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| Rebecca West (in the 1930s) |
Ian Buruma, in his absorbing “Fools, Cowards, or Criminals?” (The New York Review of Books, August 17, 2017), a review of Marcel Ophuls 1976 documentary The Memory of Justice, quotes Rebecca West. He writes, “The main Nuremberg war crimes trials began in November 1945 and continued until October 1946. Rebecca West, who reported on the painfully slow proceedings for The New Yorker, described the courtroom as a ‘citadel of boredom.’ ”
The piece Buruma is quoting from is called “Extraordinary Exile,” which appeared in the September 7, 1946, New Yorker. West later retitled it “Greenhouse with Cyclamens I”
and included it in her great 1955 collection A Train of Powder. Comparing the New Yorker piece with the book version, I find almost every
sentence is different. For example, the “citadel of boredom” phrase quoted by
Buruma comes from the piece’s opening paragraph. Here’s the New Yorker version:
There rushes up toward the plane the astonishing face of the
world’s enemy: pine woods on little hills, gray-green, glossy lakes too small
to be anything but smooth, gardens tall with red-tongued beans, fields striped
with red-gold wheat, russet-roofed villages with high gables, and
pumpkin-steepled churches that no architect over seven could have designed.
Another minute and the plane drops to the heart of the world’s enemy:
Nuremberg. In not many more minutes, one is in the courtroom where the world’s
enemy is being tried for his sins, and immediately one forgets those sins in
wonder at a conflict going on in that court which has nothing to do with the
indictments it is considering. The trial is now in its tenth month, and the
courtroom is a citadel of boredom. Every person attending it is in the grip of
extreme tedium. This is not to say that the work at hand is being performed in
a languid or perfunctory way. An iron discipline meets that tedium head on and
does not yield an inch to it. But all the same, the most spectacular process in
the court today is a certain tug of war concerning time. Some of those present
are fiercely desiring that the tedium should come to an end at the first
possible moment, and the others are as fiercely desiring that it should last forever.
And here’s the Train
of Powder version:
There rushed up toward the plane the astonishing face of the
world’s enemy: pine woods on little hills, gray-green glossy lakes, too small ever
to be anything but smooth, gardens tall with red-tongued beans, fields striped
with copper wheat, russet-roofed villages with headlong gables, and
pumpkin-steeple churches that no architect over seven could have designed. Another
minute and the plane dropped to the heart of the world’s enemy: Nuremberg. It
took not many more minutes, to get to the courtroom where the world’s enemy was
being tried for his sins; but immediately those sins were forgotten in wonder
at a conflict which was going on in that court, though it had nothing to do
with the indictments considered by it. The trial was then in its eleventh
month, and the courtroom was a citadel of boredom. Every person within its walk
was in the grip of extreme tedium. This is not to say that the work in hand was
being performed languidly. An iron discipline meets that tedium head on and
does not yield an inch to it. But all the same, the most spectacular process in
the court was by then a certain tug-of-war concerning time. Some of those
present were fiercely desiring that the tedium should come to an end at the
first possible moment, and the others were as fiercely desiring that it should
last for ever and ever.
First, note the change in tense – from present in the New Yorker version to past in the Train of Powder version. Second, “glossy
lakes too small to be anything but smooth” (New
Yorker) is changed to “glossy lakes, too small ever to be anything but
smooth” (Train of Powder). Third, “red-gold
wheat,” “high gables,” and “pumpkin-steepled churches” (New Yorker) become “copper wheat,” “headlong gables,” and
“pumpkin-steeple churches” (Train of
Powder). Fourth, “In not many more minutes, one is in the courtroom where
the world’s enemy is being tried for his sins” (New Yorker) is changed to “It took not many more minutes to get to
the courtroom where the world’s enemy was being tried for his sins” (Train of Powder). Fifth, “and
immediately one forgets those sins in wonder at a conflict going on in that
court which has nothing to do with the indictments it is considering” (New Yorker) is changed to “but
immediately those sins were forgotten in wonder at a conflict which was going
on in that court, though it had nothing to do with the indictments considered
by it” (Train of Powder). Sixth, note
the change from “The trial is now in its tenth month” (New Yorker) to “The trial was then in its eleventh month” (Train of Powder). Seventh, “Every person attending it is in the grip of extreme tedium” (New Yorker) becomes “Every person within
its walk was in the grip of extreme tedium” (Train of Powder). Eighth, “This is not to say that the work at hand
is being performed in a languid or perfunctory way” (New Yorker) is changed to “This is not to say that the work in hand
was being performed languidly” (Train of
Powder). Ninth, “and the others are as fiercely desiring that it should
last forever” (New Yorker) is changed
to “and the others were as fiercely desiring that it should last for ever and
ever” (Train of Powder).
The New Yorker version strikes me as slightly more elegant. Both versions are brilliant. Both
use the exact same words to describe the Nuremburg courtroom, the words quoted
by Buruma – “a citadel of boredom.”
Credit: The above photo of Rebecca West is from Brian Hall’s “Rebecca West’s War” (The New Yorker, April 15, 1996).
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