University of Warwick institutional repository: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick http://go.warwick.ac.uk/wrap/34691 This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. A COMPARISON OF SOME FRENCH AND ENGLISH LITERARY RESPONSES TO THE 1914-1918 WAR by DOUGLAS KERR (M. A. Cantab. ) Thesis presented for the degree of Ph. D. UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK, School of Comparative Literature. August 1978 r' CONTENTS Page PREFACE CHAPTER 1: Brooke, Wells, Hulme. 1 CHAPTER 2: Peguy, Barbusse, Vache. 45 CHAPTER 3: Cocteau, Aldington, Proust. 101 CHAPTER 4: Owen. 156 CHAPTER 5: Apollinaire. 225 CHAPTER 6: Jones. 272 Bibliography. 332 SUMMARY This thesis proposes a comparative study of some imaginative responses to the Great War in English and French writing. The principal works discussed range from Peguy's anticipation of the war in his poem Eve (1913) to David Jones's recreative memory of it in his poem In Parenthesis (1937). The survey is limited to British and French works, and does not include American and colonial contributions, or the war-writings of other combatant countries.. The thesis examines the various ways in which twelve authors - six English and six French - developed and ex- pressed their individual response to the Great War. It is not based on an imaginary anthology of the dozen best war-writings. The twelve examples have been chosen to illustrate and cover as wide a range as possible of the ways the historical experience could be met and interpreted in literature. They include writings by civilians, and by commissioned and non-commissioned soldiers; narrative and discursive prose, essays, letters, and verse. The first chapter considers the war-writings of Rupert Brooke, H. G. Wells and T. E. Hulme; and the second chapter discusses the work of Charles Peguy, Henri Barbusse and Jacques Vache. Chapter 3 is concerned with three novels, by Jean Cocteau, Richard Aldington, and Proust. In the second half of the work, a chapter each is given to Wilfred Owen, Guillaume Apollinaire and David Jones. War-writings by definition include history, and even those most innocent of a propaganda intention are likely to betray an interpretation of history, as well as having some documentary value and, at a less visible level, enacting a private drama. The literature of the Great War, considered as a sub-genre, is the product both of shared and of individual, intimate experience. The purpose of this study has been to suggest the variety of possible literary responses to the Great War; to discover what these responses are likely to have in common, and thus to offer a sketch-map of the topography of the 1914-1918 war in English and French writing; and, by locating these works in a context of European literature as well as of world history, to allow each text discussed reciprocally to illuminate and criticise the others. PREFACE Beird byt barnant wyr o gallon. (The bards of the world assess the men of valour. 1 This is a comparative study of some imaginative responses to the Great War in English and French writing. To illustrate ways in which writers tried to describe and understand the European war of 1914 - the first great historical crisis of this century -I have chosen twelve examples of war-writing to examine, ranging in time from Peguy's Eve, which was published in the year before the war began, to David Jones's In Parenthesis, published nineteen years after it ended. I have not attempted any account of the literature of the other combatant countries. But even in only two languages - and ignoring the colonial and American contributions - so wide is the area to be prospected that this study can be only a series of soundings, which suggest rather than quantify the resources of the field of investigation. The twelve examples - six English and six French - have been chosen to illustrate and cover as wide a range as possible of English and French war-writing. They include writings by civilians, and by commissioned and non-commissioned soldiers; narrative and discursive prose, essays, letters, and verse, written by the apologists of pacifism and militarism and by those - the majority - who, with various degrees of discomfort, were neither. The twelve differ almost as much in literary competence as they do in tone and politics. The main purpose of this study, then, is to suggest the variety of possible literary responses to the Great War, and by so doing, to offer a sketch-map of the topography of the war in English and French literature. 11 Insofar as it. origi, nates in a shared historical experience, and in various ways celebrates that experience, war-writing may be classified as a kind of occasional literature. But those who wrote about that occasion interpreted it in such different ways that it is sometimes difficult to remember that they were writing about the same historical event. In away, of course, they were not; and this study is an account of twelve different Great Wars. The subjects have been selected in the belief that each casts an interesting light on the work of all the others. The choice certainly does not represent an imaginary anthology of the dozen best war-writings. No account of the literature of the Great War which does not deal directly with - to choose almost at random - Giono, Rosenberg, Dorgeles and Ford Madox Ford (not to mention writers of other than British and French nationality) could lay even the most eccentric claim to such canonicism. Partly for that reason, this study is principally descriptive, and is not primarily concerned with comparative literary-evaluation; although an examination of David Jones's In Parenthesis is set as the conclusion of the survey, in the belief that that poem is the most valuable as well as the most inclusive of war-writings in either language. The authors whose war-writings are considered here are: Rupert Brooke, H. G. Wells, T. E. Hulme; Charles Peguy, Henri Barbusse, Jacques Vache; 'Jean Cocteau, Richard Aldington, Marcel Proust; Wilfred Owen; Guillaume Apollinaire; David Jones. 111 Chapter 1 examines three English writers, Chapter 2 three French. These two chapters are formally symmetrical. The first part of each deals with an anticipatory poetic formulation of the war. Peguy and Rupert Brooke had no means of knowing what the Great War would be like. The interest of their war-writings lies particularly in the way each adapts traditional literary resources to describe, proleptically, the war they expect to experience. The middle sections of Chapters 1 and 2 each examine a popular war-novel published in 1916 -. one by H. G. Wells, one by Henri Barbusse - each in its way an interpretation of the war written from a political point of view. Both could be described as dramatised propaganda. Barbusse's international socialism and Wells's liberal ameliorism predated the war, but were both severely tested by events. These two novels are attempts to adapt and reconcile two systems of belief to an unpleasant historical fact. Like so many writings of the Great War, both attempt to juggle with documentary, propaganda and aesthetic intentions. The final parts of the first two chapters deal with writers - T. E., Hulme and Jacques Vache - of less intrinsic aesthetic interest, but who both played important parts in the creation of some ofthe main trends of postwar literature in England and France. The war-writings of Hulme and Vache, incongruous figures, look forward to aspects of European modernism, in the shaping of which the 1914 war was such a critical element. Chapter 3 broadens the scope of the survey by considering fictional treatments of the Great War in iv works by Cocteau, Aldington and Proust. Cocteau and Aldington are especially concerned with the variations which the war brought about in sexual and generational politics. Aldington and Proust are prepared to advance bolder interpretations, and to see the war as a particu- larly visible and brutal dramatisation of general patterns of experience which are, however, independent of it. Proust, of course, is only a war-writer by historical accident; but in this respect his difference from other war-writers' is only one of degree. In the second half of this survey, a chapter each is devoted to three of the most important writers of the Great War - Wilfred Owen, Apollinaire, and David Jones. Superficially at least, there would seem to be a polar difference between the war-writings of Owen and Apollinaire, in almost every respect. For this reason, and because of the richness of the available evidence (particularly the two poets' letters), I have drawn on a good deal of biographical material in my attempt to understand the war-writings of these two poets. A biographical approach to David Jones's In Parenthesis would have to rely, at present, on much scantier documen- tation, and, because of the impersonality of the work, would, not, I think, be pertinent. So the study of In Parenthesis in Chapter 6, when it does refer outwards from the text, refers mainly to Jones's other published writings, and to the war-writings of others. From a psychological, historical and literary point of view, we are fortunate in having so much information about the V war-records of Owen and Apollinaire. These records are reciprocally illuminating and reciprocally critical. If they seem antithetic, the distance between them may be measured, if not bridged, by the mediate example of In Parenthesis.