Spirit Above Wars: A Study of the English Poetry of the Two World Wars

239 Pages·1976·21.16 MB·English

by  A. Banerjee (auth.)

Spirit Above Wars
Spirit Above Wars
A Study of the English Poetry of the
Two World Wars
'For God's sake cheer up and write more optimistically-The
war's not ended yet but a poet should have a spirit above wars!
Robert Graves
in a letter to Wilfred Owen, 1917.
A. BANERJEE
M
@ A. Banerjee, 1976
So ftc over reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1976
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, without permission.
First published in 1975 by
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF INDIA LIMITED
First published in the United Kingdom in 1976 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD.
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York
Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
SBN: 333 17877 7
ISBN 978-1-349-02499-5 ISBN 978-1-349-02497-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-02497-1
This book is sold subject
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of the Net Book Agreement
Preface
In this book, which discusses the poetry of both the World Wars, l
have examined the conventional attitudes to the subject and tried to
demonstrate their inadequacy. This has involved a radical revalua
tion of the war poems of such known poets as Sassoon ~nd Owen as
well as a new recognition of the merits of comparatively neglected
poets like Douglas, Lewis and Keyes of the Second World War. By
putting this poetry in its literary context I have tried to show that
through their war experiences these poets have enlarged the modern
poetic consciousness.
The book is based on work done at the University of Leicester
during my tenure there as a research student. My grateful thanks
are due to George Fraser who showed sympathetic understanding
of what I was doing and encouraged me to formulate my views on
the subject. He also very kindly read the typescript and made valua
ble suggestions for its improvement. I am indebted to Professor
Arthur Humphreys for his continued interest in my work and for
helping me in various ways. The Research Board of the University
of Leicester sanctioned me grants on several occasions, thus enabling
me to carry out research at the Bodleian Library, the National Library
of Wales, the University of London Library and what is now known
as the British Library. For a different kind of help I should like to
thank my friends Kaj, Sonia and Ian (Birksted).
No public acknowledgement can adequately express my gratitude
to my wife Jackie who, in a very real sense, made this book possible.
Her expert knowledge and appreciation of modern English poetry
and her sharp eye for a slovenly sentence saved me from many a
pitfall. Finally, a 'thank you' to our son Nigel who happily busied
himself with his toys while his mother and I were preoccupied with
correcting the final typescript for the publisher.
A. BANERJEE
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to the following publishers and copyright holders for
permission to quote from copyright material :
George Allen & Unwin Limited-Alun Lewis's Raiders' Dawn (1946),
Hal Hal Among the Trumpets (1946), The Last Inspection (1947),
In the Green Tree (1948) and Alun Lewis: Selected Poetry and
Prose, ed. Ian Hamilton (1966).
Cambridge University Press-Charles Hamilton Sorley's Marl
borough and Other Pot:rns (1932) and The Letters of Charles Hamilton
Sorley (1919).
The Executors of the Estate of Harold Owen, Chatto and Windus
Limited and New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York-
Wilfred Owen's Collected Poems, ed. C. Day Lewis (1963).
The Author's Literary Estate, Chatto and Windus Limited and Schoc~
ken Books Inc.-Isaac Rosenberg's The Complete Works, eds.
Gordon Bottomley and Denys Harding (1937).
Routledge and Kegan P.aul Limited-Sidney Keyes's The Collected
Poems, ed. Michael Meyer (1945) and Minos of Crete, ed. Michael
Meyer (1948).
Faber and Faber Limited-Rupert Brooke's The Poetical Works, ed.
Geoffrey Keynes (1946).
Faber and Faber Limited and Mr G T Sassoon-Siegfried Sassoon's
Collected Poems (1908-1956) (1971).
Faber and Faber Limited and Chilmark Press Inc.-Keith Douglas's
The Collected Poems, eds. Waller, Fraser and Hall, and Alamein
to Zem Zem, eds. Waller, Fraser and Hall (1966).
The Librarian, The National Library of Wales-unpublished letter
from Alun Lewis to Llewellyn Wyn Griffith.
Contents
Preface v
Acknowledgements vi
I. The Pre-War Poetic Scene I
2. Poetry of the First World War 16
Rupert Brooke
Julian Grenfell
Charles Sorley
Siegfried Sassoon
Wilfred Owen
Isaac Rosenberg
3· Poetry of the Second World War 83
4· Keith Douglas 105
5· Alun Lewis 136
6. Sidney Keyes 172
1· Epilogue 204
Notes 207
Select Bibliography 213
Index 225
ONE
The Pre-war Poetic Scene
T H E E N G L I s H poets of the First World War were confronted by
a new phenomenon of mechanical warfare on a gigantic scale, and
created a new kind of 'war-poetry' which has no close previous parallel
in English literary history. Both the nature of this war, and the cir
cumstances under which the poets came to write about it, were unique.
It is well-known that it was the first war in which man's increased
skill in the fields of science and technology was harnessed for causing
destruction on almost an unlimited scale. It was also the first war in
which the whole nation was involved. The civilians went to war along
with the professional soldiers, and since, unlike the professional sol
diers, the civilians were not steeled by an unquestioning spirit of
'discipline and obedience', they became more acutely sensitive to the
brutality and futility of war. What is more, they were moved to express
their own feelings in verse and prose. This fact can go to explain the
enormous amount of literature that was produced during the war
years. Speaking of this war, Edmund Blunden pointed out: 'The
!reatest war, breaking all records, produced the greatest number of
poets (at least in the English language) that any war has done1.' It
is true that a lot of this writing was trivial and ephemeral in interest
but the significant point is that there were some poets who, not content
to treat the war theme in conventional terms of justification and glori
fication, helped in establishing a new relationship between the Muse
and Mars. Here we are concerned with their poetry. In order to limit
this study to manageable proportions, and also to investigate this new
kind of 'war poetry' that was born out of the poets' immediate and
personal experiences, we shall confine ourselves to a discussion only
of the soldier-poets who wrote about, and during, the war. This would
exclude the more established poets of the time like Hardy, Pound
and Yeats on the one hand, and poets like Herbert Read and David
Jones on the other, each of whom wrote their best poems about the
war from a certain distance.
One of the most difficult problems which arise in a study of the
poetry of the First World War is connected with its literary lineage.
Spirit Above Wars
2
For a proper evaluation of this poetry, it is necessary to find out the
various cross-currents of English poetic trends, out of which, or
against which, modem war poetry came into being. The poetic scene
during the Edwardian era was pretty chaotic. Several movements
arose in the field of English poetry at the tum of the century, but it is
safe to suggest that almost all of them reacted against the poetry of
the fin-de-siecle years. Beardsley had died in 1898, and both Wilde
and Dowson in 1900. Lionel Johnson followed them in 1902, when
Yeats started a new phase in his poetic career at the Abbey Theatre.
Arthur Symons published his Poems in 1901, but turned to literary
history and criticism. Only John Davidson of this group, kept on
writing well into the new Edwardian decade. His five Testaments
appeared from 1901 to 1908. He was always an isolated figure and,
in any case, he drowned him~elf in 1909. Thus, Decadence passed
into history at the close of the nineteenth century, and a different
kind of poetry marked the new age.
The distinguishing trait of the poets of the nineties was that they
cut themselves off from the life of the common man in order to
devote their lives and writings to different ideals. Many artists of
late Victorian England found that the materialistic life around them
was inimical and hostile to all artistic activities. Poets like Coventry
Patmore, Francis Thompson and Alice Meynell rejected the world
around them and went to Roman Catholicism because it was still
vital and significant for them. The Pre-Raphaelites, on the other
hand, having abandoned contemporary values, went to Greek and
Medieval times for sustenance and comfort. The Decadents, though
they were one with the poets of these two groups in their rejection
of the contemporary world, were different from either group in that
they did not seek, nor did they find, countervalues in any of the older
traditions, religious or secular. What they sought was a freedom of
their personal emotions and sensations. Their disgust with the world,
and their alienation from it, induced in them a feeling of melancholy.
But because they refused to take into account, in their poetry as well
as in their lives, the objective facts of life, their feelings of sadness
lacked strength and vitality, leaving a sense of weariness and bore
dom, a pallid indifference. No doubt, in occasional poems like Wilde's
'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' or Dowson's 'To One in Bedlam', Fhey
could create poignant poetry out of the sordidness and misery of
Victorian life, but in the majority of their poems they appear as self
wnscious bohemians who revelled in sadness and melancholy, and
THE PRE-WAR POETIC SCENE 3
expressed their feelings in dolorous cadences. Yeats po,inted out that
these poets, whom he described as 'The Tragic Generation', were
in their 'insistence upon emotion which has no relation to any public
interest, gathered together, overwrought, unstable men'. 2 In matters
of technique, though Deca,dents like Dowson made interesting experi
ments, and Lionel Johnson wrote verses of classical simplicity and
dignity, they were, in general, rather conventional in the manner of
the Pre-Raphaelites. Their bookish and hackneyed images and ro
mantic and languorous expressions looked backwards and not forwards.
It was mainly against this kind of poetry that most poets of pre
war England reacted. In the preface to his Collected Poems (1908),
Synge lamented the current state of English poetry, and remarked:
'It may be said that before verse can be human again it must learn
to be brutal.' Ezra Pound predicted that modern poetry 'will move
against poppycock, it will be harder and saner, it will be ... "nearer
the bone". It will be as much nearer the granite as it can be, its force
will lie in its truth, its interpretative power .... '3 Indeed, there was
a general demand for a return to 'realism' in poetry. But 'realism'
was interpreted differently by different poets, so that in many cases
we find that though the pre-war poet was dealing with a more common
theme, he was, in some essential respects, almost as unreal as were
the poets of the nineties.
The blustering Imperialists like Kipling, Newbolt, Austin and
Noyes avoided the morbid self-entanglements of their immediate
predecessors, and wrote verses of noisy, and often vulgar, broad, popu
lar appeal. They were unashamedly patriotic, and they advocated the
values of loyalty and obedience in order to carry out 'the white man's
burden'. In doing so, they pandered to a vein of unself-critical po
pular sentiment and seldom succeeded in creating significant poetry.
They never delved beneath the surface facts, and tended to evade the
perplexities and mysteries of human existence as such. Kipling was
a considerable poet, as Eliot was one of the first critics to acknowledge.
His best poems deal with the elemental themes of fear, courage and
endurance: he revived the supple, colloquial verse of the English
light verse and ballad tradition. But most of his pre-war poems
are jingling and jingoistic: 'The Galley Slaves' and 'Loot' are marked
by a morbid enthusiasm for violence. In reading such poems, one
gets the impression that 'for Kipling, England and the Empire were
the symbols which enjoyed complete poetic validity unqualified by
pious self-questioning and doubts about the social justice of our