Arch of Triumph Book

I've tried to write review for Arch of Triumph and I've failed. So instead of it some impressions. It's a love story and grief story; it's Paris of expatriates, cheap brothels and shabby cafés; it's hotel International, mecca for fugitives from every corner of Europe, with its rooms embellished with portraits of fascists or their democratic counterparts, depends on whom current exiles are; it's sea of calvados, nocturnal wanderings, ambience of nostalgia and decadency and harbinger of impending disaster.

It's doctor Ravic, somewhat cynical and disillusioned refugee from Germany. It's not his real name but it has brought him luck for last two years so he sticks to it. He needs neither your support nor pity and tries to not become accustomed to anything, neither place nor people, things or love, not even to a body , after all you never know when you again will have to run away. It's an old porter Boris, émigré from Russia driven by desire for revenge on executioners of his father. It's a second-rate actress and singer Joan Madou, at first glance fragile and helpless poor thing. But that's an illusion. She is all primary strength and instinct.

She gave herself to whatever she did …Such women were nothing but drinking, when they drank ; nothing but love when they loved; nothing but desperation when they were desperate; and nothing but forgetfulness when they forgot .

Sometimes love catches us off guard and unsolicited falls in our arms. We can defend against it with harsh words and apparent indifference, though nothing works better than bottle of cognac or calvados, or both, and then one more bottle since night is still young, you can say whatever you want, nobody's listening, pour me calvados, your place or mine ?, let's drink, salute ! And sometimes it doesn't work.



Remarque masterfully rendered city at the brink of war, inhospitable hotel rooms like poor substitutes for homes, brothels with its makeshift love, sordid cafés you can hide in before loneliness. I'm not sure why this novel appeals to me that way. Am I attracted by that dark aura of pre-war Paris that still doesn't believe that war it's just at it gates, or that existential sadness that protagonists try to suppress in spouts of alcohol, or this impossible love and shared solitude, or that Ravic despite his skepticism, cynicism even remains so righteous and idealistic in his deeds, or perhaps these scenes like from kitschy melodrama and love words sometimes so clichéd that you eventually have no other choice like to believe them ?