/lit/ - Literature

>>21323517
Okay I realise the 'Sperren'/rulers from the text didn't make it to the .pdf for some reason, anyways you get the point.

Now what did Scheld think? Well, Remarque's book was effective, but simple. Everything ultimately sinks into "grauen Elend", miserable tristesse, which does nothing to elevate the individual ("den Einzigen") and could even end up posing a danger to the democracy of the time.

His criticism relies on two central theses, one is admittedly entirely Scheld's own and he does little here to listen to Remarque. Scheld purports that a central characteristic of any reasonable [abgeklärten] democracy must be: The utmost justice [Gerechtigkeit] to every member of the people [Volksgenosse], that is, the representation of everyone as equals best as possible, which admittedly Remarque has never claimed, but Scheld implies that any book portraying the war should exhibit this virtue, "auch wenn man den Krieg verwirft als Massenmord oder als Resultat politischer D-ummheit", even if you discard the war as either mass murder or the result of political stupidity.

Before moving on, while not stemming from Remarque himself, Scheld's point isn't that far-fetched as being immanently caused by very common views in the literary criticism then as well as today. It's criticism and art 'for life', i.e., in service of it.