“A stupor and a sort of shame overwhelmed me as I heard that man trying to extract the utmost entertainment possible from the dark happenings that had been torturing me for a month.”

—  Henri Barbusse

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVI
Context: A stupor and a sort of shame overwhelmed me as I heard that man trying to extract the utmost entertainment possible from the dark happenings that had been torturing me for a month.
I thought of that great voice, now silenced, which had said so clearly and forcefully that the writers of to-day imitate the caricaturists.
I, who had penetrated into the heart of humanity and returned again, found nothing human in this jiggling caricature! It was so superficial that it was a lie.
He said in front of me — of me the awful witness:
"It is man stripped of all outward appearances that I want people to see. Others are fiction, I am the truth."

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Henri Barbusse 197
French novelist 1873–1935

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