The Devilish Conclave
In this fashion began the orgy of bloodshed which is now looked upon as the second phase of the Battle of the Somme, three agonizing months during which divisions, 'fattened up' in back areas on quiet sectors, were brought up into the line to dissipate in one wild day the strength built up during the previous months.
[...]
Curzon worked with grim determination during those three months. There was always pressure to be applied to someone--transport officers who said that a thing could not be done, major-generals who flinched from exposing their divisions to some fresh ordeal, artillery colonels who pleaded that their men were on the point of exhaustion. He did his duty with all his nerve and all his strength, as was his way, while the higher command looked on him with growing approval; he was a man after their own heart, who allowed no consideration to impede him in the execution of his orders.
-p.196
Curzon is the kind of fear that we face in frank truth from the start. His monstrosities are carefully noted (see various intermittent blog points, the novel), the geography of his bad personhood without mystery. There is an implicit, greater fear dripping down the spine of the text: the higher command. They don't get much screen time, but the time they are there they spend smiling loving mafioso smiles on their protege, basking in the warm glow of their legacy, seeming to feed on if not having set motion to these events. The horrors Curzon performs, glazed with clinical euphemism (most notably, consideration...that is, the death of thousands), grim already because it is his life's purpose to perform them, are grimmer in having been ordained, more joyfully generated by that ominous circle of heads, the guys who are above him because they love it more than he does.
Forrester is a master of insinuation, having put in the spotlight the worst kind of English citizen, the kind of man who started the war...then gently having flicked a few rays on the peripheral certainty that it gets worse than this. That Curzon is not the nucleus of the horror, that there are forces such that he himself is merely workhorse for them.
That is fear.
That is the Combine.
[...]
Curzon worked with grim determination during those three months. There was always pressure to be applied to someone--transport officers who said that a thing could not be done, major-generals who flinched from exposing their divisions to some fresh ordeal, artillery colonels who pleaded that their men were on the point of exhaustion. He did his duty with all his nerve and all his strength, as was his way, while the higher command looked on him with growing approval; he was a man after their own heart, who allowed no consideration to impede him in the execution of his orders.
-p.196
Curzon is the kind of fear that we face in frank truth from the start. His monstrosities are carefully noted (see various intermittent blog points, the novel), the geography of his bad personhood without mystery. There is an implicit, greater fear dripping down the spine of the text: the higher command. They don't get much screen time, but the time they are there they spend smiling loving mafioso smiles on their protege, basking in the warm glow of their legacy, seeming to feed on if not having set motion to these events. The horrors Curzon performs, glazed with clinical euphemism (most notably, consideration...that is, the death of thousands), grim already because it is his life's purpose to perform them, are grimmer in having been ordained, more joyfully generated by that ominous circle of heads, the guys who are above him because they love it more than he does.
Forrester is a master of insinuation, having put in the spotlight the worst kind of English citizen, the kind of man who started the war...then gently having flicked a few rays on the peripheral certainty that it gets worse than this. That Curzon is not the nucleus of the horror, that there are forces such that he himself is merely workhorse for them.
That is fear.
That is the Combine.
posted by madmouth at 11:14 PM
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