The perfect sentence? (entry in the Great Canadian One-Liner Write-Off)

Human communication is a miracle. It is perhaps the most convincing evidence that there might be a God or gods. We convey information to each other that is so rich and so complex, it makes it possible to believe that we have been touched by the divine.

All animals communicate, of course, and so do plants. But they appear to tell each other only about what is. Whales and dolphins and chimpanzees and others guide each other to good spots to feed or give birth, and they tell each other how to crack open nuts or catch fish. Tobacco plants dust each other with aspirin to warn of approaching bugs. But the communication of these and other non-human lifeforms appears to be limited to information about their needs now, in the moment in which they are communicating.

Unless researchers conclude otherwise one day, it appears that humans alone are able to tell each other of what was ("It was the best of times . . .") and what might have been ("Once upon a time . . ."), of what might yet be ("To boldly go where no one has gone before . . .") and what should be ("I have a dream . . ."). Some people are better at expressing themselves than others, but we are each of us blessed with the abilities to convey some of how we think or feel, and to understand some of what others are conveying to us.

Our uses of these gifts reflect a dazzling variety. Sometimes we use silence and sometimes gestures. Sometimes we use words that makes sense and other times we use words that defy logic. ("Flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same thing, as do "I could care less" and "I couldn't care less.") We talk and write to each other in hundreds of languages and dialects. And even when we speak in what seems to be the same tongue, we shape it to our own will. The brutal German of Hitler is not the lyrical German of Austrian pop star Falco ("Rock Me Amadeus"), and the colorless English of Eminem is not the rainbow-rich English of Shakespeare.

We can use language to express joy. Consider the exultation in Anita O'Day's voice as she sings the line "You're Lester Young" in Cole Porter's song "You're the Top." You don't have to know that Young was a pioneering jazz genius to know she means it as a compliment. You don't even have to understand the words to know she's thrilled to be singing them.

And we can express optimism in the face of what could otherwise be deadening despair. Consider Alexander Solzhenitsyn's suggestion in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich that after a prisoner has spent a day in a harsh Siberian prison camp struggling to keep from freezing and starving while worrying about whether he will be able to work quickly enough to keep the guards from shooting him, he can look forward to 3,653 other such days and still not be crushed. It was "a day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day."

There are troves of these and countless other treasures, and it is certainly foolish to try to single out one. Nonetheless: In All Quiet On the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque has crafted a masterpiece of gemlike prose with one crowning sentence that likely is the most profound and moving expression in human history. At least three translations exist, but this is about the one that is most elegant. The sentence is not hopeful or in any other way positive, unless it sparks in someone who reads it an understanding that will lead somehow to peace in a moment when there could instead have been war.

That we are capable of such miracles is to be hoped. But Remarque's unflinching depiction of the agonies we are capable of inflicting on each other at our worst makes it challenging to cling to such hopes about us at our best. This is because in that one extraordinary sentence, Remarque and his English-language translator, A.W. Wheen, have suggested all that death can do to a person. They have implied all that we can do to each other to inflict death's ravages before Nature would have done so without our help. And in just ten words they have hinted at all the savagery of which we are capable, but of which Nature almost never is.

The sentence comes early in Remarque's compact novel, which is as much the masterpiece that it is widely hailed as being. It is the story of Paul Baumer, a young German soldier during the First World War. He and his comrades scramble to survive gas attacks and artillery bombardments. They scrounge food to supplement their meager rations. Because the fighting is fairly close to their homes, they are able to return to their families for brief visits. And they see death and devastation on a scale no one had seen before. All this and they are only just growing out of their teens.

But the war has aged them. Their country has taken to calling them "Iron Youth" for propaganda purposes, and their families and friends hold that view of them as well. But Paul and his comrades know better: "Iron Youth! Iron Youth! We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk."

One valuable lesson these "old folk" have learned is that dirt can save them. "Earth with thy folds, and hollows, and holes, into which a man may 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-won life."

Of the hardships and tortures these young soldiers endure, one of the worst is listening helplessly to the anguished and unending death cries of animals that have been conscripted by their human masters. "But this appalling noise, these groans and screams penetrate, they penetrate everywhere.

"We can bear almost anything. But now the sweat breaks out on us. We must get up and run no matter where, but where these cries can no longer be heard. And it is not men, only horses."

Amid those and many other passages of spare and polished prose, there is the sentence. Paul is at an Army hospital visiting Franz Kemmerich, a friend of his from childhood. He recognizes in the bloodied and diminished body that lies before him the man who was his playmate and now is his comrade-in-arms. But his friend's life-draining wounds have taken from Franz so much that Paul should have been able to see, and would have seen in a world without war.

"He it was and yet he it was no longer."




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This is an entry in the "One Liner" Write-Off hosted by Epinions stars Caleo and elvisdo, both of whom are Canadians, which is probably just a happy coincidence. Caleo has designed an impressive Web page at http://www.geocities.com/bkclark1/index.html

Participants, links to whose profile pages are included on my profile page, include:
akaMum
Bijou
bluehawq
Caleo
dandj
Debbie26
dlamarrx
elvisdo
itztru
jkkelley
KateTPZ
KingJFS
kristinafh
kurt_messick
ladydagney1
Lagavulin
lessaleigh
levda
machkick
mellkinwa
Nicholmere
NFP
nobody_knows
porcelina22
repulsemonkey
Sloucho
SMITHWOODSIDE
Solid_Snake
telefrog
and Zeira. They have all written lines worth reading.