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War and rememberance
Nov. 11th, 2005 10:11 pmWhat passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Part of what is so absolutely startling about the causes of the Great War is that so many of the elite of the day - authors, painters, poets, thinkers - absolutely delighted in the thought of war. We looked at Futurism in the Art History ABC's several entries back. Have a look at what their Manifesto, published in 1909, says.
1. We intend to glorify the love of danger ... the strength of daring...
3. Literature having up to now glorified throughtful immobility ... and slumber, we wish to exault the aggressive movement, the feverish insomnia, running, hte perilous leap, the cuff, and the blow.
7. There is no more beauty except in struggle. No masterpiece without the stamp of aggressiveness...
9. We will glorify war - the only true hygiene of the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of [the] anarchist, the beautiful Ideas which kill, and the scorn of women.
10. We will destroy museums, libraries, and fight against moralism, feminism, and all utilitarian cowardice.
...Therefore welcome the kindly incendiarists with the carbon fingers! Here they are! ... Away and set fire to the bookshelves!
Of course, after the war actually begins, we see through the eyes of the World War I poets how things actually were. Gone is the breathless craving for speed and violence, the tank and the rifle.
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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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,
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.
--Wilfred Owen
Letter written to J.R.R. Tolkien by his friend and fellow Tea Club and Barrovian Society member Geoffry B. Smith:
My dear John Ronald,
My chief consolation is that if I am scuppered tonight - I am off on duty in a few minutes - there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon. For the death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the T.C.B.S. Death can make us loathsome and helpless as individuals, but it cannot put an end to the immortal four! A discovery I am going to communicate to Rob before I go off tonight. And do you write it also to Christopher. May God bless you my dear John Ronald, and may you say things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot.
Yours ever,
Geoffrey B. Smith
By the time Tolkien got the letter, Geoffry was dead, killed by gangrene.
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, 'They are dead.' Then add thereto,
'Yet many a better one has died before.'
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.
--Charles Sorley
Part of what is so absolutely startling about the causes of the Great War is that so many of the elite of the day - authors, painters, poets, thinkers - absolutely delighted in the thought of war. We looked at Futurism in the Art History ABC's several entries back. Have a look at what their Manifesto, published in 1909, says.
1. We intend to glorify the love of danger ... the strength of daring...
3. Literature having up to now glorified throughtful immobility ... and slumber, we wish to exault the aggressive movement, the feverish insomnia, running, hte perilous leap, the cuff, and the blow.
7. There is no more beauty except in struggle. No masterpiece without the stamp of aggressiveness...
9. We will glorify war - the only true hygiene of the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of [the] anarchist, the beautiful Ideas which kill, and the scorn of women.
10. We will destroy museums, libraries, and fight against moralism, feminism, and all utilitarian cowardice.
...Therefore welcome the kindly incendiarists with the carbon fingers! Here they are! ... Away and set fire to the bookshelves!
Of course, after the war actually begins, we see through the eyes of the World War I poets how things actually were. Gone is the breathless craving for speed and violence, the tank and the rifle.
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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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,
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.
--Wilfred Owen
Letter written to J.R.R. Tolkien by his friend and fellow Tea Club and Barrovian Society member Geoffry B. Smith:
My dear John Ronald,
My chief consolation is that if I am scuppered tonight - I am off on duty in a few minutes - there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon. For the death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the T.C.B.S. Death can make us loathsome and helpless as individuals, but it cannot put an end to the immortal four! A discovery I am going to communicate to Rob before I go off tonight. And do you write it also to Christopher. May God bless you my dear John Ronald, and may you say things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot.
Yours ever,
Geoffrey B. Smith
By the time Tolkien got the letter, Geoffry was dead, killed by gangrene.
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, 'They are dead.' Then add thereto,
'Yet many a better one has died before.'
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.
--Charles Sorley