“A dead German soldier was lying supine at the foot of the steps. His face was a waxy yellow. On his breast someone had laid a bunch of the lilac which was blooming everywhere.” It makes a picture and strikes a balance, that yellow face and those lilacs, death and life, the vigor of the spring and the immense devastation of the war. The lilacs don’t negate the corpse or the war but they complicate it, as the specific often does the general.
