Tantalizing 可望不可及: Reading history, learning English

“The ruins of the village of Vaux changed hands thirteen times during March, and yet the fort itself still lay tantalizingly beyond the German reach.”

The above quote is from John Keegan’s (a British military historian) The First World War.  It epitomizes the characteristics of the WWI: stalemate and attrition resulting in enormous casualties for nothing.

There is hardly a day went by without my learning of  how an English word is beautifully and effectively used.  “tantalizingly” here caught my attention.

“Tantalize” originates from Greco-Roman mythology. “Tantalus” was a king who for his sin was condemned to stand on Tantarus up to his chin in water that receded whenever he stooped to drink.  So “tantalize” means “to tease or torment by presenting something to the view and exciting strong desire but continually frustrating the expectation by keeping it out of reach”

The German force very much wanted the fort in Vaux and fought for it ferociously with tenacity and yet couldn’t get it.  可望不可及, so to speak. 

(Many English verbs turn into adjective by adding “ing” to it: ‘tantalize’ is a verb and’ tantalizing’ is adjective)

I was surprised to learn (from Charles) that “serendipity” evolves from an ancient fairy tale.  I bet few people are aware of the origin of “tantalize”.  While I am at “tantalize”, I might as well say something about “tantamount”.

The Lend-Lease is a Bill enacted by Congress, empowering the President to send war supplies to the allied countries fighting the Axis.  This Act was passed (3/11/1941) before America plunged into the war.  It greatly delighted Churchill, who reportedly said the Lend-Lease Act was “tantamount to a declaration of war by the U.S.”

“Tantamount to” is the same as “equivalent to”.

Poppies in Flanders Field: Dr. McGrae will be honored with two statues

I recently wrote a post of “Poppies in Flanders Field” mentioning Dr. John McGrae’s (a Canadian doctor served in WWI in the Western Front) famous poem.  He’ll be honored with two statues: one in Ottawa and one in his home town.

It is of interest that we also read about poppies in the first chapter of Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (the story of WWI).

“The wind plays with our hair; it plays with our words and thoughts.  The three boxes stand in the midst of the glowing, red field-poppies.”

“It might easily have happened that we should not be sitting here on our boxes today.  It came dame near to that.  And so everything is new and brave, red poppies and good food, cigarettes and summer breeze.”

The following are the poignant stanzas of McGrae’s  In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Why read All Quiet on the Western Front?

To read is to find the truth and enjoy the beauty and this applies to science as well as humanity.  We tend to forget that there is beauty in science/mathematics, as Paul Dirac said “God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.”

Books in humanity talk about beautiful people, minds and stories in beautiful language, and above all, the truth.  One only needs to read two chapters, or perhaps one, of All Quiet on the Western Front to know why it was one of the books burned by Hitler’s Nazi regime.  It is a fiction talking about the truth in the battle field and may be some of what I call “savage beauty”.

I picked up the book while reading WWI, but knowledge of WWI is not a prerequisite to enjoy this book.  It is a very small book; one can finish it in a day or two with no interruption or making notes.  I’ll give you a taste of some samples:

Go to the front:
There are rumors of an offense. . . . on the way to the front, they saw polished, brand new coffins.  They still smell of resins, and pine, and the forest.  There are at least a hundred.

“That's a good preparation for the offense,” says Muller, astonished.

“They are for us,” growls Detering.

“Don't talk rat,” says Kat to him angrily.

“You be thankful if you get so much as a coffin,” grins Tjaden, “they'll ship you a water proof sheet for your old Aunt Sally of a carcass.”

What earth means to a soldier:

To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier.  When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often forever.

Earth!--Earth!--Earth!

Earth with thy folds, and hollows, and holes, into which a man by fling himself and crouch down.  In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, thou grantest us the great resisting surge of new-own life.  Our being, almost utterly carried away by the fury of the storm, streams back through our hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones, bury ourselves in thee, and through the long minutes in a mute agony of hope bite into thee with our lips!

A few stories of the Battle of Verdun

Today (Feb. 21) in 1916 German launched the battle of Verdun, which has a series of famous fortresses in France.  When it ended nearly 10 months later French forces prevailed and German forces fell back to the positions where it began before the battle.  The cost was nearly one million casualties both sides combined.  The village of Vaux changed hands thirteen times in March 1916.

General Philippe Petain was made famous during this battle.  Four days (2/25/1916) after German attacked, the strategically important Fort Douaumont fell to the German forces.  At this crucial moment General Petain took charge and gave the famous order “They shall not pass” (“Ils ne passeront pas!”), according to Martin Gilbert’s The First World War.

However, this famous order was generally attributed to General Robert Nivelle, who replaced General Petain half way through the battle.  If this were true, then even the top-rated historian like Martin Gilbert might not get everything right.

“They shall not pass” (“Ils ne passeront pas!”) is an order as famous as MacArthur’s “I shall return” proclaiming during WWII.

Petain met Hitler in 10/1940

When France fell in June 1940, Petain headed the Vichy government that cooperated with Nazi Germany.  Petain should never have grown old; at which time he was already 84-year-old.  He was tried and sentenced to death after the war, but General (then President) de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

Many of the battles during the WWI are named after the rivers, such as Oise, Meuse, Somme, Marne, Aisne.  The war gave these rivers a ‘doleful fame”.   The Battle of Verdun was fought along River Meuse.

Charles de Gaule was taken by German force as a prisoner-of-war during the Battle of Verdun.  Many attempts to escape failed and he was released at the end of the war.

The characteristic of the Battle of Verdun was not unique for the WWI:  Like many other battles, it marked the war of stalemate and attrition.

Why read World War I? Mark Twain’s War Prayer

I wrote this yesterday and on purposely not posted, lest I would be criticized talking about war, not love, on Valentine Day.  Love was in the air and permeated Facebook; one couldn’t click or scroll without reading a love message.

Why read World War I? The answer is to understand the story of civilization of the 20^th century.  It is safe to say that without World War I there wouldn’t have World War II, and that WWII is literary the extension of WWI with a lull of 20-21 years.

One needs to know WWI to understand the collapse of Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire (and the demise of Tsar), the German Empire (and the exile of the Kaiser) and Austro-Hungary Empire.  With the break out of WWI, there went the beautiful Belle Epoque (beautiful era).

The tragedy is that WWI is unnecessary and totally preventable.  It is the arrogance, greed and impetuosity of the emperor, the king, the Kaiser, and the Tsar, who was less guilty, though.

The mass of both Entente (Britain, France, and Russia) and Central Powers (Austro-Hungary, Germany) were consumed by nationalistic and patriotic pathos, making the events all the more tragic; human folly led to the enormous suffering.  The whole country was in delirious excitement and intoxication when the world war came.  No better term than a Chinese phrase, 如醉如狂, to describe the sad scene.

Last September we took the Eurostar train from St.Pancras International station in London to Gare du Nord station in Paris. If we were in Gare du Nord at the outbreak of war we would see the soldiers departing “the train slowly steamed out of the station.  At that moment, quite spontaneously, like a smouldering fire suddenly erupting into roaring flames, an immense clamour, arose as the Marseillaise burst from a thousand throats, . . . The women were throwing kisses and heaped flowers on our convey.”

We walked from the Place de la Concorde along the famous Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomph the last day of our visit to Paris.  We would watch a French cavalry regiment march “very smartly” around the square had we visited the Place de la Concorde almost exactly 100 years earlier and “when artillery passed, the guns were festooned with flowers and women jumped on the limbers to kiss the men.”

The air in St. Petersburg was no less excited and exalted; the crowd knelt and sang the Russian national anthem when the Tsar appeared on the balcony.  Little did anyone know that the Tsar and his family would meet their fate under the hands of the Bolshevik four years later.

The Kaiser addressed to the exuberant and tumultuous crowd from his palace balcony and his pastor led a huge congregation in the recitation of Psalm 130.  The enthusiastic Hitler was among the crowd.

 “It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing. ..”

This is how Mark Twain’s War Prayer satire begins, click this link http://warprayer.org/ to read it.

The War Prayer was never published in Twain’s life time, as he couldn’t find any publisher or magazine to publish it.  Unpatriotic is un-American!  That was the mood of the nation then.  In a letter to a friend in 1905, Twain wrote, “I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time, none but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.”

Twain wrote the war prayer at the end of American Philippine War; unfortunately the Europeans didn’t have the chance to read it before the Great War as it was not published until 1923.

The World War I shouldn’t have happened and the World War II should be fought at all costs.  That will be another post.

Poppies in Flanders Fields and in the Tower of London (and in our yard)

I am writing “Why read WWI?”, but I will post this first as I never finished writing about our London/Paris trip.  Before the trip Tuner alerted us the poppies we’ll see in the Tower of London.

2014 was the 100^th anniversary of the First World War.  There were 888,246 (British dead) ceramic poppies in a powerful display of “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” in the Tower of London.

“Remembrance poppies” came from a poem written by a Canadian surgeon, John McCrae in May 1915, during the second Battle of Ypres. Flanders Field is in the border between Belgium and France.

There were many versions of stories as to under what circumstance he wrote this poem.  According to Martin Gilbert’s The First World War, McGrae was a 42-year-old Canadian doctor, “an author of a book on pathology, he had volunteered as a gunner on the outbreak of war [August 1914], but then transferred to the Royal Canadian Medical Corps.  After two days surrounded by the human wreckage of the German attack, he wrote one of the most frequently quoted English-language poems of the war.”

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Reading this poem, I always listen to my favorite song of “Green Green Grass of Home” again.  Please go to a post in my blog (posted 6/1/2010) in which you can listen to this song sung by Joan Baez and Tom Jones.  The following link is “Listening to green green grass of home on Memorial Day”.

http://doctorjytsai.blogspot.com/2010/09/listening-to-green-green-grass-of-home.html