An ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ for the Twenty-First Century

At the 7 Nov 2024 book launch celebrating the publication of her new edition, Katharina Rout spoke about All Quiet on the Western Front to an audience of about 45 people at The Attic in the historic railway station building in Nanaimo, Vancouver Island. Excerpts from her wide-ranging address are presented here.

On language, and on learning to care:

Our language has a layer of coinages that date back to World War I: we still have trench coats and trench fever (now in homeless populations), speak of the war effort, of tanks, and of wars of attrition, use words and phrases like ersatz, no-man’s land, nose-dive, dogfight, cushy, toot sweet, over the top, eleventh hour, etc.

But do we feel connected to these words? More importantly, do we feel connected to history from long ago—or as it unfolds today far away?

How much do we care? Can we even imagine the murderousness of WWI—or of today’s wars, when the numbers of casualties are so high they numb us? How much do we care that the danger of Russia’s war spreading to the Baltic states or Poland has now grown?

How much did I care about my grandfather’s experience as a veteran from WWI, who lost a leg and almost died on the Western front? I knew him as a taciturn, stern man with a wooden leg who hobbled on crutches when his prothesis caused him too much pain, and who never said anything about the war other than that the British treated him well when he was a PoW somewhere in England?

Through All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque says we must care, for the sake of each other and our shared humanity. And he believed that if he showed us a single person in their entirety—their trust, their hopes, and their difficulties—and showed us how that person dies, we will forever remember the person. That way, we learn to care.

Of all the books about World War I, Remarque’s novel about a group of young men, friends, fighting and dying in the trenches on the Western Front, nearly a hundred years old, is the one most alive and relevant in today’s world.

On the war in Ukraine:

We can see how topical All Quiet on the Western Front is today when we look at Ukraine, with the years of trench warfare that have followed the Russian invasion. There are other connections as well: in 2014, a Ukrainian video by the blogger Galina Karanda, posted online and played on Ukrainian TV, showed Ukrainian soldiers in the trenches of the Donbas under Russian artillery fire. The video carried the Ukrainian title of Remarque’s novel and contained lengthy excerpts from the novel. …But Russians, too, have a history of identifying with Remarque; the print-runs of Russian editions of his works have often surpassed those in Germany, and Remarque used to be taught in Russian schools and universities.

On All Quiet on the Western Front in Canada

As it was in so much of the world, All Quiet on the Western Front was a bestseller in Canada. It was sold through Hudson’s Bay Company stores as well as through ordinary bookshops; it was serialized in the Ottawa Citizen and the Winnipeg Tribune; reviews in Canadian newspapers from coast to coast agreed that it was “the greatest war book ever written.”

And the book continued to have a powerful effect. In “1944: The Year I Learned to Love a German,” a 1985 essay in the New York Times (adapted from an introduction he wrote for a new Book of the Month Club edition that year), Canada’s Mordecai Richler recounted the effect that Remarque’s novel had had on him as a young man:

I fell ill with a childhood disease, I no longer remember which…. The women from the lending library, concerned, dropped off books for me at our house. …One day they brought me a novel: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. … 1944 that was, and I devoutly wished every German left on the face of the earth an excruciating death. The Allied invasion of France had not yet begun, but I cheered every Russian counterattack, each German city bombed, and—with the help of a map tacked to my bedroom wall—followed the progress of the Canadian troops fighting their way up the Italian boot. …

Finally, I was driven to picking up All Quiet on the Western Front, out of boredom. I never expected that a mere novel, a stranger’s tale, could actually be dangerous, creating such turbulence in my life, obliging me to question so many received ideas. … [H]ating Germans with a passion, I had read only 20, maybe 30, pages before the author had seduced me into identifying with my enemy, 19-year-old Paul Baumer, thrust into the bloody trenches of World War I with his schoolmates: Muller, Kemmerich and the reluctant Joseph Behm, one of the first to fall. … [T]he author [had] won my love for Paul, my enormous concern for his survival….

On the different translations

The two previous English translations of the novel are into British English. Inevitably, translations become dated, and our expectations of translations have changed. A. W. Wheen’s 1929 translation was based on the 1928 serialized version of the novel, which was crucially changed for the 1929 book publication. In its numerous variants, Wheen’s translation bears traces of censorship not made visible to its readers.

Brian Murdoch’s translation of 1993 is based on the 1929 book and is more accurate than is Wheen’s—but it’s not an easy read for North American readers. In its attempt to get every word translated, it can be wordy, fussy, awkward.

In translating All Quiet on the Western Front, I followed several principles. One thing I did not contemplate changing was the title—even though its meaning differs from the meaning of the German Im Westen nichts Neues: Nothing New in the West. The English title has become so iconic that at this point it would seem strange to alter it.

In many other ways, though, I have taken an approach that is different from previous translators.

I used North American English. … But I kept certain words and phrases as reminders that the novel is set among German soldiersin WW1. Here is one example: When a much-hated drillmaster is humiliated by a soldier who outfits him with a ludicrously mismatched, ill-fitting uniform at the supply depot, I searched for a translation of the slang term for the bizarre cap he is forced to wear. After days I gave up my futile search and decided to keep the German word because it sounded bizarre enough to English ears: “Krätzchen.”

I have also used language that is more contemporary and more direct—blunter. … And I have tended towards language that is more pared-down—in keeping with contemporary stylistic preferences. … I tried to keep the qualities of spoken language in my translation, but I also took to heart that Remarque made his narrator a young man who, before enlisting, had written poetry and a play. In the novel there are truly poetic passages about peaceful scenes that poignantly contrast with the harsh realism and chopped syntax of the battle scenes.

In some cases, reducing wordiness can help to bring out the poetic qualities of Remarque’s style. Here are a couple of examples of how my translation differs from the earlier ones:

Remarque: Ebenso zufällig, wie ich getroffen werde, bleibe ich am Leben.

Wheen: It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit.

Murdoch: It is simply a matter of chance whether I am hit or whether I go on living.

Rout: By chance I am hit, and by chance I live.  

Remarque: Aber nun fließt das goldrote Licht verschwimmend über die Welt

Wheen: But now the sun streams through the world, dissolving everything in its golden-red light

Murdoch: But now the red-gold sunlight floods across the world and blurs it all

Rout: Amber light now bathes the world and softens it

Of course it’s not always the case that the translation with the fewest words seems the most appropriate. Here’s one more example—the very last phrase of the book, describing the look on the face of the fallen Paul Bäumer. One literal translation might be “as if he was almost satisfied that it had happened that way.”

Remarque:  als wäre er beinahe zufrieden damit, daß es so gekommen war.

Wheen: as though almost glad the end had come.

Murdoch: as if he were almost happy that it had turned out that way.

Rout:  as if he had almost made his peacewith it having turned out this way.

The adjective “zufrieden” has a variety of related meanings; it commonly means “content” or “satisfied” or “pleased,” but its root is “frieden,” or “peace.” The colloquial English expression “made his peace with” felt right from more than one angle. The novel ends before the Armistice, but with the word “zufrieden” its author evokes the possibility of peace in the last sentence (without the false promise that his young narrator will live to see it).

Fellow translator Olivier Mannoni, of the École du Traduction littéraire in Paris, uses the image of the iceberg to explain translation: words, he suggests, are like the tip of the iceberg; if we translate only the words, we have not translated the work. We have to wrestle with the whole, so the reader can, too. We have to open the door to the unwritten parts—which are often the most important.

On film versions of All Quiet on the Western Front:

The earliest film version of All Quiet on the Western Front (and arguably still the best) is the 1930 American picture film directed by Lewis Milestone. There’s also an American version from the 1970s. Edward Berger’s 2022 movie is the first German adaptation of the novel, and it won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Feature Film. But in many ways it fails as a translation of the novel to the screen. …In the film, graphic violence and the scenes showing the spectacle of combat overwhelm. Enemy tanks play much greater role than they do in the novel. Berger’s characters are largely undifferentiated from one another, and rarely speak. Their comradeship, their “brotherhood,” which Remarque evokes so effectively, is reduced almost to nothing in the Berger film, as the soldiers stare wide-eyed at the mayhem around them. Although the narrator’s friend Kat is given a sentimental backstory not found in Remarque, the young soldiers in the movielack individuality to such a degree that viewers will struggle to keep track of who’s who; even I struggled in this way.

In the Berger film, Paul never goes on home leave, never has a sexual encounter with a French woman, never spends time in hospital, and never discusses with his friends how the war has turned them into killing machines unfit for peace. Leaving all this out makes it far more difficult for viewers to develop empathy for the characters—and to mourn them, as one after the other loses his life.

On Remarque, and on caring

Remarque wrote for everyone, and wanted everyone to care. Spending as much time with him as I did over the past three years, I must admit I grew tremendously fond of him, and I grew fond of his characters—though none were the kind of men I would instantly have liked!

I also found new fondness for my grandfather. As I poured over a little photo of him in uniform—a photo I had forgotten I had until I worked on the translation—I realized he wore an Iron Cross, something that had never been mentioned in the family. But more important, I was touched by how young and how gentle he looked. He could have been one of the friends in Remarque’s novel. The novel made me see him anew. I hope it will touch you, too.

A Note from the Publisher: This edition of All Quiet on the Western Front is initially available only in Canada. It will become available in the US as of January 1, 2025 (under American law, works remain in copyright for 95 years after the year of initial publication). In the UK and continental Europe, however (where copyright restrictions extend for 70 years following the death of the author), Broadview will not be able to make the edition available until January 1, 2041.