BY ERICH MARIA REMARQUE
A poignant love story of two people fleeing Nazi Germany, told in an unusual setting.
5 stars out of 5 stars
The structure of this novel is most unusual. It was written in the first person, but the story was not about the author, Mr. Remarque. The setting was in 1939, just before the Second World War started. Germans who were purported to be enemies of the Third Reich were fleeing their country and Europe. Two refugees, Mr. Remarque (the author) and a Mr. Schwartz, who were total strangers, ran into each other in Lisbon, which was the port of departure for America, for those who managed to obtain visas and boat tickets.
Mr. Schwartz wanted to give the author two tickets to America, as well as his passport and the passport of his wife, Helen, who had just died, on the condition that the author would spend the evening with him, during which he would tell the story of him and his wife. His concern was that their story would not stay true in his memory. As time went by, it would be distorted and falsified by his own experience, unless he could project it and set it up outside of himself. Schwartz thought that, by telling it to Mr. Remarque, it would stay true. This theory was certainly novel, but it sounds absurd when one first hears it. It seems to me that the only way the memory will not suffer changes or be forgotten was to write it down, either by Mr. Schwartz or by Mr. Remarque when it was fresh in their minds. Writing, of course, was a lot more work than telling a story. I guess in this case, Mr. Schwartz’s theory worked, because Mr. Remarque did write a novel about it. Mr. Remarque never saw Mr. Schwartz again after Lisbon, Whether Mr. Schwartz knew about the novel was not known.
In any case, it was a hauntingly bitter-sweet love story. As in other love stories by Remarque, such as in “A time to love and a time to die”, or “Heaven has no favorites”, there was no “happy thereafter” ending.
In addition to the various adventures the couple encountered during their escape across Europe, there were plenty of philosophical musings about the human condition in the conversations among the characters. Most themes, such as, “Do you believe in survival after death?” “The world never looks more beautiful than when you’re about to leave it”, can be found in the writings of other authors. However, the following musing about ‘time’ is novel and is worth quoting below:
“Time is diluted death, a poison administered slowly, in harmless doses. At first it stimulates us and even makes us feel immortal – but drop by drop and day by day it grows stronger and destroys our blood.”
Another passage, about Hitler’s Germany, seems to be applicable to describe the political situation in certain parts of the world today by simply changing a few words:
“Hitler keeps shouting that he is an apostle of peace and that other countries have forced war upon him; he not only tells the whole world, he believes it himself. Fifty million Germans believe it with him. The fact that they alone have been arming for years, and that no other country was prepared for war doesn’t affect their opinion in the least.”
“The Night in Lisbon” is the fifth book I read by Eric Maria Remarque in as many months. The number, better than words, speaks to the attraction of his novels.
Link to Amazon Review:
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