Stephen Crane. 1871–1900 Red Badge of Courage ponders the American Civil War bloodbath.
This prose bracket contest features war (Crane) and love (Lawrence)—and it probably doesn’t get any better than this.
Ironically, (of course—what do you expect with war and love?) the war passage is peaceful, and the love quotation is warlike.
The horror of war, the beauty of horror, the resting aspect of war, the natural inevitably of war, is captured for all time by Stephen Crane:
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
Meanwhile, D.H. Lawrence, for whom love and passion was a religion (why is this not true of all of us? Perhaps it is), injects horror into love—which makes it real love, unfortunately.
He kissed her, and she quivered as if she were being destroyed, shattered.
The glimpse into truth carried by words always has an irony for us—since words are removed from reality.
Aren’t they?
