Picking up the pieces

So many brave young men died in World War I, yet yet the trials for those who survived, both men and women, continued even after the war was over. Somehow Helen Simonson produced a light-hearted novel, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club (2024, out of this serious situation.

During the war, young British women had to step up and do many of the jobs young men had done before the war. Some of them discovered they liked doing these jobs, but when the war was over they were expected to quit and get married, never mind that there were fewer men available to marry. Meanwhile, wounded veterans found themselves unwanted for the many jobs newly available. Soldiers from India who had contributed to the war effort were less welcome in England once the war was over.

Set in the summer of 1919, Simonson's novel centers on Constance Haverhill, who did her part during the war, but now her bookeepping skills are unwanted. She is employed as an aide to a wealthy elderly woman who will soon need her no longer. Mrs. Fog is set to marry a sweetheart from long ago.

Constance doesn't know what she will do with herself, but then she befriends Poppy, an outgoing young woman who rode motorcycles during the war and wants to continue doing the same. She has several friends, female riders or mechanics, with similar frustrated ambitions. Poppy's brother, Harris, was a pilot in the war, but now he has a wounded leg, and the bank job promised to him before the war is no longer available. And although he is a gifted pilot despite his bad leg, nobody wants him flying their planes.

A badly damaged Sopwith Camel, purchased by Poppy, gives Harris incentive to live again, and with Constance as his unexpected flying partner, he begins to see a brighter future for himself. Will that future include Constance?

There are complications, of course, all of which result in an absorbing novel with just the ending readers want.

The right word

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

We think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg more for her legal commentary than her literary commentary, yet she once wrote something that must ring true to writers everywhere: "Even today, when I read, I notice with pleasure when an author has chosen a particular word, a particular place, for the picture it will convey to the readers."

Words matter to a writer, as well as to a discerning reader. Why one word and not another? Why one descriptive phrase and not another? Why set a story in one location and not another? Such choices matter, and often they matter a great deal.

In Muse of Fire, Michael Korda's book about World War I poets, he tells in detail how Siegfried Sassoon influenced changes in one of Wilfred Owen's most famous poems. Even the title was changed dramatically with one word choice. "Anthem for Dead Youth" became "Anthem for Doomed Youth." That single word change made the title more powerful, more mysterious, more memorable.

Sassoon suggested the poem be written in third person, rather than second person, as Owen originally wanted. The poem's first line changed from "What passing bells for you who die in herds?" to "What passing bells for those who die as cattle?" You became those; in herds became as cattle. These changes widened the scope of the poem somehow.

And so on.

The poem remained Owen's, yet Sassoon's editing made it immortal. All this demonstrates the importance of good editing, but it also illustrates Bader's point that a particular word choice can make a world of difference.

The poets' war

World War II produced several novelists of note, including James Jones, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. World War I, however, was the poets' war. It produced one of the greatest war novels of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front, yet poetry still ruled the literary world, even though it was all but dead just a few years later when the second big war erupted.

Michael Korda, the author of a number of wartime histories, including With Wings Like Eagles, has written a fine book about World War I seen through the eyes of its poets, Muse of Fire (2024).

He focuses on six poets who fought in the war and wrote verse about their experiences: Rupert Brook, Alan Seeger, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Only Graves and Sassoon survived the war.

Their poetry changed as the war went on and on. To Brook and Seeger, the only American in the group, the war was a great adventure. "What bloody fun!" Brook wrote in a letter. In one of his best-known poems, he said: "If I should die, think only this of me:/That there's some corner of a foreign field/That is for ever England."

Seeger, related to folk singer Pete Seeger, was even more romantic about combat. "I have a rendezvous with death ...," he wrote. And "that rare privilege of dying well."

The others viewed the war more realistically. No less patriotic that the other two, they nevertheless saw the war as pointless and a terrible waste of human life.

They were also shockingly blunt about what soldiers did in war. Writing about killing an enemy soldier with a bayonet, Sassoon wrote: "Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this;/That in good fury he may feel/The body where he sets his heel/Quail from your downward darting kiss." In another poem he wrote the phrase, "The place was rotten with dead."

Authorities strictly censored letters, books and anything else written about what was actually going on in the trenches. Yet for whatever reason — perhaps because the censors had little patience for poetry — the poems of these men somehow got through.

Translater, traitor?

There is an Italian adage that goes, "Traduttore, traditore." It means "Translator, traitor," but of course, that is a translation.

It means simply that something is always lost in translation. Of course, if you are someone who needs the translation because you can't read the original language, then you will never know if the translator is really a traitor or not.

I have read many books that have been translated into English. I am presently in the middle of one that has been translated from Icelandic. I think it's a terrific novel, but am I missing something? I will never know if the translation has betrayed the original or not.

I have mentioned in this blog that I sometimes write and even preach sermons, and a few months ago I preached one that relates to this topic. (Actually all sermons relate to the subject because all sermons are based on translations of either Hebrew or Greek texts. We can always wonder, what has been lost in translation?)

I found that Job 35:10 has been translated very differently in different Bible translations. For example, the New International Version translates it as "But no one says, 'Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night ...'"

The Complete Jewish Bible says that God "causes glad songs to ring out at night.," which is more specific than simply "songs." The Good News Bible puts it this way: "God their Creator gives them hope in their darkest hours."

The New Catholic Bible makes it more personal: God "protects me during the night." In the New Revised Standard Version, God "gives strength in the night."

Then there is The Message, which says, "God puts spontaneous songs in their hearts."

That's the same Hebrew text translated six very different ways. Some mention songs; others do not. Some mention the night; others do not. Some simply translate the metaphor; others attempt to interpret the metaphor. I liked all six translations, and I preached six mini sermons, one on each of them.

Are all six translators traitors to the original? Or does each bring out something different that was there all along?

A place to tarry

When dining in a restaurant, the server will often place the check on your table and say something like, "There's no hurry." We already know this, of course, and when I have had a good conversation partner, I have sometimes sat at the table for two hours or more. During busy times, however, when people are lined up waiting for a table, the management probably wants desperately for you to move on, whatever the servers might say.

Speed is a priority at a number of business, such as the one that promises a "10 minute oil change." Nobody likes standing in a long line at the grocery store or sitting in a crowded waiting room at a doctor's office.

So I am impressed by the slogan of the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago: "Stranger, here you will do well to tarry, Here our greatest good is pleasure." The line comes from Epicurus in reference to his school, but it seems ideal for a bookstore. The more time people spend in a bookstore, the more books they are likely to find that they cannot resist.

And while books are often about instruction and reference and guidance, they are mostly about pleasure. We usually read what we enjoy reading.

The best bookstores encourage customers to stick around. They have chairs, for example. They serve coffee. Some have cats or even dogs. Some have authors signing books or giving talks. Children's departments have story times, giving parents a chance to browse. The more books a store has, the more time book lovers are likely to spend there, and of course the more money they are likely to spend.

One does wonder, however, whether the "here you will do well to tarry" motto still applies as closing time approaches.

A courtesan's story

Juhea Kim's sweeping novel Beasts of a Little Land (2021) covers much of 20th century Korean history, mostly from the point of view of a courtesan named Jade. The novel all but ignores the Korean War, oddly enough, focusing mostly on the years of Japanese occupation, which ended with Japan's defeat in World War II, although the story continues to 1965.

Jade is just 10 years old in 1918. Before long she becomes an apprentice courtesan, training to entertain wealthy men. She develops into a beauty, beloved by many, including two boys closer to her own age who both want more from her than she can give.

JungHo is a homeless ruffian when he befriends Jade. He later becomes a communist enforcer, even though he lacks communist sympathies, returning from time to time to help Jade until, many years later, she is in a position to try to help him.

HanChol meets Jade as a teenager who takes Jade home each night in his rickshaw. They become lovers, though she eventually must reject him. He goes on to become one of the wealthiest men in postwar Korea, yet never far from Jade's mind.

Although there is much here about hunting tigers, the human beasts in this little land are mainly the Japanese oppressors, who try to dominate every aspect of Korean culture and commerce.

This is a powerful story told with grace by the young author, now a Princeton grad living in the United States. "Death was such a small price to pay for life," she writes near the end, and her novel makes you believe it.

The soul laid bare

Guy de Maupassant

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

Guy de Maupassant

Are those words by Guy de Maupassant really true? Or is the opposite true? Are spoken words more or less likely to be truer than written words?

Since the great French writer of short stories said those words, technology has confused matters even more. Now we have the telephone, allowing us to hear words without the benefit of seeing the face saying them. We have email and texting, allowing spontaneous reactions, which may often be more truthful because the writer often acts before thinking of a more diplomatic way of saying what was said.

Certainly we can be dazzled and deceived by words spoken to our face, but can't we also be dazzled and deceived by words written on paper? Writers have more time to deliberately craft their words than speakers do. Written language, in fact, is better designed for dazzling, at least in the hands of a skilled writer, than plain speech is. As with texts and emails, people tend to speak before they have thought it through, not giving themselves time to consider the best way to say something.

People often lay the soul bear in arguments or when making cruel jokes that they later regret. On the other hand, it may be easier to write a Dear John letter (or email) than to break up a relationship in person. It may also be easier for someone to say "I love you" in writing. Very soon people will be sending each other valentines to say things they cannot bring themselves to say in person.

I don't know if Guy de Maupassant got it right or not.