SEMANTICS OF ALCOHOL AND OPPOSITION “RUM – COGNAC” IN THE NOVEL “THREE COMRADES” BY E. M. REMARQUE
Authors:   Mariupol State University, HORODNIUK N. 
Published: April 2024

The article is devoted to the semantics of alcohol in the novel “Three comrades” by E. M. Remarque. The vast majority of scenes and episodes of the novel are marked with numerous alcoholic beverages, signs of drinking and drunkenness, or numerous references to cafes, restaurants, bars and pubs, which appear the dominant chronotope of the work. The article analyzes the semantic opposition “rum – cognac” in the novel. Typically, Remarque’s semantics of drinking is considered in the context of “the lost generation” as a mental and/or physical anesthesia that dulls post-war traumas, pain, sadness, fear and disappointment, and the alcohol as a means of escaping from reality and forgetting things (it is confirmed by significant number of episodes). But some drinking scenes are full of high aestheticism and clearly convey the semantics of hedonism (full-blooded delight of taste, color, aroma nuances, etc.), embody the poetics of the symposium. “Rum – cognac” opposition in “Three Comrades” marks semantically contrasting situations and episodes: rum symbolizes the beginning of life, the beginning of everything new and the birth, and cognac - the end, destruction, and death. At first, it seems that Remarque's rum is associated with love (meeting Pat, the first date, relationship development, etc.), and cognac with friendship (cognac was drunk in male company: Robert with Ferdinand or Lenz with Alois). But this hypothesis is not confirmed in the text, since, firstly, both rum and cognac were drunk in an all-male company (sometimes at the same time), and, secondly, Robert and Pat also drank both rum and cognac together. Moreover, rum appears when the lovers toast to the fidelity of love and friendship and Robert calls the girl a faithful friend. At the end of the novel, (the characters' last conversation about love and death), cognac marks the symbolic unity of the characters - Robert and Pat drink cognac from the same glass. The cognac is the last Pat’s drink with Robert before her death. These examples show that the author has a different idea and logic of the text. The question arises why, out of several dozen traditional drinks in the text, Remarque chooses these two - rum and cognac as a semantic pair or plot opposition, using one or the other alternately. Note that it is not one drink, like calvados in “Arch of Triumph”, but two - with a certain sequence. There is a certain logic in this sequence. Rum and cognac mark devotion, love and friendship in the novel, but if rum embodies the beginning and the taste of life, then cognac symbolizes completion and death. The semantics is fixed for these drinks and clearly outlined in the text. Thus, rum symbolizes life, birth and something new, rum marks the plot of the story: Robert's birthday (aged rum is a gift from friends), meeting Pat, the first date (the talk about rum and the fact that on the date Robert had too much of rum), the development of their affair (numerous drinking situations and visiting bars by the heroes), the first visit to Pat's apartment (diluted rum that Robert drinks and praises out of delicacy for the girl's feelings), the dramatic vacation with the sudden deterioration of Pat’s health, the tonic effect of rum on girl's body and the characters' conversation over a glass of rum about the specifics of their generation’s love, visiting Pat in the sanatorium. Cognac embodies the completion of a certain cycle, destruction, death. It appears in the studio of Ferdinand, an artist who paints portraits of the dead, marking his decadent mood and the talk about the relentless of time and inevitable death. Ferdinand, related to the concept of death, in most cases, drinks exactly cognac; the meeting of Lenz and Alphonse with the three drinks of Napoleon cognac (let us recall that after Lenz’s death, it is Alphonse who tracks down and executes his killer); cognac is the last thing that Gasse, crushed by cheating on his wife, drinks before suicide. Alphonse pours Napoleon cognac for the upset friends when he escorts Pat to the sanatorium, she was never destined to return from. The cognac given by Lenz temporarily soothes Pat's tears on a train to the sanatorium. The bankruptcy of the garage is clearly associated with the last bottle of good cognac, it is cognac that Robert and Pat drink from the same glass before the girl's death. So, if rum is birth, the taste of life and the sun, beginning, renewal, new feelings, sensations and impressions, then cognac is completion, destruction and death, darkness and twilight, the tragic finale of the work. Key words: alcohol semantics, opposition “rum – cognac”, signs of drinking, aestheticism, olfactory detail, E. M. Remarque, the novel “Three comrades”.