I AM LAZARUS

by Sven Berlin ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Sven Berlin is a painter, and also a poet, and his diary of his months of active service after his not fully explained enlistment (he was a pacifist and conscientious objector for the first three years of the war) is an interesting contrast of lyricism and realism, of actual bttle incidents and more fugitive perceptions. While it covers almost day by day annotations of his experience as a gunner with an Artillery Heavy Regiment in France, soon after D Day, to the time when he was injured and invalided home in 1944, it alternates between the immediate circumstances to more metaphysical considerations; the excitement or ""extraseunary"" attributes of action under fire; to thoughts of death which is "". The great fear is in being alive""; to softer memories of home occasioned by the villages through which they pass, the children seen, etc., etc. While necessarily sket, it is intense in feeling, spontaneous, personal, an artist's landscape of life and death of a rather special character.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1961

Categories: NONFICTION