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Carregando... Death of a Hero (Penguin Classics) (edição: 2013)de Richard Aldington, James H. Meredith (Introdução)
Informações da ObraDeath of a Hero de Richard Aldington
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Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. The third part of this book is terrific war writing, capturing trench warfare in all its tedium and terror, and giving a desolate account of how "shell shock" ruined so many of the combatants. Aldington's satire bites hard against the chattering classes back home, but the predominant tone is an elegiac helplessness in the face of the war's industrialised carnage. The first two parts are like a much more superficial "Way of all Flesh", excoriating the Victorians for their moral (especially sexual) cant and hypocrisy and in effect locating all the blame for the war therein. Here the writing lacks nuance and sometimes seems juvenile, with frequent resort to italics and other emphatic devices. There are occasional good descriptive passages, especially of nature, but in general it's an Angry Young Man polemic without any depth that cannot justify its 200+ pages. The framing device of a narrator who gets to know the titular "hero" shortly before he dies is implausible and I'm not sure why Aldington didn't just go with omniscient third person. I believe you could actually skip the first two parts of "Death of a Hero" entirely and just enjoy the third for what it is, a brilliant and horrifying rendition of life in the trenches. Cant and sex. Those are the twin themes of this book, although, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that cant about sex is the one theme of this book. The first two thirds of the book tell the story of the titular hero, George Winterbourne, and his family. They are a set of grotesques, wrapped so tightly in late Victorian sexuality that it warps them beyond almost all humanity. The point is made repeatedly and with little subtlety. Indeed, Aldington frequently brings the action to a halt to pour another bucket of venom over their heads. The effect is not a little tedious. This is a shame because when the war writing begins it is electrifying, although, again, Aldington finds the causes of the war in Victorian sexual mores. Intriguingly, Aldington's book covers the latter stages of the war, when the Allied armies defeated those of Germany, which are absent from the better known books of [a:Robert Graves|3012988|Robert Graves|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1251049332p2/3012988.jpg] and [a:Edmund Blunden|31139|Edmund Blunden|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1335026460p2/31139.jpg]. Lurking in this long, hectoring book about cant and sex (or cant about sex) is a shorter, far better book about the First World War. 2276 Death of a Hero, by Richard Aldington (read 11 Mar 1990) Paul Fussell mentioned this book in the same breath as All Quiet on the Western Front and other great World War One novels. I had never heard of it but I decided to read it because of Fussell's comment. Aldington was born in 1892, and was in France from 1916 to 1918. This book was published in 1929, and is cynical and 'avant garde' and filled with half-baked free love opinions pretty well shown to be reprehensible. He rails against the war, quite rightly, but his blaming all of it on "dull" people is unwarranted. When Aldington died in 1962 the Times obituary of him said "an angry young man of the generation before they became fashionable, he remained something of an angry old man to the end." Only the last third of the book tells of the war in Europe--and it conveys well the awfulness of life at the Front. Hard to glorify that awful Western Front. Not at all a book I liked--he poisoned me right at the beginning by anti-Catholic comments. A sarcastic account of the fictional life of George Winterbourne with whose death in the closing days of World War I the novel begins. The story that follows this opening is much in the form of a biography of the 'hero'. Needless to say, his life is one that starts poorly and goes downhill from there to the point where his final return to the front seems precursor to the denouement of his life. Aldington's passion over the folly and waste of war is expended in this fictional tale of a life much the same. Heroic in name only. sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
One of the great World War I antiwar novels - honest, chilling, and brilliantly satiricalBased on the author's experiences on the Western Front, Richard Aldington's first novel, Deathof a Hero, finally joins the ranks of Penguin Classics. Our hero is George Winterbourne, who enlists in the British Expeditionary Army during the Great War and gets sent to France. After a rash of casualties leads to his promotion through the ranks, he grows increasingly cynical about the war and disillusioned by the hypocrisies of British society. Aldington's writing about Britain's ignorance of the tribulations of its soldiers is among the most biting ever published. Death of a Herovividly evokes the morally degrading nature of combat as it rushes toward its astounding finish.About the author-Richard Aldington (1892-1962) was known as a translator, critic, biographer, and poet of distinction. He joined the British Army in 1916 and was wounded in 1918. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — Carregando... GênerosClassificação decimal de Dewey (CDD)823.912Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos E.U.A. (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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Aztán szerencsére Winterbourne bezupál, és a szöveg is varázsütésre megváltozik. A kötet második fele, az első világháború ábrázolása példaszerű, tiszta, pontos és erős. Érezzük a könnygáz ananászszagát, mi is ott caplatunk a térdig érő sárban, halljuk a srapnelek becsapódásait. Azt hiszem, a két textúra közötti minőségi különbség oka, hogy amíg az első szakasz az ellenszenvből táplálkozott, addig a második a személyes élményből, ennek köszönhetően amíg az első széteső és torz, addig a második feszes és plasztikus. Tanulságos. Vajon miért nem bízták erre az íróra az első részt is, kérdezi magában a naiv olvasó.
Különben meg pacifista regény. De valahogy disszonánsan az. Nem azért, mert az eleje rosszul van megírva – az más lapra tartozik. Hanem mert amíg az első szakasz egy hazug, kétszínű világot mutat be, a második egy olyan létezésnek – a háborúnak – állít emléket, ami véres és értelmetlenül kegyetlen ugyan, de mégis: a maga módján őszinte, átlátható és világos. Áthatja a bajtársiasság, és az a tudat, hogy a háború hülyeség. Paradox, hogy ezért az összhangért magának a háborúnak tartoznak hálával. Talán emiatt éreztem úgy, hogy ez a szöveg legalább annyira nosztalgiával kezeli a világégést, mint ellenszenvvel. Amit persze nem rónék fel neki, enélkül is van gondja elég.
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