Читать книгу All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque - Страница 17

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all the older men are linked up with their previous life. they have wives, chil-dren, occupations, and interests, they have a background which is so strong that the war cannot obliterate it.

what has kan-torek written to you?

ha! we are the iron youth!

we all smile bitterly. we are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? youth? that is long ago. we are old folk.

it is strange to think that at home in the drawer of my writing table lies the beginning of a play called “saul” and a bundle of poems. many an evening I worked over them--we all did something of the kind--but that has become so unreal to me I cannot comprehend it any more. our early life is cut off from the moment we came here, and that without our lifting a hand.

for us young men of twenty everything is extraordinarily vague, for kropp, mu ̈ller, leer and for me.