THE WAR POETS

They were really educated, they usually belonged to the upper classes,
they frequented Oxford and Cambridge.
Their language is new and original.

Rupert Brooke 1887-1915

Rupert Brooke was born in 1887 and was educated at Rugby School,
where his father was a master, and then went to King's College,
Cambridge.
He was a good student and athlete, and became popular especially for his
handsome looks by him. He was also familiar with literary circles like the
Bloomsbury Group and came to know many important political, literary
and social figures before the war.

He joined up at the beginning of the conflict but saw little combat since
he contracted blood poisoning and died in April 1915, on the Aegean
Sea. He was buried on the Greek island of Skyros. Brooke's reputation of
as a War Poet is linked to the five sonnets of 1914, in which he advanced
the idea that war is clean and cleansing. He expressed an idealism about
the conflict, in which the only thing that can suffer is the body, and even
death is seen as a reward .
Traditional not only in form, his poems show a sentimental attitude which
was completely lost in the brutal turn that war poetry took in the works of
the other War Poets, who lived to witness the horrors of trench warfare.
The publication of Brooke's war sonnets coincided with his death in 1915
and made him immensely popular, turning him into a new symbol of the
'young romantic hero' who inspired patriotism in the early months of the
Great War, when England needed a focal point for its sacrifice, ideals and
aspirations.

THE SOLDIER
The soldier is a very patriotic poem about England, it presents an idealized
image of war, due to the fact the poet died before he could experience the
tragedy and the horror of the conflict.
The ideas and the romantic feelings towards war against the enemy, that
we can read here, were shared by the majority of soldiers.

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;

-"thinks"-> imperative, the soldier speaks to his loved ones, friends and
relatives, and to other soldiers.

- The poet here seems aware that death is a realistic possibility, but he is
not scared.
The awareness of England seems a form of consolation to him, Death in
war is seen as a reward.
He had the idea of the hero, who fights and dies to defend the motherland.

- This poem sounds like a prediction of the future, because he speaks in

the first person, and you can imagining him dying in a foreign country, as
he did, in Greece.

- The poet says that his body will enrich the soil, because it will became
dust, a richer dust than the earth around it because that dust will be of a
son of England’s who died honorably for his beloved country.
his corpse, full of ideals, is imagined after his death to become an example
for the younger generations, in defense of the motherland.
.His dead body will make wherever he dies a part of England too.

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.

The speaker views England as a mother, who gave him life, feelings of
joy and gentleness.
he asserts that his body was born in England, in the shape of England.
 He was brought up with the English culture, English tradition, he is
completely English.
Her-> personification.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

His heart will be ready to give back to England, feelings of love and
belonging.
Shed away = freed from suffering.
The soldier feels grateful for England, for the feelings and thoughts that
his mother country gave to him.

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

The poet seems to miss England even before he left her, he emphasizes the
politeness and friendship of the English people.

Nothing is said about the suffering of the soldiers, nothing is said of the
horrors, of the pain that precedes the death of a soldier.

WILFRED OWEN

Born in 1893, Wilfred Owen was working as an English teacher in France

when he visited a hospital for the wounded and decided, in 1915, to return
to England and enlist.
1917 was an important year: he was sent to France and saw his first action
of him;
in March he was injured and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in
Edinburgh to recover from the shock. It was there that he met Siegfried
Sassoon, who was also a patient and already had a reputation as a poet. He
read Owen's poems, encouraged him to keep writing and introduced him to
other literary figures.
Owen openly denounced the government, and because of it he risked to be
executed.
It was considered high treason at the time, to not be killed he had to
pretend he was insane.

Owen returned to the front in August 1918. On November 4, 1918, just

seven days before the armistice, he was killed in a German machine gun
attack. His poems are painful in their accurate accounts of gas victims,
men who have gone mad and men who are clinically alive although their
bodies have been destroyed.
He is also notable for the technical innovation of "pararhymes" - half
rhymes, where the consonants in two different words are the same but the
vowels vary - as well: as bis extensive use of assonance and alliteration
haunting quality, a gravity and moral force
These devices gave the lines of his poems a which people must suffer and
die.
In June 1918, Owen was preparing Disabled and Other Poems for
publication.
At that time he was writing the 'Preface' to the book, words which have
now become essential in discussing his work and much of the poetry of
World which make them suitable for any situation in War I: 'This book is
not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. / Nor is it
about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honor, might, majesty,
dominion, or power, except War. / Above all I am not concerned with
Poetry. / My subject is War, and the pity of War. / The Poetry is in the
pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They
may be to the next.
All a poet can do today is warn, about the dangers of the war. That is
why the true Poets must be truthful.

Wilfred Owen wrote his experiences in his poems:

- the gas bombs
- he reproduced horror scenes which created scandals
- he showed the pain and suffering, which had never been done before

dulce et decorum est

THE TITLE: The title means “it is sweet and honorable”, and since it’s
written in Latin, it suggests that patriotism had a long tradition

Stanza 1
- >In the fist stanza, the soldiers are described coming back, retreating,
towards the trenches;
they are tired, scared, they cough and are made blind and deaf, they can’t
even hear the shells.
They are described so fatigued they feel drunk, they are dropping off.
- We can see a strong criticism against the uniforms
- Soldiers are compared to beggars and hags, we see a strong contrast,
since young people should be healthy and strong.
-The poet takes personally part to this event, we understand that from the
use of the 2 person plural.
- the poet uses technical words, he doesn’t want to veil the horrors of the
war

Bent double (piegati in 2), like old beggars (simile) under

sacks( criticism against the uniforms, which are compared to sacks,
in order to underline the fact that they didn’t protect the soldiers
from the cold, or the rain, and they became even heavier when wet),
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, (simile, con le ginocchia che si
toccano, tossendo come streghe) we cursed through sludge (fango),
Till on the haunting flares (bagliori spaventosi) we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge (trascinarsi).
Men marched asleep. (the were dropping of, addormentarsi senza
accorgersene) Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod (metaphor) (avanzavano zoppicando,
calzati di sangue, another criticism against uniforms, the factory
owners, which manufactured uniforms, used only a small part of the
money that the government gave to them to buy the materials, the
rest of the money ended up in their pockets).
All went lame (storpi, zoppi); all blind;
Drunk with fatigue (metaphor), they were so exhausted they felt
drunk); deaf even to the hoots (fischi, sibili, onomatopeia)
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
(they couldn’t hear the rumor of shells/grenades, which contained chloride
gas. They felt silently )

underlined letters: examples of alliteration

The words ‘Bent double’, ‘Knock-kneed’, ‘coughing’, ‘trudge’, ‘limped
on’, ‘blood-shod’, ‘lame’, ‘blind’, ‘Drunk with fatigue’ and ‘deaf’ refer to
physical suffering due to fatigue and the effects of chemical weapons. The
words ‘cursed’ (line 2), ‘haunting’ (line 3), ‘asleep’ (line 5), ‘ecstasy of
fumbling’ (line 9) and ‘yelling out’ (line 11) convey the idea of
psychological uneasiness and fear. Owen gives importance to the
psychological sphere, he deals with the themes of alienation and
dehumanization.

The second stanza deals with the gas attack, the men try to put on their
masks, which were heavy, really hard to put on, in the green light created
by the gas, and the poet’s friend is wounded.
the soldier gets caught by panic, because the mask didn’t fit him properly.
He is stumbling, tripping, the poet feels like being under a green see, while
his friend his drowning.
The tense used here is the present, in order to give more realism and
immediacy to the poem.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy (metaphor, it indicates panic) of

fumbling (un brancolare frenetico)
Fitting the clumsy helmets (another criticism to the uniforms) just in
time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling (gridava inciampava e si
dimenava)
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.(calce) ( similes), —
Dim (dark) through the misty panes (vetri delle maschere appannate) and
thick green light (here the poet moves the attention to himself),
As under a green sea(metaphor, refers to the color of gas), I saw him
drowning.
Stanza 3: The sight of the dying friend returns in the poet’s dreams.
His unconscious makes him live in his nightmares this vision, it was
common between people who suffered traumatizing experiences

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges (si precipita) at me, guttering, choking, drowning
(onomatopoeia).

If in some smothering (affannosi) dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon (carro) that we flung him in, (he wants to underlines
that war transforms people into beast, such things or actions wouldn’t take
place in normal circumstances)
And watch the white eyes writhing (contorcersi)in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; (simile)

If you could hear, at every jolt (sobbalzo), the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs (polmoni intaccati dal gas,
lungs became liquid, melted, froth),
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud (amaro come il bolo)(simile)
Of vile, incurable sores (piaghe) on innocent tongues, (the gas attacked
first the mouth)—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest (entusiasmo)
To children ardent for some desperate glory, (he addresses to children
because they would have been the next generation)
The old Lie:
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

there is nothing noble or decorous in war; war is an ‘old’ lie because it is

not a new concept but a historic one that has been used many times to
cover up the harsh reality of war. This statement comes after a crescendo
of terrible images, which puts even more emphasis on it
The author here is addressing to the government, the leader of the war,
people home, women who weren’t nurses, who ignored the horrors of the
war.