Question : Essay-type
Attempt an overview of the major poets of the First World War.
Introduction
In war poetry broadly two phases may be distinguished.The first one was of patriotic fervour, almost of rejoicing in the opportunity of self-sacrifice, in the cause of human freedom and a revival of the romantic conception of the knight-at-arms. The other poets arouse with the declared with intention of shattering the illusion of the splendour of war by frankly realistic picture of the suffering, brutality, squalor and futility of the struggle.
The major poets of the First World War are Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. After following Brooke’s glorification of war in the song of the “Ungirt Runners”, he is found to make a shift to write of the ‘millions of mouth less dead’. This is the first strong comment in English poetry on the slaughter in the trenches–
“Say not soft the thing as other men have said.”
Rupert Brooke
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| Rupert Brooke [1887-1915] |
Rupert Brooke belongs to the first phase of war poetry. Most of the younger men were influenced by his fervent patriotism. It is difficult to overestimate the influence of Brooke who seemed to express perfectly the idealism of 1914.
“Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there,
But only agony, and that was ending,
And the worst friend and enemy is but death.”
His poetry echoes his complacent view, as a noble ordeal, for the preservation of English horror and for the cause of justice and peace. This is distinctly echoed in his two celebrated sonnets— “The Soldier”, and “Peace”.
Siegfried Sassoon
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| Siegfried Sassoon [1886-1967] |
Siegfried Sassoon belongs to the second phase. His work is based on his experiences in the war. First hand knowledge of the conditions of trench warfare produced in him a bitter disillusionment and a determination to shock the people at home into a realisation of the ghastly truth. He painted the horrors of life and death in the trenches, and a merciless realism gave to his work a vitality not previously found in war poetry.
Sassoon’s “Counter Attack” is a collection of violent embittered poems. It is still the best known of his collections of poetry. Some critics have found his horrors mechanical or exaggerated, but he still maintains his reputation among the readers of poetry. His works inspired the greatest of all the war poets, Wilfred Owen.
The fighting soldier had his own ideas of his enemy. At home one could denounce the enemy as an inhuman barbarian, but the average soldier saw little truth in that living in this isolated world of the trenches, he felt that the enemy was closer to him than the invisible politician or a commander who from a remote and secure place urged him on to the horror of senseless death. Hence, Sassoon had words of sympathy even for a German mother—
“O, German mother dreaming by the fire;
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.”
Wilfred Owen
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| Wilfred Owen [1893-1918] |
Owen was the greatest of the war poets. As early as 1910, he was writing verse in the romantic tradition of Keats and Tennyson, and the influence of French poetry, the product of his staying in France, was never completely shaken off, but the works by which he lives by all products after his meeting in 1917 with Sassoon. His experiences of the trenches had rapidly to maturity, and Sassoon set his feet on the path which he himself had already taken.
Because of their temperamental affinity Owen and Sassoon became great friends. They were dedicated realists who decided to speak out against war in harsh and unmistakable words of anger with a frank realism free from the violent bitterness, so much of Sassoon’s poetry. Owen set out to present the whole reality of war– the boredom, the helplessness, the futility, the horror, occasionally, the courage and self-sacrifice, but above all, the pity of it, he himself wrote–
“Above all, I am not concerned with poetry
My subject is war, and the pity of war,
The poetry is in the pity. “
Owen was a gifted artist with a fine feeling for words and subtle rhythmic sense. In both technique and mood, the post war generation found in him a congenial spirit. It is tempting to speculate on what he might have become, had he not been killed in action during the war.
Other Poets
The other poets may be mentioned here– Julian Grenfell, C.H. Sorely, Robert Nicholas, Rupert Graves, Edmund Blunden, and Lauren Bunyan. These war poets set a new trend in English poetry and contributed the language to its armoury of new idioms. From their writings, we find a vivid and realistic picture of horrors of the trench warfare and the mental and moral condition of the people and also the society.
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