Good morning members and welcome to The Movement’s 17th
meeting. My name is Renee, founder and president of this association, and it is
my pleasure to introduce our topic and two guest speakers. For those of you
live streaming, welcome and we’d love to get your opinion on our presentation
today – send us your very own poem if you like! You will be able to tweet us
during the meeting using #TheMovementWar. Tag us in your post
@TheMovementPoetry and we can favourite and retweet the best of your comments.
Hopefully we can get some of the tweets coming through behind me on the screen
here.
In light of the current unrest in Syria and Iraq dominating
news coverage, today’s topic will explore the contrasting opinions of war
throughout the 20th century as voiced by notable war poets. War
poets from the 20th century were the first to write from experience
and with uncompromising truth about the nature of modern warfare. What poetry
can do, ladies and gentlemen, is encapsulate experiences, feelings and ideas
with a depth, force and brevity that prose cannot equal. Today, our guest
speakers and I will be carefully examining the opinions of respected war poets
and drawing parallels between their words and our own ideologies. I ask that
each member here today take part in an opinion poll so that we can know how
this particular group of people view a number of issues.
Now, I’d like to introduce and formally welcome our speakers
this morning, Dr. Sarah Prentice and Dr. James Williams, both lecturers at the
university, experts in their respective fields and new members to our poetry
society. I have asked each of them to present and analyse the many voices represented
in war poetry.
James speaks.
Sarah speaks.
Thank you Dr. Prentice and Dr. Williams for you scholarly and
in-depth analysis of those especially thought-provoking poems. Members, the
survey will now be collected and I would encourage you to consider the poets
that have been discussed already, their views on war and your own knowledge of
the recent events in Iraq.
War seems to be the most destructive and horrific type of
human interaction. No other setting allows people to kill each other in such
massive numbers or to cause such incredible and widespread suffering. More than
any other conflict, the Great War inspired
writers of all generations and classes, most notably among soldiers. Famous war
poets Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, whose poems I will be discussing this
morning, wrote about their individual experiences of war, expressing their
voices and representing the attitudes and values of their social context.
Juxtaposing the poems of these two poets will provide insight into the
concepts, identities and circumstance these poems were written to embody.
Rupert Brooke, an English poet during the First World War, was known for his
idealistic war sonnets, especially “The Soldier”. Brooke’s importance as a poet
is partly due to the extraordinary success he enjoyed through representing the
popular attitudes and beliefs in the opening months of the First World War.
“The Soldier” was written during 1914 and was the conclusion to Brooke’s war
sonnet series dealing with the death and accomplishments of a soldier. Interestingly,
the inscription on Rupert Brooke’s headstone was written by fellow English poet
and soldier, Wilfred Owen. Wilfred Owen, one of the leading poets of the First
Wold War, provided a stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the
time and to the patriotic verse written by earlier war poets including Brooke.
His shocking, realistic war poetry, including “Dulce et Decorum est”, on the
horrors of trenches and gas warfare is now studied extensively and has shaped
our vision of the Western Front. Written in 1917, “Dulce et Decorum est” is
known for its horrific imagery and condemnation of war. These poets and their
poems portray vastly dissimilar ideologies considering their similarities in
context, time and place.
In the very first line of the sonnet, “The Soldier”, there is
an overwhelming feeling of self sacrifice – “If I should die, think only this
of me”. Immediately, Brooke’s foreshadow of death encourages the reader to
sympathise with the voice of the poem, imagining that this thought exists in
every soldiers mind as he serves. Rupert Brooke manipulates and effectively
applies poetic techniques to passively influence an audience to accept the idealised
selflessness that Brooke encourages in his poem “The Soldier”. Using compelling
imagery, symbols and figurative language, Brooke successfully portrays the themes
of death, warfare, patriotism, love and the natural world. In the first stanza,
Brooke creates an image full of pathos and patriotism through the line “There
is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England”. The soft
alliteration lends this line a subdued tone, disguising the reality of death.
Further reinforcing this theme of death and sacrifice in the poem, in the
subsequent lines “In that rich earth a richer dust concealed / A dust whom
England bore, shaped, made aware”, Brooke exploits a religious discourse.
‘Dust’ is a common literary metaphor for the body coming from “Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust,” a phrase from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer burial service.
Incorporating this religious discourse here, and in the lines “Washed by the
rivers, blest by suns of home” and “In hearts at peace, under an English
heaven”, assures the reader that Brooke’s stance on war was honourable and
moral. The lines “Gave, once, her
flowers to love, her ways to roam” and “Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as
her day; / And laughter, learnt of friends” demonstrate to a reader the
patriotic intensity of the poem through the overly upbeat and positive language
used despite the dire circumstances. England’s abundance and pastoral beauty is
emphasised as a gift in these lines. This is an important and recurrent
metaphor in Brooke’s writing as it provides a way of giving meaning to death by
placing it in the context of a normal, social exchange. “And gentleness, in
hearts at peace / Under an English heaven”: the poem ends with a startling
proposition: that Heaven is now “an English heaven” and the connection with
England will remain forever unbroken. The sonnet’s turn from an idyllic vision
of England to the idea of a transcendent and literally heavenly England is reminiscent
of the entire poem and encompasses Brooke’s attitudes and ideologies concerning
war. Brooke’s poem, “The Soldier”, is a highly persuasive poem that aimed to
provide a guiding principle for the conduct of life in relation to warfare and
enlistment during the First World War. “The Soldier” invites the audience to
accept the act of war as honourable, righteous and necessary.
Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est”, also written
during the First World War, presents a great contrast in discourse, intention
and subject matter to “The Soldier” and this contrast shows a clear anti war
propensity. The language, theme and imagery contribute to the influence that
the poem has on an audience. Most noticeable to readers is the vividness of the
imagery and Owen’s ability to bring the horrors of war to life. The first line,
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,” shows us that the troops are so exhausted
and lethargic they can be compared to old beggars. Reducing the foreign concept
of soldiers at war to the familiar sight of beggars is effective in revealing
the true horrors of war. Aiming to influence the ideologies of his
readers and allow them an insight into the true horror of war, the images
created by Owen’s words are graphic, disturbing but play an effective role in
the development of the poem. Another tool in developing the effectiveness of
the poem is the presence and use of diction. The use of words like “guttering”,
“choking”, and “drowning”, when the troops are suffering exemplify the extreme
pain and misery. These examples of cacophony, the harsh and discordant sounds
these words produce, emulate the harsh nature of war and are effective in
generating the tone of the poem. All these images are intended to contrast with
the Latin maxim that appears in the poems title and the last line of the poem,
“Dulce et Decorum Est” meaning it is “sweet and proper” to undergo die for
one’s own country. The final line of the sonnet “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum
est / Pro patria mori” summarises the entire purpose of Owen’s writing. Owen
vehemently opposes this commonly used phrase and this resonates with readers
who are familiar with it. Owen uses graphic imagery and exceptional diction to
persuade the reader that war is terrible and horrific. This poem is extremely
effective in showing the gruesome, heartless, and horrifying effects of war.
Though Brooke and Owen have used many of the same poetic
techniques and themes in their poems, they are able to achieve conflicting
arguments. “The Soldier” represents the perspectives of a pre-war society and is
seen in the context of the early part of World War 1, a time when literature
was characterised by a patriotic fervour and not eroded by the long years of
trench warfare. Through
the fact that “The Soldier” was accepted during 1914, you can make the
connection that the public shared Brooke’s view of hope for a deeper meaning to
the war and death. Though Brooke’s fiercely patriotic and light take on WWI in
“The Soldier” strongly appealed to the public as they coped with loss during
the commencement of WWI, its sentimentality is criticized for romanticizing the war and masking the true
horrors England was experiencing. In striking contrast, “Dulce et
Decorum Est” describes the gruesome effects of war and concludes that
platitudes such as “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country” would not
be repeated if the reality was understood. “The Soldier” and “Dulce et Decorum
Est” both appeal to the emotions, values and morals of the audience and have
engaged the thoughts of scholars for decades.
The ever-present question, ladies and gentlemen: Are we going
to have peace, even if we have to fight for it? Or is an unjust peace better
than a just war?
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