Three Comrades

by Erich Maria Remarque

If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.

Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.

“The pillars of human society are covetousness, fear, and corruption,” retorted Grau. “Man is evil, but loves the good—when others do it.”

Only the stupid conquer in life; the other man foresees too many obstacles and becomes uncertain before he starts. In difficult times simplicity is the most priceless gift—a magic cloak that conceals dangers into which the super-intelligent run headlong as if hypnotized.”

I let her go—but something in me did not let her go. Long after we had come out I still felt her shoulder in my arm, the soft hair, the faint peach smell of her skin. I avoided looking at her. She had suddenly become something different for me.

Never will I forget that face—never forget how it then inclined toward me, how it won expression, how it filled silently with tenderness and compassion, with a shining quietness, as if it flowered—never will I forget how her lips came toward mine, how her eyes approached mine, how they stood close in front of me and looked at me, questioning, solemn, big and shining—and then how they slowly closed as if surrendering themselves.…

“What are you then?” “Only half, nothing whole. A fragment—” “That is best of all,” said I. “That stirs the imagination. Such women one loves forever. Perfect women one soon gets over. Worthy ones likewise. Lovely fragments never.”

“Extraordinary creatures you young people are, altogether. The past you hate, the present you despise, and the future is a matter of indifference. How do you suppose that can lead to any good end?”

I hate the swimming looks of lovers, the foolish blissful cuddling, the indecent sheepish happiness that can never rise above itself; I hate all the talk of becoming one through love; it seems to me we cannot sufficiently be two nor remove ourselves from one another often enough in order to meet again. Only those who are constantly alone know the joy of being together. Anything else breaks the spell of the tension. And what can more powerfully penetrate the magic circle of solitude than the uprush of emotion, the surrender to a shock, the might of the elements, storm, night music? And love …

Submit! thought I. A lot that would help. Fight, fight, was the only thing in this struggle, where one would go under in the end anyway. Fight for the little that one loved. At seventy one might begin to think about submitting.

“Could, could,” answered Jaffé. “Haven’t you ever observed how we live in an age of self-persecution? What a lot of things there are one might do that one doesn’t—and yet why, God only knows. Work has become so tremendously important to-day, because so many have none, I suppose, that it kills everything else.

Work, work, work … an abominable obsession—and always under the illusion it will be different later.

I wanted to say something, but I could not. It is difficult to find words when one really has something to say. And even if one knows the right words, then one is ashamed to say them. All these words belong to other, earlier centuries.

One could only reassure him; the rest he must find for himself. He did not love the woman any more, that was obvious—but he was used to her, and for a bookkeeper habit can be more than love.

“To compensate, you do belong to an order, brother—the order of the unsuccessful, the unsound fellows with their desires without purpose, their ambition that brings in nothing, their love without prospect, their despair without reason.”

Light doesn’t shine in the light; it shines in the dark.

“Otto,” said I to Köster, who was walking in front of me, “I know now what those people are wanting. They don’t want politics at all. They want substitute religion.” He looked around. “Of course. They want to believe in something again—in what, it doesn’t matter. That’s why they are so fanatical, too, of course.”

“People should die, only when they’re alone. Or when they hate—not when they love.”