Three essays on judgments whose speakers never pay their cost, the enemy who receives a name only after the knife, and the truthful communiqué that cannot record the one person who dies inside its quiet.
Remarque’s novel follows the distance between words and the bodies in which words are realized: teacher and pupil, map and trench, enemy and named printer, communiqué and dead soldier. These readings do not convert comradeship into a justification for the machinery that made it necessary.
Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, first published in 1929. Full-book spoilers; this series addresses the novel rather than its film adaptations.
Kantorek’s sincere guidance is paid for by pupils’ bodies; the same training that damages them also creates the comradeship by which they survive.
Paul’s knife reaches an enemy before profession, family, and name can return him to personhood; the promises made afterward have nowhere to stand.
“All quiet” truthfully measures an unmoved front and cannot measure Paul; when no other record remains, its narrow truth becomes the entire day.
三篇文章，从判断者无需支付的代价、刀落下以后才得到名字的敌人，到完全真实、却无法记录死在“无事”之中的那个人的战报。
雷马克追踪的是词语与词语兑现之身体之间的距离：教师与学生、地图与战壕、敌人与有名字的排字工、战报与死去的士兵。这组文章不会用战友情替制造它的机器辩护。
本文依据朱雯译本（上海人民出版社／世纪文景 2017 修订版），人名从该本。另有姜乙、顏徽玲译本通行。只处理小说，不涉及电影版。