#wwi

In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable. ↗

— Robert Hughes

#industrialization #language #wwi #age

I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#aryans #demon #hitler #perspective #propaganda

In the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were well employed in killing each other, but that sensible men would keep out of their way while they were doing it. Fortunately this outlook, which is reminiscent of Bentham, has become rare in this age, which recognizes that heroism has a value independent of its utility. The Last Survivor of a Dead Epoch ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#war #wwii #age

Integrating the beauty of seasonal change into the residence was a concept that remains true even today even in the more cramped, inner city machiya. ↗

— Judith Clancy

#food #history #japan #kyoto #machiya

Mute in that golden silence hung with green, Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyes Remembrance of all beauty that has been, And stillness from the pools of Paradise. ↗

— Siegfried Sassoon

#poetry #sassoon #world-war-one #wwi #beauty

I keep such music in my brain No din this side of death can quell; Glory exulting over pain, And beauty, garlanded in hell. ↗

— Siegfried Sassoon

#beauty

At this period, too, Leningraders resorted to their most desperate food substitutes, scraping dried glue from the underside of wallpaper and boiling up shoes and belts. (Tannery processes had changed, they discovered, since the days of Amundsen and Nansen, and the leather remained tough and inedible.) ↗

— Anna Reid

#polar-exploration #siege #starvation #wwii #change

I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. And he never failed me. ↗

— Diet Eman

#holocaust #jesus-christ #prison #resistance #righteous

One of the most oft-quoted records of the siege, scribbled in pencil over the pages of a pocket address book, is that kept by twelve-year-old Tanya Savicheva: 28 December 1941 at 12.30 a.m. – Zhenya died. 25 January 1942 at 3 p.m. – Granny died. 17 March at 5 a.m. – Lyoka died. 13 April at 2 a.m. – Uncle Vasya died. 10 May at 4 p.m. – Uncle Lyosha died. 13 May at 7.30 a.m. – Mama died. The Savichevs are dead. Everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left. ↗

— Anna Reid

#siege #starvation #war #wwii #death

It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe. ↗

— Eva Ibbotson

#summer #war #wwii #death