A Book about Spring and Youth

[breathedout]

The outbreak of war had also been a notable experience for Kresten [Andresen, a Danish-speaking conscript into the Austro-Hungarian army]. He had just put the finishing touches to a manuscript: “A Book about Spring and Youth.” It was a sort of long prose poem about folk-life, nature and young love (or rather, a longing for young love). The manuscript itself was a kind of act of love, with its pale blue cover, its elegantly coloured vignettes and illuminated capitals—all of which he had done himself. The lines with which he ended his work were these: “A bell falls silent, and then another, and another. The bells are falling silent more and more, their sounds becoming fainter and fainter, dying away until they are completely silent. Death, where are thy spoils? Hell, where is thy victory?” At the very moment he was writing these last words his father entered the room and told him that mobilisation had started. So, at the bottom of the very last clean page of the manuscript, Kresten added a few lines: “O God, have mercy on those of us going, and who knows when we shall return!”

—Peter Englund, The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War

OK, update: this book is fantastic. Reminder: Kresten Andresen was a real person, and this whole story is (Kresten claimed) absolutely true. It is at least true that Kresten wrote and illustrated “A Book about Spring and Youth” during the summer of 1914, even if his poetic and idealistic nature tends to make one question the exact timing of the way in which he learned about the mobilisation. For my purposes, though, stuff like this is absolutely perfect, because I care much less about macrocosmic causes and global truths, and much more about what the war was like for people living it, and the stories they told themselves about what was happening to them, as it happened. So Englund’s approach, of focusing on first-hand accounts from twenty different ordinary people, is pretty much solid gold as far as I’m concerned, especially since he back-fills his sources’ chaotic, in-the-moment accounts with some amount of historical context for his readers.

I also love that he’s covering more than just the Western Front, and that his stable of narrative sources includes many women, older people, younger people (12-year-old German schoolgirl Elfriede Kuhr is thus far fascinating), and people from ethnic and lingual minorities (such as 23-year-old Kresten, who hailed from Jutland, spoke Danish, and considered himself a Dane, but was technically a German citizen and so was conscripted into the army). I have, unsurprisingly, a particular soft spot for 49-year-old Scot Sarah MacNaughtan, field aid worker, who prior to the war “lives alone, unmarried and childless … has travelled a great deal, frequently in trying conditions, and … writes books.”

[Re-sharing to people's reading pages because five years later The Beauty and the Sorrow continues to be invaluable. As far as I'm concerned, if you read one book about WWI, read this one. Incidentally, Kresten later became one of several models for Daniel MacIntyre in A Hundred Hours, although by the time I was done rewriting & editing, the final version of the character doesn't bear him much of a resemblance.]

Comments

[felinejumper]

All of your book posts are so dangerous for me! Added with anticipation to my teetering mental 2019 TBR.

[breathedout]

It's SO GOOD. And SUCH a useful resource if you're ever writing anything set during that time. It gives you a sense of voice and everyday, on-the-ground experience that more traditional histories just don't.

[tomato_greens]

Ah, this is an extremely convincing recommendation - do you mind if I ask, what does Elfriede Kuhr have to say that you find so fascinating?

[breathedout]

Elfriede's arc isn't one I've revisited as recently as, say, Sarah MacNaughtan's (MacNaughtan is one model for the protagonist of my current big novel project), so my memory of her isn't as strong as it would have been back when I originally posted this in 2013. But what I remember about her narration is just the in-between level on which she understands what's going on: she's at that brink between childhood and adolescence/adulthood, and her priorities, the way she thinks about the war, really reflect that. Her world is still so circumscribed (her diary entries involve things like making cakes with her grandmother), yet she's dealing directly with events that are so huge and far-reaching. It's formative, for her, quite literally.

[anelith]

"I care much less about macrocosmic causes and global truths, and much more about what the war was like for people living it, and the stories they told themselves about what was happening to them, as it happened."

Yes to this! This is something I've been thinking about a lot over the past few years, not so much for my reading life (I'm not much of a non-fiction reader) but just in general when it comes to the study of history. Watching my kids "learn" history over the course of their K-12 education has made me yearn for a revolution in the way history is taught. SO MUCH WASTED TIME AND EFFORT spent in the classroom going over facts they don't remember beyond the final exam. What I find in conversation with them is they remember history far better when there are personal stories that hook together with the broader viewpoint. And fiction can do something similar (hopefully with some level of accuracy). Argh, sorry to dump my education rant on your book rec, but it hit a nerve!

[breathedout]

Oh, no apologies necessary at all! I totally agree: I only really discovered my love of digging into historical research holes when I discovered Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and her focus on recreating the everyday lives of historical people through examination of the objects they used. Reading The Age of Homespun—which isn't even about a period I'm particularly interested in!—it was like a switch flipped in me, and suddenly I understood how history can be fascinating. These days, I have more of a tolerance for also understanding the dates etc., the 60,000-foot view, because it does help to understand what was going on for people on the ground. But the most interesting part is still always the people-level stuff. At least for me, and I think for a lot of people.

[sea_changed]

Sorry to barge in, but this is a topic I also spend a lot of time thinking about: what exactly is interesting about history, and how can that be conveyed to kids in school? (I have no experience with the K-12 system, but I TA first-year college history classes, where I absolutely see the same struggles that you (anelith) talk about.) I completely agree that personal stories are the way to go: what were people’s lives like? How were they affected by the big history-making events that took place—but also, how were they affected by what clothes they wore? What food they ate? What they were expected to do with their lives? I don’t know how to best convey that in a classroom setting that is so boxed in by the names-and-dates version of history, but gosh, at this point, what do we have to lose by trying?

All of which is to say, the Englund book looks fascinating, and exactly what I look for in my history. (Ulrich as well—her Midwife’s Tale is extraordinary. I remember weeping in public while reading the end of it, because Ulrich makes you care so deeply about this unknown, unextraordinary woman who lived two hundred years ago.)

[breathedout]

I couldn't agree more. The dates-and-battles model of teaching history conveys so little information, and inspires so little interest; it seems like an obvious lose/lose, and yet we keep at it.

And I actually own Midwife's Tale but haven't read it yet! This conversation is motivating me to move it up my ever-shifting queue.