War Poetry Lecture No: 13

1 Subject: ENGLISH Class: B.A. Part 1 English Hons., Paper-1, Group B Topic: War Poetry Lecture No: 13 By: Prof. Sunita Sinha Head, Department of English Women’s College Samastipur L.N.M.U., Darbhanga Email: [email protected] Website: www.sunitasinha.com Mob No: 9934917117 “WAR POETRY” INTRODUCTION Talking about War Poetry, Jon Stallworthy rightly asserted, “there can be no area of human experience that has generated a wider range of powerful feelings than war: hope and fear; exhilaration; hatred – not only for the enemy, but also for generals, politicians, and war-profiteers; love – for fellow soldiers, for women and children left behind, for country (often) and cause (occasionally).” The First World War of 1914-18 left its fierce and its permanent influence on English literature, especially English poetry. There were numerous poems written in English by the soldier poets in their early twenties in the First World War which vividly recorded the moments, the feelings, and the experiences of encountering death, danger, suspense and horror. Very few of those writings could be preserved, and very few of these poets have got critical recognition. But some of them like Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Edward Thomas deserve careful study. 2 For a better understanding of the war poetry, we can divide it into two sections: WAR POETRY 1. Early War Poetry 2. Later War Poetry Rupert Brooke Edmund Thomas Siegfried Sassoon Wilfred Owen EARLY WAR POETRY The soldier poets who wrote poems during the early days of the War showed the following reactions to the War: (1) They expressed a willingness to die for their country. (2) They had faith in the justice of the cause for which they were fighting. (3) They exulted in the strength and courage which enabled them to meet the challenge. (4) They harbored no bitterness against the enemy. EXAMPLE: Rupert Brooke was the best known of these early war poets. LATER WAR POETRY The soldier poets who had firsthand experience of the War, who could see the horror and reality, of war wrote verse which showed the following reactions to the War: (1) a sense of the horrors of the War, (2) a tenderness toward doomed youth tricked by false idealism, (3) a sense of the closeness of the friendships formed on the battlefield, (4) the purpose of making clear to future generations the truth about warfare EXAMPLE: Edward Thomas, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen were the major poets of this phase of war poetry. 3 Early War Poetry RUPERT BROOKE (1887–1915) • Rupert Brooke was a poet, academic and campaigner, and aesthete who died serving in World War One, but not before his verse and literary friends established him as one of the leading war poets in British history. Rupert Brooke wasn't a war poet like Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon, soldiers who confronted the horrors of war. • For many critics, the 'idealism' of Brooke’s war sonnets is actually a glorification of war, a carefree approach to death which ignored the carnage and brutality. The reason why he chose to write about the ‘glory of war’ was that Brooke never actually experienced War. This was the main difference between him and other war poets. Because of this, his views are unaffected by the actual horrors of war. This is why his belief in God was so strong: he was still naïve and his mind was still unaffected by reality. Had he lived to participate in battle, his views may have been changed and his poetry could have been very different for the rest of his life. • His sonnets are almost too well-known to need quoting. They represent the early reaction of many soldiers to the War; the spirit is that of exultation in opportunity of sacrificing one’s life for one's country. Their great popularity Is a tribute to the spirit of the work; they represent a feeling which echoes in the hearts of the readers. In his famous sonnet, The Soldier, he writes, like an ideal patriot, If I should die, think only this of me; That there’s some comer of a foreign field That is forever England. Another famous sonnet by Brooke is The Dead: Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. These laid the world away; poured out the red 4 Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, That men call age; and those who would have been, Their sons, they gave, their immortality. Later War Poetry EDWARD THOMAS (1878 –1917) • Edward Thomas was a British poet, essayist, and novelist. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences, and his career in poetry only came after he had already been a successful writer and literary critic. Edward Thomas’s poem reflects his changing attitude to war from The Pity of War to Aftermath. • Thomas himself drew a distinction between subtle (private) patriotism and deliberate (public) patriotism, by saying “The worst of poetry being written today is that it is too deliberately, and not inevitably English. There is more in it of the shouting of rhetorician, reciter, or politician than of the talk of friends and lovers.” • His most remarkable poems are the Owl, When First, Addlestrot and No one Such as You. The Owl shows sensitively and poignantly that the mental depression, grief, disgusts and panic of war are more powerful than physical agony and hardship: And salted was my food, and my repose, Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice Speaking for all who lay under the stars, Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice. SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1886 –1967) • Siegfried Sassoon was an English poet, writer, and soldier. He is best remembered for his angry and compassionate poems about World War I, which brought him public and critical acclaim. Avoiding the sentimentality of 5 many war poets, Sassoon wrote of the horror and brutality of trench warfare and contemptuously satirized generals, politicians, and churchmen for their incompetence and blind support of the war. He was also well known as a novelist and political commentator. In 1957 he was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. • Counter-Attack and Other Poems collects some of Sassoon’s best war poems, all of which are “harshly realistic laments or satires,” writes Margaret B. McDowell in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. • Largely regarded as Brooke’s opposite, Siegfried Sassoon rejected the idea of blind patriotism and focused on portraying the war in real, modern terms. Siegfried Sassoon, like Wilfred Owen, saw the war from the point of view of the common soldier. • The work of Siegfried Sassoon shows a man of many moods. He entered the war a mystic, a lover of music, of beauty, of nature, of out-of-door sports. Coming from a well-to-do influential family, he enlisted with a carefree conventional attitude that he was doing a glorious service for his country. Later, he began to question the rights and wrongs of warfare, but he still wanted to feel that there was something splendid and glorious about it. Finally, his feeling that it was horrible hardened into a belief that modern warfare caused a senseless sacrifice of youth, that people were deluded by false ideals, that the whole war was blundering, mismanaged, and needlessly prolonged. Later, he became openly defiant and bitterly satirical. • He bitterly condemned an age too engrossed with interest in material gain to appreciate higher values or to realize the gigantic destructive force of modern mechanized warfare. • The poetry of Sassoon exhibits the undermentioned traits: (1) His mysticism, his humor, his love of beauty, his love of solitude. (2) His representation of the War from the point of view of the soldier. (3) His early acceptance without question about the soldier’s duty to fight for his country. (4) His feeling of resentment because people did not understand the horror of modern warfare. (5) His conception that World War was a crime against the youth of his generation. 6 WILFRED OWEN (1893 – 1918) • Wilfred Owen was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. Owen, who wrote some of the best British poetry on World War I, composed nearly all of his poems in slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918. In November 1918 he was killed in action at the age of 25, one week before the Armistice. • His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his mentor Siegfried Sassoon, and stood in stark contrast to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. • Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility", "Spring Offensive" and "Strange Meeting". • Owen belonged to a group of war poets whose poetry showed a new outlook on life created by a firsthand experience of warfare. Backed by his experience as a soldier and sustained by the nobility of a sensitive soul capable of confronting truths, Owen’s poetry goes beyond being a personal gesture. His poetry is true for all times. • Owen writes in 1918 of his experience in the battlefront “I came out in order to help these boys directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as pleader can.” Owen thus shattered the illusion of the glory of war.

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