‘...Everything, everything is gone’: The aesthetics of First World War poems and what they mean now

O! ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom

— 'On Receiving News of the War' by Isaac Rosenberg (1914)

Reading about our current wars, one may wonder if we have learnt anything from history. Despite the bloodshed, deaths and grief, why does humanity continue to wage wars? How does one make sense of the violence around us, and where can we find hope in these times of despair? The answer perhaps, is art. In 1915, On being asked for a war poem, William Butler Yeats wrote, “I think it better that in times like these / A poet’s mouth be silent…,” but he and many other war poets continued to write poetry about what would later come to be known as the First World War.

What began as expressions of celebration soon turned into mournful and angry verses on the futility of it all.

There are various perspectives on violence in society. While some research claims we live in sophisticated times, separated by many years from the hunter-gatherer days when violence was estimated to be five times more, there is also work that explains how violence and peace are cyclical in nature. St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas write about how war can be just, depending on its intention and execution, while recently the United Nations chief announced that genocide is a real threat to certain communities worldwide.

William James has been credited with being the first psychologist to investigate war, and in his essay “The Moral Equivalent of War”, he suggests that warfare has continued to exist because of its positive psychological effects, because it instils in people a sense of community, identity, and allows them to activate their higher human purpose of sacrifice and tolerance. Four years after this essay was written, the First World War began. Many accounts state that the war began with a sense of jubilation.

Triumph and jubilation

The poetry of the early days of the war was also full of enthusiasm and optimism. A good example is “Men Who March Away” by Thomas Hardy, published in September 1914. In the fourth stanza of the poem, the narrator’s faith and optimism is expressed thus:

In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just,
And that braggarts must
Surely bite the dust,
Press we to the field ungrieving,
In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just.

It was not just the men who believed that going to war was a cause of celebration. As seen in the 1914 poem “War Girls” by Jessie Pope, women supported the war effort by taking over jobs that were typically done by men before the war. Although they were not in uniform, the poem points out that they too fought the war in their own way. The last stanza reads:

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.

Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier”, published in 1915, the same year as the death of the poet (although perhaps written a year earlier), illustrates the passion and patriotism with which one dies for one’s country. The first stanza of the poem reminds us of the spirit of a soldier even though he may die at war. This poem too, is optimistic and hopeful in its tonality, even though the theme at large is martyrdom. The soldier in the poem sees a higher purpose in dying for his country, and the mood of the poem is very different from the ones that were to follow in the following years.

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.

Dread and existentialism

Once the early years of the war were over, there was a shift in the kind of poetry that was being written. The themes moved from being hopeful to being angry, sad and illustrate a sense of purposelessness. This is depicted in the 1916 poem “The Poet As Hero” by soldier and poet, Siegfried Sassoon.

You’ve heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented,
Mocking and loathing War: you’ve asked me why
Of my old, silly sweetness I’ve repented –
My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry.

But now I’ve said good-bye to Galahad,
And am no more the knight of dreams and show:
For lust and senseless hatred make me glad,
And my killed friends are with me where I go.
Wound for red wound I burn to smite their wrongs;
And there is absolution in my songs.

A similar sense of dread and abandonment is visible in the 1916 poem by Wilfred Wilson Gibson. The mention of death that had a celebratory tone at the beginning of the war, now haunts the mind of the poet. He writes in “The Messages”:

I cannot quite remember... There were five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench, and three
Whispered their dying messages to me...

Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive –
Waiting a word in silence patiently...
But what they said, or who their friends may be

I cannot quite remember... There where five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench – and three
Whispered their dying messages to me...

Another telling poem comes from Seigfried Sassoon in 1916, written as a conversation between Christ and the Soldier. In this poem, we sense existentialism. The narrator questions the purpose of life, religion, and in a sense, war. These ideas also found their representations in paintings. Echoing the poetic lines is a painting by James Clark, titled The Great Sacrifice (1914). It depicts a soldier lying dead at the foot of a cross. Along the same lines, the second half of Sassoon’s poem goes thus:

Christ said
‘Believe; and I can cleanse your ill. I have not died in vain between two thieves; Nor made a fruitless gift of miracles.’

The soldier answered,
‘Heal me if you will, Maybe there’s comfort when a soul believes In mercy, and we need it in these hells. But be you for both sides? I’m paid to kill
And if I shoot a man his mother grieves. Does that come into what your teaching tells ?’
…

‘Lord Jesus, ain’t you got no more to say ?’

Bowed hung that head below the crown of thorns. The soldier shifted, and picked up his pack,
And slung his gun, and stumbled on his way.

‘O God,’ he groaned, ‘why ever was I born?’

... The battle boomed, and no reply came back.

Wilfred Owen, whose poetry is studied as a part of the syllabus in many schools and colleges, is best known for his war poetry. His most telling poem on the futility of war is “Dulce et Decorum Est”. Owen fought the war and was the recipient of bravery medals. He died on the battlefield one week before the Armistice of 1918. In this poem, he describes the brutal and gory reality of war and in the last stanza of the poem, borrows a Latin Phrase from the Roman poet Horace “Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori” (which means: it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country).

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,
Obscene as cancer, 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.

What do these poems mean today?

Not much has changed. Wars rage on in different countries. News reports suggest that one child was killed every quarter of an hour in the Israeli bombings of Gaza. This would mean that at least a dozen innocent lives were perhaps lost while this article was being written. Are the First World War poets calling us to meditate upon their trauma, so that we are able to create a reality that is different from it?

In “The Returning Soldier” by 11-year-old Annie Politzer, she writes about destruction and loss of human life:

And when I think of that place
Where so many are lying!
Poor fellows!
You will no longer see my beautiful Vienna.
For you everything, everything is gone.
Poor fellows!

The pain of death, as expressed in Owen’s “The Last Laugh”

Another sighed, – ‘O Mother, – mother, – Dad!’
Then smiled at nothing, childlike, being dead
And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
Leisurely gestured, – Fool!
And the splinters spat, and tittered

The pain of hope, as seen in “After the War” by May Wedderburn Cannan.

After the war perhaps I’ll sit again
Out on the terrace where I sat with you,
And see the changeless sky and hills beat blue
And live an afternoon of summer through.

I shall remember then, and sad at heart
For the lost day of happiness we knew,
Wish only that some other man were you
And spoke my name as once you used to do.

And, the pain of being a mother, as illustrated in Siegfreid Sasoon’s “Glory of Women”:

O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

Can revisiting the pain in the poems of the First World War remind us of the value of peace? Is it possible that we have found solace in their words, and our angst found a vent in their voice? Or perhaps that their rhythmic expression of trauma and horror has allowed light to creep into our hearts? They spoke then, but their words still ring of truth. Many more have spoken before, in-between, and after. But, are we listening?

Rashmi Mehta is a Junior Research Assistant at the Department of Sociology at Monk Prayogshala, Mumbai.