A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

“Anticipation is the heart of wisdom. If you are going to cross a desert, you

way to arrive at the truth, exactitude and methodology are, in the end, far inferior to vision and apotheosis. I don’t claim to have a patent on either, and history is not my profession, but I do have some ideas about the

were not the steady alternation of the dark and the light, people become resigned and pessimistic, and when the fields are left open, in rush the lunatics and idiots. Does it remind you of factional politics and the Triplice? It’s the same. When greater forces are immobilized, the splinter factions run riot.

been funny but for their influence on the rest of the country. When people write violent absurdities on the walls of a city, the city becomes violent and absurd.

“If I die tomorrow it will have been useless to have been afraid today.”

“Mortality is like the cold. It cannot be altered by human conceit or solidarity, and at the end you will be on your knees, in shock and amazement, and then you’ll have only one sword, one shield, one great thing to carry you through.” Alessandro

Bindo Altoviti

Paintings

In one respect it hardly mattered, for the life of a soldier is an introduction to death, and when death comes or is about to come, the soldier is at least partially satisfied.

cigars clearly visible in the side pocket and a stethoscope arched over his neck like a cat that has learned to ride on its owner’s shoulders, the doctor was the picture of authority and expertise. His was the

the Isonzo, but I withdrew them to an

hands on lines that run uninterrupted through life and through death. Touching them is an act of hope, for perhaps someone on the other side, if there is another side, is touching them, too.” “Who is Ariane?” the major asked. Alessandro seemed

PERHAPS BECAUSE isolation is the mother of meticulousness,

Vita Nuova more than a few lines at a time. These

faster things go, the less likely that one can rule many, because stirrings and changes in relative positions will be too frequent. Austria-Hungary cannot fail to dissolve. “In the

the object of war is peace, and I have merely thrown out the middle. If everyone did the same, no one would be crushed and pulverized in the filth of the trenches.”

obsequious. We require it.” Alessandro blinked.

his eyes, consumed in flame, executed,

vertiginous face it seems only natural to struggle along

was one of those days in fall when summer returns in every respect except one, the strength of the light. Such a day has the quality of a very old man who possesses

doomed merely by the passage of time. Though it was hot, the light was dying. But declining

light is the crowning glory of the seaside and a dream-like reward for the exertions of summer. In summer, the waves toil, but when the air is hot and th...

much as whisper. Alessan...

“Real power is with those who are forever still, and I want to join them.”

Nicolò’s well meaning remark, he was offended.

of God, in voiceless perfection, in the perpetual stillness that is yoked to perpetual movement, you asked nonetheless to be released, to go back, to descend, to go down, to revert. What if you chose, rather than

silver and gold, and white that is too bright to comprehend, the lively pulse of red?

Alessandro echoed contemptuously. “That’s the stupidest question I ever heard in my life. I threw myself upon her and she devoured me with every part of her body that could move or be moved. Though it was extraordinarily pleasurable, I felt like a downed wildebeest set upon by a pride of lions. She was everywhere at once. Every touch, at first only for her, and then for me, put out ten aggravating fires but started fifteen more. She may have worked in the library but she loosed everything upon me in pitchers-full, with moaning, hyperventilation, finger sucking, and all that.

Love

you years to learn what to do—not because it’s a matter of technique, but precisely because it isn’t. It’s a matter of deep understanding, and of love. Nowadays, people have a problem with sex, I think. Popular culture is obsessed with it. It has become almost a sickness. It never

out the cold, and by the time he began to feel