "I don't deserve so much, as the suffering is very restricted"...
Nothing new, we killed a German a few days ago.
- - -
December 18th.
[...] Before Rheims we had dug hibernating trenches which we had accommodated with all possible care, and we only slept once in this seeming comfort to be ousted over here. I was spying a German through a shooting cranny and loading my rifle when the order came to pack up and get ready to start on a night march. We did not know the destination: some were sure we went to rest some 20 miles behind the lines, others said we were led to the assault of a position, and this seemed confirmed when they took away our blankets to lessen the weight of the knapsack. Anyway, no one foresaw the awful ground we had to defend. We must keep two bridges and naturally as usual "until death." We cannot come back to villages to sleep, and we have to dig holes in the ground which we fill with straw and build a roof over, but the soil is so nasty that we find water at two feet six inches depth; and even if we stop at a foot, which is hardly sufficient to afford cover, we wake up in the night through the water filtering up the straw. We have been busy these last nights bringing in lots of materials, stoves, grates, etc., to make decent abodes, and unhappily they will be done just in time for us to go, as we are relieved of the post within three weeks. The beastly regiment which was here before us remained three months, and as they were all dirty northern miners used to all kind of dampness they never did an effort to better the place up a bit. When we took the trenches after the march it was a sight worthy of Dante, there was at the bottom a foot deep of liquid mud in which we had to stand two days and two nights, rest we had in small holes nearly as muddy, add to this a position making a V point into the enemy who shell us from three sides, the close vicinity of 800 putrefying German corpses, and you are at the front in the marshes of the Aisne.
It has been dry these last three days and the 1st Battalion has cleansed up the place, I believe. Anyway we are going back to-night, and we shall finish the work.
I got a sore throat in this damned place and lost my knife while falling down to avoid bullets from a stupid German sentry, whom I subsequently shot dead, but the stupid ass had no knife on him to replace mine, and the bad humour will last another week until I receive a new one from my people.
Anyway the three weeks here will pass away soon. I take the opportunity to wish you and your wife a Merry Xmas and a prosperous 1915.
- - -
January 27th, 1915.
My dear Ezra,
I was writing you a post-card to Stone Cottage when your last turned up. We are at rest again in the same farmhouse for six days and we are glad of it. These last 12 days in the trenches were hard, it has been raining and every night we had to puddle ankle deep; in the daytime we had to empty ditches and dry our clothes. I have heard from Hulme when he was at Havre on the way to the trenches; it will change him a bit from the comfort he had at Frith Street. I had the luxury of only one patrol, we had to wait for a beastly night to do it as the Germans are too near us.
I started with a sergeant and it was so dark that walking side by side we had difficulty to see each other. We went all along their barbed wires, paid visits to all their sentry posts, which we found empty, and only got one shot fired at us when we got at the corner of a burnt farmstead within their line. The bullet whizzed past our heads and stuck itself in the ground splashing our faces with mud. We had just come from this little emotion when we crossed our own wires and came near our sentries. There was a youngster on duty and my sudden appearance surprised him so much that he let me have a bullet at five yards which missed the mark. The poor fellow got such a fright that he shivered for two days, but of course he had to enjoy a first rate licking with the butt end of a rifle from the angry corporal on the spot. Since we only had only a sham attack the night we were leaving for rest, attack in which my company was not engaged. All the time there have been violent artillery duels in which nobody got the better. [...]
I believe I shall develop a style of my own which, like the Chinese, will embody both a grotesque and a non-grotesque side. Anyway, much will be changed after we have come through the blood bath of idealism. Wadsworth has told me in a letter that Dunoyer de Segonzac fell in Lorraine; he leaves a complete work. His end may have been a great fact. [...]
It is as bloody damp here as it was with you a week ago when you wrote, and I again indulged in the luxury of "mud baths," very good for rheumatisms, arthritis, lumbago and other evils. But nowadays I am a trench veteran. I have experienced all sorts of weather in these hellish places, so that I can stand a night under a heavy rain without sneezing the next day, and sleep beautifully a whole day on hard frozen ground without any ill result to the "abdomenalia." Nevertheless I am writing from a barn behind the lines, a good old sheepfold full of straw where one is warm, and needless to say I enjoy it and appreciate the happy position, especially as I have been able to find good cigars and wine in the village.
Let all the hordes of city clerks and kilted Highlanders come to reinforce us and take up the offensive when the weather is fine again. I dislike rotting away in a ditch like an old toad. Our army is forming behind us, we are being re-equipped with better fighting clothes, soft greys instead of bright blues and reds. We get American boots and socks, English gloves and scarves. We'll do fine work soon.
- - -
14/3/1915.
I am at rest for three weeks in a village. [...]
I am about to be made a sergeant. ... The weather is now magnificent and I am astonished to have been through such a badly wet winter practically in the open air without getting any the worse for it. I have been patrolling lately; we had lively volleys in the early hours. I threw a bomb also in a very black night into the German line: all great fun. It will be a little harder when we have to pierce thro' then three lines of trenches soon; but thereafter the pursuit will be quick and decisive, and I shall get to Dusseldorf perhaps in a week after having waited six long months in the damp.
As we are here six comrades and we can get wine and other suitable liquids, could you send me a couple of pounds during the 21 days we have to stay?
- - -
20/3/1915.
[...] In the night we can go on top of the hills and see the fireworks all along the line from Soissons to Rheims. It is so calm to-day and the fellows are writing and reading so quietly that it's difficult to imagine one's self at war. But I have some presentiment it is the great calm preceding violent storms, for which we are now well prepared.
- - -
May 25th.
There is nothing very special here. Spring in all its beauty, nightingales, lily-of-the-valley in the trenches, and the Germans have been routed. They dared attack our entrenchment. We killed 1.250, but the horrid side is the stench now. We had a handful of prisoners. We are far away from the lines resting. I shall write soon to Wadsworth. Tell me of anything that may happen in London.
- - -
3/6/1915.
Dear Ezra,
It becomes worse and worse. It is the 10th day we are on the first line, and the 10th day we are getting shells on the cocoanut without truce. Right and left they lead Rosalie to the dance, but we have the ungrateful task to keep to the last under a hellish fire.
Perhaps you ignore what is Rosalie? It's our bayonet, we call it so because we draw it red from fat Saxon bellies. We shall be going to rest sometime soon, and then when we do come back it will be for an attack. It is a gruesome place all strewn with dead, and there's not a day without half a dozen fellows in the company crossing the Styx. We are betting on our mutual chances. Hope all this nasty nightmare will soon come to an end.
[...] (The Germans are restless, machine-gun crackling ahead, so I must end this in haste.)
Yours ever,
Henri Gaudier.
- - -
* His premonition of a head wound is curious, for this letter was written I believe only two days before his death. His sister tells me that years ago in Paris, when the war was undreamed of, he insisted that he would die in the war.
Mais:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/04/henri-gaudier-brzeska
http://frenchsculpture.org/en/artist/gaudier-brzeska-henri
