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

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

French writers on war and peace

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

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

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Pierre Gascar
The Fugitive
Translated be Merloyd Lawrence

She knew he would try to talk about her mother, or her brother who had been killed in the beginning of the eastern campaign. Why couldn’t he leave them in peace! There would be enough dead tomorrow, without reviving those of yesterday. The war was taking its course and the high-sounding ideals they were throwing at one another were already posthumous ones.

Time, momentarily blotted out, began again. After today, there would be another day, then another and another, without end. The sounds of war would fade away completely. People would open their doors.

The silence seemed even deeper than outdoors, where, however, nothing was rustling or moving at that hour. A room outside of time. The war had stopped at the door. A kind of temple.

From high on the wooden hillside, he had seen a landscape stricken by death, and dazzling. The truth of silence.