[flickr]
After setting up the previous post, i realised that the 11th november is remembrance day, and thus reserves a little post of its own. So sorry for 2 poetry posts on the one day (i promise on wednesday i will bombard you all with fashion fashion fashion!) but i thought i should honour a day (and a war) that i feel very strongly about.
Maybe its because we were forced to learn about world war 1 a thousand times, both from the australian point of view (gallipoli, anyone?) and the more worldly perspective (attrition, trench warare, the sommes, the schlieffen plan, american entry), or maybe its just because i find it really interesting, but world war 1 has got to be one of my favourite areas of historical study. the battles are engaging, and captivating, really challenging of your perceptions of warfare and justice. The political dynamics and hierarchical opinions of the officers and generals are astounding to see play out, the military techniques frustratingly ineffective, the personal soldier's tales are moving and passionate, the outcome so completely impotent (and causing more damage than it solved)... And the poetry is just amazing.
Before World War 1 it was considered a soldier's duty, priviledge even, to represent his country and king, protect his loved ones and honour the integrity of his nation's autonomy in battle. Dulce et Decorum Est pro patria mori, it is good and right to die for you country, intoned recruitment officers. In 1914 they signed up in drones, the strains of rupert brooke's self-abnegating poem 'the soldier' ringing in their ears ('if i should die, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever england...). They would go and fight, see a bit of the world, be home by christmas... if they died it would be in the support of their country, something great and enviable.
And then 1915 rolled by, and 1916, bringing with them some of the bloodiest and most horrific battles the world has ever seen. Soldiers drowning in the mud at Paschendaele, their 30 kg packs weighing them down. 60 000 casualties on the first day of battle at the Sommes. Field Marshall Douglas Haig's archaic tactic of attrition was unethical and immoral. But of course, the soldiers had no choice but to 'go over the top' at the whim of their generals. And, for the first time in history, a difference in opinion began to be showcased. Like the protests against Vietnam and the video tapes of insiders, the war poets began to report a very different actuality than that presented by the government of victorious soldiers and few casualties. The real horror and futility of war seeped through the pens of these poets for all to read.
Powerful, emotive, fiery words from first-hand witnesses. To commemorate World War 1 i want to share with you this war poetry that so inspired, incensed and influenced a generation. Lest we forget.
'Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
...
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.'
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
...
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.'
Philip Larkin
'If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.'
Wilfred Owen
And my absolute favourite. This poem is, in my opinion, more potent that Owen's angry and bitter vitriol towards war... it is a simple, and indeed sad, protest.
'Here dead we lie because we did not choose
to live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.
But young men think it is, and we were young.'
A.E Housman
[flickr, photography of WWI by frank hurley]X
You have read this article history /
poetry
with the title Lest We Forget. You can bookmark this page URL http://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2008/11/lest-we-forget.html. Thanks!
