| Title | : | The Train Was on Time |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0810111233 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780810111233 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 110 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1949 |
As the train hurtles on, he riffs through prayers and memories, talks with other soldiers about what they've been through, and gazes desperately out the window at his country racing away. With mounting suspense, Andreas is gripped by one thought over all: Is there a way to defy his fate?
The Train Was on Time Reviews
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Deathly Ironies
Impending death certainly concentrates the mind. In 1943 a German soldier returning to his unit on the collapsing Eastern front, has good reason to anticipate death. His thoughts are not about the past or of loved ones or a life he has left. Rather, he thinks about his war experiences and the present as it streaks by outside his railway carriage. He believes that what he sees and smells is the last time he will see and smell these things - the cities, the girl-volunteers serving coffee at the stations, the autumnal German sky, the trees, the air of the countryside.
The soldier knows his destination is in Poland, a place called Przemysl, and then onward past Lviv in a heavily Polish part of the Ukraine. This is the area of the former Austrian-Hungarian province of Galicia which bordered the 19th century Jewish Pale of the Russian Empire. About 10% of Galicia, 1 million people, was Jewish in 1940. By 1943 almost all had been murdered, many by the Einsatzgruppen, and others were victims of the death camp at Janowska which had been established in 1941 by the SS in a northeastern suburb of Lviv.
What the soldier does not know, and the reader is not informed about directly, is that the railway journey that he is on is, although in relatively much more comfortable conditions, exactly the same as that for the millions of Jews who had already been deported from Germany and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe on their way to Janowska and the other camps in Eastern Poland and Western Ukraine. He, like those Jews, is being sent to his death. The principal difference is that he is aware of his likely fate; the Jews were not.
Boll’s intentional irony is signalled, I think, very early on when he notes that “Now and again what appears to be a casually spoken word will suddenly acquire a cabalistic significance.” The soldier becomes obsessive about the word ‘soon’ in relation to his death, and conducts a sort of existential analysis to determine when and where ‘soon’ could be. Consulting a map given him by a fellow-soldier, he intuitively estimates that his death will occur in about four days time just past Lviv, that is, in the region of the Janowska camp.
The soldier is a Catholic. He finds himself praying. Remarkably “he said a special prayer for the Jews of Cernauti and for the Jews of Lvov, and no doubt there were Jews in Stanislav too, and in Kolomyya …” And, although he has several opportunities to desert, he stays on the train. Whatever his country has become, it is no longer his: “I don’t want to go back, I never want to go back.…” he says.
After a sumptuous ‘last meal’ and other after-dinner entertainments in an up-market brothel in Lviv, the soldier’s intuition becomes even more precise about his death: “Just this side of Stryy I shall die.…” he says to a Polish prostitute who is also a partisan spy. Stryy had been a largely Jewish city an hour’s train journey from Lviv. Certainly the Jews had been eliminated from the place by 1943, and he includes them in his prayers as well. He is meant to board the train, which will undoubtedly be running on time with German efficiency, early in the morning.
The soldier does not make the train to Stryy. It leaves without him. -
It is not good for man to be alone.
Unhappiness is life, pain is life.
I am a human being and I can’t stand it alone
It was Bach. It was like a tower that was spiralling upwards from within, piling level upon level, fiercely shooting its way past the gloom of centuries into the light. An aching happiness filled him as, against his will yet knowlingly and consciously he was borne upwards on level after level of that pure upthrusting tower, as if borne on a cloud of fantasy, wreathed in what seemed a weightless, poignant felicity, he was yet made to experience all the effort and the pain of the climber: this was spirit, this was clarity, little remained of human aberration, a fantastically clean playing of compelling force. It was Bach.
The debut novel of Heinrich Böll (1949)
Read in German.
Review under construction. -
رواية قصيرة ضد الحرب وضياع قيمة الحياة في القتل والدمار
يركب جندي ألماني القطار للوصول لجبهة القتال بعد بداية الهزيمة في الحرب العالمية الثانية
ويصف هاينريش بول بدقة حالة الجندي الذهنية والنفسية وشعوره بالاقتراب من الموت
ونظرته لصداقات لن تدوم وممتلكات لا قيمة لها
أسلوب السرد بطئ لكن فكرة الرواية رائعة -
This is a story set during the late phase of the second world war. The main character, Andreas, is a soldier returning to his unit by train after a period of leave. Very quickly we are told that he knows that he is going to die soon. He develops an awareness of approximately where he is going to die and because the train of the title is, as revealed in that very title, is running on time, untroubled by the wrong kind of leaves or anything of the sort, he also works out when he is going to die, eventually more or less to the minute. It is always ambiguous within the story from where this knowledge comes, and this reminded me of Michael Bentine, or at least I think it was a story about him, anyway that was that during WWII he began to get visions of a skull that would appear over people before they died. He was a polite man and never attempted to profit from this by borrowing money from those people and was instead much troubled by his visions, eventually he found a sympathetic priest who conducted some priestly rite or other over him and he was not troubled by further visions.
All of which is by the by. So the story so far is young man, travelling by train, knows he is going to die, in the near future. I am reading this, wondering how it is going to work out, of course it is wartime, so the soldier might get shot, or bombed, or blown up, or maybe there will be a twisty ending; maybe he won't die - it's just a delusion, or maybe he dies just like in a story because he tries to escape his fate - perhaps you remember the story of the king who is visited by a wizard who says that the king's favourite horse will cause his death. The shocked king orders the horse immediately to be put out to pasture, years later it dies, and the king remembers the warning, he laughs and goes to the pasture with his cronies, they wander over to the skeletal remains joking about the stupid wizard as they go. When they get there the king kicks the horse's skull, immediately a highly venomous snake darts out from inside the skull and bites the king - who proceeds to die in agony.
So there I was reading and wandering what kind of twisty trick the author was going to play on me, the reader. After a while I decided to let the future be the future and focus instead on what was actually happening in the story. Well is a soldier travelling east, towards certain death, he has no weapon, he is sharing food with two comrades...sharing food is communion, they are also consuming the Holy Ghost in liquid form, they are telling stories - which is confession, the central character prays, and prays too for the Jews of any town that he becomes aware of - so we have a sense of sin and the necessity of what do you call it, making good ? Repentance? One of the men, he has senior military rank over the other two is involved in theft, he works in a military repair shop. And from the written off wrecks that they get back they manage to salvage enough good parts to make one new vehicle from every three old ones that they receive, these new machines then mysteriously find themselves on to the black market. He is returning to the front early from leave because when he got home he found his wife dressed in red pyjamas dancing on a table top with a Russian man watching (presumably some kind of forced labourer), hmm, so he is telling the younger man about a woman taken in adultery . And there is a Henkersmahlziet in Lemberg which functions both as a religious last supper and the literal final meal before execution.
So about half way through this little book it slowly dawned on me that this is all a bit...well, a bit religious, then as I mentioned in the updates the stopping points of this train, all big substantial towns, are described as stations which reminded me of the Stations of the Cross in Christian worship. Since my acquaintance with Christianity is mostly limited to taking the Lord's name in vain, I did have to resort to Wikipeadia for further detail on this, but the final journey of Jesus eastwards towards his inevitable and expected death has been divided into 14 stations, each of which is a particular event for the faithful to pray or meditate over. There certainly were a couple of parallels that I could spot - the division of the robes, or stripping of the garments (station 10) for instance.
ok then the issue was for me - do I think of Andreas as a Christ figure, the soldier as necessary sacrifice, or is this silly - if the Christian life is an imitation of Christ then all good, or at least striving, Christians are imitators of Christ, the stations of the cross then are both a way to draw closer to Christ through reflection and worship but also a mythical archetype of the last hours of human life.
Ok, so then again the issue was for me what does this mean in the context of a German story published in 1949? Are we being offered the stations of the cross as a way of processing the experience of war, the unarmed soldier is a lamb of God , a necessary sacrifice, the war dead are an atonement, walking, or in this case, reading the stations of the cross is a way of working towards understanding the sin and guilt that requires such loss. -
دوستانِ گرانقدر، من از خواندنِ این کتاب لذت نبردم... با روحیهٔ ایرانی ها سازگار نیست... البته باز هم باید به این نکته اشاره کنم که ایرانی با ساکن ایران تفاوت های بسیار زیادی دارد... ایرانی اصیل همیشه امید به زندگی دارد.. اگر به اشعار فردوسی بزرگ دقت کنید متوجه میشوید که این بزرگمردِ میهن پرست، نه تنها درس اخلاق و ادب ایرانی را همچون "اوستا" مدام گوشزد میکند، بلکه شما را تشویق به زندگی و ایستادگی در برابرِ ظالم و تجاوزگر، میکند
و امّا در مورد این کتاب، اولین سؤالی که ممکن است برایتان ایجاد شود، این است که: چرا یک سربازِ جوان منتظر رسیدنِ مرگش میباشد؟؟... روندِ داستان در اواسط به من نوید این را میداد که پایان خوشی برایِ داستان متصور شوم.. چراکه به این موضوع اشاره داشت که سربازِ جوان یعنی <آندره> عاشق موسیقی و شادی میباشد... بعد در اواخرِ داستان با دختری سرزنده به نامِ <اولینا> آشنا میشود که پیانو مینوازد... یعنی همان چیزی که این سرباز جوان لازم دارد... ولی چرا باید پایان داستان ناامیدانه و تلخ باشد و اصلاً به ریشهٔ اصلی داستان ارتباط نداشته باشد!؟
بنظرم اشتباهی که <هانریش بل> در این داستان داشت این بود که: این نویسندهٔ بزرگ به این موضوع توجه نکرده بود که، وقتی انسانی آرزو و آمالِ گوناگونی در ذهنِ خویش دارد، نمیتواند ناامید باشد.. آرزو و نا امیدی در مقابل و برخلافِ یکدیگر قرار دارند.. در داستان، <آندره> میگوید: آخه چرا من همان کسی نیستم که او دوستش دارد؟ ......اگر میتوانستم فقط... فقط ... چشم های آن دیگری را داشته باشم، از تمام هستی خود دست میکشیدم
دوستان گرامی و خردمند، آیا ممکن است یکی در آرزوی وصال عشق باشد ولی هم زمان منتظر مرگ نیز باشد؟؟؟ میدانیم که منظور نویسنده عشق زمینی بوده است... پس چطور ممکن است که این جوان یعنی <آندره> تا این حد ناامیدانه در انتظار مرگ بنشیند؟؟... این را نیز میدانیم که "عشق" به همراه خودش امید به زندگی را می آورد، پس منطق میگوید که <آندره> باید به ادامهٔ زندگی امیدوار باشد، ولی در پایانِ داستان اینچنین نیست
بهتر است خودتان این داستان را بخوانید و از سرانجامِ آن آگاه شوید
امیدوارم همیشه شاد باشید و وجودتان سرشار از عشق و امید به زندگی باشد
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی> -
Der zug war punktlich = The Train Was on Time, Heinrich Böll
The Train Was on Time (German: Der Zug war pünktlich) is the first published novel by German author Heinrich Böll. It dates from 1949. The book centres on the story of a German soldier, Andreas, taking a train from Paris (France) to Przemyśl (Poland). The story focuses on the experience of German soldiers during the Second World War on the Eastern Front where fighting was particularly vicious and unforgiving; Böll had earlier explored the same experience in A Soldier's Legacy which was written in 1948 but published later. On his way to the war front, he meets two other Germans with whom he starts a dialogue and a short-term friendship; he also meets Olina, a Polish prostitute, who has been working for the anti-fascist partisans but who has become disillusioned with such activity, seeing it as begetting yet further cycles of violence and aggression rather than leading to a proper way out of the bellicosity of the situation. During their trip we learn much about horrors soldiers endure in the war, and the effect it leaves on a person. Andreas has a particularly passive (some might say stoic) attitude to his involvement in the conflict, and the inevitability of death (and the question of fate) hangs over the narrative in a tragic fashion. It is arguable that the only real choices in the novel, presented in its opening gambits, involve the place and manner of Andreas's death in the war, rather than the possibility of its evasion. This tragic fate seems to be circumvented to some extent when Andreas meets Olina and they plan an escape to the Carpathian mountains, but the eventual fate cannot (it appears) be overlooked. In this sense, connections can be made between the work and the structure of ancient Greek tragedies such as the story of Oedipus.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: پانزدهم ماه اکتبر سال 1994 میلادی
عنوان: قطار به موقع رسید؛ هاینریش بل؛ مترجم: کیکاووس جهانداری؛ تهران، چشمه، 1372؛ در 165 ص؛ شابک: 9646194672؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان آلمانی قرن 20 م
نخستین رمان کوتاه «هاینریش بل» در اعتراض به جنگ و خشونت علیه بشریت است. «آندرهآس» سربازی ست که راهی جبهه میشود و هنگام سوار شدن به قطار احساس میکند که به زودی خواهد مرد. در طول راه به روز مردن خود که آن را یک شنبه هفته بعد احساس کرده فکر می کند. میل به زندگی، صلح، و نفرت بشر از جنگ؛ در این رمان به زیبایی تصویر شده است. بشری که: «نمیخواهد بمیرد، اما میداند به زودی خواهد مرد». ا. شربیانی -
This is a re-read of a book I first read 30 years ago.
It is 1943. The war is lost but Germany fights on. A soldier travels to the Eastern Front, knowing somehow that he travels to his death. This is not the painful realisation that he is unlikely to survive, but a knowledge of the exact time and place of his demise. He is resigned to his fate and in a strange way almost welcomes it.
A study of the futility of war and the way that soldiers cope, written by a man that had experienced what he has described. The ennui of an endless journey into danger in aid of a lost cause, punctuated by bouts of drinking, sleeping, whoring and interminable card games.
I found this a powerful and moving book. Odd in a sense in that we know the ending very early on.
Worth a read. -
هر مرگی جنایتی ست ،
هر مرگی در جنگ جنایتی ست ......
درد هایی در این دنیا هست به آن عظمت که دیگر در برابر آنها از اشک کاری ساخته نیست ... -
Having now read all of the Booker longlisted books I can get my hands on, I am back to reading some that have been patiently sitting on the to read shelf for a few months. Böll has been a writer I felt I should have read for a while, and this early novella was my first experience.
The whole book is a test of the premise "what if I knew exactly when I was going to die". The book is mostly set on a German troop train in 1943, which is travelling from the Rheinland towards the front in eastern Poland over a few days. The narrator Andreas has a premonition, which he believes unshakably, that he will die somewhere between two Polish villages, at a time no more than four days away, and the book follows his thoughts and actions over those four days. He spends most of the journey in the company of two other soldiers, one of whom is determined to throw his money away after his wife has left him, mostly on food, alcohol and women.
The journey involves two changes of train in Poland, allowing the last night to be spent in the Galician capital Lvov, .
The whole vision is a rather impressive but bleak one, and I will definitely consider reading more. -
این کتاب اولین اثر هانریش بل در زمینه رمان کوتاه به شمار میرود.این کتاب بیشتر جنبه اعتراضی به جنگ دارد نه حماسه وقهرمان پروری وتک وایه گویی های شخصیت تنهای قصه بل در جابه جای قصه نمود های زیبایی دارند کتاب پر از است اشتیاق به زندگی واحساسات ضد ونقیض یک ادم .مثل تنهایی وترس ..ترس از مرگ ....کتاب پر است از دردهای مشترک بشریت .اندریاس قصه هانریش بل جوانکی بیست وچند ساله است که جنگ باعث شده به اندازه تمام عمر تجربه اندوخته باشد .هانریش بل در این رمان با خطی مستیم مارا به همذات پنداری عمیقی با اندریاس وا میدارد وچهره کریه جنگ وپوچی ایده های نازیسم را به خوبی بیان میکند .در این رمان کوتاه او ادمهایی را به تصویر میکشد که هیچ منفعتی در جنگ برایشان نبوده وتنها لگد مال شدن روح وجسم برایشان مانده که حتی ممکن است تا نسلها تاوان انرا پس دهند ...
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موضوعِ مرگ و سوالی که برای همه هست که بزودی خواهم مرد، این موضوعی است که بعد از خواندن کتاب درگیر آن می شویم. اینکه بدانی خواهی مرد و آنگاه نگاهت به جهان چکونه خواهد بود. آن هم از منظر یک سرباز آلمانی در جنگ جهانی دوم. و شاید تنها را چاره عشق باشد. حتی عشق افلاطونی یک فاحشه.
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جوان بیچارهای که عازم جبهه جنگه و در تمام طول مسیر به این فکر میکنه که قراره خیلی زود بمیره :( اون جرات هیچکاریو نداره حتی عاشق شدن چون قراره خیلی زود بمیره...
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Heinrich Böll hat schon in diesem frühen Werk eine Sprache, der man sich ob der eindringlichen Bilder und der dadurch geschaffenen Atmosphäre nicht entziehen kann. Er beschreibt die Reise des jungen Soldaten Andreas mit dem Zug an die Ostfront. Es ist 1943. Andreas ist überzeugt, dass er im Krieg sterben wird. Die dreitägige Reise, die Bekanntschaften, das Spielen, das Trinken, der Bordellbesuch sind Gegenstand der Handlung. Gedanken über Sterben, Liebe, Religion oder Macht werden in diese Handlung eingeflochten.
Heinrich Böll versteht es wie kaum ein anderer die Generation der jungen Kriegsteilnehmer in einem Satz mit einem beeindruckendem Bild zu illustrieren: "Sie sind alle arme, graue, hungrige, verführte und betrogene Kinder, und ihre Wiege, das sind die Züge, die Fronturlauberzüge, die Rak-Tak-Bums machen und sie einschläfern." Sätze wie diese wirken auf mich einerseits sehr nüchtern, andererseits sind sie aber auch von einer tiefen Menschlichkeit durchdrungen.
Das Buch wird als Erzählung bezeichnet. Heute würden die in meiner Ausgabe (dtv; 8. Auflage von 1976; 3,80 DM) eng bedruckten 124 Seiten locker als Roman durchgehen. Es war das erste Werk Bölls, das veröffentlicht worden ist, und zwar im Jahr 1949. Auch knapp 75 Jahre später kann ich es mit voller Überzeugung zur Lektüre empfehlen. -
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I have spent much of my life, from around ten or eleven years old, looking for the answer, for something that would provide relief and allow me to, not exactly reconcile myself with The Fear, but at least be able to cope with those times when it sits on my chest and holds me down and pummels me in the face. Which is most days really. For years my relationship with The Fear – which for other people may mean a number of things but which for me is a fear of dying – has involved extreme panic attacks. During these attacks, which I would describe as being motivated by The Genuine Belief That One Day I Will Definitely Die, I will howl inhumanly, and tear at my hair, literally grab great chunks of hair and yank at them like an overzealous, inexperienced fisherman yanks at his rod when he sees his float disappear under the surface of the pond’s water. And I will scream, actually scream into the palms of my hands, and writhe and kick and squirm. When The Fear really takes hold, when I truly believed that at some point I am going to cease to exist – because it is a different thing to say it or know it than it is to truly believe it – it is like my head, my body, my Self, is going to suffer a kind of irrevocable breakdown, a Twin Towers-like collapse, and the writhing, the screaming, the kicking, etc is a sort of existential battle for survival, is my Self trading blows with The Fear. If anyone was ever to see me in this state, which they wouldn’t of course because The Fear is a canny bastard who will only ever step to a guy when he is at his most alone and vulnerable, they’d think, understandably, that I was possessed.
All of which should go some way to explaining why Heinrich Böll’s The Train Was on Time, which is, on the most basic level, the story of a young man who is absolutely certain that the train he is on is taking him to his death, has been an uncomfortable, and yet at times strangely comforting, reading experience for me. The novel is set in 1943, and features a German infantryman, Andreas, who is bound for the Eastern front [specifically Poland]. In these circumstances, having a premonition of one’s death is not exactly a flight of fancy. Indeed, Andreas had already come close to the ultimate departure once before, in Amiens, France. Unfortunately for him, the situation, for the Germans, has significantly worsened since then, so that losing the war seems likely. One must bear in mind that one’s chances of survival when on the winning side are, at best, in the balance, but when on the losing side? Well…
[German soldiers during WW2, waiting to board a train]
To be a soldier during wartime is to be in an extraordinary predicament, because, regardless of how that war is justified, whether it be in the name of freedom or democracy or whatever, for the people who are actively involved in it, it is literally a fight for life, a battle to stay alive; it is a state of affairs whereby death isn’t simply keeping an eye on you, it is aggressively stalking your heels. To spend weeks, months, years in such a situation must be horribly taxing. Therefore, it is no surprise that soldiers are often mentally damaged by the experience; and there is certainly evidence of that where Andreas is concerned. He is obsessively focussed on certain incidents, replaying them in his mind; he worries that he isn’t praying enough, and when he does pray it is often for the Jews; he frequently wants to cry but cannot; and, as already noted, he is convinced that his death is coming, yet not at some unspecified point in time, but on a specific day, in a specific place.“He could no longer say, no longer even think: “I don’t want to die.” As often as he tried to form the sentence he thought: I’m going to die…soon.”
For me, Böll handles all this with great sensitivity, intelligence and skill. On the surface, the book is written in the third person, but large parts of it are actually given over to Andreas’ internal monologues. In the beginning, he is terribly afraid, he panics…it is an animal reaction, a feeling that goes beyond reason. He is tormented by the word ‘soon.’ Soon. Soon. Soon. Soon. “What a terrible word,” he thinks to himself. When is soon? Soon is uncertain, it is imprecise, it is a black hole, a nothing. Like death itself. And so, almost in order to comfort himself, to be able to get a handle on death, to make it concrete, to give himself something to hold onto, he convinces himself that his death will take place on a Sunday, between Lvov and Cernauti. He makes the uncertain certain. There is something, I think, in the unknown, in nothingness, that we simply cannot bear, because, I guess, we cannot comprehend it. I have been spending time with terminally ill people recently, and there is, in my limited experience, a kind of calmness that descends when death stops being this thing that might grab you unawares, and instead comes to sit beside you.
Once death is certain, and no longer soon, Andreas’ panic subsides somewhat [which is not, by the way, the same as saying that he becomes entirely reconciled to the fate that he believes is his] and he becomes wistful and melancholy, thinking about the places he has been unable to visit, about how he will never again see the girl who serves him coffee. In this way, The Train Was on Time, as with all worthwhile literature, is universal, because we all experience the transitory nature of existence, even if we do not always link that experience to death. Whenever I am on a train I will spend some time looking out of the window, and I am always struck by a painful feeling, an understanding that I will never again see what I am seeing, that even if I take the same train, at the same time, travelling the same route, the sights will not be exactly the same. No single second of your life can ever be repeated; to all intents and purposes, you die thousands of times a day.“That’s something no one would ever be able to understand, why I don’t take the next train back to her… why don’t I? No one would ever be able to understand that. But I’m scared of that innocence… and I love her very much, and I’m going to die, and all she’ll ever get from me now will be an official letter saying: Fallen for Greater Germany…”
For a novel so preoccupied with death it is not surprising that there is a sense of wanting to escape running through it. In addition to Andreas, there are two other major characters, Willi and a blonde officer. The three men come together when Andreas is asked if he wants to play a game of cards. Of course, for the young infantryman the game, and the company, is not about avoiding boredom, as it might be for us, but about keeping busy, taking his minds off things, off, specifically, the fact that he is likely hurtling towards his final resting place. However, death itself is also a kind of escape, or it could be viewed in that way, especially if one’s life is intolerable. In the case of Willi and the blonde officer, they could be said to be running towards war, towards death, rather than away from it, as one struggles with the break up of his marriage and the other with having once been sexually abused. In fact, Willi drinks large quantities of alcohol, which, of course, also provides an escape from reality, albeit only in the short-term.
In conclusion, I seem to recall the translator and critic Michael Hofmann once writing disparagingly of Heinrich Böll, and I seldom see his work [Böll’s] in lists of great German novels. On this basis, he probably qualifies as underrated. I do not think he ever hit the heights of someone like, say, Thomas Mann or the Austrian Robert Musil, but I have yet to be disappointed with any of his books. However, I ought to point out that, in the early stages, the transitions between third person narrative and the internal monologue are a little clunky to say the least, and that I wasn’t won over by the opening scene in which Andreas speaks to a clergyman on the platform about his desire to avoid death, but these are minor quibbles overall. The Train Was on Time, which was Böll’s first published work, written when in his early thirties, is fascinating, and often beautiful and moving. Indeed, there is a passage about how the searchlights in the night air resemble fingers seeking out someone that will stay with me for a long time. -
هاینریش بل در این کتاب که ظاهرا اولین رمان این نویسنده هم هست چهرهی زشت و خشن جنگ رو با استفاده از توصیف حالات روحی سربازی آلمانی به نام آندرئاس و گاها مرور خاطرات تاریک و عذاب آورش که زادهی جنگ هستند و عشق او به یک جاسوس دشمن به تصویر میکشد.
متاسفانه ترجمه زیاد جالب نبود و داستان یه جاهایی به شدت کسل کننده میشه به همین خاطر بیشتر از 2 ستاره نمیتونم بهش بدم. -
my first heinrich boll; good stuff! reminded me some of anna kavan's
Ice, though much more realistic. also it was strange that i read it after
The Driver's Seat, as the two had very similar storylines... person travels in a straight line toward death, unwilling and/or unable to turn aside. not scathing like the driver's seat, however... sadder, haunted, beautiful.
there's a quality about post-war european books i really love; they have this air of profundity which i guess is a product of exhaustion and disillusionment; they make modern books seem histrionic.
(picked up
The Clown at the same time. these melville house re-releases are beautiful. i was halfway through before i suddenly realized those shapes on the cover were a train.) -
2.5 ⭐
کتاب قطار سر وقت یا در ترجمهی دیگه قطار به موقع رسید، داستان یک سرباز آلمانی است که از جایی که مشخص نیست کجاست میدونه چه روزی میمیره، روزی که چند روز بیشتر بهش باقی نمونده و با کلمهی کلیدی به زودی توی داستان باهاش بازی میشه. من به زودی میمیرم، به زودی به زودی
هاینریش بل به نظر میاد خواسته بگه که در جنگ حتی سربازهای کشور مهاجم هم مورد ظلم واقع شده و نیازمند دلسوزی و ترحم هستند.
داستان از سه قسمت مشخص ولی در هم تنیده تشکیل شده، قسمت اول تنهایی سرباز آلمانی آندریاس، قسمت دوم آشنایی و بازی و گفتگوی اون با دو نفر دیگه در قطار و گوش دادن به داستان اونها ولی در انتها آشنایی با دختری جاسوس در فاحشه خانهای در لهستان و درگیری ماجرای عشقی.
چیزی که در داستان به وفور میشه دید احساس پشیمانی و شرم از جنگ توسط نویسنده هست و چیزی که وجود نداره امید. داستان جالب و عمیق اما گاه گاه با چیره شدن کسالت به خواننده پیش میره. در مجموع امتیاز من به این کتاب کمتر از ۳ هست و بیشتر از ۲ ولی خب نیم نداریم منم دلرحم، همون سه -
هاینریش بُل رو با این کتابش بشناسید
هاینریش امشب سرنماز برات از خدا آرامش طلب میکنم و شایدم قطره ایی خون دخترکت بجای اشک رو گونم حس کنم -
"جنگ آدمهاي ساده لوح را غصه دار مي کند، تا آدمهايي به شادي برسند که خودشان هم نمي دانند چه چيزي خوشحالشان مي کند."
جنگ چيز خوبي نيست...همين. -
Actual rating 2.5/5 stars.
Before picking this book up I had never heard of Heinrich Boll before. Upon reading the introduction I discovered that he was an extraordinary man who also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. He lived through the turbulence of WWII, losing one child during it, and originally refused to join the Hitler Youth. He was later conscripted to the infantry before deserting after receiving four bullet wounds. Many aspects of this book, especially the thoughts and actions of young soldiers during wartime, could conceivably be autobiographical.
Almost the entire narrative takes place inside the mind of protagonist, twenty four-year-old German solider Andreas. He confronts the probable imminence of his own death as he travels, largely via troop train, to the Eastern front. The word ‘soon’ reverberates throughout the entire length of the novella and tinges every actions with the certainty of the future, or lack of it, that he faces.
I begun this poignant short story absolutely enraptured. Boll’s creation provides the reader with the human face of war. Andreas stands for all soldiers, who are forced to fight for the glory of death and of serving the Fuhrer, yet are guiltily stricken by the thoughts of their imminent demise.
Despite worshipful of the premise, enjoying the narrative style, and acknowledging the importance of a story such as this, I failed to continue on with my early adoration. Thoughts and motions were very repetitive, which I believe may have been a deliberate decision, but it failed to continue to incite my interest. For me, this would have been a stellar read, if only made at half the length. -
Δεύτερο βιβλίο του Χάινριχ Μπελ που διαβάζω, μετά το πολύ καλό "Η χαμένη τιμή της Κατερίνας Μπλουμ" που διάβασα τον Νοέμβριο του 2011. Μιας και πέρασαν τόσα χρόνια από τότε, ουσιαστικά είναι σαν να διαβάζω για πρώτη φορά βιβλίο του. Η όλη ιστορία διαδραματίζεται το 1944 και πρωταγωνιστής της είναι ο Αντρέας, ένας νεαρός στρατιώτης που ταξιδεύει με το τρένο από τη Γερμανία για το Ανατολικό Μέτωπο, όντας σίγουρος ότι θα πεθάνει σύντομα, κάπου στην Πολωνία, ανάμεσα σε δυο περιοχές. Εμείς γινόμαστε μάρτυρες όλων όσων σκέφτεται ο νεαρός για τη ζωή και το μέλλον του, με τον συγγραφέα να μας δίνει με δραματικό τρόπο να καταλάβουμε πως ήταν να είσαι στρατιώτης και να πηγαίνεις στο μέτωπο του πολέμου, από τη στιγμή κιόλας που δεν έχεις προλάβει ουσιαστικά να ζήσεις και να γευτείς όλες τις χαρές της ζωής. Πρόκειται για ένα μάλλον πεσιμιστικό έργο, καθόλου ευχάριστο, που δίνει όμως τροφή για σκέψη και προβληματισμό, ενώ φυσικά η γραφή είναι πραγματικά πάρα πολύ καλή, με μια αφήγηση χειμαρρώδη και εξαιρετικά εθιστική.
-
چند ساله دارم فکر میکنم چرا عقاید یک دلقک رو نتونستم تموم کنم، این کتاب رو برداشتم که گامی باشه به شروع مجدد عقاید یک دلقک، اما به نصف کتاب نرسیده باز خواستم این رو هم نیمه رها کنم
نمیدونم چرا، اما فکر کنم هیچ چیزی نداشت که من رو مشعوف کنه. شخصیت اول داستان که هیچ سیری رو طی نمیکنه، همونیه که همه میشناسیم و از قضا «قهرمانه»، تو بحبوحه جنگ از جنگ بیزاره و از کثیفی، عاشق موسیقیه و برای یهودیا دعا میخونه (کلیشه ای تر از این!؟!) توصیفش و روایتش از جنگ هم باز چیزی نیست که آدم رو بلرزونه. تجاوز، خیانت، عشق!مشکل این دو اینه که من از صفحه اول کتاب میدونم چه روالی قراره طی بشه
اما اینها هیچ کدوم میتونست مهم نباشه اگه توصیف زیبایی از جنگ و بدیهاش ارائه می شد. اما باز هم این نافرجام بود به نظرم
در مورد توصیف، دو روزه دارم فکر میکنم «زنی که دهنش شبیه قلکه» چطوری میتونه باشه!!مهم نیست توصیفش رئال نیست، اما توصیف سرراست تر از این پیدا میشه حقیقتا؟ -
Σας έχει τύχει ποτέ να σας ελκύει ένας/μια συγγραφέας, χωρίς να τον έχετε ποτέ διαβάσει, αλλά καταφέρνετε και έχετε ήδη 3-4 βιβλία του, και μόνο όταν τον/την διαβάζετε να λέτε «ναι, δικαιώθηκα»;
Κάτι τέτοιο συνέβη και εδώ.
Σύμφωνα με κάποιον (νομίζω η Χάνα Άρεντ το είχε πει), το Ναζιστικό καθεστώς, δημιουργήθηκε, εδραιώθηκε και προέβη στα εγκλήματα που προέβη, όχι λόγω μιας χαρισματική ηγεσίας, η μιας μαζικής παραπλάνησης του λαού, αλλά λόγω του ότι «τα τραίνα έφευγαν στην ώρα τους» και πως κάποιοι αξιωματούχοι, «έκαναν απλώς την δουλειά τους».
Η πρώτη μου επαφή με το έργο του Böll και το αμετάφραστο ακόμη στα ελληνικά «Το τραίνο ήταν στην ώρα του», μπορεί να θεωρηθεί ιδιαίτερα επιτυχής. Πρωταγωνιστής αυτής της νουβέλας, Ο Άντρεας ένας στρατιώτης όπου ξεκινάει για το ανατολικό μέτωπο για να πολεμήσει για την «Μεγάλη Γερμανία», μόνο που γνωρίζει με μαθηματική ακρίβεια, πως θα πεθάνει «σύντομα», και ποιό συγκεκριμένα μέσα σε 3 μέρες.
Ο Μπελ καταφέρνει και συνδυάζει την ματαιότητα του πολέμου, με την βεβαιότητα του θανάτου, πάνω στο πρόσωπο του πρωταγωνιστή του και τον εξανθρωπίζει, σε τέτοιο βαθμό μάλιστα που σε πιάνει άγχος για την μοίρα του. Νομίζω πως αυτός ήταν και ήταν ο στόχος του συγγραφέα: να μας δείξει το παράλογο του πολέμου, την σύνθλιψη του ατόμου μέσα σε αυτόν, και την ελπίδα διαφυγής, απο αυτόν με τον έναν ή με τον άλλον τρόπο. Χαρακτηριστική η στιγμή όπου μετά απο μέρες ταξίδι, οι στρατιώτες θυμούνται πως είναι άνθρωποι, κάνοντας ένα μπάνιο. Και ναι, είναι μερικές στιγμές σαν αυτές που αρκούν για να σου υπενθυμίσουν πως είσαι κάτι παραπάνω απο αυτό που προστάζει η στολή που σου φόρεσαν. Αυτές, και ένα χάδι, ένα φιλί ίσως και ένα όνειρο.
Αυτά τα λίγα. -
برای کسی که با نثر هاینریش بُل آشنایی نداشته باشد، نه تنها این کتاب، بلکه همه کتاب های این نویسنده، عجیب و تاحدودی سخت خوان هست. ولی کافیست عاشق تک گویی و درونیات شخصیت ها باشی، تا نه تنها این کتاب، که همه آثار هاینریش بُل را، بخوانی و لذت ببری.
قطار به موقع رسید، داستان لحظات و ثانیه هایی است که از دست می دهیم... داستان عمری است که می گذرد و می رود. از همان اوائل که نویسنده با کلمه "بزودی" بازی می کند، مدام در ذهن من این آیه از قرآن می آمد که: «و اذا جاء اجلهم لا یستقدمون ساعة و لا یستاخرون» (و هنگامی که سرآمدشان می رسد، دیگر نه یک لحظه بیش و نه یک لحظه کم باقی نمی مانند) (امیدوارم آیه و معنی را درست گفته باشم)... به هر حال عجیب به نظر می رسد، اما مطمئنم که شما هم در هنگام خواندن کتاب، این معنا را یاد می کنید، هرچند معتقد نیستم هدف هاینریش بل، اشاره به این بوده باشد... چه بسا مطالب دیگری نیز، که بُل، روایت می کند.
(این قسمت، ممکن است داستان را لو بدهد)
در هنگام خواندن، چیزی که برای من جالب بود، و چیزی که به نظرم طنز اصلی داستان (و در واقع دنیا) در آن نهفته، این نکته است که شخصیت داستان، از وقتی متوجه "آن اتفاق" می شود، همه سعی اش را بر این می گذارد که دعا کند... (و تک گویی ها و ذهن خوانی های شخصیت، چه قدر به ما در شناختنش کمک می کند) اما تقریبا کمترین وقت را به دعا کردن اختصاص می دهد... بیشترین زمانش در خواب سپری می شود، و مدت زمان زیادی هم صرف خوردن و کاری نکردن می گذرد... شخصیت داستان، ناراحت است از اینکه دعا نمی کند، و عمر باقیمانده این چنین سریع می گذرد، اما در این میان، کارهایی هم هست که او می کند، و با اینکه ناراحت است از انجامش اما خود نیز کم کم متوجه می شود که آن چند ساعت استثنایی، که در آن نه دعا کرده، نه وقت را به خوردن و بیهوده گذران سپری کرده، از مهم ترین لحظاتی است که در زندگی خود داشته... الآن دقیقا یادم نیست که شخصیت داستان هم به این نکته پی برد یا نه، ولی نویسنده و ما، مسلما به این نکته رسیدیم، و نکته این داستان، نه در کلمه "بزودی"، که در همین چندساعت است؛ که اگر بخوانید داستان را، خودتان متوجه می شوید کدام ساعت ها را می گویم. -
"Pratik olarak savaşı biz kazandık",diyor erin biri,savaşın aslında galibi falan olmadığını bilmeden.
Heinrich Böll'ün gerçekten de çok güçlü bir anlatımı var.Tekrarlar olsa da sıkmıyor,hikayeye bağlıyor sizi,aksine pekiştiriyor ifadeyi.
Ölüme gittiğini düşünen Andreas'ın iç hesaplaşmalarına tanıklık ediyoruz,kasvetli bir trende giderken ve sonlara doğru bir randevuevindeki bir kızla konuşurken.
Kitabın son sayfalarını;tek bir paragrafın,tek bir cümlenin,tek bir kelimenin bile anlamını es geçmemek adına yoğun çaba sarfederek ağır ağır okudum;buzsuz,sek,bardağın dibinde sadece yarım parmak kalmış bir Chivas Regal'i bitmesin diye yudum yudum içer gibi... -
یاد رمان معروف در جبهه ی غرب خبری نیست رمارک افتادم با ترجمه ای وان و لذتی وافر و البته تلخ!
-
Now and again what appears to be a casually spoken word will suddenly acquire a cabalistic significance. It becomes charged and strangely swift, races ahead of the speaker, is destined to throw open a chamber in the uncertain confines of the future and to return to him with the deadly accuracy of a boomerang. Out of the smalltalk of unreflecting speech, usually from among those halting, colorless goodbyes exchanged beside trains on their way to death, it falls back on the speaker like a leaden wave, and he becomes aware of the force, both frightening and intoxicating, of the workings of fate. To lovers and soldiers, to men marked for death and to those filled with the cosmic force of life, this power is sometimes given, without warning; a sudden revelation is conferred on them, a bounty and a burden … and the word sinks, sinks down inside them.
*
Soon. Soon. Soon. Soon. When is Soon? What a terrible word: Soon. Soon can mean in one second, Soon can mean in one year. Soon is a terrible word. This Soon compresses the future, shrinks it, offers no certainty, no certainty whatever, it stands for absolute uncertainty. Soon is nothing and Soon is a lot. Soon is everything. Soon is death.…
*
I long for that horizon as intensely, as fiercely and ardently, as only a lover can long for his beloved. -
Andreas is a 24 year old German soldier in WW2, he has been in the army for four years, it's the end of the war now. He is on a train that is taking him and his fellow soldiers to what is a sure death.
Andreas hasn't been kissed, he hasn't had sex, he has never been in love(except perhaps for a strangers dark eyes) something that could be an obsession or love, he and we will never know.
During the train ride we experience his mental and emotional disintegration, you could say it's an accelerated preparation for death.
The elderly in some cultures remove themselves from the rest of society to cleanse their souls and slowly let go of all earthly ties( the good stuff like greed, hate, love etc). No such luck for Andreas.
He goes through a rapid input of life experienced and an equally rapid output of what was and was not learnt(appreciated). A slow, horrible, "my life flashed before my eyes", train ride. And yes...the bloody train was on time. -
این کتاب اولین رمان کوتاه بل هست و از نخستین اعتراض های او به جنگ .
آندره آس سربازیست که راهی جبهه می باشد و هنگام سوار شدن در قطار احساس می کند که به زودی خواهد مرد . در طول راه به روز مردن خود که آن را یک شنبه هفته بعد احساس کرده فکر می کند .
کتاب نشان دهنده اشتیاق به زندگی ، احساس نزدیکی و دوستی به خاطر دردهای مشترکی ، تنهایی عظیم انسان ها و هراس ها و ..... هست
راستش اوایل کتاب رو اونقدر دوست نداشتم اما از جایی که با اولینا آشنا می شد قشنگ بود . کتاب خوبی بود و خیلی زیبا استیصا�� آدمی رو تو شرایط خاص توصیف کرده بود درست مثل "عقاید یک دلقک" دوستش داشتم، پایان کتاب رو هم. نشون میده که چه قدر وقت ما برای زیستن و ابراز محبت به تمام هستی کوتاهه .
