A review of “All Quiet on The Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque
Having seen both the American (1930) and German (2022) film versions of this famous novel, I thought that it was time to read the original work (1929) in an excellent English translation (1994) by Brian Murdoch.The novel contains less narrative but more reflection than the films and has lost none of its power and punch. Yet the book ends not with a bang but a whimper: “there was nothing new to report on the western front”. Indeed the title that we all know came from an English translation in 1929 which Murdoch has chosen to keep because it has “justly become part of the English language”, but he explains that a more literal translation of Remarque’s German title would be “Nothing new on the western front”.
The viewpoint is that of 19 year old student volunteer Paul Bäumer. Remarque describes the debilitation of lack of food, water and sleep, the ubiquity of rats and lice, and even the degradation of excretion. He presents a brutally graphic description of how bodies can be ripped apart in different ways by shells, shrapnel and snipers. But he highlights “the best thing that the war produced – comradeship in arms” and asserts that “you can cope with all the horror as long as you simply duck thinking about it – but it will kill you if you try to come to terms with it”.
After the publication of his stunning novel, Remarque was exiled from Nazi Germany and deprived of his citizenship, but today all German school children study his writing and honour his name.