Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms.

I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates....

It stormed all that day. The wind drove down the rain and everywhere there was standing water and mud. The plaster of the broken houses was gray and wet. Late in the afternoon the rain stopped and from the number two post I saw the bare wet autumn country with clouds over the tops of the hills and the straw screening over the roads wet and dripping. The sun came out once before it went down and shone on the bare woods beyond the ridge. (Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929, pp. 196-97).

Tim O'Brien. The Things They Carried.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed between 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man's habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots -- 2.1 pounds -- and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ten Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away (pp. 4-5).

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. Listen to Rat Kiley. Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or girl. He says cooze. Then he spits and stares. He's nineteen years old -- it's too much for him -- so he looks at you with those big sad gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead and because it's so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back.

You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty (Tim O'Brien. The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990, pp. 76-77).

(Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and Michael Herr's Dispatches -- fiction and non-fiction, respectively -- are the two best books I've read on the Vietnam War. Both extraordinarily well-written, moving, vivid nightmares that strip war of every last shred of romance and hope.)

Dante. The Inferno (Hollander transl.)

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost. (Inf. 1.1-3)

Paollo & Francesca:

"Love, quick to kindle in the gentle heart,
seized this man with the fair form taken from me.
The way of it afflicts me still.

Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving,
seized me so strongly with his charm that,
as you see, it has not left me yet.

Love brought us to one death.
Caina waits for him who quenched our lives....

... There is no greater sorrow
than to recall our time of joy
in wretchedness--and this your teacher knows.

But if you feel such longing
to know the first root of our love,
I shall tell as one who weeps in telling.

One day, to pass the time in pleasure,
we read of Lancelot, how love enthralled him.
We were alone, without the least misgiving.

More than once that reading made our eyes meet
and drained the color from our faces.
Still, it was a single instant overcame us:

When we read how the longed-for smile
was kissed by so renowned a lover, this man,
who never shall be parted from me,

all trembling, kissed me on my mouth.
A Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it.
That day we read no further. (Inf. 5.100-38)

On mentors:

But the mentor who had brought me there replied:
"Have no fear. None can prevent our passage,
so great a power granted it to us.

Wait for me here. Comfort your weary spirit
and feed it with good hope.
I will not forsake you in the nether world." (Inf. 8.103-108)

Lament for a teacher (here Brunetto Latini):

"If all my prayers were answered,"
I said to him, "You would not yet
be banished from mankind.

For I remember well and now lament
the cherished, kind, paternal image of You
when, there in the world, from time to time,

You taught me how man makes himself immortal.
And how much gratitude I owe for that
my tongue, while I still live, must give report." (Inf.15.7987)

On fame:

"Now must you cast off sloth," my master said.
"Sitting on feather cushions or stretched out
under comforters, no one comes to fame.

Without fame, he who spends his time on earth
leaves only such a mark upon the world
as smoke does on the air or foam on water." (Inf. 24. 46-51)

On fog:

As, when the mist is lifting,
little by little we discern things
hidden in the air made thick by fog. (Inf. 31.34-36)

On power:

For when the power of thought
is coupled with ill will and naked force
there is no refuge from it for mankind. (Inf. 31.55-57)

And for the terrifying story of Ugolino, gnawing forever at the head of his enemy, see Inf. 32.127 ff.

This is the Hollander translation of Dante, which I gather is better at its exhaustive and endlessly fascinating commentary than at the translation itself. One NYBReview, deftly comparing rhyme to the rocks that impede and alter the stream's flow, wrote of how much we lose when we fail to capture Dante's inter-locking terza rima. Having waited too long in my life to read Dante, I cannot say if this is so -- perhaps others will know of a "better" translation? In the meanwhile, Dante's haunting account of his journeys through the Inferno in Virgil's company is unexpectedly moving particularly because it is about the education of its narrator. Interminable references to Florentine figures and affairs make it difficult going, however -- and the commentary essential. I can't imagine how to teach this! Or, even, how to read it well.