Giddings, Robert;
The War Poets
Bloomsbury 1988, 192 pages
ISBN 0747501459
topics: | poetry | history | world-war1 | anthology
War gives rise to intense emotions, that often find expression in superlative
poetry. It has been estimated (Keith Robbins, p.8) that one and a half
million poems were written during the five years of WW I. This book sifts
through the better known work of poets from all sides of the conflict,
juxtaposing illustrations of poets, their text, paintings and images of
battlefields, cartoons and descriptions of the conditions that prevailed.
The poems are organized by year, but transcending geographical boundaries.
1914 starts off with Isaac Rosenberg in S. Africa, lamenting the breakout
of war, and Rupert Brooke reminiscing about the night he heard the
declaration of war, along with the poetry of Wilfred Owen, AE Housman,
interspersed with Allied voices (Guillaume Apollinaire), as well as that of
the enemy (Georg Trakl), all sounding rather universal :
the night embraces
Dying warriors, the wild lament
Of their broken mouths. (Georg Trakl, Grodek p.30)
mixed with the lament of the young soldier:
We're marching off in company with death.
I only wish my girl would hold her breath. (Alfred Lichtenstein 28)
1915 opens with deadlock in the war, and rampup of the war-industry. The
realities of war is seeping in, including the dreadful wounded:
He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
Leapt like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
and the trench experience (Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vigil, tr. J. Griffin p.61):
A whole night long
crouched close
to one of our men
butchered
with his clenched
mouth
grinning at the full moon
with the congestion
of his hands
thrust right
into my silence
I've written
letters filled with love
I have never been
so
coupled to life -
Among the casualties this year is Rupert Brooke.
1916 is the year of the big push, and the heavy losses, and endless trench
warfare:
I remembered someone that I'd seen
Dead in a squalid, miserable ditch
Heedless of toiling feet that trod him down.
He was a Prussian with a decent face,
Young, fresh, and pleasant, so I dare to say.
No doubt he loathed the war and longed for peace.
wrote Siegfried Sassoon.
By 1917 the war seems "foul and endless", but this was the year when Sassoon
turned pacifist, refusing to duy after convalescing; his "Soldier's
declaration" in "wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that
the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end
it." He is sent for psychiatric treatment, and there he meets Wilfred Owen,
who is much impressed after reading his trench life sketches: "[I feel] a
very high pitch of emotion... Shakespeare reads vapid after these." Sassoon
goes on to mentor Owen, who is a master of the nuanced contrast:
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day...
And when the poet Edward Thomas dies at Arras, Walter de la Mare has this
elegy:
You sleep too well -- too far away
For sorrowing word to soothe or wound;
Your very queiet seems to say
How longed-for a peace you have found.
1918 saw initial heavy fighting but by the summer, the tide had turned,
and armistice was signed in November. Unfortunately, Wilfred Owen was killed
just a month before. Isaac Rosenberg also died in April, aged 27, and
Sassoon had a narrow escape when one of his own sergeants shot him in the
head thinking him to be a German: "It seemed to me that there was a very large
hole in the right side of my skull. I felt, and believed, that I was as good
as dead... While the blood poured from my head, I was intensely aware of
everything around me -- the clear sky and the ripening corn."
The book ends with poems recalling the return of the troops, and the
continuing tragedy of peace. Rudyard Kipling, whose son died in the war,
writes in "Salonikan grave":
I have watched a thousand days
Pushed out and crawl into night
Slowly as tortoises.
Now I, too, follow these.
It is fever, and not the fight --
Time, not battle, -- that slays.
At the end of the book what held me was how lively, how relevant, these
poems, nearly a century old, remain today. One is left with a sense of the
senselessness of war, and perhaps the unification of Europe owes as much to
this body of poetry as to anything that any statesman ever wrought.
I am happy to note that this tour-de-force presentation, with such a lively
re-creation of the visual context, was reprinted in 2002, and remains in
print today, twenty years after it was first published in 1988. Definitely
worth a visit!
QUOTE:
Friedrich von Bernhard, Germany and the next war (1912): War is a biological
necessity in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed
with... But it is not only a biological law but a moral obligation
and, as such, an indispensible factor in civilization.
Friedrich von Bernhard (1849- ). German general who achieved political
prominence through his volume Germany and the Great War (1911). In this he
sets forth with frank cynicism the advantages, the necessity, and the
inevitability of a war between Germany and England. ]
Introduction – The Doomed Generation 6
Snow is a strange white word. No ice or frost Has asked of bud or bird For Winter’s cost. Yet ice and frost and snow From earth to sky This Summer land doth know. No man knows why. In all men’s hearts it is. Some spirit old Hath turned with malign kiss Our lives to mould. Red fangs have torn His face. God’s blood is shed. He mourns from His lone place His children dead. O! ancient crimson curse! Corrode, consume. Give back this universe Its pristine bloom. Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) - son of Russian Jewish émigrés, grew up in East London. Had to leave school at age 14 because of his parents’ poverty... was indentured to a Fleet Street engraver and attended evening classes at Birkbeck College until some wealthy patrons clubbed together to enable him to attend Slade School of Fine Art. Heard of the outbreak from S Africa where he was convalescing at his sisters'. Joined the war in 1916 in France, and was killed at Somme on April 1, 1918. see notes on this poem at movehimintothesun.
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free. Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, There is music in the midst of desolation And a glory that shines upon our tears. They went with songs to the battle, they were young, Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted; They fell with their faces to the foe. They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; They sit no more at familiar tables of home; They have no lot in our labour of the day-time; They sleep beyond England's foam. But where our desires are and our hopes profound, Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, To the innermost heart of their own land they are known As the stars are known to the Night; As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain; As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, To the end, to the end, they remain. the fourth stanza of this poem is engraved in graveyards throughout England. The third and fourth stanzas, called "Ode to Remembrance" are sung or used in the service on Remembrance Day. The second line of the 4th stanza in the book has contemn, see wiki page on this.
At the sound of the drum,
Out of their dens they come, they come,
The little poets we hoped were dumb,
The little poets we hoped were dead,
The poets who certainly haven't been read
Since heaven knows when, they come, they come,
At the sound of the drum, of the drum, drum, drum.
[...]
Two rows of cabbages, Two of curly-greens, Two rows of early peas, Two of kidney-beans. That’s what he is muttering, Making such a song, Keeping other chaps awake, The whole night long. Both his legs are shot away, And his head is light; So he keeps on muttering All the blessed night: Two rows of cabbages, Two of curly-greens, Two rows of early peas, Two of kidney-beans.
Neck-deep in mud. He mowed and raved- He who had braved The field of blood— And as a lad Just out of school Yelled: "April fool!" And laughed like mad. 1914 – Into Battle 8 1915 – In Flanders Fields 32 1916 – The Year of the Big Push 64 1917 – The Foul and Endless War 90 1918 =- With our Backs to the Wall 144 1919 – The Aftermath of War 170 Biographies of the Poets 187