On a morning in June, when the first guns startled the larks, they sounded like some dissonance. Everything around is out of harmony with these voices: whether it is a peaceful cottage or a slowly maturing ear of wheat; Whether it is children on the streets of border cities or people's hearts that continue to beat smoothly. How much our country has changed! It's a clear autumn day. The birch trees around the shelter seemed to be bleeding. The last batch of gloomy and colorful leaves are well adapted to the war environment. Many trees were cut off by shrapnel. Steel has dug many craters. The village disappeared, only the remaining chimneys were seen. Even the face has changed: it seems that the war has re-fabricated the face. In the past, people's faces were as soft as the endless, expressive and barely outlined scenery in Russia that was so easy to praise but so difficult to describe. In the past, people were like this. Nowadays, faces are carved out of stone. There was a stern and firm look in his eyes.
Sometimes at night, when the first batch of green flares pierced the sky, when the shelling in the daytime began to be silent and the shelling at night had not yet exercised its power, a frontline soldier vaguely remembered the past. For a moment, it seemed to him that life was still going on somewhere in the rear, and this was his old life. He saw the brightly lit Moscow. In the windows, people are eating dinner under the lights, laughing and reading attractive novels, the children are preparing their homework, and the girls are dressing up-because there is a dance today ... isn't it fireworks in the cultural park? At this time, the frontline soldiers immediately remembered: war! There is also a war in Moscow: the streets are dark, the windows on the houses are like a pair of blind eyes ... Girls are cutting wood. Musicians become engineers or mortars. The children were evacuated to the Urals. The searchlight pierced the black night sky. If you can fly over the country as in fairy tales, you will see wars everywhere. You will see the city burned by the Germans. You will see factories covered with wooden sheds, which span thousands of kilometers. You will see girls who used to study literature or play the piano casting shells with anger. Just look into a girl's eyes in a dark, cold workshop, and you will find something kind in these eyes: she is also fighting on the battlefield. You will meet the women of Leningrad in Uzbekistan. You'll meet Poltavhina's children in Siberia. You will hear an elderly mother sigh: "I haven't written for two months …" You will hear a three-year-old child rubbing his blindfolded eyes with his little hand and asking: "Where is dad? ..... "You will see many hardships and many indomitable struggles. Not only is there a battle ahead. The whole country is at war. She is working day and night, forgetting to eat and sleep. She doesn't have fun, she doesn't sit and enjoy herself. Like you in the shelter, she lives with her head covered with night, her feet on the ground and her teeth clenched. She's fighting like you.
we have suffered many losses, and there is no one who does not think of our losses. Catastrophes are always embarrassing. Young women used to nag about some unpleasant little things, but now they are silent. She silently bandaged the wound for the wounded. The soldiers she cares for only know one thing: don't ask about her husband. We have lost many excellent people, many selfless, intelligent and honest people. This kind of loss is the greatest pain, because it is irreparable. We will rebuild the destroyed cities, which will be more beautiful than in the past. However, the loss of talented young people is irreparable. They have not engaged in any construction, built houses or built their own homes. However, they may be able to build a whole city.
we lost the magnificent dams and factories that we devoted all our efforts to. We lost the monuments in Novgorod. These precious cultural relics in Russia, which seem to have been warmed by the love of generations, have existed for centuries. They were destroyed by the evil hands of fascists.
we didn't create life easily. We often lack wisdom and time. However, this imperfect and imperfect life is our life. It's like an outstanding first draft of a long poem, but it's completely altered. The dark and foolish past has bound our progress. From narcissism to killing each other, we often shudder. We are the earliest prospectors of mankind. We have opened roads and crossed dense forests. When we built the nursery, terrible news came from the west: bombers were being built there that could kill hundreds of children overnight. We smelled the blood of fascism, so we said to our wife, "Wear old clothes for the winter." -We must build fighter planes. We know that children need toys, just as birds can't leave their wings. But since there are Hitler gangsters on the earth, can children play? We can only make a few toys. We must make tanks. In the ten years before the war, the evil fascism disturbed our lives, but we still built many cities, many schools, many retreats and many theaters.
Women give birth in pain. Fruit trees grow up bit by bit. For people, a quarter of a century is half a life; For history, a quarter century is only a short moment. On the eve of the war, we have seen the first fruits in our orchard. At this moment, the Germans attacked us. In just one hour, the SS destroyed many houses, villages and cities that we scrimped and saved for the future, like mothers for babies. We know how much we have suffered. The Germans also know this, because they saw our soldiers who were full of hatred and anger that forced the tanks to retreat.
we often think about our losses. Now we can talk about our gains in this war. It is difficult for mothers to detect why children grow up; When the child grows up, he is still a naughty child in the eyes of his mother. The speed at which our people have grown in 16 months is beyond words. Sometimes I simply can't recognize the young friends who came back from the front. The people don't recognize it. This is another people. It has been said that we must think in a quiet environment and a peaceful mood. Young people seem to have grown up in solemn classrooms, stacks, or small rooms with a lot of manuscripts piled up. Dark shelters are not like institutions of higher learning. The front is noisy, noisy and restless. But who will talk about how people think on the front line now? Their thinking is tense, stubborn and agitated. They are thinking about the present and the future. They are thinking about why yesterday's tactics didn't succeed and why the ten-year school didn't teach them more knowledge. They are thinking about the future and the beautiful life that the winner will build.
people grew up miraculously in the war, just like the forest in fairy tales. They associate with death and know death as their neighbors, so they become smart. They overcame their fears, which cheered people up and gave them firm faith, inner joy and great strength. There is no middle color and faint tone on the battlefield, and everything can be summed up as greatness and smallness, black and white. War is a great test for the nation and people. Many things in the war have been rethought, remoulded and reevaluated.
a quarter of a century ago, we took the word "comrade" as the criterion of our life, which put forward many requirements. It is easy to say "comrade", but it is not so simple to be responsible for "comrade". The concept of "citizen" has accurate and boring significance. This is a mathematical manual for recording rights and obligations. The word "comrade" requires fire-like enthusiasm. It's like the first time on the front line, it's completely displayed in front of millions of people. It becomes as concrete as blood, as warm and as sticky.
On the battlefield, we really saw the power of human friendship. How many heroic acts have been produced by this lofty emotion! Beside you, in an artillery company and an infantry platoon is a close comrade-in-arms. If he is injured, you will save him from death; If he dies, you won't forget him or forgive the enemy. Before the war, it was easy to make friends, but it was also easy to forget friends. Not after the battle. In the past, people often said: "Eat a Putt of salt together." But how can salt be compared with blood? How can it be compared with a night in Stalingrad for a long time? When the soldiers returned to their own troops, they were as happy as when they returned home. They always kept asking about every comrade-in-arms and every friend.
Friendship among all ethnic groups is our national principle, and it has become everyone's emotion. In the same company, there are Russians, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Georgians. We have seen that although we use different languages, we have the same feelings and thoughts. Siberian people listen to wonderful Ukrainian songs excitedly; The story about the white night in Arkhangelsk fascinated armin's black-eyed son. We were United by history at first, and then by the noble spirit of equality. Now, we are United by the night in the trench, and stronger than cement.
what you get without effort is not precious. Only now can our feelings for the motherland become solid, dignified and invincible. For the motherland, people sacrificed the most precious things. They used to be patriots, but now they have thought about their feelings, which makes them deeper. In the past, they just looked for an external explanation for their love. For foreign things, they sometimes despised them without foundation and sometimes worshipped them blindly. Now they know that loving the motherland is not for any other reason, but just because she is the motherland. Therefore, a simple little tree becomes more beautiful than the whole forest in the Garden of Eden. Being able to see your own shortcomings will not interrupt your love for the motherland, but just want to correct your own shortcomings and make yourself and the motherland noble and perfect.
On the battlefield, history unfolds before our eyes, the knowledge in books is restored to life, and the heroes of the past have entered the shelter department from textbooks. Who hasn't experienced the twelfth year like an easy-to-understand novel? Which youth league member is not angry about the ruins of Novgorod? We see that our young country is not built on a desert. We admire Leningrad's tenacity, and her sufferings demand our revenge. We saw Peter's career, and he built a fabulous city. We know that without Peter, there would be no Pushkin, without Petersburg, there would be no Putilov who opened a new era in the dark autumn night.
when we met the brutal atrocities of fascism, we felt the preciousness and greatness of the achievements made by the Russian people a quarter of a century ago.
We attach great importance to the heroic spirit of the Spanish people, but many of us used to find it hard to understand. Spanish farmers who are semi-illiterate are more civilized than some professors in Berlin, and now everyone understands. We can see that Hitler also kept diaries. They had typewriters and phonographs at home. Their appearance was very similar to that of civilized Europeans, and they could insult the moral feelings of any residents in the Shangweiqi Islands. The superficial civilization can no longer deceive us. We now see that without spiritual prosperity, such a civilization will soon become barbaric.
the maturity of every front-line soldier has strengthened our strength. We have lost vast tracts of land. The second summer brought us a lot of suffering. But we can still say that we are stronger now than on June 22, 1941, with stronger thoughts, wisdom and hearts. When we sang "If War breaks out tomorrow", we still didn't understand many things. We are no longer carefree, narcissistic or conformist. We haven't won yet, but we have prepared mature conditions for victory.
We sometimes think that it is very difficult to heal the wounds of war, rebuild destroyed cities and restore a peaceful life. This is the idea of loss. However, as long as we think about our gains, we will understand that one person who comes back from the front is worth ten people before the war. People will work and live in another way. We gained initiative, discipline and inner freedom on the battlefield.
the first morning after the war will be beautiful. We will hear that mother has fallen asleep peacefully. The postman will become a part of life again. The wife will hug the hero. The alarm will be silenced. Bright street lamps will be lit on Gorky Street and Neva Street, and our national flag will fly in the wind over troubled Kiev. Maybe it will rain or snow that day, but we will see the sun and the blue sky. The first Russia to stop the invaders, with its head held high, strong and peace-loving, proud but not arrogant, will take off the rifle on its shoulder and say, "Now start living!"
(translated by Li Zhongqing)
Note:
Eat a putt of salt together: Russian proverb, which means: A horse's power is known from a distance, and people will see it for a long time.
Peter: Peter the Great.
Mrs. Putilov: refers to the workers of Putilov factory in Petersburg, who took an active part in the revolutions in 195 and 1916 in Russia.
Appreciate
Artillery fire and gunfire, Russia's land and early morning, thoughts on life and fighting, and many scenes of war, and so on. Ehrenburg began his prose narrative with a poetic expression, precisely to reveal the friendship between people and the writer's philosophical thinking related to friendship in the most cruel war environment. This kind of thinking was wrapped up by ehrenburg with deep poetry, showing a particularly bright and clean color.
As a journalist who observes the world and the war from a Russian perspective, this essay by ehrenburg clearly embodies some characteristics of Russian and Soviet literature. The vast aesthetic space and deep feelings constitute some touching paragraphs in the article: "On a morning in June, when the first guns startled larks, they sounded like some dissonance." Everything around is out of harmony with these voices: whether it is a peaceful cottage or a slowly maturing ear of wheat; Whether it is children on the streets of border cities or people's hearts that continue to beat smoothly. " This perspective is Pushkin's calmly overlooking perspective in Bronze Knight. The camera moves slowly, and pictures pass by from the back of the camera. The narrator hides behind the camera and looks at the cottages, ears of wheat and children. He even felt people's beating hearts, and felt the fresh lives living in the war. Hearing and vision began to be closely combined since the sound of guns startled larks. This narrative technique makes ehrenburg's prose present a vivid picture. More importantly, this simple description is not simple. It reminds people of some novel fragments of the Great Patriotic War of 1812 described by Tolstoy in War and Peace, which are also poetic in prose. These articles are of a * * * nature.