Wilfred Owen and Strange Meeting

STRANGE MEETING was written in the spring of 1918 and stands in the forefront of
Owen's achievements. Siegfried Sassoon called it Owen's passport to immortality. On the
poet's memorial in the grounds of Shrewsbury Abbey is engraved the famous quotation: I am
the enemy you killed, my friend.
Wilfred Owen fought and died in WW1, being fatally wounded just a week before the war
ended in 1918. By all accounts he wanted to return to the front line, despite suffering from
shell shock, to justify his art. 'I know I shall be killed,' he told his brother, 'but it's the
only place I can make my protest from.' Owen disliked the gentle, sentimental poetry that
gave a distorted view of the war. He wrote many poems depicting the horror and helplessness;
he wanted to capture the pity in his poetry.
Strange Meeting is a poem about reconciliation. Two soldiers meet up in an imagined Hell,
the first having killed the second in battle. The title was taken from Shelley: In The Revolt of
Islam, Laon tells his soldiers not to avenge themselves on the enemy who has massacred their
camp but to ask them to throw down their arms and embrace their shared humanity. The two
sides gather together in the "strange meeting".
RICHLY – to a large degree, fully
“I went hunting wild, after the wildest beauty in the world, which lies not calm in eyes, or
braided hair, but mocks the steady running of the hour, and if it grieves, grieves richlier than
here.”

 Real beauty of life "mocks the steady running of the hour", since it is above time,
sublime and universal. Even its grieving cannot be fully experienced in hell. It would
grieve more intensely, or "richlier," than it ever could in hell. Nothing can be truly
vivid, or thrive, in hell; certainly not beauty.

CITADEL - a fortress that protects a city

 "To miss the march of this retreating world, into vain citadels that are not walled."

 Citadel is a fortress that protects a city. In other words, the soldiers are fighting for
nothing—it won't get them anything in the end. And what they thought was their
protection, or fortress, isn't. Nothing can protect them from the damage war does.

WITHOUT STINT – without restriction

 “I would have poured my spirit without stint”; give his life

PARRY – try to block

LOATH – reluctant, unwilling

  “I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.”

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .”

FORM:
Strange Meeting consists of four stanzas and there is a total of 44 lines. Strange Meeting is
written in heroic couplets (iambic pentameter x2 rhyming). There are lines that vary from
heroic couplet and these are important because they challenge the reader to alter the emphasis
on certain words and phrases. The iambic pentameter reflects the steady almost conversational
natural pace of speech, whilst the variations bring uncertainty, altered beats which echo battle
and bring texture and added interest for the reader, e. g. With a thousand fears that vision's
face was grained.
Note the syntax changing as the dialogue (monologue) develops. Enjambment disappears and
punctuation holds sway in terms of syntax, the pace within the iambic pentameter steadied by
comma and semi-colon.
Rhyme
Owen is a master of pararhyme, where the stressed vowels differ but the consonants are
similar, and uses this technique throughout the poem. So note the end words:
escaped/scooped, groined/groaned, bestirred/stared and so on. The second vowel is usually
lower in pitch adding to the oddity of the sounds, bringing dissonance and a sense of failure.
So whilst there is common ground between the rhymes there is equally discomfort, the feeling
that something isn't quite what it should be. If Owen had used full rhyme this unease would be
missing, so the imperfection perfectly fits the surreal situation of the two men meeting in Hell.

FUTILITY

Move him into the sun –

Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, –

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved – still warm – too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
– O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

FORM
This short but impactful poem was only one of five published during Owen's lifetime, in
1918. Its format is a short elegiac lyric like a sonnet, though it is not structured as one – it
consists of two stanzas, seven lines each. The poem uses one of Owen’s favourite techniques,
that of pararhyme or half-rhyme (sun/unsown, once/France, seeds/sides, star/stir) alongside
full rhyme (snow/know, tall/all). This disturbs the natural rhythm and gives the poem a
slightly tortured mood.
THEMES
The very title of the poem gives away what this poem is actually about – war and its futility.
The poem concerns a soldier or several soldiers moving a recently deceased fellow soldier
into the sun, hoping its warmth will revive him. The touch of the sun had always woken him
before, both at home and in France, but it did not this snowy morning. Also, we have this play
on words – morning or mourning? The imagery regarding the sun contrasts its vitality and
warmth with its ultimate inability to wake one who has died. In the first stanza the sun is
personified and described as "kind" and "old", its warmth ancient and affirming. The speaker
is quiet and gently hopeful when he asks that the body be moved into the sun. Many of
Owen's poems focus on the bond between man and Nature, and here Nature seems like it
could revive the speaker's friend.
If there is anything that could wake him it would be the "kind old" sun. Basically, there is this
theme of nature and its connectedness with nurturing quality – gently, whisper, touch....
Despite the sun's life-giving properties, it can do nothing for the young man; his life is cut
short like the "fields half-sown". This was a reality known all too well to the poet – young
men were being killed before their lives had barely begun.

In the second stanza, however, the speaker becomes more upset and questioning, the tone
shifting to accommodate the change in his mindset. The speaker is confused how the sun
could wake the seeds and animate a fully-formed man (the Biblical "clay" of Adam), and now
can do nothing. It wakes the seeds and once it woke the "clays of a cold star". The speaker
wonders if the man's limbs and sides, which are still warm, are now too hard to stir.
WAS IT FOR THIS THAT THE CLAY GREW TALL?
This loss of one precious life makes the speaker bitterly wonder why "the fatuous /fećs –
foolish) sunbeams toil / To break earth's sleep at all".
The meaning of the title, then, is the futility of trying to understand how nature could create
life but stand by as it is laid to waste. So this questions God as well.