Pierre Gascar: Inside the forest, beyond the touch of war

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

French writers on war and peace

Pierre Gascar: A kind of temple. The war had stopped at the door.

Pierre Gascar: One could read the whole world kindling another war

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Pierre Gascar
The Fugitive
Translated be Merloyd Lawrence

He was escaping from the war, from the landscapes altered by it, from the static light of fear. He was escaping the Germany of today, and going back to the one which, through all the battles and the horror, was secretly pursuing its dream of rushing springs.

Civilian clothes would have made his flight easier. He could have followed the roads. But then he would not have known the sense of primordial liberty, the happiness which he had experienced that morning, in the forest which had suddenly emerged straight, tall and brightly lit from his memory, and not only from his own, but from the memories which were being awakened at this moment, in thousands of men, by the sadness of dying.

On the horizon was the beginning of a forest. It was then that a sense of peace had begun to come back to him, as though, once inside the forest, Paul had put himself out of reach of the town, out of touch with the war.

She looked back at the window. Some trees with young leaves stirred, quite close by. Soon, smoke would begin rising behind these trees, there would be a roar in the sky, as though walls were crumbling in the distance: the war, moving onwards, through woods and fields, breaking into the zones of silence….