War’s ruin intrudes on and dishonors even untouched natural landscapes
Evidence
even here ugliness was not to be forgotten altogether: from time to time the train stopped at scaling, mud-colored little stations that clung to the embankment between the river and the cliff; against the military blue of the already dim windowpanes, soldiers in khaki were dozing on the mail wagons—then the green valley grew almost desolate for a moment: the train passed lugubrious yellow houses sliced out of the earth and apparently powdering the surrounding greenness with dust from the gypsum quarries — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 28
Categorization
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 28
- XREF: connects to: War degrades landscapes before any fighting actually occurs there — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 28; A quiet forest can erupt into total war within minutes — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 395; Modern warfare’s destruction of landscapes reveals a broken relationship between humanity and environment — Landscape: a human lens on the environmental cost of war (+4 more)