first world war poetry for the 21st century written by andrew niemeijer
TRANSCRIPT
First World War Poetry for the 21st century
written by Andrew Niemeijer
Inleiding De lessenseries van Taalwijs zijn gestoeld op onderzoeksgericht onderwijs (Community of Learners, VU) en het ontwikkelen van taalbewustzijn (Carter et al., 2003). Overeenkomstig hebben alle lessen van Taalwijs de volgende structuur: 1. De confrontatie Indruk maken, binnenkomen, verrassen 2. De discussie Verwondering woorden geven 3. Onderzoek 1 Kleine verkennende opdracht 4. Extra inhoud College geven 5. Onderzoek 2 Grotere opdracht die leidt naar een eindproduct 6. Bij elkaar brengen Klopt het eindproduct met de theorie? 7. Conclusie Terug naar de confrontatie, presentatie, wedstrijdelement 8. Evaluatie Vanzelfsprekend hoeven deze acht onderdelen niet in acht aparte lessen behandeld te worden. Deze cursus gaat uit van 5 lessen, er is rekening gehouden voor een uitloop naar 6 lessen. De cursus is geen ijzeren wet: er is genoeg ruimte voor een docent om naar eigen inzicht en interesse invulling te geven aan de lessenserie. Wij hebben zelf goede ervaringen met blokuren, vanwege de relatief korte looptijd van de curus, niveau en het projectmatige werken. Literatuur:
http://www.vu.nl/nl/Images/Verder_met_onderwijs_1_community_of_learners_tcm289-‐189548.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254921432_Ten_questions_about_language_awareness.
Course outline (5 lessons)
Lesson 1 Confrontation (1): Engaging the 21st century student. Contemporary conflicts and the centenary of the First World War. Contemporary song lyrics on World War I and their culture in the new century.
Lesson 2 Discussion (2): Why poetry? An introduction to other forms, books, memoirs and film. This should, indirectly, also prove and show the pervasiveness of First World War poetry, which has heavily influenced these ‘other forms’, not only their remediated forms, but in their cultural re-‐interpretation.
Research (3): Individual Assignment: find your own First World War narrative. àstudents are to analyse the ‘representation (including self-‐representation) of those who […] tell others [ them ] of war.’ (McLoughlin, 2011, 22).
Lesson 3 Lecture (4): Teaching the traditional developmental arch in First World War poetry: the canon.
Teaching poetic analysis and introducing the poetry of Rupert Brooke (1887-‐1915), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-‐1967) and Wilfred Owen (1893-‐1918).
Lesson 4 Research & end product (5): Contesting the canon, and the developmental arch from Brooke to Sassoon to Owen. ‘Goveadder’ and beyond. Showing the ‘others’ to the voices of the ‘big three’, i.e. other poets and poems.
Reconnect with the research assignment (àstudents are to analyse the ‘representation (including self-‐representation) of those who […] tell others [ them ] of war.’).
What is ‘truth’ about the First World War, who has most salience and credibility, in short, credentials according to the students? (McLoughlin, 2011, 21-‐50): ‘how to successfully deliver an account of war […] the chances of success are greatest if the account in question is salient and, crucially, credible.’ (22)
End product: write/create your own (First World) war narrative.
Lesson 5: Presenting research conclusions in end product: how does the end product confirm or criticize theory (of war narratives) (6)?
Conclusion (7): students present their convincing war narrative to class, in any form (film, short story, poem). Length max 5 minutes.
Handing out (take home) evaluation form (8)
Dear Students,
This First World War poetry course is designed as a 5-‐lesson course. It will give you both a thorough understanding of the canon of First World War Literature and also introduce you to basic poetic analysis, and give you the skills to perform analyses of your own.
Though this course mainly focuses on the canon poets, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, you will also be introduced and ‘introduce yourselves’ to ‘other forms’, i.e. music, novels, memoirs and film. This will mirror poetry as a form, giving you a wider skill base and tool set by which to First World War poetry.
Some of the texts under discussion in class are part of the source material in this syllabus. However, this is by no means extensive, the idea being that you do your own research on First World War texts, finding them, analysing them, pitting them against (your) contemporary critique and finally, presenting your end product.
The latter product is what you will be graded for. All the language skills, i.e. reading, writing, use of English, speaking and listening will be addressed. Poetic, narrative and textual analysis and the cultural legacy of First World War poetry will serve as a gateway to do so. You will find the requirements in this syllabus.
Sources to five lessons on WWI poetry for the 21st century
Lesson 1
Confrontation (1): Engaging the 21st century student. Contemporary conflicts and the centenary of the First World War. Contemporary song lyrics on World War I and their
culture in the new century.
Notes for Teacher At the very beginning of the course, letting the students know what is expected of them is vital. To have a thorough understanding of the framework will help both students and the teachers alike to understand what knowledge is and will be tested and taught. For teachers, getting this straight at the start of the course is the moment to add you own colour and creativity, and to use the flexibility of the course’s outline to work for you, and make the First World War Poetry schooltalenproject a unique project for your school, and your English (poetry) class. There is one lesson suggestion, which like all suggestions may or may not be used at your discretion. “MH17,” a poem by Arnoud van Amerongen, is a good way to engage the students with contemporary world politics and get them engaged with the idea of poetic response. I will show them it is not something that necessarily belongs to another age. Also, the format is very simple, and will remind Dutch students will the lowest level of literary knowledge of so-‐called ‘Sinterklaas’ poetry which they have all been brought up with. To pitch it next to Sassoon’s “Counter Attack” will work well, because van Amerongen in his poems suggest a counter attack, and Sassoon gives us one, and very graphically. Easy poetic forms are used. It will engage them on a moral level (is a call to arms the right/wrong/understandable way to react to terror/war?), on a literary level (poetry as a political response) and on a language level (easy rhyme and style / intro to poem by a war poet versus non war poet).
“MH17”
Het regende lichamen, Onschuldigen van vlees en bloed.
Door terroristen uit de lucht geschoten, Een hachelijke dood tegemoet.
Families en vrienden blijven achter in shock, Onthutst, ontredderd, onbeschrijflijk verdriet.
Hun geliefden zijn hen afgenomen, Geen separatist die hun wonden ziet.
Dit boeventuig in Oost-‐Oekraïne, Is wars van compassie of ethiek.
Respectloos het rampgebied onterend, Ronduit weerzinwekkend en ziek.
Intussen wordt Rutte vernederd, Houdt Poetin hem aan de lijn.
Zodat de daders zo lang mogelijk, De hoeder van de ‘crime scene’ kunnen zijn.
Deze pro-‐Russische separatisten, Kiezen vanzelfsprekend Poetin’s kant.
Steun, bewapening en training verkrijgend, Zet hij ze naar zijn hand.
Hoe lang blijft het Westen naïef, Gecorrumpeerd door economische belangen.
Bedwelmd door Russisch gas, Blijft het naar diplomatie verlangen.
Het moet afgelopen zijn met de huichelarij, Proosten in Sotsji, economisch gewin.
Stop de focus op het gevlei, Voer keiharde strafmaatregelen in.
Boycot alle economische handel, Neem Russen hun buitenlandse paspoorten af.
Bevries hun buitenlandse tegoeden, Alleen zo graaft Poetin z’n eigen graf.
Het Westen zal er pijn van lijden, Een boterham minder, een jasje aan.
Alleen zo krijgen we oude Sovjet driften, Definitief weer van de baan.
Europa: maak één vuist, Trek een snoeiharde lijn!
Laat de dood van 298 mannen, vrouwen en kinderen, Uiteindelijk, in vredesnaam, niet zinloos zijn.
Arnaud Van Amerongen, posted on 22 july at 12:21 https://www.facebook.com/NRC/posts/547592602019298
From D. Siersema, Rhyme & Reason, (Malmberg, Den Bosch, 1988), page 158-‐159
Contemporary World War I song lyrics and their culture in the new century “On Battleship Hill” by PJ Harvey The scent of Thyme carried on the wind, stings your face into remembering cruel nature has won again.
On Battleship Hill's caved in trenches, a hateful feeling still lingers, even now, 80 years later. Cruel nature. Cruel, cruel nature. The land returns to how it has always been. The scent of Thyme carried on the wind. Jagged mountains, jutting out, cracked like teeth in a rotten mouth. On Battleship Hill I hear the wind, Say "Cruel nature has won again."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rryc8Kjzx6M
“A Bad Dream” by Keane Why do I have to fly over every town up and down the line? I'll die in the clouds above and you that I defend, I do not love. I wake up, it's a bad dream, No one on my side, I was fighting But I just feel too tired to be fighting, guess I'm not the fighting kind. Where will I meet my fate? Baby I'm a man, I was born to hate. And when will I meet my end? In a better time you could be my friend. I wake up, it's a bad dream, No one on my side, I was fighting But I just feel too tired to be fighting, guess I'm not the fighting kind. Wouldn't mind it if you were by my side But you're long gone, yeah you're long gone now. Where do we go? I don't even know,
My strange old face, And I'm thinking about those days, And I'm thinking about those days. I wake up, it's a bad dream, No one on my side, I was fighting But I just feel too tired to be fighting, guess I'm not the fighting kind. Wouldn't mind it if you were by my side But you're long gone, Yeah you’re long gone now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SetZMHgARqs “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” by Radiohead
'I am the only one that got through the others died where ever they fell it was an ambush they came up from all sides give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves I've seen devils coming up from the ground I've seen hell upon this earth the next will be chemical but they will never learn'
“We All Went Down with the Ship” by Ed Harcourt
We were only doing what the captain said We all went down with the ship The cause left splintered only thing I had We all went down with the ship The captain calls his pirates and the virgin assassins But told he would reach paradise Down is an army with following orders But see it in his hellous eyes It pulled out the monsters like deep in the mind We all went down with the ship The bayonets rusted on the fiery line We all went down with the ship
I heard all the men who were sent to the trenches And those beyond my scrapes Powers of the British and we go to war In charge of the light brigade And it's a long long way down To the bed of the sea Oh I will sink until she She covers me We'll suffer for another man's falling Blindsided by an ego that can't stop We sink to the bottom to rise to the top and say We all fall under the spell of the charmer Devil's tongue from the shepherd to his flock We sink to the bottom to rise to the top and say I never would've taken what the general desired We all went down with the ship In the land of the evil and the noble empire We all went down with the ship The terrible persuasion of the master's hand Shadowed in the ark of his rule This history lesson takes a measure of sand As the tricks in his thoughts have returned And it's a long long way down To the bed of the sea Oh I will sink until she She covers me We'll suffer for another man's falling Blindsided by an ego that can't stop We sink to the bottom to rise to the top and say We all fall under the spell of the charmer Devil's tongue from the shepherd to his flock We sink to the bottom to rise to the top and say We were doing what the captain said We went down, we went down as she went down with the ship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=516Sx8ThOCc
Note for Teacher The articles that are provided are in Dutch, so as to break the ice slowly, and steadily engage the students. This is also the reason why a Dutch poem is the starting point for a course in English (war) poetry. They have to be convinced it is they who want to learn about war poetry (of the First World War). It is their contemporary lifestyle s and cultures, which are seeped deeply with the responses to the war that started a centenary ago. Introducing them to contemporary music, which has First World War as subject, will open the door to poetry of the First World War. Moreover, using lyrics, and using YouTube to show and listen to the songs engages modern media, which will motivate young learners. The texts provided below, to accompany the lyrics of the songs above are reflections on 21st century (song) culture and warfare.
Source: Trouw Newspaper article, April 2011
De Engelse zangeres PJ Harvey wijdde een complete cd aan de gruwelen van de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Volgens Peter Sierksma treedt ze hiermee in de rijke Britse traditie van oorlogsdichters. En dan is er nog ‘Het barre land’ van T.S.Eliot.
Waarom april zo grimmig is, door Peter Sierksma
April is the cruellest month’ dichtte T.S. Eliot in 1922, ‘breeding Lilacs out of the dead land.’ Of in de vertaling van Paul Claes: ‘April is de grimmigste maand, hij wekt seringen uit het dode land.’ Zelden heb ik een mooier en aangrijpender regel gehoord en gelezen dan dit begin van ‘The Waste Land’ (‘Het barre land’). Maar begrijpen ho maar. Hoe ik er mijn best ook voor deed sinds ik het gedicht als student in Leiden opmerkte bij de geschiedeniscolleges over de Eerste Wereldoorlog en de dichters van het Interbellum — ik kreeg er geen vat op. Waarom was april de grimmigste of wreedste maand en niet mei, juni of juli, toen de Duitsers in 1917 voor het eerst
mosterdgas gebruikten in de omgeving van het Belgische leper? En waarom niet september of oktober toen erbij Zonnebeke zo ongelofelijk gesneuveld werd? Behalve aan de oorlog heb ik bij het begin van ‘The Waste Land’ ook vaak aan Goede Vrijdag gedacht. Vaak sterft Christus in april. En geen groter lijden dan Zijn collectief gememoreerde kruis-‐ dood. Maar ik kwam er niet mee weg. Want wordt Christus soms ook niet al in maart begraven? Ik hoorde Eliot, maar doorgrondde hem niet. Maar sinds de verschijning van de cd ‘Let Eng-‐ land Shake’ van de Engelse zangeres PJ Harvey vallen zijn woorden eindelijk op hun plaats. Op haar jongste plaat bezingt en beweent Harvey haar vader-‐ en moederland in oorlogstijd. Onder de indruk van het nieuws en de ooggetuigenverslagen van de recente en huidige oorlogen in Bosnië, Irak en Afghanistan probeert Harvey het fenomeen oorlog te verbinden met de bijna natuurlijke en historische onvermijdelijkheid ervan. “Oorlog is er altijd en zal er altijd zijn”, zo zei Harvey in een interview met The New Musical Express (te zien op YouTube). Harvey’s fascinatie gaat dan ook niet uit naar het politieke of strategische handelen zelf of welke schuldvraag dan ook, maar naar de grote dilemma’s en existentiële vragen die iedere oorlog weer met zich mee brengt. Hoe ver-‐ houdt zich de wil om te vechten tot de morele opdracht van het brengen van vrede en het herstel van recht? Wat is de zin van vaderlandsliefde of trouw aan een land of een idee, een familie, een vriendschap of een geliefde? Hoe verhouden trots en schaamte en woede en verdriet zich tot elkaar? Oorlog dus, als eeuwig terugkerend verschijnsel in de geschiedenis. Hoewel ze bij het schrijven van haar liederen op ‘Let England Shake’ vooral dacht aan oorlogsgeweld in Bosmë, Irak en Afghanistan, koos Harvey als decor het Turkse schiereiland Gallipoli. Hier liepen de Britse troepen eind april 1915 tegen een genadeloze nederlaag op. Bij ons is de slag relatief onbekend gebleven, maar in Engeland, Nieuw-‐ Zeeland en Australië refereert Gallipoli nog altijd aan een van de grootste trauma’s uit de moderne geschiedenis. Een litteken van de tijd, net als de slagvelden van Vlaanderen en Noord-‐ Frankrijk uit de Eerste en de randen van de stranden van Normandië uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Wat gebeurde er op Gallipoli? En wat maakt die plaats zo bijzonder? Onder leiding van de minister van Marine, Winston Churchill, hoopten de Engelsen in het voorjaar van 1915 samen met de geallieerde troepen uit Australië en Nieuw-‐Zeeland (Anzac) via Gallipoli de Dardanellen en de zee van Marmara te kunnen beheersen. Het voert nu te ver op de hier uitgevochten slagen in te gaan, maar het komt er op neer dat alles wat er aan Engelse kant mis kon gaan ook daadwerkelijk mis ging. Nog voor de (ook wel als mislukte D-‐Day omschreven) invasie op 25 april schreef legerleider generaal Jan Hamilton in zijn dagboek in Egypte: ,,We zijn als matrozen die verdrinken in een zee van chaos, chaos op de kantoren, chaos op de schepen, chaos in de kampen, chaos op de kaden.” Eenmaal aan land werden de geallieerde soldaten vrijwel direct door de Turkse bondgenoten van Duitsland gedwongen zich in te graven. De loopgravenoorlog zou nog tot diep in de herfst duren. Zelfs de evacuatie verliep rampzalig, toen tientallen soldaten werden overvallen door hevige stortbuien die de loopgraven in rivieren deden veranderen. En alsof dat nog niet alles was, brak een strenge vorstperiode aan waardoor veel van de tot dan toe overlevende soldaten alsnog doodvroren. Toen in 1916 de balans werd opgemaakt bleek dat in Gallipoli meer dan 40.000 van de 400.000 geallieerde soldaten ter plekke
gesneuveld waren. In ‘Let England Shake’ dus geen modderig Vlaanderen of Noord-‐Frankrijk, maar het zonovergoten Gallipoli. En die keus heeft een extra vervreemdend effect. Het lijkt wel of het decor van zon en strand de verschrikkingen van de oorlog en de staat van verwarring en ontheemding die Harvey probeert op te roepen versterkt, zoals in de song ‘All And Everyone’: ‘toen we verder trokken in de zon, alleen maar dood rondom.’ Niet eerder schreef Polly Jean Harvey over zo’n veelomvattend politiek historisch thema. Hoewel zij op haar vorige cd ‘A Woman Walked By’ (2008) al refereerde aan de maand april en het fenomeen van de oorlog, beperkte zij zich tot dan toe vooral tot het verkennen van de binnenwereld van de ziel: vertrouwen, lust, pijn en verlangen in het rijk van de (wan)hoop, het geloof en de liefde. Later kwamen daar de thema’s dood en verlies nadrukkelijk bij. En nu dus het slagveld. Hoewel Harvey, zo liet ze NME weten, altijd al geïnteresseerd was in het wereldnieuws, voelde ze zich nu pas rijp genoeg er ook over te schrijven: ,,Ik ben geen politicus, maar ik voel dat er een golf van onrust door de wereld gaat en dat gewone mensen en volken hun stem duidelijk willen laten horen.” Die stem is ook haar stem. Een stem, een taal van verlies en verdriet en soms verval (‘And what is the glorious fruit of our land? Its fruit is deformed children’). Van bloed en verscheurdheid, maar ook van vriendschap en hoop. Het is een taal vol vragen en losse eindjes, noem het een soort vertaalde onderstroom van sentimenten waarvan de burger tijdens een oorlog ontheemd en in verwarring raakt:
‘In the fields and in the forests, under the moon and under the sun another summer has passed, and not one man has appeared, not one woman has revealed the secrets of this world.’ (In The Dark Places)
PJ Harvey
Je zou ‘Let England Shake’ een protestplaat kunnen noemen. Neem bijvoorbeeld het door Eddy Cochran’s ‘Summertime Blues’ beroemd geworden zinnetje ‘I’m gonna take my problem to the United Nations’ dat als sample in het nummer ‘The Words That Maketh murder’ een wrange bijsmaak krijgt: ‘I have seen and done things I want to forget; soldiers fell like lumps of meat, blown and shot out beyond belief’. Maar ondanks dat zijn Harvey’s liederen moeilijk te vergelijken met de bekende en vaak ook eendimensionale protestsongs tegen Nixon, Johnson of Vietnam uit de jaren zestig en zeventig van Donovan, Boudewijn de Groot en zelfs Bob Dylan of the Doors (hoewel de laatsten de gekte van de oorlog waarschijnlijk toch het dichtst benaderd hebben). Harvey is veel weemoediger. Nee, als er al een voorloper van ‘Let England Shake’ bestaat dan is dat ‘Arthur, Or The Rise And Fall Of The British Empire’ van The Kinks uit de zomer van 1969. Ook op ‘Arthur’ gaat het over het verval van Engeland als natie en het verdriet om dode zonen in The Great War . En ook hier voel je behalve kritiek
verschrikkelijke weemoed. Maar tijd en toon zijn anders. Zijn de teksten en de melodieën van Ray Davies sterk geworteld in de rijke traditie van cabaret en vaudeville, bij PJ Harvey is alle franje verdwenen en iedere lach verstomd. Bij Harvey’s minimale, door oude folk (uit Engeland maar ook Rusland, Koerdistan, ‘Perzië’ en Afghanistan) beïnvloede muziek zijn de heldere en open popklanken van de Kinks veranderd in het omfloerste geluid van een sobere, ondersteunende begeleiding door hoofdzakelijk akoestische instrumenten zoals xylofoon, gitaar en (kleine) harp. Alleen orgel en mellotron lijken elektrisch aangedreven. En dan is er nog haar ijle stemgeluid. The West’s asleep. Let England shake, weighted down with silent dead. 1 fear our blood won’t rise again. Het lijkt soms wel of de muziek er zelfs nauwelijks nog toe doet. Alles is teruggebracht tot de kern, tot de essentie van de taal.
Twee jaar lang raakte ze geen instrument aan, vertelde ze in Oor. ,,Om deze muziek te schrijven moesten de teksten heel krachtig zijn. Dus besteedde ik al mijn tijd en aandacht om ze te laten ‘werken’ op papier, als poëzie, voor ik ze begon om te vormen tot songs.” De liefde, de dood en de poëzie, die drie. Door haar werkwijze treedt PJ Harvey nog meer in de voetsporen van haar vorig jaar december overleden inspirator Captain Beefheart, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith en niet te vergeten haar oude liefde Nick Cave bij wie de poëzie ook nooit ver weg is. Harvey’s fascinatie voor de oorlog en haar liefde voor de poëzie klonk zoals gezegd ook al door in oudere songs. In ‘The Soldier’ droomt de zangeres soldaat te zijn, een verschrikkelijke nachtmerrie. De soldaat loopt over de gezichten van dode vrouwen en wordt achtervolgd door iedereen die hij ooit achterliet. Hij overschrijdt de 39ste breedtegraad en loopt dan bij wijze van spreken zo een zin van W.H. Auden binnen: ‘It’s the year when some poet said/ we must love, or accept the consequences...’ Harvey verwijst ermee naar het gedicht ‘1 September 1939’ waarin Auden (1907-‐1973) op de agressie van Hitler slechts dit antwoord heeft: ‘We must love another or die.’ Het zinnetje werkt op ‘Let England Shake’ door. Een andere keus is er ook niet bij al die moeders, jonge weduwen en weggeblazen mannen. Auden had Harvey kunnen verleiden de Tweede Wereldoorlog als decor te kiezen. Maar dat deed ze niet Ze had er ook een goede reden voor, Op school leerde de jonge Polly, zoals iedereen in Engeland, al vroeg de zogenaamde ‘War Poets’ kennen. Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon en de op het slagveld gestorven Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell en Wilfred Owen behoren tot de canon van de literatuur die iedere Brit kent. Ziet of hoort hij ‘The naked earth is warm with spring... and life is colour and warmth and light.., and he is dead who will not flght...’ ,dan herkent hij ‘Into
Battle’ (Grenfell) en leest hij iets over een oor of een hand of een ander lichaamsdeel dat zomaar in de takken tussen de kersen hangt plus het gedempte geluid van vogels, dan denkt hij aan ene Robert Nichols, aan wie Robert Graves een gelijknamig gedicht opdroeg. En nu zal hij vergelijkbare flarden herkennen bij Harvey. Geen oorlog zo genadeloos vertrouwd: open-‐ baart de dood bij Harvey zich in ‘All And Everyone’ tijdens het rollen van een shagje, het lachen om een mop en het drinken van water, in ‘On Battieship Hill’ is het de geur van tijm die door de wind wordt meegevoerd ‘over de als gebroken tanden in een rottende mond uitstekende bergtoppen.’ Het zijn sterke beelden, opgerakeld uit dat collectieve bewustzijn van Engeland en onlosmakelijk verbonden met de grote poëzie die het land heeft voortgebracht:
Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand If there were only water amongst the rock Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Lines 331-339 from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot.
Nog een keer terug naar ons beroemde begin. Lees je ‘April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land’ dan komt 25 april 1915, de dag van de mislukte invasie van Gallipoli, wel erg dichtbij en begrijp je waarom Harvey tijdens het schrijven van haar libretto meer aan die seringen heeft gedacht dan aan de tot symbool geworden klaprozen van zijn Canadese collega John McCrae ‘In Flanders Fields the poppies blow/ between the crosses, row on row.’ Er is nog iets. De connectie met T.S. Eliot lijkt behalve dichterlijk ook geografisch bepaald. PJ Harvey werd geboren vlakbij East Coker, de plaats waar T.S. Eliot zijn laatste rustplaats vond en waar hij ook het tweede van zijn ‘Four Quartets’ naar genoemd heeft. Slechts een paar mijl scheidt dus Polly’s wieg van Thomas’ graf, dat wil zeggen de urn waarin zijn as bewaard is. En gezien haar opvoeding en interesse kan het niet anders of zij heeft al vroeg die bewuste kerk en haar kapel bezocht. In ‘The Last Living Rose’ beschrijft Harvey het verlangen van een wanhopige soldaat om van het godvergeten Europa terug te mogen keren naar Engeland ‘waar de mist al eeuwenlang de bergen en kerkhoven bedekt en de Theems glinstert als goud’: Let me watch night faIl on the river, the moon rise up and turn to silver, the sky move, the ocean shimmer, the hedge shake, the last living rose quiver.
En zo kom ik terug bij de zinnen waar ik dit artikel mee begon. Net als het beeld van die grillige en grimmige maand, die ook nu weer net begonnen is, is dat van die bergrug als een stel rotte tanden ook uit ‘Het Barre Land’ van T.S. Eliot afkomstig. Via hem moet ze ook bij haar keuze voor Gallipoli als metafoor gekomen. Zo ligt Gallipoli niet alleen bij de ingang van de Zee van Marmara, ze grenst ook aan de monding van de oude Helles pont, niet ver voor de kust van het oude Troje. Een notie die je ook steeds bij Eliot terugvindt, bijvoorbeeld in zijn ‘Four Quartets’. Anders dan de genoemde Oorlogsdichters, die vaak nog in een romantische traditie stonden en als ooggetuige opvielen door hun primaire stem, bekeek Eliot, net als Auden overigens, de wereld met zijn experimentele en metafysische benadering van de poëzie meer van een afstand. Hoe actueel de beelden die tijdens het schrijven in de dichter opkwamen ook waren, nooit kon je ze los zien van de autonome (en mythologische) zeggingskracht van de taal zelf. Die afstand en het ontbreken van al te persoonlijke sentimenten gaf Eliot de mogelijkheid zijn barre tijding der tijden in een breder historisch perspectief te zetten. En het lijkt dat PJ Harvey hem daarin op ‘Let England Shake’ tracht na te volgen. Het landschap als pleister op de wonde: hoop versus wanhoop.
Meer nog dan naar de rollen die zij graag speelt (oorlogscorrespondent, weduwe, soldaat) zoekt Harvey uiteindelijk naar een ‘gevoeligheid’ in de omgang met de taal zelf. Een gevoeligheid zoals Eliot die zocht op een manier die hem de kans gaf zo zuiver mogelijk te kijken naar de (turbulente) wereld om zich heen door daarin de valse, te makkelijk voor de hand liggende emotie van de echte, diepere onderliggende, te onderscheiden. Voor Eliot was de overwinning van Engeland in de Eerste Wereldoorlog dan ook geen overwinning maar een nederlaag. Een nederlaag van de Europese beschaving, te vergelijken met de Griekse ondergang in de Peloponnesische oorlog eerder. Die gevoeligheid heeft PJ Harvey begrepen. Het is haar gelukt het verdriet van Engeland in oorlogstijd vanaf ’The Glorious Revolution’ tot Irak en Afghanistan te vangen in een vorm die nog het meeste op gestolde wanhoop lijkt. Ter nagedachtenis aan hen, die lijken op die beste vriend, die altijd, zoals in het prachtige slotlied ‘The Colour Of The Earth’, Louis zal blijven heten en nooit meer van zijn verre heuvel af zal dalen: He’s still up on that hill Nothing more than a pile of bones, bull think of him still.
Lesson 2
Discussion (2): Why poetry? An introduction to other forms, books, memoirs and film. This should, indirectly, also prove and show the pervasiveness of First World War poetry, which has heavily influenced these ‘other forms’, not only their remediated
forms, but in their cultural re-‐interpretation. Research (3): Individual Assignment: find your own First World War narrative. àstudents are to analyse the ‘representation
(including self-‐representation) of those who […] tell others [ them ] of war.’ (McLoughlin, 2011, 22).
Note for Teacher Reading is class of ‘Goodbye’ extracts is meant to take student trough the course of Robert Graves’ story, and thus through the course of the war. The poem “The Rear Guard” and its prose counterpart is a good lesson on the similarities and differences on prose and poetry texts. Possibility: make the students choose 1 book to read at home, by ordering online or library loan. Also, book test questions are provided throughout this reader should a teacher choose to test either in class or as part of a bigger test during a test-‐week. Possibility: watch parts of the films listed to give the students an impression on how Hollywood/celluloid has tried to capture World War I on the screen. All but Gallipoli focus on the Western Front, as do the books. Most films have extracts available on YouTube. Behind the Lines is FULLY available on YouTube at this moment of writing.
List of WWI films:
• Paths of Glory • All Quiet on the Western Front • Gallipoli • A Very Long Engagement • War Horse • The Trench • Passchendaele • My Boy Jack • Behind the Lines • Beneath Hill 60 • The Lost Battalion
List of WWI books:
• Memoirs of an Infantry Officer • Good-‐bye to All That • Undertones of War • Her Privates We • Farewell to Arms • Birdsong • Regeneration • Ghost Road • Life Class • The Wars • The Absolutist • All Quiet on the Western Front
• Under Fire
Poetry & Memoir contrasted: “The Rear-‐Guard” (Hindenburg Line, April 1917) Groping along the tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air. Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes and too vague to know; A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; And he, exploring fifty feet below The rosy gloom of battle overhead. Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie Humped at his feet, half-‐hidden by a rug, And stooped to give the sleeper’s arm a tug. “I’m looking for headquarters.” No reply. “God blast your neck!” (For days he’d had no sleep) “Get up and guide me through this stinking place.” Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, And flashed his beam across the livid face Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore Agony dying hard of ten days before; And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound. Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat and horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step by step. Siegfried Sassoon, from The War Poems, Faber & Faber, London, 1983, page 75-‐76 ‘The Tunnel was a few inches higher than a tall man walking upright; it was fitted with bunks and recessed rooms; it was fitted with bunks and recessed rooms; in places it was crowded with men of various units, but there were long intervals of unwholesome-‐smelling solitude. Prying my way along with an electric torch, I glimpsed an assortment of vague shapes, boxes, tins, fragments of broken furniture and frowsy matresses. It seemed a long way to Headquarters, and the Tunnel was memorable but not fortifying to a fatigued explorer who hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a stretch or taken his clothes of since last Tuesday. Once, when I tripped and recovered myself by grabbing the wall, my tentative patch of brightness revealed somebody half hidden under a blanket. Not a very
clever spot to be taking a nap, I thought, as I stooped to shake him by the shoulder. He refused to wake up, so I gave him a kick. “God blast you, where’s Battalion Headquarters?” My nerves where on edge; and what right had he to be having a good sleep, when I never seemed to get five minutes’ rest? … Then my beam settled on the livid face of a dead German whose fingers still clutched the blackened gash on his neck … Stumbling on, I could only mutter to myself that this was really a bit too thick. (That, however, was an exaggeration; there is nothing remarkable about a dead body in a European War, or a squashed beetle in a cellar.)’ By Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, (Faber & Faber, London, 1930), p. 225-‐226
Source: excerpt from Goodbye to All That, chapter XX
Four days after the raid we heard that we were due for the Somme. We marched through Béthune, which had been much knocked about and was nearly deserted, to Fouquières, and there entrained for the Somme. The Somme railhead was near Amiens and we marched by easy stages through Cardonette, Daours, and Buire, until we came to the original front line, close to the place where David Thomas had been killed. The fighting had moved two miles on. This was on the afternoon of 14th July. At 4 a.m. on the 15th July we moved up the Méaulte-‐Fricourt-‐Bazentin road which wound through 'Happy Valley' and found ourselves in the more recent battle area. Wounded men and prisoners came streaming past us. What struck me most was the number of dead horses and mules lying about; human corpses I was accustomed to, but it seemed wrong for animals to be dragged into the war like this. We marched by platoons, at fifty yards distance. Just beyond Fricourt we found a German shell-‐barrage across the road. So we left it and moved over thickly shell-‐pitted ground until 8 a.m., when we found ourselves on the fringe of Mametz Wood, among the dead of our new-‐army battalions that had been attacking Mametz Wood. We halted in thick mist. The Germans had been using lachrymatory shell and the mist held the fumes; we coughed and swore. We tried to smoke, but the gas had got into the cigarettes, so we threw them away. Later we wished we had not, because it was not the cigarettes that had been affected so much as our own throats. The colonel called up the officers and we pulled out our maps. We were expecting orders for an attack. When the mist cleared we saw a German gun with "First Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers" chalked on it. It was evidently a trophy. I wondered what had happened to Siegfried(1) and my friends of A Company. We found the battalion quite close in bivouacs; Siegfried was still alive, as were Edmund Dadd and two other A Company officers. The battalion had been in heavy fighting. In their first attack at Fricourt they had overrun our opposite number in the German army, the Twenty-‐third Infantry Regiment, who were undergoing a special disciplinary spell in the trenches because an inspecting staff-‐officer, coming round, had found that all the officers were back in Mametz village in a deep dug-‐out instead of up in the trenches with their men. (It was said that throughout that bad time in March in the German trenches opposite to us there had been no officer of higher rank than corporal.) Their next objective had been The Quadrangle, a small copse this side of Mametz
Wood. I was told that Siegfried had then distinguished himself by taking single-‐handed a battalion frontage that the Royal Irish Regiment had failed to take the day before. He had gone over with bombs in daylight, under covering fire from a couple of rifles, and scared the occupants out. It was a pointless feat; instead of reporting or signaling for reinforcements he sat down in the German trench and began dozing over a book of poems, which he had brought with him. When he finally went back he did not report. The colonel was furious. The attack on Mametz Wood had been delayed for two hours because it was reported that British patrols were still out. "British patrols" were Siegfried and his book of poems. "It would have got you a D.S.O. if you'd only had more sense," stormed the colonel. Siegfried had been doing heroic things ever since I had left the battalion. His nickname in the Seventh Division was "Mad Jack". He was given a Military Cross for bringing in a wounded lance-‐corporal from a mine-‐crater close to the German lines, under heavy fire. He was one of the rare exceptions to the rule against the decoration of Third Battalion officers. I did not see Siegfried this time; he was down with the transport having a rest. So I sent him a rhymed letter, by one of our own transport men, about the times that we were going to have together when the war ended; how, after a rest at Harlech, we were going for a visit to the Caucasus and Persia and China; and what good poetry we would write. It was in answer to one he had written to me from the army school at Flixécourt a few weeks previously (which appears in The Old Huntsman). I went for a stroll with Edmund Dadd, who was now commanding A Company. Edmund was cursing: "It's not fair, Robert. You remember A Company under Richardson was always the best company. Well, it's kept up its reputation, and the C.O. shoves us in as the leading company of every show, and we get our objectives and hold them, and so we've got to do the same again the next time. And he says that I'm indispensable in the company, so he makes me go over every time instead of giving me a rest and letting my second-‐in-‐command take his turn. I've had five shows in just over a fortnight and I can't go on being lucky every time. The colonel's about due for his C.B. Apparently A Company is making sure of it for him." For the next two days we were in bivouacs outside the wood. We were in fighting kit and the nights were wet and cold. I went into the wood to find German overcoats to use as blankets. Mametz Wood was full of dead of the Prussian Guards Reserve, big men, and of Royal Welch and South Wales Borderers of the new-‐army battalions, little men. There was not a single tree in the wood unbroken. I got my greatcoats and came away as quickly as I could, climbing over the wreckage of green branches. Going and coming, by the only possible route, I had to pass by the corpse of a German with his back propped against a tree. He had a green face, spectacles, close shaven hair; black blood was dripping from the nose and beard. He had been there for some days and was bloated and stinking. There had been bayonet fighting in the wood. There was a man of the South Wales Borderers and one of the Lehr regiment who had succeeded in bayoneting each other simultaneously. A survivor of the fighting told me later that he had seen a young soldier of the Fourteenth Royal Welch bayoneting a German in parade-‐ground style, automatically exclaiming as he had been taught: "In, out, on guard." He said that it was the oddest thing he had heard in France.
I found myself still superstitious about looting or collecting souvenirs. The greatcoats were only a loan, I told myself. Almost the only souvenir I had allowed myself to keep was a trench periscope, a little rod-‐shaped metal one sent me from home; when I poked it up above the parapet it offered only an inch-‐square target to the German snipers. Yet a sniper at Cuinchy, in May, drilled it through, exactly central, at four hundred yards range. I sent it home, but had no time to write a note of explanation. My mother, misunderstanding, and practical as usual, took it back to the makers and made them change it for a new one. Our brigade, the Nineteenth, was the reserve brigade of the Thirty-‐third Division; the other brigades, the Ninety-‐ninth and Hundredth, had attacked Martinpuich two days previously and had been stopped with heavy losses as soon as they started. Since then we had had nothing to do but sit about in shell-‐holes and watch the artillery duel going on. We had never seen artillery so thick. On the 18th we moved up to a position just to the north of Bazentin-‐le-‐Petit to relieve the Tyneside Irish. I was with D Company. The guide who was taking us up was hysterical and had forgotten the way; we put him under arrest and found it ourselves. As we went up through the ruins of the village we were shelled. We were accustomed to that, but they were gas shells. The standing order with regard to gas shells was not to put on one's respirator but hurry on. Up to that week there had been no gas shells except lachrymatory ones; these were the first of the real kind, so we lost about half a dozen men. When at last we arrived at the trenches, which were scooped at a roadside and only about three feet deep, the company we were relieving hurried out without any of the usual formalities; they had been badly shaken. I asked their officer where the Germans were. He said he didn't know, but pointed vaguely towards Martinpuich, a mile to our front. Then I asked him where and what were the troops on our left. He didn't know. I cursed him and he went off. We got into touch with C Company behind us on the right and with the Fourth Suffolks not far off on the left. We began deepening the trenches and locating the Germans; they were in a trench-‐system about five hundred yards away but keeping fairly quiet. The next day there was very heavy shelling at noon; shells were bracketing along our trench about five yards short and five yards over, but never quite getting it. We were having dinner and three times running my cup of tea was spilt by the concussion and filled with dirt. I was in a cheerful mood and only laughed. I had just had a parcel of kippers from home; they were far more important than the bombardment -‐-‐ I recalled with appreciation one of my mother's sayings: "Children, remember this when you eat your kippers; kippers cost little, yet if they cost a hundred guineas a pair they would still find buyers among the millionaires." Before the shelling had started a tame magpie had come into the trench; it had apparently belonged to the Germans who had been driven out of the village by the Gordon Highlanders a day or two before. It was looking very draggled. "That's one for sorrow," I said. The men swore that it spoke something in German as it came in, but I did not hear it. I was feeling tired and was off duty, so without waiting for the bombardment to stop I went to sleep in the trench. I decided that I would just as soon be killed asleep as awake. There were no dug-‐outs, of course. I always found it easy now to sleep through bombardments. I was conscious of the noise in my sleep, but I let it go by. Yet if anybody came to wake me for my watch or shouted "Stand-‐to!" I was alert in a second. I had learned to go to sleep sitting down, standing up, marching, lying on
a stone floor, or in any other position, at a moment's notice at any time of day or night. But now I had a dreadful nightmare; it was as though somebody was handling me secretly, choosing the place to drive a knife into me. Finally, he gripped me in the small of the back. I woke up with a start, shouting, and punched the small of my back where the hand was. I found that I had killed a mouse that had been frightened by the bombardment and run down my neck. That afternoon the company got an order through from the brigade to build two cruciform strong-‐points at such-‐an-‐such a map reference. Moodie, the company commander, and I looked at our map and laughed. Moodie sent back a message that he would be glad to do so, but would require an artillery bombardment and strong reinforcements because the points selected, half way to Martinpuich, were occupied in force by the enemy. The colonel came up and verified this. He said that we should build the strong-‐point about three hundred yards forward and two hundred yards apart. So one platoon stayed behind in the trench and the other went out and started digging. A cruciform strong-‐point, consisted of two trenches, each some thirty yards long, crossing at right angles to each other; it was wired all round, so that it looked, in diagram, like a hot-‐cross bun. The defenders could bring fire to bear against an attack from any direction. We were to hold each of these points with a Lewis gun and a platoon of men. It was a bright moonlight night. My way to the strongpoint on the right took me along the Bazentin-‐High Wood road. A German sergeant-‐major, wearing a pack and full equipment, was lying on his back in the middle of the road, his arms stretched out wide. He was a short, powerful man with a full black beard. He looked sinister in the moonlight; I needed a charm to get myself past him. The simplest way, I found, was to cross myself. Evidently a brigade of the Seventh Division had captured the road and the Germans had been shelling it heavily. It was a sunken road and the defenders had begun to scrape fire-‐positions in the north bank, facing the Germans. The work had apparently been interrupted by a counter-‐attack. They had done no more than scrape hollows in the lower part of the bank. To a number of these little hollows wounded men had crawled, put their heads and shoulders inside and died there. They looked as if they had tried to hide from the black beard. They were Gordon Highlanders. I was visiting the strong-‐point on the right. The trench had now been dug two or three feet down and a party of Engineers had arrived with coils of barbed wire for the entanglement. I found that work had stopped. The whisper went round: "Get your rifles ready. Here comes Fritz." I lay down flat to see better, and about seventy yards away in the moonlight I could make out massed figures. I immediately sent a man back to the company to find Moodie and ask him for a Lewis gun and a flare-‐pistol. I restrained the men, who were itching to fire, telling them to wait until they came closer. I said: "They probably don't know we're here and we'll get more of them if we let them come right up close. They may even surrender." The Germans were wandering about irresolutely and we wondered what the game was. There had been a number of German surrenders at night recently, and this might be one on a big scale. Then Moodie came running with a Lewis gun, the flare-‐pistol, and a few more men with rifle-‐grenades. He decided to give the enemy a chance. He sent up a flare and fired a Lewis gun over their heads. A tall officer came running towards us with his hands up in surrender. He was surprised to find that we were not Germans. He said that he belonged to the Public Schools Battalion in our own brigade. Moodie
asked him what the hell he was doing. He said that he was in command of a patrol. He was sent back for a few more of his men, to make sure it was not a trick. The patrol was half a company of men wandering about aimlessly between the lines, their rifles slung over their shoulders, and, it seemed, without the faintest idea where they were or what information they were supposed to bring back. This Public Schools Battalion was one of four or five others which had been formed some time in 1914. Their training had been continually interrupted by large numbers of men being withdrawn as officers for other regiments. The only men left, in fact, seemed to be those who were unfitted to hold commissions; yet unfitted by their education to make good soldiers in the ranks. The other battalions had been left behind in England as training battalions; only this one had been sent out. It was a constant embarrassment to the brigade. I picked up a souvenir that night. A German gun-‐team had been shelled as it was galloping out of Bazentin towards Martinpuich. The horses and the driver had been killed. At the back of the limber were the gunners' treasures. Among them was a large lump of chalk wrapped up in a piece of cloth; it had been carved and decorated in colors with military mottos, the flags of the Central Powers, and the names of the various battles in which the gunner had served. I sent it as a present to Dr. Dunn. I am glad to say that both he and it survived the war; he is in practice at Glasgow, and the lump of chalk is under a glass case in his consulting room. The evening of the next day, July 19th, we were relieved. We were told that we would be attacking High Wood, which we could see a thousand yards away to the right at the top of a slope. High Wood was on the main German battle-‐line, which ran along the ridge, with Delville Wood not far off on the German left. Two British brigades had already attempted it; in both cases the counter-‐attack had driven them out. Our battalion had had a large number of casualties and was now only about four hundred strong.
I have kept a battalion order issued at midnight:
"To O.C. B Co. 2nd R.W.F. 20.7.16."
Companies will move as under to same positions in S14b as were to have been taken over from Cameronians aaa A Coy. 12.30 a.m. B Coy, 12.45 a.m. C Coy. 1 a.m. D Coy. 1.15 a.m. aaa At 2 a.m. Company Commanders will meet C.O. at X Roads S14b 99. aaa Men will lie down and get under cover but equipment will not be taken off aaa
S 14b 99 was a map reference for Bazentin churchyard. We lay here on the reverse slope of a slight ridge about half a mile from the wood. I attended the
meeting of company commanders; the colonel told us the plan. He said: "Look here, you fellows, we're in reserve for this attack. The Cameronians are going up to the wood first, then the Fifth Scottish Rifles; that's at five a.m. The Public Schools Battalion are in support if anything goes wrong. I don't know if we shall be called on; if we are, it will mean that the Jocks have legged it. As usual," he added. This was an appeal to prejudice. "The Public Schools Battalion is, well, what we know, so if we are called for, that means it will be the end of us." He said this with a laugh and we all laughed. We were sitting on the ground protected by the road-‐bank; a battery of French 75's was firing rapid over our heads about twenty yards away. There was a very great concentration of guns in Happy Valley now. We could hardly hear what he was saying. He told us that if we did get orders to reinforce, we were to shake out in artillery formation; once in the wood we were to hang on like death. Then he said good-‐bye and good luck and we rejoined our companies. At this juncture the usual inappropriate message came through from Division. Division could always be trusted to send through a warning about verdigris on vermorel-‐sprayers, or the keeping of pets in trenches, or being polite to our allies, or some other triviality, when an attack was in progress. This time it was an order for a private in C Company to report immediately to the assistant provost-‐marshal back at Albert, under escort of a lance-‐corporal. He was for a court-‐martial. A sergeant of the company was also ordered to report as a witness in the case. The private was charged with the murder of a French civilian in an estaminet at Béthune about a month previously. Apparently there had been a good deal of brandy going and the French civilian, who had a grudge against the British (it was about his wife), started to tease the private. He was reported, somewhat improbably, as having said: "English no bon, Allmand très bon. War fineesh, napoo the English. Allmand win." The private had immediately drawn his bayonet and run the man through. At the court-‐martial the private was exculpated; the French civil representative commended him for having "energetically repressed local defeatism." So he and the two N.C.O.'s missed the battle. What the battle that they missed was like I pieced together afterwards. The Jocks did get into the wood and the Royal Welch were not called on to reinforce until eleven o'clock in the morning. The Germans put down a barrage along the ridge where we were lying, and we lost about a third of the battalion before our show started. I was one of the casualties. It was heavy stuff, six and eight inch. There was so much of it that we decided to move back fifty yards; it was when I was running that an eight-‐inch shell burst about three paces behind me. I was able to work that out afterwards by the line of my wounds. I heard the explosion and felt as though I had been punched rather hard between the shoulder-‐blades, but had no sensation of pain. I thought that the punch was merely the shock of the explosion; then blood started trickling into my eye and I felt faint and called to Moodie: "I've been hit." Then I fell down. A minute or two before I had had two very small wounds on my left hand; they were in exactly the same position as the two, on my right hand, that I had got during the preliminary bombardment at Loos. This I had taken as a sign that I would come through all right. For further security I had repeated to myself a line of Nietsche's, whose poems, in French, I had with me:
Non, tu ne peux pas me tuer.
It was the poem about a man on the scaffold with the red-‐bearded executioner standing over him. (This copy of Nietsche, by the way, had contributed to the suspicions about me as a spy. Nietsche was execrated in the papers as the philosopher of German militarism; he was more popularly interpreted as a William le Queux mystery-‐man -‐-‐the sinister figure behind the Kaiser.) One piece of shell went through my left thigh, high up near the groin; I must have been at the full stretch of my stride to have escaped emasculation. The wound over the eye was nothing; it was a little chip of marble, possibly from one of the Bazentin cemetery headstones. This and a finger wound, which split the bone, probably came from another shell that burst in front of me. The main wound was made by a piece of shell that went in two inches below the point of my right shoulder and came out through my chest two inches above my right nipple, in a line between it and the base of my neck. My memory of what happened then is vague. Apparently Doctor Dunn came up through the barrage with a stretcher-‐party, dressed my wound, and got me down to the old German dressing-‐station at the north end of Mametz Wood. I just remember being put on the stretcher and winking at the stretcher-‐bearer sergeant who was looking at me and saying: "Old Gravy's got it, all right." The dressing-‐station was overworked that day; I was laid in a corner on a stretcher and remained unconscious for more than twenty-‐four hours. It was about ten o'clock on the 20th that I was hit. Late that night the colonel came to the dressing-‐station; he saw me lying in the corner and was told that I was done for. The next morning, the 21st, when they were clearing away the dead, I was found to be still breathing; so they put me on an ambulance for Heilly, the nearest field-‐hospital. The pain of being jolted down the Happy Valley, with a shell-‐hole at every three or four yards of the roads, woke me for awhile. I remember screaming. But once back on the better roads I became unconscious again. That morning the colonel wrote the usual formal letters of condolence to the next-‐of-‐kin of the six or seven officers who had been killed. This was his letter to my mother:
22/7/16
DEAR MRS. GRAVES,
I very much regret to have to write and tell you your son has died of wounds. He was very gallant, and was doing so well and is a great loss.
He was hit by a shell and very badly wounded, and died on the way down to the base I believe. He was not in bad pain, and our doctor managed to get across and attend him at once.
We have had a very hard time, and our casualties have been large. Believe me you have all our sympathy in your loss, and we have lost a very gallant soldier.
Please write to me if I can tell you or do anything.
Yours sincerely,
* * *
Later he made out the official casualty list and reported me died of wounds. It was a long casualty list, because only eighty men were left in the battalion. Heilly was on the railway; close to the station was the hospital -‐-‐ marquee tents with the red cross painted prominently on the roofs to discourage air-‐bombing. It was fine July weather and the tents were insufferably hot. I was semi-‐conscious now, and realized my lung-‐wound by the shortness of breath. I was amused to watch the little bubbles of blood, like red soap-‐bubbles, that my breath made when it escaped through the hole of the wound. The doctor came over to me. I felt sorry for him; he looked as though he had not had any sleep for days. I asked him for a drink. He said: "Would you like some tea?" I whispered: "Not with condensed milk in it." He said: "I'm afraid there's no fresh milk." Tears came to my eyes; I expected better of a hospital behind the lines. He said: "Will you have some water?" I said: "Not if it's boiled." He said: "It is boiled. And I'm afraid I can't give you anything with alcohol in it in your present condition." I said: "Give me some fruit then." He said: "I have seen no fruit for days." But a few minutes later he came back with two rather unripe greengages. I felt so grateful that I promised him a whole orchard when I recovered. The nights of the 22nd and 23rd were very bad. Early on the morning of the 24th, when the doctor came to see how I was, I said: "You must send me away from here. The heat will kill me." It was beating through the canvas on my head. He said: "Stick it out. It's your best chance to lie here and not to be moved. You'd not reach the base alive." I said: "I'd like to risk the move. I'll be all right, you'll see." Half an hour later he came back. "Well, you're having it your way. I've just got orders to evacuate every case in the hospital. Apparently the Guards have been in it up at Delville Wood and we'll have them all coming in tonight." I had no fears now about dying. I was content to be wounded and on the way home. I had been given news of the battalion from a brigade-‐major, wounded in the leg, who was in the next bed to me. He looked at my label and said: "I see you're in the Second Royal Welch Fusiliers. Well, I saw your High Wood show through field-‐glasses. The way your battalion shook out into artillery formation, company by company -‐-‐ with each section of four or five men in file at fifty yards interval and distance -‐-‐ going down into the hollow and up the slope through the barrage, was the most beautiful bit of parade-‐ground drill I've ever seen. Your company officers must have been superb." I happened to know that one company at least had started without a single officer. I asked him whether they had held the wood. He said: "They hung on at the near end. I believe what happened was that the Public Schools Battalion came away as soon as it got dark; and so did the Scotsmen. Your chaps were left there alone for some time. They steadied themselves by singing. Later, the chaplain -‐-‐ R.C. of course -‐-‐ Father McCabe, brought the Scotsmen back. They were Glasgow Catholics and would follow a priest where they wouldn't follow an officer. The middle of the wood was impossible for either the Germans or your fellows to hold. There was a terrific concentration of artillery on it. The trees were splintered to matchwood. Late that night the survivors were relieved by a brigade of the Seventh Division;
your First Battalion was in it." That evening I was put in the hospital train. They could not lift me from the stretcher to put me on a bunk, for fear of starting hemorrhage in the lung; so they laid the stretcher on top of it, with the handles resting on the head-‐rail and foot-‐rail. I had been on the same stretcher since I was wounded. I remember the journey only as a nightmare. My back was sagging, and I could not raise my knees to relieve the cramp because the bunk above me was only a few inches away. A German officer on the other side of the carriage groaned and wept unceasingly. He had been in an aeroplane crash and had a compound fracture of the leg. The other wounded men were cursing him and telling him to stow it and be a man, but he went on, keeping every one awake. He was not delirious, only frightened and in great pain. An orderly gave me a pencil and paper and I wrote home to say that I was wounded but all right. This was July 24th, my twenty-‐first birthday, and it was on this day, when I arrived at Rouen, that my death officially occurred. My parents got my letter two days after the letter from the colonel; mine was dated July 23rd, because I had lost count of days when I was unconscious; his was dated the 22nd.(1) They could not decide whether my letter had been written just before I died and misdated, or whether I had died just after writing it. 'Died of wounds' was, however, so much more circumstantial than 'killed' that they gave me up. I was in No. 8 Hospital at Rouen; an ex-‐chateau high above the town. The day after I arrived a Cooper aunt of mine, who had married a Frenchman, came up to the hospital to visit a nephew in the South Wales Borderers who had just had a leg amputated. She happened to see my name in a list on the door of the ward, so she wrote to my mother to reassure her. On the 30th I had a letter from the colonel:
30/7/16
DEAR VON RUNICKE,
I cannot tell you how pleased I am you are alive. I was told your number was up for certain, and a letter was supposed to have come in from Field Ambulance saying you had gone under.
Well, it's good work. We had a rotten time, and after succeeding in doing practically the impossible we collected that rotten crowd and put them in their places, but directly dark came they legged it. It was too sad.
We lost heavily. It is not fair putting brave men like ours alongside that crowd. I also wish to thank you for your good work and bravery, and only wish you could have been with them. I have read of bravery but I have never seen such magnificent and wonderful disregard for death as I saw that day. It was almost uncanny -‐-‐ it was so great. I once heard an old officer in the Royal Welch say the men would follow you to Hell; but these chaps would bring you back and put you in a dug-‐out in Heaven.
Good luck and a quick recovery. I shall drink your health to-‐night.
**
I had little pain all this time, but much discomfort; the chief pain came from my finger, which had turned septic because nobody had taken the trouble to dress it, and was throbbing. And from the thigh, where the sticky medical plaster, used to hold down the dressing, pulled up the hair painfully when it was taken off each time the wound was dressed. My breath was very short still. I contrasted the pain and discomfort favorably with that of the operation on my nose of two months back; for this I had won no sympathy at all from anyone, because it was not an injury contracted in war. I was weak and petulant and muddled. The R.A.M.C. bugling outraged me. The 'Rob All My Comrades,' I complained, had taken everything I had except a few papers in my tunic-‐pocket and a ring which was too tight on my finger to be pulled off; and now they mis-‐blew the Last Post flat and windily, and with the pauses in the wrong places, just to annoy me. I remember that I told an orderly to put the bugler under arrest and jump to it or I'd report him to the senior medical officer. Next to me was a Welsh boy, named O. M. Roberts, who had joined us only a few days before he was hit. He told me about High Wood; he had reached the edge of the wood when he was wounded in the groin. He had fallen into a shell-‐hole. Some time in the afternoon he had recovered consciousness and seen a German officer working round the edge of the wood, killing off the wounded with an automatic pistol. Some of our lightly-‐wounded were, apparently, not behaving as wounded men should; they were sniping. The German worked nearer. He saw Roberts move and came towards him, fired and hit him in the arm. Roberts was very weak and tugged at his Webley. He had great difficulty in getting it out of the holster. The German fired again and missed. Roberts rested the Webley against the lip of the shell-‐hole and tried to pull the trigger; he was not strong enough. The German was quite close now and was going to make certain of him this time. Roberts said that he just managed to pull the trigger with the fingers of both hands when the German was only about five yards away. The shot took the top of his head off. Roberts fainted. The doctors had been anxiously watching my lung, which was gradually filling with blood and pressing my heart too far away to the left of my body; the railway journey had restarted the hemorrhage. They marked the gradual progress of my heart with an indelible pencil on my skin and said that when it reached a certain point they would have to aspirate me. This sounded a serious operation, but it only consisted of putting a hollow needle into my lung through the back and drawing the blood off into a vacuum flask through it. I had a local anesthetic; it hurt no more than a vaccination, and I was reading the Gazette de Rouen as the blood hissed into the flask. It did not look much, perhaps half a pint. That evening I heard a sudden burst of lovely singing in the courtyard where the ambulances pulled up. I recognized the quality of the voices. I said to Roberts: "The First Battalion have been in it again," and asked a nurse to verify it; I was right. It was their Delville Wood show, I think, but I am uncertain now of the date. A day or two later I was taken back to England by hospital ship.
By Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That, (Penguin Classics, London, 2014), p. 261-‐280
Lesson 3
Lecture (4): Teaching the traditional developmental arch in First World War poetry: the canon. Teaching poetic analysis and introducing the poetry of Rupert Brooke (1887-‐
1915), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-‐1967) and Wilfred Owen (1893-‐1918).
Note for Teachers First off, students need to learn a little on poetry analyses, or at least some poetic terms, teachers may provide. Teachers can choose to teach poetry reading as a stand alone lesson, or use these lesson and Brooke’s poems to teach poetry analysis. For this reason, pace should be steady and relatively slow. Teaching some of the best know Rupert Brooke poems in the traditional frame, where Brooke’s verse stands for ‘jingoist’ naïve poetry at the start of the war, written by a poet who had not yet and never would see battle. Students often react very predictably to the poetry of Brooke with regards to content, almost proving Jay Winter’s claim right, that our collective language is so seeped with pacifism through the poets, that Brooke is doomed to lose the battle before it has even started. Teachers do well to point out the timeless qualities of Brooke proleptic elegy’s of mourning of one’s own future death, creating empathy with the pupil’s through their own private losses they almost invariably have experienced. The so-‐called counterpart poems are meant to teach students poetry that might go alongside Brooke’s, but nonetheless is a different voice that is not the canon. Women’s poetry, worker’s poetry, transnational poetry, poetry that is Brooke’s opposite content wise, poetry that is inspired by Brooke, etcetera. Teachers are either be inspired by these choices or to choose and pick, or both.
Selection from the canon of First World War poetry and short bio background of Brooke, Sassoon and Owen.
From Rhyme & Reason, (Malmberg, Den Bosch, 1988), page 160
“The Soldier” 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. From: The New Oxford Book of War Poetry, Jon Stallworthy, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), p. 16
“The Dead” Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifst than gold. These laid the world away; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years tob e Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, That men call age; and those who would have been, Their sons, they gave, their immortality. Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us , for our dearth, Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain. Honour has come back, as a king, to earth. And paid his subjects with a royal wage; And Nobleness walks in our ways again; And we have come into our heritage. From: The New Oxford Book of War Poetry, Jon Stallworthy, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), p. 16
The following poems are for study at home, and are selected because they either form a contrast to Brooke’s war poetry, or because they are similar to the spirit of the time. The three poems are a good exercise for you as a reader to try and reflect upon the poetry of Rupert Brooke at the start of the war, and the ways in which other poets wrote poetry during that same period, including poets such as Sassoon who later on developed such a different tone of voice in his poetry, and non combatant (female) poets such as Jessie Pope.
“This is no case of petty right and wrong” This is no case of petty right or wrong That politicians or philosophers Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers. Beside my hate for one fat patriot My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:— A kind of god he is, banging a gong. But I have not to choose between the two, Or between justice and injustice. Dinned With war and argument I read no more Than in the storm smoking along the wind Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar. From one the weather shall rise clear and gay; Out of the other an England beautiful And like her mother that died yesterday. Little I know or care if, being dull, I shall miss something that historians Can rake out of the ashes when perchance The phoenix broods serene above their ken. But with the best and meanest Englishmen I am one in crying, God save England, lest We lose what never slaves and cattle blessed. The ages made her that made us from dust: She is all we know and live by, and we trust She is good and must endure, loving her so: And as we love ourselves we hate our foe. By Edward Thomas in Tim Kendall, Poetry of the First World War, (Oxford University Press, New York, 2013), p. 57 “Absolution” The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes Till beauty shines in all that we can see. War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise, And, fighting for our freedom, we are free. Horror of wounds and anger at the foe, And loss of things desired; all these must pass. We are the happy legion, for we know Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass. There was an hour when we were loth to part From life we longed to share no less than others. Now, having claimed this heritage of heart, What need we more, my comrades and my brothers?
By Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems, (Faber & Faber, London, 1983), p. 15
“War Girls”
There's the girl who clips your ticket for the train, And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor, There's the girl who does a milk-‐round in the rain, And the girl who calls for orders at your door. Strong, sensible, and fit, They're out to show their grit, And tackle jobs with energy and knack. No longer caged and penned up, They're going to keep their end up Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back. There's the motor girl who drives a heavy van, There's the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat, There's the girl who cries 'All fares, please!' like a man, And the girl who whistles taxis up the street. Beneath each uniform Beats a heart that's soft and warm, Though of canny mother-‐wit they show no lack; But a solemn statement this is, They've no time for love and kisses
Till the khaki soldier-‐boys come marching back.
By Jessie Pope in Catherine Reilly, Scars Upon My Heart, (Virago, London, 1981), p. 90
Notes for Teacher Teaching some of the best know Siegfried Sassoon poems in the traditional frame, where Sassoon’s verse stands for anger against the war, using harsh realities mixed with biting irony as Sassoon tries to hammer home the harsh realities of war to the complacent public on the homefront. Students often react very well to Sassoon, rallying to his sarcastic call. Sassoon incites empathy and anger and laughter from the student reader, but not sadness. Shock and horror are his effect, and at this moment in the course, empathy would be empty stil, moreover his soldierly anger resembles that of teenagers, and their angst. The three poems all have neat little lesson plans, as well as so-‐called counterparts. These poems are meant to teach students poetry that might go alongside Sasoon’s but is of a different voice: either women’s poetry, worker’s poetry, transnational poetry, poetry that is Sassoon’s opposite content wise, poetry that is inspired by Sassoon, etcetera. Teachers are either be inspired by these choices or to choose and pick, or both.
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-‐fuelled war. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war in his "Soldier's Declaration" of 1917, culminating in his admission to a military psychiatric
hospital; this resulted in his forming a friendship with Wilfred Owen, who was greatly influenced by him. Sassoon later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-‐volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston trilogy".
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon
A Soldier’s Declaration
‘I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not have enough imagination to realise.’
By Siegfried Sassoon in Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon, the Making of a War Poet, (Duckworth, London, 1999), p. 373-‐374.
“Blighters”
The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din; “We’re sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!” I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls, Lurching to rag-‐time tunes, or “Home, sweet Home,” And there'd be no more jokes in Music-‐halls To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume. By Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems, (Faber & Faber, London, 1983), p. 68
“Does It Matter?”
DOES it matter?—losing your legs?... For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind When the others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs. 5 Does it matter?—losing your sight?... There’s such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind, As you sit on the terrace remembering And turning your face to the light. 10 Do they matter?—those dreams from the pit?... You can drink and forget and be glad, And people won’t say that you’re mad; For they’ll know you’ve fought for your country And no one will worry a bit. By Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems, (Faber & Faber, London, 1983). p. 91
“Glory of Women” You love us when we're heroes, home on leave, Or wounded in a mentionable place. You worship decorations; you believe That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace. You make us shells. You listen with delight, By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. You crown our distant ardours while we fight, And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed. You can't believe that British troops “retire” When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run, Trampling the terrible corpses—blind with blood. O German mother dreaming by the fire, While you are knitting socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud. By Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems, (Faber & Faber, London, 1983), p. 100 The following poems are for home study, and are selected because they either form a contrast to Sassoon’s war poetry, or because they are similar to the spirit of the time. The two poems are a good exercise for you as a reader to try and reflect upon the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon in the middle of the First World War, and the ways in which other poets wrote poetry during that same period, including poets such as Postgate Cole and other non combatant (female) poets such as Jessie Pope.
“Socks” Shining pins that dart and click In the fireside’s sheltered peace Check the thoughts the cluster thick -‐ 20 plain and then decrease. He was brave – well, so was I – Keen and merry, but his lip Quivered when he said good-‐bye – Purl the seam-‐stitch, purl and slip. Never used to living rough, Lots of things he’d got to learn; Wonder if he’s warm enough – Knit 2, catch 2, knit, turn. Hark! The paper-‐boys again! Wish that shout could be suppressed; Keeps one always on the strain – Knit off 9, and slip the rest. Wonder if he’s fighting now, What he’s done an’ where he’s been; He’ll come out on top somehow – Slip 1, knit 2, purl 14.
By Jessie Pope in Catherine Reilly, Scars Upon My Heart, (Virago, London, 2012), p. 89-‐90
“Afterwards” Oh, my beloved, shall you and I Ever be young again, be young again? The people that were resigned said to me —Peace will come and you will lie Under the larches up in Sheer, Sleeping, And eating strawberries and cream and cakes— O cakes, O cakes, O cakes, from Fuller's! And, quite forgetting there's a train to town, Plotting in an afternoon the new curves for the world. And peace came. And lying in Sheer I look round at the corpses of the larches Whom they slew to make pit-‐props For mining the coal for the great armies. And think, a pit-‐prop cannot move in the wind, Nor have red manes hanging in spring from its branches,
And sap making the warm air sweet. Though you planted it out on the hill again it would be dead. And if these years have made you into a pit-‐prop, To carry the twisting galleries of the world's reconstruction (Where you may thank God, I suppose That they set you the sole stay of a nasty corner) What use is it to you? What use To have your body lying here In Sheer, underneath the larches?
By Mary Postgate Cole in Catherine Reilly, Scars Upon My Heart, (Virago, London, 2012), p. 21-‐22
Notes for Teacher Teaching some of the best know Wilfred Owen poems in the traditional frame, where Owen’s verse stands for the pity of war, using harsh realities mixed with intertextuality of the Romantic poets to create an emotional response to the war, inciting empathy from the student reader, sadness even. The three poems all have neat little lesson plans, as well as so-‐called counterparts. These poems are meant to teach students poetry that might go alongside Owen’s but is of a different voice: either women’s poetry, workers poetry, transnational poetry, poetry that is Owen’s opposite content wise, poetry that is inspired by Owen, etcetera. Teachers are either be inspired by these choices or to choose and pick, or both.
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend and mentor Siegfried Sassoon, and stood in stark contrast both to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-‐known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". On 21 October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles Officers' Training Corps. For the next seven months, he trained at Hare Hall Camp in Essex. On 4 June 1916 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant (on probation) in the Manchester Regiment. Initially, he held his troops in contempt for their loutish behaviour, and in a letter to his mother described his company as "expressionless lumps". However, his imaginative existence was to be changed dramatically by a number of traumatic experiences. He fell into a shell hole and suffered concussion; he was blown high into the air by a trench mortar, and spent several days lying out on an embankment in Savy Wood amongst (or so he thought) the remains of a fellow officer. Soon afterwards, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from neurasthenia or shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. It was while recuperating at Craiglockhart that he met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, an encounter that was to transform Owen's life. Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day, as the church bells were ringing out in celebration. He is buried at
Ors Communal Cemetery. Owen is regarded by many as the greatest poet of the First World War, known for his war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Owen
“Anthem for Doomed Youth”
What passing-‐bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,— The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-‐down of blinds.
By Wilfred Owen, in Jon Stallworthy, The Poems of Wilfred Owen, (Chatto & Windus, London, 2009), p. 76
“Exposure”
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us... Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent... Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient... Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens.
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire. Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war. What are we doing here?
The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow... We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray, But nothing happens.
Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow, With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew, We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance, But nothing happens.
Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces -‐ We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-‐dazed, Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-‐dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. Is it that we are dying?
Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed With crusted dark-‐red jewels; crickets jingle there; For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs; Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed -‐ We turn back to our dying.
Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit. For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
For love of God seems dying.
To-‐night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us, Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp. The burying-‐party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp, Pause over half-‐known faces. All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens.
By Wilfred Owen, in Jon Stallworthy, The Poems of Wilfred Owen, (Chatto & Windus, London, 2009), p. 162-‐163
“Dulce et Decorum Est” Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-‐kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-‐shod. All went lame, all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-‐shells dropping softly behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. 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 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.
By Wilfred Owen, in Jon Stallworthy, The Poems of Wilfred Owen, (Chatto & Windus, London, 2009), p. 117
The following poems are for home study, and are selected because they either form a contrast to Owen’s war poetry, or because they are similar to the spirit of the time. The three poems are a good exercise for you as a reader to try and reflect upon the poetry of Wilfred Owen at the end of the First World War, and the ways in which other poets wrote poetry during that same period, including poets such as Isaac Rosenberg and non combatant (female) poets such as Jessie Pope and Elinor Jenkins. “The Call” Who's for the trench— Are you, my laddie? Who'll follow French— Will you, my laddie? Who's fretting to begin, Who's going out to win? And who wants to save his skin— Do you, my laddie? Who's for the khaki suit— Are you, my laddie? Who longs to charge and shoot— Do you, my laddie? Who's keen on getting fit, Who means to show his grit, And who'd rather wait a bit—
Would you, my laddie? Who'll earn the Empire's thanks— Will you, my laddie? Who'll swell the victor's ranks— Will you, my laddie? When that procession comes, Banners and rolling drums— Who'll stand and bite his thumbs— Will you, my laddie? By Jessie Pope in Cathernine Reilly, Scars Upon My Heart, (Virago, London, 2012), p. 88 “Break of Day in the Trenches” 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 poppy To 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 German Soon, 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 flame Hurled through still heavens? What quaver—what heart aghast? Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins Drop, and are ever dropping; But mine in my ear is safe— Just a little white with the dust. By Isaac Rosenberg, in Tim Kendall, Poetry of the First World War, (Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 137-‐138 “Dulce Et Decorum?”
We buried of our dead the dearest one-‐ Said to each other, ‘Here then let him lie,
And they may find their place, when all is done, From the old may tree standing guard near by.’ Strong limbs whereon the wasted life blood dries, And soft cheeks that a girl might wish her own, A scholar’s brow, o’ershadowing valiant eyes, Henceforth shall pleasure charnel-‐worms alone. For we, that loved him, covered up his face, And laid him in the sodden earth away, And left him lying in that lonely place To rot and moulder with the mouldering clay. The hawthorn that above his grave head grew Like an old crone toward the raw earth bowed, Wept softly over him, the whole night through, And made him of tears a glimmering shroud. Oh Lord of Hosts, no hallowed prayer we bring, Here for They Grace is no importuning, No room for those that will not strive nor cry When loving kindness with our dead lay slain: Give us our fathers’ heathen hearts again,
Valour to dare, and fortitude to die.
By Elinor Jenkins in Cathernine Reilly, Scars Upon My Heart, (Virago, London, 2012), p. 57
Lesson 4
Research & end product (5): Contesting the canon, and the developmental arch from Brooke to Sassoon to Owen. ‘Goveadder’ and beyond. Showing the ‘others’ to the voices of the ‘big three’, i.e. other poets and poems. Reconnect with the research assignment (àstudents are to analyse the ‘representation (including self-‐representation) of those who […] tell others [ them ] of war.’). What is ‘truth’ about the First World War, who has
most salience and credibility, in short, credentials according to the students? (McLoughlin, 2011, 21-‐50): ‘how to successfully deliver an account of war […] the chances of success are greatest if the account in question is salient and, crucially, credible.’ (22) End product: write/create your own (First World) war narrative.
Note for Teacher The challenge in these lessons is to try and involve the students in recent academic, societal and political debate with regards to what we teach when we teach First World War poetry. Instead of making the choices for them, as teachers we need to show students how First World War poetry is framed, as a moral lesson, in terms of right and wrong, in terms of suffering and justice and most importantly in terms of anti-‐war and pro-‐war. Also with an Ypres field trip in mind: do we celebrate victory or commemorate the dead when we visit the Menin Gate in Ypres? Getting class discussion going on this subject with prove all the more valuable, since these are the last lessons
of the course, pupils are well informed by know, and their knowledge should transcend ‘war is bad, Brooke was pro-‐war, Sassoon was anti-‐war’-‐ level. A true taste of first year university level education.
Source: Why does the Left insist on belittling true British heroes?
MICHAEL GOVE asks damning question as the anniversary of the First World War approaches. By Michael Gove, PUBLISHED: 22:30 GMT, 2 January 2014.
The past has never had a better future. Because history is enjoying a renaissance in Britain. After years in which the study of history was declining in our schools, the numbers of young people showing an appetite for learning about the past, and a curiosity about our nation’s story, is growing once more. As a Government, we’ve done everything we can to support this restoration. We’ve changed how schools are judged, and our new measure of academic success for schools and pupils, the English baccalaureate, rewards those who study history at GCSE. And the changes we’ve made to the history curriculum have been welcomed by top academics as a way to give all children a proper rounded understanding of our country’s past and its place in the world. That understanding has never been needed more. Because the challenges we face today – great power rivalry, migrant populations on the move, rapid social upheaval, growing global economic interdependence, massive technological change and fragile confidence in political elites – are all challenges our forebears faced. Indeed, these particular forces were especially powerful one hundred years ago – on the eve of the First World War. Which is why it is so important that we commemorate, and learn from, that conflict in the right way in the next four years. The Government wants to give young people from every community the chance to learn about the heroism, and sacrifice, of our great-‐grandparents, which is why we are organising visits to the battlefields of the Western Front. The war was, of course, an unspeakable tragedy, which robbed this nation of our bravest and best. But even as we recall that loss and commemorate the bravery of those who fought, it’s important that we don’t succumb to some of the myths which have grown up about the conflict. Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage. The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-‐of-‐touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-‐wing academics all too happy to feed those myths. Professor Sir Richard Evans, the Cambridge historian and Guardian writer, has criticised those who fought, arguing, ‘the men who enlisted in 1914 may have thought they were fighting for civilisation, for a better world, a war to end all wars, a war to defend freedom: they were wrong’. And he has attacked the very idea of honouring their sacrifice as an exercise in ‘narrow tub-‐thumping
jingoism’. These arguments are more reflective of the attitude of an undergraduate cynic playing to the gallery in a Cambridge Footlights revue rather than a sober academic contributing to a proper historical debate. The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war. Nigel Biggar, regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at the University of Oxford, laid out the ethical case for our involvement in a superb essay in September’s Standpoint magazine. The ruthless social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified. And the war was also seen by participants as a noble cause. Historians have skilfully demonstrated how those who fought were not dupes but conscious believers in king and country, committed to defending the western liberal order. Other historians have gone even further in challenging some prevailing myths. Generals who were excoriated for their bloody folly have now, after proper study, been re-‐assessed. Douglas Haig, held up as a crude butcher, has been seen in a new light thanks to Professor Gary Sheffield, of Wolverhampton University, who depicts him as a patriotic leader grappling honestly with the new complexities of industrial warfare. Even the battle of the Somme, once considered the epitome of military futility, has now been analysed in depth by the military historian William Philpott and recast as a precursor of allied victory. There is, of course, no unchallenged consensus. That is why it matters that we encourage an open debate on the war and its significance. But it is important to recognise that many of the new analyses emerging challenge existing Left-‐wing versions of the past designed to belittle Britain and its leaders. Instead, they help us to understand that, for all our mistakes as a nation, Britain’s role in the world has also been marked by nobility and courage. Indeed, the more we reflect on every aspect of the war, the more cause there is for us to appreciate what we owe to our forebears and their traditions. But whatever each of us takes from these acts of remembrance and hours of debate it is always worth remembering that the freedom to draw our own conclusions about this conflict is a direct consequence of the bravery of men and women who fought for, and believed in, Britain’s special tradition of liberty.
Research product First World War poetry for the 21st century
‘My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is
warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.’
By Wilfred Owen, The complete poems and fragments, ed. Jon Stallworthy, (Chatto & Windus, London, 2013), p. II
The statement above, an introduction to his poetry was first published posthumously shortly after the war, edited by his mentor Siegfried Sassoon. Next to his poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, these words above have received fame both popularly and academically. It is as if Owen is speaking to his readers almost exactly a century later, with urgency and candid directness. Poets should be ‘truthful’, they should ‘warn’.
During the past lessons, you have been confronted with contemporary poetic reaction to war and conflict, with singers and songwriters reinterpretation of the Great War in their art, and with genres such as film and novels in which World War I is still and evermore a pervasive subject.
Moreover, you been taught in a lecture the traditional canon of war poetry and its developmental arch and you have discussed in class what so-‐called dead white poets have and continue to contribute(d) to understanding (the First World) war and how poets such as Sassoon continue to be part of heated historic and cultural debates such as ‘Goveadder’.
Your assingment is to write/create your own (First World) war narrative. You may choose to write a poem, or a short story/memoir. You may also choose to set your story/poem to film. The narrative choice is yours.
When writing, bear in mind the following: What is ‘truth’ about the First World War, who has most salience and credibility, in short, credentials according to the students? (McLoughlin, 2011, 21-‐50): ‘how to succesfully deliver an account of war […] the chances of succes are greatest if the account in question is salient and, crucially, credible.’ (22) Should a poet/writer/filmmaker be concerned with ‘warning’ ?
Please present your end-‐product, in any form, in class the next lesson. Maximum length of presentation is 5 minutes, you may choose any form you wish to present your product. Also, poem and prose length is up to you, film length is max 5 minutes.
What follows are some suggestions with regards to viewpoint/speaker, and some good source sites, besides this syllabus, naturally. Tips:
For this assignment it helps to get underneath the skin of your character. Write or film as if you are one of them, and write it as if you are addressing your mother, your son, your wife, your friend or your husband, etc. Make sure you that you have a firm understanding of where the character you have chosen is from: which part of the country for example (Scotland, London, the countryside, Germany)? Also consider to what social class he or she belongs (aristocrats, middle-‐class or working-‐class). What position is he or she in (a private in the army, a commanding officer in the army, a mother knitting by the fireside, etc.)? Here are some suggested viewpoints: 1. The private in the Ypres trench to his girlfriend 2. The German officer in the Hindenbrug Line to his wife 3. The mother to her soldier son in France 4. A munitions worker to her soldier husband in Flanders 5. A shell-‐shocked Somme veteran and famous poet to a leading newspaper 6. The poet in the trenches of Ypres to his veteran poet-‐friend in London Some handy websites: www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone. When you scroll down the pages you will come across sections called the Human face of War, Shell shock during World War One, Wilfred Owen Audio Galleries and Soldier Stories Audio Galleries. You may draw significant inspiration from there, as from this syllabus and the lessons. Another good site is: www.iwm.org.uk
Lesson 5
Presenting research conclusions in end product: how does the end product confirm or criticize theory (of war narratives) (6)? Conclusion (7): students present their convincing war narrative to class, in any form (film, short story, poem). Length max 5
minutes. Handing out (take home) evaluation form (8)
Je leerlingen hebben de afgelopen paar weken een lessenreeks gevolgd binnen het Schooltalenproject van de VU. We horen graag wat je ervaringen zijn geweest en stellen het zeer op prijs als je de volgende vragen wilt beantwoorden. Hartelijk dank! Naam:
1. Wat was je motivatie om deel te nemen aan het Schooltalenproject en wat waren je verwachtingen?
2. Hoe was de lessenreeks ingebed in het curriculum?
3. Ben je enthousiast over de lessenreeks? Waarom wel/niet?
4. Wat waren aantrekkelijke punten van de lessenreeks?
5. Wat waren minder aantrekkelijke punten c.q. verbeterpunten?
6. Was de lessenreeks van toegevoegde waarde in de opleiding van de
leerlingen?
7. Denk je dat je zal teruggrijpen naar de lessenreeks in je eigen lessen?
8. Wil je de lessenreeks volgend jaar weer inzetten? ja / nee Zo nee, waarom niet? Zo ja, willen jullie dan weer samenwerken met VU-docenten?
9. Denk je dat leerlingen door de lessenreeks enthousiast gemaakt zijn voor het
kiezen van een universitaire talenstudie? Waarom wel/niet?