The Heroic Spirit in the Literature of the Great War

The Heroic Spirit in the Literature of the Great War

THE HEROIC SPIRIT IN THE LITERATURE OF THE GREAT WAR by KATHLEEN M McARTHUR Town A DISSERTATIONCape SUBMITTED TO THEof FACULTY OF ARTS IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH University UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN 1989 :< . - ... - ~ - .. "~ ._ . -· .•.-:--."I The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements i 1. Introduction A Survey of the Heroic tradition in English Literature. 1 2. Isaac Rosenberg: Part One The Development of an Heroic Vision 56 3. Isaac Rosenberg: Part Two Husbanding the Ancient Glory in an Unheroic Var 85 4. David Jones: Part One Early Works 135 5. David Jones: Part Two 'In Parenthesis' 151 6. David Jones: Part Three The Passchendaele Fragment 199 7. Frederic Manning: Part One Early Works 220 8. Frederic Manning: Part Two 'The Middle Parts of Fortune' 260 Appendix 294 Bibliography 295 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Inevitably, after a study which has its origins as far back as a childhood interest in my grandfather, who was killed in the First World War, one accumulates a debt of gratitude, inspirational, academic, and material. I should like now to thank all the patient people who have borne with me and my obsession for many years1 as well as the Library Staff of the Universities of Cape Town, Stanford, Oxford, the National Library of Wales, and the Imperial War Museum, Landon, who gave me help which was usually much beyond the bounds of their duty. But, in particular, for special thanks I wish to mention two persons: Ian :McArthur, who in 1972 began my academic pursuit of the Great War with a Christmas gift of Wilfred Owen's poems and who has since nurtured my interest through a Master's dissertation and through the present one, with the finding and buying of well over a hundred books, listening ta the reading of many paragraphs of my work and pronouncing on their clarity, and, finally, typing <on an AMSTRAD PCW8256 Ward Processor> and proof-reading the whole dissertation; and Terry Baxall, my supervisor and teacher par excellence, who has the rare gift of perfect courtesy, combining an insistence on firm critical standards with kindness, guidance and tact. Of other generous friends mention must also be made of Carol Ayton who, despite the birth of Caroline, took aver with enthusiasm and complete dedication the critical role of Ian when he was away; and of Penny Ratcliff and of Sister Rosemary Cummins <O.P.>, my 'resident theologian', who allowed me to discuss my ideas with them in the midst of a hectic school day. Lastly, I wish ta acknowledge the inspiration of Professor Andrew Rutherford of Goldsmiths' College, University of London, whose book The Literature of War; Five Studies in Heroic Virtue helped greatly to sustain my belief that the need to celebrate heroism was as integral ta writers of the Great War as was the need to register their protest. l CHAPTER 1 I:n.troductio:n. "The poetry is in the pity" wrote Wilfred Owen in 1918 in a preface intended for a collection of his war poems. The notion that the poetry of the First World War is primarily a poetry of pity and angry protest has become so embedded in the general literary consciousness that, even today, after one has performed a thorough scrutiny of the criticism of the literature of the period, one finds that it is seldom realized that there were other valid and truthful responses to that conflict. In the light of a full knowledge of the Great War, one can support those who, both at the time and more recently, have rejected all attempts to glorify it. For however many people Rupert Brooke, for instance, might still stand as a symbol of the vivid and beautiful doomed youth of 1914, his view of war as a game and as a welcome opportunity to test one's manhood is too naive to be tenable. Yet this justifiable rejection of all poetry that falsifies the picture of war on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918 has led to a tendency to judge all war writings by their pacifist force. Thus it is that much of the unique quality and inspirational power of the poetry and prose that emanated from the Great War has been missed or ignored. In particular, Isaac Rosenberg's war poetry has suffered by its having been read as poetry concerned with issues that were crucial to Wilfred Owen, while, in fact, it has nothing of the social, messianic spirit that informs Owen's poetry. Rosenberg was inspired by a heroic, tragic vision, in which the war was an unloosing of huge, devastating forces, and against these, futilely but splendidly, stood man. Impelled by much the same vision as Rosenberg was Frederic Manning, who wrote poems of considerable merit during the war, but who went on after the war to synthesize his 2 apprehension of the heroism and the bleakness of the war in The Middle Parts of Fortune. This work is, undoubtedly, the tragic novel of the war, and its superior quality was recognized by Arnold Bennett when it was first published in 1930. Yet, despite this early acclaim and despite too its staying in print, it is little known. This is almost certainly because it is not so much an indictment of the war as an examination, from a tragic and heroic viewpoint, of the human predicament in war. David Jones found the shaping force of his epic poem of the First World Var, In Parenthesis, in his literary past, particularly his heroic literary past. But it seems that so strong in the minds of modern critics is the association of the word 'heroic' with the propaganda and hackneyed martial effusions written at the beginning of the war, that they have shied away from pointing out that the continuation of the heroic tradition of the past is the focus of Jones's vision. In Parenthesis is such a rich and comprehensive work that it is perfectly possible ta concentrate on aspects of it other than the heroic, but in doing so one misses the direction in which Jones points us at the beginning of the Preface. He describes the fellowship of the Royal Welch Fusiliers whose experiences are the subject of the· book as "the intimate, continuing, domestic life of small contingents of men, within whose structure Roland could find, and, for a reasonable while, enjoy, his Oliver." That he draws such a parallel between the relationship of the heroes of the Chanson de Roland and the infantrymen he knew indicates how integral a part the heroic tradition is of Jones's view of war. Rosenberg and Manning, too, reveal many of the myriad faces of war, but to point only to the diversity of their of their work is, as in the case of David Jones, to obscure what lies at its epicentre. The aversion to the heroic found in modern criticism of the literature of war has led, also, to the obscuring of the important fact that the effects which the pre-war heroic conditioning had on the sensibility of 3 the entire wartime generation of writers were permanent and profound. Even among poets whose motivating force came from the necessity they perceived to articulate the horrors of war, the response to war is not as clear-cut as is commonly presented, and one finds throughout their writing a need to adhere to images and values which are essentially heroic: I, too, saw God through mud,- The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled. War brought mare glory to their eyes than blood, And gave their laughs mare glee than shakes a child. (1) So writes Wilfred Owen in 'Apologia Pro Poemate Meo', a poem which is as pure an exposition of heroic virtue as has ever been written, celebrating, as it does, the band of brotherhood and the exhilaration of battle central ta much heroic poetry, most memorably 'The Battle of Malden'. 'Spring Offensive' is, validly, read as Nature's indictment of man's warring activities, but what has hitherto gone unremarked is the vital complexity of Owen's response that lies in his being able to perceive a heroic splendour in man's defiance of Nature in the midst of this indictment. As the following lines indicate, this omission is hard to understand, for the character of the men's heroism is carefully distinguished, and the image of them seeming, for a brief 1 magnificent instant, mightier ..than the suJ;).. is the most arresting in the whole poem, adding enormously. to its resonance and to the tragic intensity of its vision . No alarm Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste - Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done. 0 larger shone that smile against the sun, - Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned. (2) <1> Wilfred Owen : The Collected. Poems of Wilfred Owen ed. C Day Lewis <Chatto & Windus, London 19?1) p.39 <2> op.cit. p.52 4 Of all the war poets, Siegfried Sassoon would seem to be the quintessential 'poet of protest', and his poems written of his experience of trench warfare are presented by his commentators as registering an unambiguous response of anger and bitterness.

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