Under Fire/ Le Feu

[andigger]

I just picked this book up today. Has anyone read it? I didn't find much under other threads on Forum, so I thought I would give it its own topic. Andy

[delta]

It's reputably a classic!

[Desmond7]

Personally found it very hard to get into. Tried to read it years ago. I think French linguists believe it has lost a great deal in translation?

[Max Poilu]

It is a worthy book and one definitely worth reading but as above a bit of a slog. Persevere though - there are some excellent moments...

[tim_oz]

An intresting read though I thought the translation may not have been that good. Id be intrested to hear a view from any pals who have read it in French. It is intresting as it was apparently written in 1916 is its not a post war interpretation of the war affected by the 1917 mutinies and the post war periosd.

For those who havent read it you can download a copy for the Project Gutenburg site here.

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/ndrfr10.txt

Tim

[paul guthrie]

It's nearly unreadable, since it is so well considered it's obviously a terrible translation.

[ian.sumner]

It's certainly well received in some quarters ...

Jean Norton Cru, in his bibliographic study of soldiers' memoirs Te/moins (Nancy, repr.1993) didn't like whingers, scroungers, lefties or pacifists, and Barbusse fitted into several of these categories. So in reviewing Le Feu, Cru did a number on it, complaining about every little mistake over ten pages, to prove that the book was rubbish. He concludes that the book was only so popular because it was the first to attempt a realistic portrayal of the front line, in contrast to the absurdly optimistic novels that had gone before; and because it was the first, other, better, novels (Cru mention those of Genevoix, Lintier, Roujon, Vassal and Galtier-Boissie\re) have never stood a chance.

Methinks that Cru was letting his prejudices show more than a little. It's not _that_ bad (though I too have only read it in English).

Ian

[Hoplophile]

Though Barbusse had plenty of first-hand experience, I suspect that he was less interested in recording what had seen than in writing a book that fit in with his views of what a war memoir ought to be. This can be seen in the way that he describes his fellow soldiers. In his letters to his wife, Barbusse makes it clear that he liked to keep company with men from backgrounds that were similar to his own. He was particularly pleased to discover that a corporal in his platoon was an editor at a major publishing house. In Under Fire, however, Barbusse's comrades are transformed into 'workers and sons of the soil.'

Thus, if you want to read a novel that is written by someone who desperately wanted to be the heir to Emile Zola, dig right in. If, however, you want to read about World War I, you may want to look elsewhere.

[Paul Hederer]

I just picked this book up today. Has anyone read it? I didn't find much under other threads on Forum, so I thought I would give it its own topic. Andy

I tried a few years ago. I think I made it about 20 pages before I gave it up. I know it's supposed to be a classic, but I didn't care for it.

Paul

[IanA]

One point worth noting is that it was very highly regarded by the men who "were there".

Ian

[MartinWills]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading it a few years ago, despite wondering a little about the translation. Having read parts of it in French I felt a lot easier with it but didn't find to easy to read much more than short sections at a time - the style is undoubtedly french.

Given the paucity of french accounts of this ilk it is well worth perservering with if you are struggling with the language either in the original or in translation!

[Take on me]

Perhaps it isdifficult to read but it has had an important impact upon shaping perceptions of the First World War in French cultural history. Furthermore its left wing, reputedly anarchic philosophy, made it extremely popular among the French left while it was hated by groups on the right such as Action Francais. I believe that a scene in Oh, What A Loveley War! is taken from it.

Jon

[Ste]

I haven't read Le Feu myself, but it is covered in some little detail by Samuel Hynes in A War Imagined. I'm reading that at the moment, so I will post Hynes opinion when I've got the book in front of me.

Cheers,

Ste

[marc leroux]

I found that it was a tough read, particularily to get started, but in the end an excellant book. It took me a lot longer to gget through than I would have expected. I'd recommend the translation by Robin Buss. The descriptions of the people in the cities, meeting soldiers, but having no idea of reality of the trenches, I found strikingly similar to the same description in "All Quiet .."

Obviously not everyone shares this opinion, but I would recommend it.

marc

[Ste]

As promised, the following quotations are taken from A War Imagined by Samuel Hynes:

Henri Barbusse's Le Feu is the story of an ordinary infantry squad on the Western Front, first in billets, then in battle, told with exact, unsqueamish particularity. It is a realistic novel, in the great French tradition; but it continually violates that tradition. It begins in an unrealistic 'vision', and ends in surrealism, it shifts the person, tense and number of its narrative voice, and it repeatedly projects the incapacity of its own method to render the reality of its subject coherently, because incoherence is the essential principle of that reality....

...It was as though the very act of trying to understand the war, in order to render it in language, engaged the rendering imagination in a continuous process of redefinition - as though the self that recorded changed as the truths it confronted emerged. In Barbusse's case you might argue that the tradition in which he was working - that of the realistic novel of Zola - was adequate as a method for the behind-the-lines scenes, but inadequate to the challenge of life in battle, where reality became more-than-real. Nash and Lewis had observed the same thing in painterly terms.

Le Feu is also important for its politics. Barbusse was a Socialist, and the last 'dawn' pages of his novel are a Socialist sermon against war, and for the international cooperation of the working class. These are not new ideas - the Independent Labour Party had been saying these things in England since the war began - but they had not previously been expressed in a popular work of fiction, one that carried the note of authority in its account of the war itself.

Le Feu was a highly subversive book, and it appeared at a crucial point in the history of English attitudes towards the war. It was published in France in 1916, and won the Prix Goncourt; it appeared in England as Under Fire, in July 1917, the month during which the Third Battle of Ypres...began. It was qickly recognised as important...Sassoon read it at Craiglockhart in August, and lent it to Rivers... Under Fire was the first novel to reach the English public with an unameliorated rendering of the horrors of war.

[P203-205].

Note that Hynes makes no comment about the books relative ease of reading for a modern audience; he is concerned with the development of how people thought abot the war at the time, and particularly how they rendered it in art. In that context it is significant, although from the comments posted by Pals in this thread, I doubt I would find it of great literary merit now.

Cheers,

Ste

[andigger]

Actually I am glad and appreciate the fact everyone is hashing this out before I get started. At first I had a little buyer's remorse, but now I am intrigued enough to read it and see what I think. The bad part (for this thread) is that it is on the Dec/Jan calendar. I have a few other things on my plate first, but that will also allow me to bring up this thread from the depths, another one of my favorite things!

Andy

[Kathie]

Ive had the book sitting in my pile of "waiting to be read" for a couple of months and have just about finished.

I think it is a good read. I think the new translation is well done- easy flow of language etc.

I felt I learnt bits and pieces about daily life which really couldnt have been made up. For example - the excitment of the poilus and the planning that they would have table from which to eat when in a rest area; - the man lingering outside the dentists lorry; the sense of freedom when two men were sent to fetch somethng and found themselves walking unaccompanied across the fields; a great many of the analyses of emotions.

I would pout this pretty high on my list.

Kathie

[angelab]

I have just finished reading "Le Feu" in French, and endorse the opinions of those who found it hard to get into at first, but ultimately rewarding. I found it elegantly written - though when I came across the English version somewhere on the internet I thought it looked appalling.

The part when - on a morning so misty that the battle could not start - the writer accompanies a friend to a village near Souchez, and the friend can't find a single stick or stone intact that would enable him to orientate himself in his home village is imprinted on my memory.

Oh, and that grim description of the first-aid place that the writer accompanied a wounded friend to seemed like a scene from hell itself...

I also read "Les Croix de Bois" by Roland Dorgeles, which I really enjoyed - if that is the right word...

There's a good little book of reminisences/letters/diary extracts called "Paroles de Poilus " (rather like the "Forgotten Voices" series).

Angela

[Martin Bennitt]

"Le Feu" is just one of a number of good, or at least classic, French novels about the war which bear reading, though I don't know what's available in English. Apart from "Les Crox de Bois", Dorgelès also wrote a "follow up" called "Le Cabaret de la Belle Femme". Another quite good one is Joseph Kessel's "L'équipage" about a two-seater squadron. I can also recommend André Maurois' view of the British army, where he was an interpreter and liaison officer, in "Les Silences du Colonel Bramble" and "Le Discours du Docteur O'Grady".

cheers Martin B