THE HELL

I was going to end the War Poetry cycle yesterday, but have received so many messages asking why I didn't mention Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967). So I have decided today to give you one of his most poignant little poems, without any comment. Suicide In The Trenches speaks for itself.

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again. 

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

BALANCE OF LIFE AND DEATH

To end this brief cycle on the War Poet’s, I’d like to share with you one of my favourite poems written by William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939), An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.

I love this little poem because of its straightforward political consciousness and balanced simplicity. It is believed that the poem was written in honour of Major Robert Gregory, an acquaintance of the poet who was killed in World War I. 

The Irish airman claims that he is aware of his imminent death, but feels that he is not going to die for any glorious cause. His only cause could be the actual “delight” he feels in his job, being an airman and flying into and above “this tumult in the clouds.” He makes it very clear from the start that he does not hate those that he fights, nor does he love those that he guards. He is the typical impartial victim of a senseless war. His only passion is his “impulse of delight”. He feels that his past life has been a waste, as would be his future life. Therefore this discrepancy can only be balanced by his death. 

The perfect structure of the poem echoes this life/death balance. It is written in regular iambic tetrameter, with an abab rhyme scheme. The balance is also clear in the weighing scales of ideas, words and phrases. We have the British and the Irish; those he fights and those he guards; no love and no hate; the past waste of breath and the future waste of breath. 

It is a constant balance that leads to final death; a death that has been foreseen. Enough of my words. Enjoy this little gem.

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behin
In balance with this life, this death.

POETRY IS THE PITY

Looking at the War Poetry of the early 20th century we have seen the glorification of war through patriotism and the personal philosophical perspective through imagery and symbolism. Today we shall see how the poetry of Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918 ) dealt with the reality of that senseless war. He was neither perfunctorily patriotic nor poetically philosophical. He was brutally realistic. More than any other, Wilfred Owen was the true poet/spokesman for the horrors the soldiers were facing on the battlefields. He wrote:

My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.

His poetry did not euphemistically romanticise death and suffering, but it focused on the documentary reality of terror, dread and anguish. In direct opposition to the ideals of Rupert Brooke, Owen shattered the false belief that war was glorious and that dying for one’s country was patriotic and romantic. His poetry portrayed the reality of war as though it was a photographic reportage. 

The poem I shall briefly look at, is a typical case in point. The title is sarcastically echoing Brooke’s patriotic belief that it is glorious to die for one’s country. The title is, Dulce Et Decorum Est , which is a quote from The Odes by the Latin poet Horace, the English translation being, It Is Sweet And Fitting… the lines are actually followed by "pro patria mori", which means "to die for one's country".
 “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country” is in sharp contrast to the gruesome picture Owen paints in the poem. 

He describes broken men marching like “old beggars under sacks/Knocked kneed, coughing like hags…” They are “drunk with fatigue” and seem to be more like an army of zombies than soldiers. 

The poet then describes a gas attack. The limping, blood-shod men panic under the billowing lime gas and clumsily strive to cover their faces with masks, but not everyone manages. One poor soul breathes the gas and drowns in the green poison. 

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

Rupert Brooke would have envisioned a romantic burial for this brave, unfortunate soldier. A burial in a “corner of a foreign field / That is forever England.” However, in reality the dying soldier is “flung” behind a wagon where his head hangs “like a devil’s sick of sin” and the blood comes: 

…gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues 

The picture is a stark realistic image of physical suffering and a graphic depiction of bloody wounds and horrific injuries. The end of the poem explains the title by calling it an old lie.
Read the full poem here.

POETRY OF POPPIES

Back to the war poets with the second poet of my choice, Isaac Rosenberg. From patriotism to pure poetry.

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) did not sing the praises of war; he reflected on its philosophical and poetical impact through symbolism and imagery. 

Break of Day in the Trenches is a short poem that not only deals with the deadly devastation of the trench warfare, but also with the poetic and philosophical view of human emotions.

The opening line of the poem poetically and metaphorically describes the break of day by saying, "The darkness crumbles away". It is not the birth of light, but the crumbling of darkness. Everything is withering, everything dies, even darkness. The poet then introduces the central figure of the poem, an ungainly rat. This lowly creature is a symbol around which the poem revolves, and is the starting point for the poet’s reflections on the atrocity and stupidity of the war. The rat is described as being cosmopolitan. It is, in fact, a rat and therefore has no nationality, no patriotic sentiments. It crosses both sides of the trenches and scurries over German soldiers and British soldiers. It takes no sides, and in this wretched scene of death and destruction it seems to be superior to the dying soldiers. This insignificant creature is sardonic and grins at the paradox of being more likely to live than the unfortunate soldiers, who are indeed “haughty athletes” with “strong eyes” and “fine limbs”. Although they are strong and athletic, they are in fact, shooting at each other...

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.

The poem ends with another touching symbol, the poppy. It is a sad reflection of a life prematurely ended by war.

Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;

The poppy is today the symbol of the fallen soldiers in that cruel First World War in which the average age of the dead soldiers was only 19. Among the hundreds of thousands killed in the trenches were 250,000 boys and young men. Isaac Rosenberg was killed there in 1918, he was only 28.

The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppyTo stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a GermanSoon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flameHurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,Just a little white with the dust.

Women’s Day

A pause from war to allow a Shakespearean song for women on this 8th of March. This is from Much Ado About Nothing

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no more
Of dumps so dull and heavy.
The fraud of men was ever so
Since summer first was leafy.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey, nonny, nonny.

WAR AND PATRIOTISM

In the next three posts, I shall deal with War Poetry. I just want to show how such a straightforward topic, like war, can be treated in such different ways. I shall look at three poets, who sadly all died during the treacherous trench warfare in Northern France, during the First World War. I shall analyse three poems, one for each poet. They are Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg. They all wrote about the same war, but their perspectives were very different. 

I shall start with Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) and his poem The Soldier. This poem perfectly reflects Brooke’s positive view of war. He believes in the importance and romance of Patriotism. Dying for one’s country is an honour, almost a goal to wish for: 

If I should die, think only this of me;
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.

So, dying at war in a foreign land is a great thing, because your corpse would then be buried in that land and upraise it. The English body will turn to dust and that dust would make the earth richer:

… There shall be
in that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

One can hardly believe that death can be aggrandised and romanticised to this point; especially the brutal death in the windswept cold trenches of places like the Somme. 

La Somme

The short poem (actually a traditional Petrarchan sonnet) then meanders off to praise the glory of England and all that is English. The very image of England that transpires is that of a generous mother who bestows all her riches, both material and spiritual, onto her children. Brooke totally ignores the ugliness of war and the horrors of death. He uses mellifluous words with romantic connotation like, Eternal, heart, dreams, happy, peace or heaven. No wonder the poem has been defined as a “frank and unashamed piece of patriotism.” 

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Although Brooke died during a commission in the Royal Navy, it is interesting to note that the poet never experienced battle first hand. He developed blood poisoning from a mosquito bite and died shortly afterwards.   

Sexual Awakening

I’d like to end this short cycle on love with a work about the “love that dare not speak its name”; the love between two men. Maurice was written by E. M. Forster back in the Edwardian England of respectability and bigotry. Not that any other period in the last few centuries were any more progressive or open minded. As Forster put it, “England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

Maurice , written in 1913/14, was published posthumously in 1971, due to its too stark revelation of “human nature”. It is a Bildungsroman; a coming of age novel that follows the moral and psychological growth of the protagonist, Maurice. He does indeed grow and he develops from the naïve boy who believed himself to be sick because of his love for another man, to the enlightened adult who understood and accepted the reality of his beautiful human nature. 

The story starts when Maurice Hall, studying at Cambridge, falls in love with his friend and fellow student Clive Durham. Their relationship is a romantic one, but they are both not daring enough to make it a sexual one. Maurice is eager to nurture his love for Clive, but the latter is too socially embroiled and dreads admitting to homosexuality. He eventually breaks Maurice’s heart by deciding to make the socially acceptable choice, marry a woman.

Maurice is not only hurt, but he now believes that he is a broken man who needs fixing. He wants to be “cured” of his abnormality. He goes to London to consult a hypnotist. He lets Clive believe that he is actually going to do the right thing, find a wife and marry. His meeting with the hypnotist is a sad attempt to “cure” his homosexuality. However it is a revealing moment for Maurice:

"And what’s to happen to me?” said Maurice, with a sudden drop in his voice. He spoke in despair, but Mr Lasker Jones had an answer to every question. “I’m afraid I can only advise you to live in some country that has adopted the Code Napoleon,” he said.

“I don’t understand.” 

“France or Italy, for instance. There homosexuality is no longer criminal.” 

“You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?” 

“Share? Do you mean unite? If both are of age and avoid public indecency, certainly.”

“Will the law ever be that in England?”

“I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

Maurice understood. He was an Englishman himself, and only his troubles had kept him awake. He smiled sadly. “It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.”

“That is so, Mr Hall; or, as psychiatry prefers to put it, there has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person. And you must remember that your type was once put to death in England.”

Maurice learns to accept his true nature and when he meets Alec Scudder, the gamekeeper at the Durham estate, he becomes both romantically and sexually involved with him. With Alec he feels the entirety of love, in its powerful emotional and physical completeness. He eventually decides to start a new life with his lover. 

“Madness is not for everyone, but Maurice's proved the thunderbolt that dispels the clouds."

Maurice does not forget Clive and wishes he could make him see the limits of his socially geared choice. How can one choose to spend an entire life without an emotional and sexual bond. He reminds Clive of their own emotions:

I was yours once till death if you’d cared to keep me, but I’m someone else’s now–I can’t hang about whining for ever–and he’s mine in a way that shocks you, but why don’t you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?

Maurice leaves Clive to his stagnant life of aridity and goes off towards a new dawn with Alec. This is a very happy ending that not only condones homosexuality, but legitimatises it, in a period of total hostility. Foster wrote:

A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn’t have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense Maurice and Alec still roam in the greenwood.

The happy conclusion of the relationship between Maurice and Alec contrasts bitterly with the dark clouds looming over Clive's emotional end. He seems to be tucking back into a shell of conformity and aridity.

He did not realise that this was the end, without twilight or compromise, that he should never cross Maurice's track again, nor speak to those who had seen him. He waited for a little in the alley, then returned to the house, to correct his proofs and to devise some method of concealing the truth from Anne.