War and the Death of Innocence (original) (raw)
Related papers
Survivors of a Kind: Memoirs of the Western Front
The English Historical Review, 2010
's newest book presents an analysis of Western Front memoirs written by British and Commonwealth authors, acting as an analogous volume to The Unquiet Western Front: Britain's Role in Literature and History.(1) The study is organised into a series of essays discussing individual authors, which are in turn complemented by comparative thematic chapters. Chapter titles indicate, roughly, the representative roles of the various servicemen selected: for example, Alfred Pollard and John Reith as the 'Fire-eaters'; General F. P. Crozier as 'Martinet, militarist and opponent of war; and Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, somewhat ironically, 'having a "good war"'. Within these general topical divisions one finds a breadth of experiences and opinions, which Bond conveys through a series of well-selected quotations from the memoirs, supplemented by published and unpublished works by the highlighted authors, letters, regimental histories and contemporary biographies. Robert Graves' 1929 memoir Goodbye to All That (2) is addressed in the opening chapter, and is presented as a product of the author's 'mordant contempt for all the conventional values of the time' (p. 3). It serves as a foil to Charles Carrington's A Subaltern's War (3), also published in 1929 but written ten years earlier. Carrington's account implicitly rebuts Graves' characterisation of the war as an engine for disillusionment, instead arguing that 1919 and peace provided 'the real moment of disenchantment' (p. 16), the point at which the serving generation lost confidence in the meaning of their collective experience. These two books offer contrasting, but not necessarily binary archetypes; what links all of the memoirs is a respect for fellow soldiers, particularly those that did not survive the war. While Graves' literary talents serve him well, 'transforming it [his war experience] into his own brilliantly colourful myth' (p. 3), Bond points out that much of the bitterness conveyed by the memoir is tempered by his tangible and 'undoubted
2016
Literature is shaped by many influences and war is one of them. Over the time war inspired many great literary works. However, no other event inspired this much literary works as World War I had. Literature began to change and evolve during and after World War I. Many authors of the time became disillusioned by the war and its aftermath, this destroyed their view and belief in traditional values. The amount of death and destruction they saw made them skeptic about everything. As a form of expressing this disillusionment and decay the writers broke new literary ground. The grief and despair caused by the war guided the writers towards modernist sentiment. This dissertation is an attempt to show the devastating impact of World War I, its literary representation and writers' response to this profound human experience. This paper has attempted to examine some of these writers' famous war literature to focus on the views they have expressed regarding war; their experiences during the war time and how those experiences forced them to speak up about these issues despite of strict political situation at that time. This paper has analyzed the work of four writers who wrote during the time of World War I. This research has focused on traditional war literature like the novels of Erich Maria Remarque and Ernest Hemingway and poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon to show how these writers wrote not only to record what they had seen and experienced but also to create a resistance against the glorification of war. The first chapter of this dissertation will look into how Remarque's experience of this cataclysmic event urged him to write such novel that is well known as an anti-war novel and how aptly this novel has depicted the realities of the war. In order to gain different perspectives of writers on war and the impact of war the second chapter will look into Ernest Hemingway's war literature. Followed by this, the third chapter will shed light on Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon to understand what prompt them to produce such profound anti-war novels and poetry despite of strict political situation during that time. After having read these authors of different background, style and Nawar 2 nationality this study has found that World War I generated a platform, a unison where all the barriers transcended, the concept of nationalism, patriotism and bravery were redefined, challenged and thrown away. Nawar 3
Poetry and the First World War
The Poetics of Otherness, 2015
This pacific mood was merely transient, While Britain vas outside the war it was remote from the hearts of the British people, for most of whom Serbia and Sarajevo were no more than names. The threats to neighbouring France and to 'little Belgim', however, were swiftly realised, and the proclamation of war on 4 August brou^t with it a change of attitude that was overwhelming. The,Times for 5 August reported that the crowds which gathered to hear the Proclamation of War read "were filled with the war spirit", and the Daily News, which two days earlier had affirmed that "there is no war party in this country", now described how "The enthusiasa culminated outside Buckingham Palace when it became known that war had been declared", Newspapers and periodicals of ttie first month of the war did much to encourage the wave of fervent patriotism and war-eagemess which swept over the country, and it was not long before every available wall bore the famous poster of Eitcdiener with its pointing finger and arresting caption "Tour King and Country Need Tou", On 12 August The, Times was able to report that "there was again a large queue of young men waiting outside the Central Recruiting office at Great Scotland-yard yesterday to respond to Lord Kitchener's call for 100,000 men. The wozk of enlistment proceeded briskly all day, and new recruits were-5 s w o m in at the rate of between 80 and 100 an hour," There was scarcely a discordant voice ax^rwhere in the country. Internal strife and party faction were forgotten. The fitting spirit of Ireland was diverted from civil to world war, and divisions of Irishmen were soon ready to join in the greater conflict. Amidst all this enthusiasm it is sobering to read a letter from Lord Weardale in The Times for 5 August, This letter shows him to have been one of the most clear-sighted statesmen Britain could boast of in those troublous days. This is what he wrote for publication the day after war was declared: The indignation of Austria at the crime of Sarajevo is as natural as the racial and religious sycqjathy of Russia with the Servian people; but what rational man can contend that such a question and such tmporary antagonisms can justify the horrors of a great Emrapean war-the worst, perhaps, the world has ever seen-with its countless dead and maimed, its ruined homes, its irremediable industrial losses? Both victors and vanquished can only emerge from such a conflict bankrupt in resources and in ell the hi^er attributes of humanity. w > g #• His vas the voice in the wilderness proclaiming the true and deadly character of the war. Before long he would be joined by otiiérs who spoke not from a lively apprehension of what war could moan, but from the terrible eaperlence of twentieth century warfare. Keaawfaile the var was on end enlistment continued, and among those who enlisted during the next few years were the young men idio were to become the voice and the conscience of their age-the poets of En^andi Edzpund Blundmi, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, Robert Nicdiols, Vilfred Oven, Siegfried Sassoon, to mention only some of the better known. Vhen war broke out Siegfried Sassoon, who was the oldest of these young men I have mentioned, was twenty-ei^t; Edmund Blunden was seventeen. Even the most sensitive scarcely foresaw the horrors that were before them. Althcu^ Wilfred Owen wrote in 1914, War broke: and now the Winter of the world With perishing great darkness closes in.ĥ e yet wrote home in a letter to his mother when he first joined the fitting forces in France: "Ihere is a fine heroic feeling 3. Collected Poems, p, 129.-7about being in France# and X an in perfect epirits. A tinge of ezcitenent is about It was mainly this "tinge of excitement" xdiich prevailed during the flMt two years of the war. In his journal for August 1914 Aubrey Herbert wrote# "The men were very pleased to have been under fire, and compared notes aa to how they 5 felt," but the Battle of Hone in which his men were engaged was followed by the Battle of Le Gateau and of the Marne and tlm first Battle of Tpres. Meanwhile Antwerp had fallen and the hopes of peace "before Christmas" began to recede. The tone of reports from the Front began to changet The Tinea reported from the Battle of Kons that "[The British soldier] was cheerful, steady and confident."^ Biz weeks later another report told how the wounded were "as happy and as eager to be well enou^ to go to the front again as if they 7 were schoolboys going home for the holidays." But a sourer note was creeping into the reports; first, the confession that war and the idea of war were two very different things; 4. 1 January 1917, Collected Letters, p. 421. 5. Kons. Ansae end Kuts. p. 48. 6. 23 August 1914. 7. 8 October 1914* 8 «# "I had not the slightest conception what war could mean, even 8 in the wildest flights of fancy"; secondly, descriptions of the real horrors of war; "Tou cannot imagine what a battlefield is like after a battle-a huddled mass of corpses, some of which have been lying there since the q fighting round here in October last...." and thirdly, the beginnings of condemnation; By the touchstone of the men it has broken this war is judged and the makers of this war. And more than ruined villages end desecrated churches these soldiers pronounce condemnation. They, idio have given 80 much, are, in a sense, without joy and without enthusiasm; rather they shun recollection. There is no sest in the killing of men.... The war is revealed as a thing gross and dull-witted, a crime even against the ancient, chivalrous spirit of war.^D uring 1915 the frontiers of war were extended and its horrors intensified. Early in the year Zeppelin raids wore made on England; in February the Germans began their D-boat 8. Letter from an Officer, The Times.
Modernist Studies Association, 2019
1914-1945 -- the period Siegfried Sassoon called “a cemetery for the civilized delusions of the nineteenth century” -- saw millions of Britons fighting in two world wars and the Spanish Civil War, and marked a significant evolution in views about testimonial authority in wartime (Weald 274). Of prime importance is the changing status of frontline testimony exemplified by soldier-poets’ narratives of the Great War. In their commemorative writings, Sassoon and his peers argued for a radical shift away from the authority traditionally accompanying Government, Army, and journalistic accounts of war, and towards the direct experience of frontline combatants. While the protest-poet’s war-narrative and its discounting of homefront experience held a unique authority in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, recent scholarship has demonstrated that this authority was challenged in Britain’s succeeding wars. This panel proposes reading Britain’s evolving relationship to war and testimonial authority through three key writers who each survived multiple unique engagements with twentieth-century warfare. Less well-known than his poetry and memoirs, Sassoon’s autobiographies were composed from the uncomfortable position of “armchair-combatant” during the Second World War. Forced into the helpless position of those he had long rallied against, Sassoon-as-civilian reluctantly reoriented his approach to narrative authority by retroactively incorporating non-combatants’ experiences of war and suffering into his own autobiographical testimony. Another evolving perspective on narrative authority is that of Basil Bunting, who was imprisoned for refusing to be conscripted in 1918. His poem about this traumatic episode, “Villon,” is as physically personal as the protest-poets’ works. Bunting imbues his work with Eliotic references to the deep European past. Reflecting on Bunting’s position as conscientious objector, “Villon” interweaves that deep past in a way that combatant-poetry generally eschews. Despite his experience in WWI, however, Bunting later served as an intelligence officer in Persia during WWII. In “The Spoils”, and the autobiographic “Briggflatts”, Bunting refers to his time on the active side of military duty through allusions to Europe and Britain’s martial and epic-poetic past. Finally, George Orwell demonstrates an evolving position on frontline correctives to homefront propaganda in his writings on the Spanish Civil War. Homage to Catalonia emulates the soldier-poets’ “debunking” vision of war, suggesting an analogy between anti-fascist jingoism in 1937 Britain and homefront propaganda from 1914-1918. Orwell’s suspicion of atrocity propaganda leads him to modify his frontline testimony, effacing references to pain and suffering, and downplaying the dangers represented by bombing planes. In 1942, however, Orwell revisits this manipulation of testimonial authority with shame, recognizing that his (and others’) practice of lingering on the problematic effects of homefront propaganda had contributed to a culture of appeasement. Orwell’s mature perspective on atrocity propaganda illuminates key factors in the evolving relationship between frontline testimony and homefront culture between the wars. Thus, each of these writers used his own experience of Britain’s later conflicts to reconsider the testimonial authority staked by the soldier-poets of 1914-18. They advocate against any monumental war-myth, calling for a reconstruction of testimonial writing that relies upon polyphonic sources, including, but not limited to, frontline combatants.
The Rhetoric of Grief: Hiroshima mon amour
Grief's emotional progress has a hidden grammar. Its syntax unfolds through aching desire, nostalgia, sadness, physical pain, anger, odd joy, even dullness and banality. It is absolutely singular, isolating a person from others and the familiar. It also throws a person outside him or herself, casting one into strange, even radically impersonal, relationships. Mudi has been written on the causes and mechanisms of trauma, yet this essay addresses less-discussed temporal aspects of remembering and memorializing the death of an intimate and the deaths of large groups of foreign bodies. First, it examines the topic of moving past and even forgetting grief, that is, how such processes are possible, and the emotional and ethical consequences when people move on. The function of time in grief is important here because traumatic memory complicates a linear chronology of emotional progress. The second section of the essay investigates these temporal aspects of grief in relation to communal loss. It looks at how individual and international forms of memory might relate to each other. The third part brings together the two previous sections around an idea of giving grief. Can someone and a nation give a memory of a traumatic event? What would it mean to gift grief itself? Is there anything psychologically , ethically, or politically desirable about this gesture? The temporal mechanisms of the gift, I suggest, offer not unprobiematic but potential solutions to issues that arise when one considers the scale of international mourning.