"IN trying to recall my impressions during my short war duty as an officer in the Austrian Army, I find that my recollections of this period are very uneven and confused"
About this Quote
Memory is supposed to deliver war in crisp snapshots: heroism, horror, or at least a clean moral. Kreisler offers the opposite. His sentence is a quiet refusal of the tidy war story, and it lands harder because it comes from a composer whose public identity trades on control, phrasing, and precision. Here, the celebrated maker of orderly sound admits that his inner archive is ragged.
The specific intent reads almost defensive, even ethical: he’s warning you not to over-trust what follows. “Short war duty” downplays the duration and, by extension, the authority he might claim; “as an officer” restores a hint of status, then immediately undercuts it with “uneven and confused.” That push-pull feels like a man negotiating the expectations placed on him: officers are meant to remember clearly, to report, to testify. He’s saying he can’t, or won’t, perform that role.
Subtextually, the confusion is the point. Modern war doesn’t just wound bodies; it scrambles narrative. Kreisler’s language resembles what we now recognize as trauma’s afterimage: patchy recall, discontinuity, a mind that refuses to replay certain reels on command. Coming from the Austro-Hungarian context, there’s also the imperial fog: a multiethnic army fighting for a state whose coherence was already fraying, making personal recollection mirror political disintegration.
Stylistically, the clause-heavy, self-correcting rhythm mimics the very unevenness he describes. It’s prose that stumbles on purpose, a musician letting the reader hear the hesitation between notes.
The specific intent reads almost defensive, even ethical: he’s warning you not to over-trust what follows. “Short war duty” downplays the duration and, by extension, the authority he might claim; “as an officer” restores a hint of status, then immediately undercuts it with “uneven and confused.” That push-pull feels like a man negotiating the expectations placed on him: officers are meant to remember clearly, to report, to testify. He’s saying he can’t, or won’t, perform that role.
Subtextually, the confusion is the point. Modern war doesn’t just wound bodies; it scrambles narrative. Kreisler’s language resembles what we now recognize as trauma’s afterimage: patchy recall, discontinuity, a mind that refuses to replay certain reels on command. Coming from the Austro-Hungarian context, there’s also the imperial fog: a multiethnic army fighting for a state whose coherence was already fraying, making personal recollection mirror political disintegration.
Stylistically, the clause-heavy, self-correcting rhythm mimics the very unevenness he describes. It’s prose that stumbles on purpose, a musician letting the reader hear the hesitation between notes.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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