Novel
Under Fire
Le Feu
Henri Barbusse · 1916
Opening lines
La Dent du Midi, l’Aiguille Verte et le Mont Blanc font face aux figures exsangues émergeant des couvertures alignées sur la galerie du sanatorium.
The Dent du Midi, the Aiguille Verte and Mont Blanc stand opposite the bloodless faces emerging from the blankets lined up along the gallery of the sanatorium.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
The narrator shares the life of a squad of French infantrymen at the front: a peasant, a carter, a delivery boy, a miner, a pharmacist and others besides, whom the close quarters of the trenches bring together and end up blurring into one another. The book moves forward episode by episode, like a campaign diary, and lets their conversations be heard in the soldiers' slang.
Context
The novel first appeared as a serial in L'Œuvre from 3 August 1916, then in volume form with Flammarion in December, the very month in which it received the Prix Goncourt, while the war was still going on. Soldiers at the front recognised themselves in it; the right-wing press, on the contrary, reproached it for not celebrating heroism, and its slang as well as its hostility to the military institution caused a scandal.
Who it is for
Chapters that can be read separately, like the pages of a notebook; the soldiers speak the slang of the trenches, which is easier to understand read aloud.
Prizes and reception
Hemingway cited it as an example; the book appeared in English as early as 1917 under the title Under Fire, retranslated by Robin Buss in 2003.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.