Genevoix is great style, purity of the French language. And when this style is placed at the service of the testimony, it gives a great work. Maurice Genevoix speaks of war with words but it is his flesh that dictates sentences. He saw the mud of the trenches, promiscuity, online climb, the horror of combat, fear and bravery. He tells with great economy of means that these offensives were the "big bloodletting". Our contemporaries do not know what were those years. The Black & White images of old archive films reflect a terrible violence, but muted. With Maurice Genevoix, we have a voice that dominates the clash of arms, simply tell them: shut up!
Adding May 2014: a century after the conflict began, I was able to go on the spur of Eparges, which fought Maurice Genevoix. The land, despite his coat tree, keeps intact all the deep scars of the fighting and it takes little imagination to feel the hell experienced by all combatants in the sector. The simple words of Maurice Genevoix are only stronger because there would have been strong enough adjectives to describe what is beyond words.
