Abstract
The disenchantment with armed conflict is nowadays reflected in countless books of an agnostic type and in Christian prayers. In different ways they tell us that war is bad. It is also meaningless. M. G. Stern’s masterpiece Il Sergente nella Neve takes us on the retreat of Italian troops from the Russian front in 1943. The sufferings of the Alpine troops in the immense waste and cold of the steppe are given us in so realistic manner, without pathos and exaggeration, that we are tempted to generalise the tale. Imbeciles drive men and beasts into battles from which they are scrupulously absent. The men curse and submit. We are a long way from Homer as well as from the Crusades.
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Notes
The most accessible biography and evaluation of the man and his work is Michael Scammell’s Solzhenitsyn (1985).
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© 1989 Ulrich Simon
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Simon, U. (1989). The Transcendence of War. In: Pity and Terror. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20343-7_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20343-7_16
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-20345-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20343-7
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