Above are a few examples of the numerous editions of Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five (or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death), compiled by Emily Temple (2019) and found in the Literary Hub article, The 50 Best Slaughterhouse Five Covers from Around Around the World.
From upper left to lower right (publisher, language, date): Vintage Classics (USA) 2024, Points (French), 2016, Knygos (Lithuanian), 2017, Mondadori (Italian), 1988.
The Rosy Spade meme has taken me to some pretty strange places since the first day I envisioned it, on February 13th of this year. And, it's been a long and winding road. There is no real way of rationalizing this journey. I seem to be unconsciously following some intuited breadcrumb trail with no consciously known goal. And, weirdly enough, those dates, February 13 and 14, seem to keep popping up throughout my research like little red flags, although not necessarily in a Friday the 13th nor a Valentine's Day aspect..
Recently, the name Kurt Vonnegut came to me... as I compulsively grappled with how best to describe the present (absurd) state of American affairs (an unfortunate factor that can't be dismissed). It's as if someone whispered it in my ear. Eureka!, I thought, Kurt Vonnegut, exactly. The second thought that came to my mind was Slaughterhouse Five, a novel I once read in my rebellious, energetic youth... a time when many of us still believed everything could, should, and would eventually make sense. Vonnegut warned us about that delusion. But, like most children, we didn't listen.
Inset left is a photo of Vonnegut with his signature unfiltered Pall Mall which he unapologetically chain-smoked until his (unrelated) death at the age of 84.
As it happened, in keeping with the Rosy Spade's "birthday," February 13 & 14 would put in an appearance once again... in the darkest of ways. Read on.
Kurt Vonnegut believed in the power of art. If he hadn't he would never have had the courage, stamina or creative fire to complete his 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse Five, based upon his horrifying experiences during the bombing of Dresden (which began on the night of February 13, and continued throughout February 14, till the 15th, 1945) near the end of World War II; an undertaking which took him over 20 years to accomplish.
It is now considered the pre-eminent anti-war novel of its time... possibly, of all time. And it's numerous, international incarnations over the past 57 years give testament to the novel's lasting power and relevance. But, it came at a great cost. The memory of the harrowing experience which compelled Vonnegut to write the novel never entirely left him.
Inset right is the cover of the Mladá fronta (Czech) edition from 1973. It has a great graphic treatment which seems to add it's own dimension to the story. And, you might say, this is true across the board. Art interprets art. Does language play any part in this process? Take, for instance, the most painterly and elegant of the editions, the French edition, with the less harsh-sounding title of "Abattoir 5."
Abattoir, Abatorul, Bitúnok, Jatka, Lò mổ, Matadouro, Mattatoio, Mezbaha, Rzeźnia Schlachthof, Slakthus, Skerdykla, Slachthuis, Slagtehal, Teurastamo... Who knew there were so many diverse ways to say the word "slaughterhouse"?
Inset left is a German edition published by HoCa-Belletristik in 2016. Note it's sophisticat design but somewhat grim image ... and then compare it to the Lithuanian edition with the huge, cartoonish bird, or the Italian edition with the comic book action graphic. While each is powerful in its own way, they might be covers from different novels altogether.
Importantly, Slaughterhouse Five is a difficult novel to portray in a single graphic image. It is not your standard novel. Below is its (lengthy) title page, fashioned like a prose poem and not as straightforward as we might wish. It almost stands as a reminder: what you are about to read is not an ordinary novel; it is intended to represent a new literary (schizoid) art form.*
____________________________________________________________________________________________
.webp)
Slaughterhouse-Five
OR THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE:
A DUTY DANCE WITH DEATH BY
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
A FOURTH-GENERATION GERMAN-AMERICAN
NOW LIVING IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES
ON CAPE COD (AND SMOKING TOO MUCH),
WHO AS AN AMERICAN INFANTRY SCOUT
HORS DE COMBAT,
AS A PRISONER OF WAR,
WITNESSED THE FIRE-BOMBING
OF DRESDEN, GERMANY,
“THE FLORENCE OF THE ELBE,”
A LONG TIME AGO,
AND SURVIVED TO TELL THE TALE.
THIS IS A NOVEL SOMEWHAT IN THE
TELEGRAPHIC SCHIZOPHRENIC MANNER
OF TALES OF THE PLANET TRALFAMADORE,
WHERE THE FLYING SAUCERS COME FROM.
PEACE.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
So, although at its heart it is an anti-war story, it is a also a historical novel based on fact. It is a semi-biographical novel. It is also, very possibly, a thinly-veiled case-study of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But, beyond that, it is an existentialist, absurdist commentary and a satire.
And, yet, what most of the Slaughterhouse 5 book jackets fail to convey, is that the novel is also, both in spirit and fact, a science-fiction tale. It has all the qualifying elements: time travel, an exoplanet and an alien abduction involving some very freaky extraterrestrials.How freaky? Well, the Vintage Press edition introducing this post - the falling hand with the central eye - actually represents an alien intelligence.
Inset left is one book jacket which carries the science fiction theme further. In it's almost childlike illustration we're confronted by a destitute soldier crouching next to what appears to be a unusual plant-like creature with a body resembling a toilet bowel plunger topped by a hand-shaped head with a single green eye in the center. This entity is a Tralfamadorian who (pun intended?) helps Billy Pilgrim become "unstuck" in time. In other words, unless the creature is in disguise, it is clearly a metaphor.**
Tralfamadore is also discussed in this Post-Mac Blues cross-post: A Post-Birthday Greeting from Tralfamadore.
(Continued below the break...)
____________________________________________________________________________________________
"Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes…
People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore. I’ve finished my book now. The next one I write is going to be fun. This one is a failure, and it had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt."
- Kurt Vonnegut from the first chapter of Slaughterhouse 5; a sort of a wandering introduction he continues from the title page (shown above).
His choice of metaphor here is the biblical tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Via Wiki: "God then rains sulfur (or brimstone) and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah and all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and "what grew on the ground" (Genesis 19:24–25). Lot and his two daughters are saved, but Lot's wife disregards the angels' warning, looks back, and is turned into a pillar of salt."
He compares himself to Lot's wife, a woman he loves for her humanity. Inset right is a marble statue of Lot’s Wife by Sir William Hamo Thornycroft, R. A., 1877, currently on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
In general, the story of Lot is a misogynistic, Abrahamic parable; the "wife" isn't even given a name until medieval Christianity. Meanwhile, Lot, at one point, is willing to pimp his daughters to appease an unruly crowd. However, his wife - we are to understand - was a "bad" woman. How bad? Inhospitable? As for the "sin" of Sodom while originally a vague reference to wickedness, later Christians embellished it with homophobic innuendos - hence, the word sodomy was born. For an alternative reading of Lot's parable, see this article.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
"It wasn’t safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5.
"Dresden remained ablaze for weeks. Bergander recalled how unceremoniously the dead were treated. Fear of disease led the Germans to pile the corpses on top of iron grates, soak them with benzene, and cremate them. SS personnel played a key role in creating these makeshift funeral pyres. The smell permeated everything. Allied prisoners of war were forced to help extract bodies from the rubble. We know of at least one case where an American POW was executed, purportedly for looting. Mass graves became the final resting places for thousands."
- A description of the firebombing and its aftermath in Dresden, 1945, quoted from the article, Apocalypse in Dresden, February 1945, by Jason Dawsey for the National WWII Museum. Dawsey's descriptions of the hellscape are graphically genteel compared to some I've read. But, I think we can all agree that Dresden was a hellscape created by the RAF and their American allies.
Tragically, it was neither the first nor last hellscape of WWII and in terms of loss of life and culture, not the most extensive. The fascist regime in Germany produced the devastations of Daschau where "25,613 prisoners are believed to have been murdered."
"As U.S. Army troops neared the Dachau sub-camp at Landsberg on 27 April 1945, the SS officer in charge ordered that 4,000 prisoners be murdered. Windows and doors of their huts were nailed shut. The buildings were then doused with gasoline and set afire. Prisoners who were naked or nearly so were burned to death, while some managed to crawl out of the buildings before dying. Earlier that day, as Wehrmacht troops withdrew from Landsberg am Lech, townspeople hung white sheets from their windows. Infuriated SS troops dragged German civilians from their homes and hanged them from trees."
But, we must not forget Warsaw:
"The destruction of Warsaw was practically unparalleled in the Second World War, with it being noted that 'Perhaps no city suffered more than Warsaw during World War II', with historian Alexandra Richie stating that 'The destruction of Warsaw was unique even in the terrible history of the Second World War'."
"The Warsaw Uprising was launched by the Polish Home Army on August 1, 1944, as part of Operation Tempest. In response, under orders from Heinrich Himmler, Warsaw was kept under ceaseless barrage by Nazi artillery and air power for sixty-three days and nights."
Ultimately, 80 to 90% of the city was destroyed and hundreds of thousands of citizens, were deported to concentration camps.
In regard to the inset photos, the first (right) is not from Dresden but documents the Eastern Front and was shot by the young German photographer, Herbert Tobias, first mentioned mentioned on PMB.***
The second photo inset right was found in this excellent Guardian article. The photo of Warsaw was sourced from the Wiki entry.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
 |
| A monument in Nagasaki marking the exact spot - the hypocenter - of the explosion. |
"The effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000 to 166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki; roughly half the deaths occurred on the first day. For months afterward, many people continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. Despite Hiroshima's sizable military garrison, estimated at 24,000 troops, some 90% of the dead were civilians."****
- But, I've saved the worse atrocities for last: hellscapes the world had not witnessed in the past which were wrought by atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
by American forces August 6 and 9, 1945.
"The term "atomic bomb literature" came into wide use in the 1960s. Writings affiliated with their genre can include diaries, testimonial or documentary accounts, and fictional works like poetry, dramas, prose writings or manga about the bombings and their aftermath."
"Yōko Ōta's short story Kaitei no yō na hikari ('A light the as if from the depths') was published on 30 August, 1945, in The Asahi Shimbun, making it the first published literary text on the atomic bomb. The following month, by directive of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, the censorship of topics like the atomic bomb in the media came into operation, with the effect that books dealing with this topic, like a poetry collection of Sadako Kurihara or Yōko Ōta's novel City of Corpses, initially appeared only in abridged form."
- Were you aware of Japanese Atomic Bomb literature? If not, you can probably thank the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (General Douglas MacArthur) for this absence... this erasure during the 1950s. Question: How many translations exist now?
"Let all the souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil."
This epitaph appears on the monument inset left above, which is Memorial Cenotaph at the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park. It holds the names of all those who died during the city's destruction. It also holds the Peace Flame.
"The Peace Flame is another monument to the victims of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, but it has an additional symbolic purpose. The flame has burned continuously since it was lit in 1964 and will remain lit until all nuclear bombs on the planet are destroyed and the planet is free from the threat of nuclear annihilation."
- It is a beautiful gesture and a noble, humanitarian thought. But, beauty cannot save us if the we turn to it a blind eye, a deaf ear and a shuttered mind...
***
...which was my prompt to dive into the last section of this post: the loss of art, literature and architecture during WWII. That is, until I realized there was too much material.
So, what was one Kurt Vonnegut post has morphed into four, counting the one on PMB. And, as they are part of the VDOTD series, what I initially assumed was a short trip has taken the better part of a year. I continue to follow the breadcrumbs...
I'm going to let this post fly. Footnotes are still to come and there will no doubt be revisions. Kurt Vonnegut liked to say he had a lot to talk about, and I can attest to that!
____________________________________________________________________________________________
*
**
***
**** From the Wiki article on WW2 casualties: "Several categories are used to classify World War II casualties, mainly to separate between military people and civilians. Due to the broad effects of war-induced famines, genocides like the Holocaust, and strategic bombings, civilian casualties frequently outnumbered military fatalities."
**
No comments:
Post a Comment