Traductorado de Ingls

Literatura II

Term exam

War Poetry in the WWI

Susana Ibez

Nstor Rosales

6 de julio de 2016
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Abstract

In this essay I will focus on the influence of the WWI in the modernist movement, more

specifically in the war poetry of the First World War.

Starting with a brief introduction to what Modernism is and its origin, I will move on to the

birth of the war poetry phenomena building up along the side of the war. Afterwards, I will

develop on who were the main poets of the movement and some of their input and vision of

the First World War.

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War Poetry in the WWI

Background

Modernism is a term that enclosures a series of radical movements in art,

architecture, photography, music, literature, and the applied arts which emerged in the three

decades before 1914. It encompasses the works of artists who rebelled against nineteenth-

century academic and historic traditions, believing that earlier aesthetic conventions were

becoming outdated. (New World Encyclopedia, 2014).

Origins and aim of the modernist movement

In the 1880s, the idea of pushing aside the previous norms, related to a mere revision

of past knowledge, was gaining much support in light of contemporary techniques (Peter,

2008, p. 4). These techniques compel the works of different areas, such as psychology and

biology (e.g. Freud & Darwin). Therefore, Modernism is a search to explain mankind's place

in the modern world, where religion, social stability and ethics are all called into question.

(Carter & McRae, 2001, p. 321)

War Poetry in the WWI

It is a well-known fact that the horror of the First World War marked the end of a

phase in the Western European culture, and caused deep psychological wounds in the minds

of the survivors. The European landscape suffered a physical and metaphysical wasteland

that was increasingly reflected in the poetry of these years (Carter & McRae, 2001, p. 331).

According to many critics, English poetry was at its lowest point in history. Prior to the

changes in diction and subject matters, achieved by the well-known war poets, poetry was

deeply conservative and insular (Peter, 2008, p. 100). One of these conservative tendencies

was to praise armed conflicts as an opportunity to dutifully serve the country and that young
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men should freely pursue this endeavour as a sacrifice for the sake of it. This characteristic

feature of poetry at the beginning of the WWI was soon to be discarded and replaced by a

vivid and realistic poetry, satirising the vainglory and incompetence of many in the officer

class whose actions caused the unnecessary deaths of some of the finest young men (Carter &

McRae, 2001).

The War Poets

Many of the widely known war poets of the WWI were not highly regarded until the

1930s, poets such as Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney, and

Siegfried Sassoon amongst others (Peter, 2008, p. 100).

However, Thomas Hardy was a well-known poet even before the WWI. He wrote

many war poems about the Boer Wars (1899-1902) between the British and the Dutch settlers

in South Africa, first, and the WWI, later. His style is also known for using visceral images,

the use of colloquial language, and the point of view of ordinary soldiers. His work had a

profound influence on other war poets such as Rupert Brooke and Sassoon (Axelrod, 2014).

By the 1914s, after the outbreak of the First World War, Hardy joined a band of

leading writers who pledged themselves to write for the Allied cause. Sadly, the war gave the

coup de grace to any conception he may have nourished of a fundamental ultimate Wisdom

at the back of things. He said that he would not have ended his work The Dynasts on an

optimistic note had foreseen what was to happen (Pinion, F. P., 1968, p. 13).

Rosenberg, Sassoon, and Gurney were the ones that reacted with their poetry in this

way of depicting the horrors of the battlefield and the satirising of the officers orders.

Sassoon was one of the first poets to point to the consequences of war for the maimed and

disfigured soldiers who had to live with the horrors long after the war had finished. The

language used in Sassoons poetry is deliberately anti-Romantic in its rejection of

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conventional poetic diction in favour of sharp and biting colloquialism (Carter & McRae,

2001, p. 332).

Isaac Rosenberg gave one of the most graphic images of the waste of war in his poem

Dead Mans Dump, where he describes without holdbacks and in a vivid way how it was to

be in the trenches of war. Nevertheless, not all poets were as brutal as Rosenberg. The poetry

of Edward Thomas is based on the English countryside, in his poem As the Teams Dead

Brass he celebrates the land and working on it, as it tries to remind that the young men are

not dying far away from home (Carter & McRae, 2001, p. 334).

The major poet of the First World War, Wilfred Owen, began to write poetry in the

manner of Keats, but his poetry suffered stylistic changes as he toughened and tightened his

language under the pressure of traumatic front-line experience of war. In one his poems,

Dulce et decorum est, Owen describes a gas attack while ironically comments on the limits of

patriotism. The only duty to which he feels responsible to comply is to warn of the horrors of

war and to ask why political rulers allowed such mass destruction to continue for so long.

Owen also questioned the necessity of war, stressed the common humanity of both sides in

war, and linked the futility of the deaths of individual soldiers to the cosmic indifference of a

world from which God was conspicuously absent. (Carter & McRae, 2001, p. 332)

The innovative technique of half-rhyme used by Owen fits much better the tone and

subject matter of his poetry. And so, because full rhyme would inappropriately give a sense

of pattern and completeness, the use of half-rhyme reinforces a sense of things not fitting and

being incomplete. (Carter & McRae, 2001, p. 333)

Such was the sense of duty to warn about the horrors of war in Wilfred Owen that he

saw fit to publish a volume of poems with focus on the war. Among his papers there was a

Preface, which most famous part is the following:

This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it
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about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or

power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My Subject is War and

the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity all a poet can do today is warn. That is

why the true Poets must be truthful. (Carter & McRae, 2001, p. 333)

Its not difficult to comprehend to which extent he saw his labour as a poet, and how he

regarded his colleagues, and he also goes as far as to say That is why the true poets must be

truthful, implying that this subject matter should not be avoided.

Conclusion

It is difficult to speak of a good outcome of the First World War when millions of

men died and the landscape throughout Europe was scarred with trenches. But not only men

died, but also the Victorian forms of expression died, and began the questioning of the heroic

values as regards duty and war. Nevertheless, this new way of facing the reality of the world

with a vivid imagery and crude language, such as Isaac Rosenberg poetry, gave the poets of

the time a new purpose, as seen by Wilfred Owen, to depict the reality of war and write as

truly and honestly as possible to revert the traditional dutiful search for glory through

sacrifice in name of their country. This was the effect of Modernism seen in the war poetry,

to change the conventional ways of thinking about the world and focus on the matters that

were closer to men and answered more relevant questions.

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References

Axelrod, Jeremy. (2014) Thomas Hardy. The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved

from: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/thomas-hardy

Carter, Ronald & McRae, John (2001). The Routledge History of Literature in English:

Britain and Ireland. London. Routledge

Childs, Peter (2008). Modernism 2nd Edition (The New Critical Idiom). Milton Park,

Abingdon. Routledge. Retrieved

from: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxRihLezIWw-NGdBZkd3bjBGVE0

New World Encyclopedia. (2014, November 11). Modernism, Retrieved

from: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Modernism&oldid

=985222.

Pinion, F. P. (1968) A Hardy Companion, A Guide to the works of Thomas Hardy and their

background. New York. MacMillan and Co LTD. Retrieved From:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxRihLezIWw-RGFkenY2cHBiRDg