推荐时间：12/30/19
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客户：Issacie Ma
网址：https://www.gracg.com/works/view/1399786
创造年份：2019
描述：Source of inspiration: LAST WITNESSES was written by Belarusian journalist S.A. Alexievich. The book won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015.Last Witnesses is Alexievich's collection of the memories of those who were children during World War II. They had sometimes been soldiers as well as witnesses, and their generation grew up with the trauma of the war deeply embedded--a trauma that would change the course of the Russian nation. Collectively, this symphony of children's stories, filled with the everyday details of life in combat, reveals an altogether unprecedented view of the war. Alexievich gives voice to those whose memories have been lost in the official narratives, uncovering a powerful, hidden history from the personal and private experiences of individuals. Last Witnesses is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war.I created a series of illustrations inspired by the content of this b
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illustration
literature
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LAST WITNESSES
Dostoevsky once posed a question: Can we justify our world, our happiness, and even eternal harmony, if in its name, to strengthen its foundation, at least one little tear of an innocent child will be spilled? And he himself answered: this tear will not justify any progress, any revolution. Any war. It will always outweigh them. Just one little tear…
MISTERWhen my father came home from the front, I was scared of him. He would give me candy and ask, “Say ‘papa’…” I would take the candy, hide with it under the table, and say, “Mister…” I had no papa during the war. I grew up with mama and grandma. With my aunt. I couldn’t imagine what a papa would do in our home. He’d come with a rifle…
I SAW I saw what shouldn’t be seen…What a man shouldn’t see. And I was little… I saw a soldier who was running and seemed to stumble. He fell. For a long time he clawed at the ground, he clung to it… I saw a German train go off the rails and burn up during the night, and in the morning they laid all those who worked for the railroad on the tracks and drove a locomotive over them… I saw my neighbor’s dog crying. He sat in the ashes of our neighbor’s house. Alone. He had an old man’s eyes… And I was little…I grew up with this…I grew up gloomy and mistrustful, I have a difficult character. When someone cries, I don’t feel sorry; on the contrary, I feel better, because I myself don’t know how to cry. I’ve been married twice, and twice my wife has left me. No onecould stand me for long. It’s hard to love me.
SLEEPLESSI close my eyes…I see… Three Red Army soldiers are being led down the road, their arms tied behind them with barbed wire. They are in their underwear. Two are young, one an older man. They walk with their heads down. They are shot near the school. On the road. In the last moments they began to shout their names loudly in hopes that someone would hear and remember them. Inform their relatives. I watched through a hole in the fence…I remember… One was Vanechka Ballai, the other Roman Nikonov. And the one who was older shouted, “Long live Comrade Stalin!” And I kept repeating…I’d wake up at night and repeat: Vanechka Ballai, Roman Nikonov…The third man’s name I didn’t know…
FOLLOWFather saw us and, I remember it like today, covered his head with his hands and walked off, even ran. He was afraid to look back. The sun was shining in my face. So warm…And even now I can’t believe that my father left that morning for the war. I was very little, but I think I realized that I wasseeing him for the last time. That I would never meet him again. I was very…very little… It became connected like that in my memory, that war is when there’s no papa… Once I met a man in the street who looked like papa. I followed him for a long time. Since I hadn’t seen my papa dead…
PINK The whole street had burned. Grandmothers and grandfathers and many small children had burned. Because they didn’t run away with the others, they thought they wouldn’t be touched. The fire didn’t spare anybody. We walked and if you saw a black corpse, it meant a burned old man. If you saw something small and pink from a distance—it meant a child. They lay pink on the cinders…
HIT THE BALLWe saw a family sitting in a boat—a man, his wife, and two children. When the boat was overturned, the adults immediately sank to the bottom, but the children kept resurfacing. The fascists hit them with their paddles, laughing. They hit them here, they would resurface somewhere else; they would catch up with them and hit them again. But, like rubber balls, they didn’t sink…
GIRLS’ SHOESAs luck would have it, an army choirmaster came to the orphanage, Captain Gordeev. He chose four musical boys, including me. That was how I wound up at the front. The whole orphanage came to see us off. I had nothing to wear, and one girl gave me her sailor suit, and another had two pairs of shoes and gave one to me. Thus equipped I went to the front. Most of all I was embarrassed to be wearing girls’ shoes…
