WEBVTT

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Professor Langdon
Hammer: Let's turn to page

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527 in your anthology where you
find a famous poem by Wilfred

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Owen called "Dulce et Decorum
Est."

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And your footnote explains that
that phrase is the beginning of

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a line from Horace,
completed at the end of the

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poem – that is,
in the last lines of the poem

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– "pro patria mori":
translated as,

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"It is sweet and proper";
sweet and right,

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decorous – "to die for one's
country."

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Bent double,
like old beggars under sacks,

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Knock-kneed,
coughing like hags,

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we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we

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turned our backs
And towards our distant rest

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began to trudge.
Men marched asleep.

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Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod.

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All went lame;
all blind;

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Drunk with fatigue;
deaf even to the hoots

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Of tired, outstripped
Five-Nines that dropped behind.

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Gas!
Gas!

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Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of
fumbling,

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Fitting the clumsy helmets just
in time;

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But someone still was yelling
out and stumbling

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And floundering like a man in
fire or lime…

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Dim, through the misty panes
and thick green light,

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As under a green sea,
I saw him drowning.

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In all my dreams,
before my helpless sight,

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He plunges at me,
guttering, choking,

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drowning.
If in some smothering dreams

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you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung

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him in,
And watch the white eyes

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writhing in his face,
His hanging face,

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like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear,

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at every jolt,
the blood

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Come gargling from the
froth-corrupted lungs,

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Obscene as cancer,
bitter as the cud

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Of vile, incurable sores on
innocent tongues,--

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My friend, you would not tell
with such high zest

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To children ardent for some
desperate glory,

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The old Lie:
Dulce et decorum est

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Pro patria mori.

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Paul Fussell,
a literary critic who wrote a

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brilliant book about the
literature and culture of the

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First World War,
speaks of irony as the

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essential trope or rhetorical
figure of this body of

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literature,
World War One poetry.

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Here is, in this poem,
an example of irony,

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of a really comparatively
simple kind.

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What are schoolboy lines from
Horace, lines that Owen and many

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others would have learned in
school to recite,

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to have memorized--that poetry
is here held up as propaganda,

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as a kind of murderous lie:
"it is sweet and right to die

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for one's country."

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You can feel it in the
marvelous texture of this

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poetry.
Against Horace's decorous and

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elegant Latin,
there is placed Owen's

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Anglo-Saxon alliterative,
inflected, strongly stressed

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language with its rough and
actual vernacular diction.

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The power and authority,
too, of Owen's writing is,

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well, certified,
we feel,

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by that first person that
speaks to us,

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that "I" who speaks as a
witness to war,

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as a describer,
as someone telling a reader

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elsewhere what he has seen and
speaking specifically for one

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fallen soldier.
The reception of Owen's poetry

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has always been attached to a
sense of Owen as a soldier and

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witness to war,
and indeed as a victim of war,

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who died a week before the
Armistice.

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These poems that you see the
cover for here,

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Poems by Wilfred Owen,
originally appeared

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posthumously after Owen's death,
introduced by Siegfried Sassoon

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– a comrade,
fellow poet,

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fellow soldier.
And as you can see,

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in addition to the
introduction,

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the cover advertises also a
portrait of the author.

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And there is Owen,
in uniform, a handsome young

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man.
This is all,

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as I say, very much part of the
transmission of Owen's poetry.

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"Dulce et Decorum Est" is a
great poem but the kind of irony

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that it puts forward is,
I think, a simple one.

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It is, well, it's a great poem.

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There are lots of them that
when I first started teaching

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this course I decided I wouldn't
teach.

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And for a number of reasons
including the sense that,

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gee, Yeats, Stevens,
Eliot – these are hard poets

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and we need as much time on them
as we can in order to read their

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work.
And this poem seemed like one

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you might find and be able to
read yourself,

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without me there to explain it.

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It also is the case that
probably many of you have

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already read it and possibly
studied it in school and talked

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about it.
So, at any rate,

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this seemed to me to be,
when I started teaching this

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course, reasons not to teach it.

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Besides, well,
I think the first time I taught

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this course was a few years
after the Gulf War,

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the first Gulf War;
and it seemed to me,

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in my historical innocence,
that the irony that Owen is

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playing upon here,
that he's putting forward to

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us, was not one that I would
need to talk about in a

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classroom.
It seemed to me as though no

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one would ever quote Horace
again, as anything but a lie.

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Of course that's not the case.

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You know, as our present war
has gone on, how many times have

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we heard people in many
different forms speaking of

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justifications for the deaths of
young men and women,

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on behalf of the nation?

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Well, as we watch our
President's approval ratings for

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his conduct of the war drop,
one wonders:

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could any of us really be
surprised by this?

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And certainly Wilfred Owen
would not have been,

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and it seemed to me as though
in fact it was important to read

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Wilfred Owen and to go on
thinking and talking about his

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poetry.
And not only Owen,

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of course, but really the
extraordinary rich body of

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British World War One poetry as
a whole,

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writing that is not by any
means all about battle,

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though much of it is,
like that poem I just read.

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Today what I want to do is give
you some sense of this body of

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writing.
And unlike the last few

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lectures where I've concentrated
on a single poet and tried to

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make arguments about that poet
and have a thesis,

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today what I want to do is
really just show you different

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poems and different poets,
a range of brilliant writing.

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In addition to an opportunity
to think about poetry and war,

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it's also a good opportunity to
start to fill out a little bit

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our sense of what modern poetry
is or was,

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what it is or was;
also, what it did not become.

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World War One destroyed an
English generation.

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Modern poetry,
as we study it in this class

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and, I think,
as you see it in this

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anthology, is an international
phenomenon.

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It's not--Well,
we don't have a lot of English

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poets on this syllabus.

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There's T.S.
Eliot, the only great English

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poet born in America.

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There's W.H.
Auden, an English-born poet who

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moved to America.

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Most of the figures that we
study are in fact Americans.

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There's Yeats, too.

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All of them are in a sense
internationals.

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And there's a range of
important cultural reasons for

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this.
But there's also the simple

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fact of the war.
Arguably, the great modern

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English poets died in the teens,
in France in 1915 or 1917,

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or they survived – like Ivor
Gurney, whom you have some

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samples from – in a wounded
and injured state.

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I also think it's important for
us to think about the war as an

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important context when we go on
to read Pound and Eliot,

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when we encounter in their
poetry a sense of apocalyptic

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change, of civilization in
crisis,

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which can seem pretty vague
sometimes.

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Well, and this is true for the
Yeats poems that we've been

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talking about as well.

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Yeats is obviously writing in
the context of an Irish civil

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war, but it's also the case that
he's writing in the shadow of

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the First World War as well.

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On July 1,1916,
more than 57,000 English troops

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were wounded or dead.

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I think almost 20,000 on that
day died, and in the Battle of

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the Somme, as it unfolded,
there were a million

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casualties.
This is a scale of human

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suffering and a kind of,
well, a scale of human

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suffering that is enormous and
hard to comprehend,

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and leaves its shadow across
the writing that we will be

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reading.
All the poets we will be

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talking about today are men;
not quite all soldiers,

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but most of them.

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I've given you some quotes from
Virginia Woolf,

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partly to remind us that the
war did not only exist for men,

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or soldiers,
and that it existed in England

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as much as it existed on the
continent.

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Well, with all that said by
preparation, let me show you

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some more poems,
beginning with Thomas Hardy,

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on page 51.

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This is a little pamphlet of
war poems Hardy published in

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1917 and that you can find in
the Beinecke.

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Hardy, arguably the greatest
English poet,

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modern English poet,
is a figure we don't study in

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this course otherwise.

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He is a poet from another
century.

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He's born, in fact,
twenty years before the

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American Civil War.

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When World War One began he was
seventy-four.

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He wrote his poems from the
perspective of rural England.

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It was the setting for almost
all of his novels,

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almost all of his poetry.

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And "Channel Firing," on the
bottom of 51,

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is also set in the west of
England,

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Hardy's home country,
and is set right on the verge

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of the First World War.

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It's a poem about gunnery
practice.

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Yes, it's a dramatic monologue
spoken by one of the dead,

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in a graveyard:
That night your great

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guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,

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And broke the chancel
window-squares,

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We thought it was the
Judgment-day

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And sat upright.

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[Hardy has various gothic and
supernatural fancies that

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he asks us to imagine in vivid,
homely terms.]

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While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened

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hounds: [This is all this
wonderful, observed detail of

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rural life.]
The mouse let fall the

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altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the

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mounds,
The glebe cow drooled.

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Till God called, 'No;
It's gunnery practice out at

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sea.
Just as before you went below;

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The world is as it used to be:
[This is not "The Second

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Coming."
Kind of a reply to Yeats,

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although Yeats has written his
poem yet.]

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'All nations striving strong to
make

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Red war yet redder.

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Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés

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sake
Than you who are helpless in

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such matters.
'That this is not the

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judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed

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thing,
For if it were they'd have to

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scour
Hell's floor for so much

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threatening….
'Ha, ha.

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[Hardy's God laughs like that.

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Frost would have understood
it.]

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It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed

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I ever do;
for you are men,

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And rest eternal sorely need).'

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[This is God,
so cruel that he will not

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deliver the Second Coming,
the Day of Judgment.]

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So down we lay again.

19:34.450 --> 19:37.650
'I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,'

19:37.650 --> 19:40.020
Said one, 'than when He sent us
under

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In our indifferent century!'

19:43.329 --> 19:46.279
And many a skeleton shook his
head.

19:46.279 --> 19:49.639
'Instead of preaching forty
year,'

19:49.640 --> 19:53.760
My neighbor Parson Thirdly said,
'I wish I had stuck to pipes

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and beer.'
Again the guns disturbed the

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hour,
Roaring their readiness to

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avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,

20:03.269 --> 20:09.269
And Camelot,
and starlit Stonehenge.

20:09.269 --> 20:16.569
Gunnery practice disturbs the
dead, disrupts the ground.

20:16.569 --> 20:21.599
Here, war refuses to let the
dead lie in peace,

20:21.599 --> 20:27.609
with the notion that not even
the dead are safe from it,

20:27.613 --> 20:29.913
unaffected by it.

20:29.910 --> 20:33.120
The church windows shatter.

20:33.119 --> 20:38.449
Well, in some sense this is
exactly what modernity might be

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seen to be doing to traditional
English culture.

20:43.039 --> 20:48.909
Hardy is full of all those
quaint gothic,

20:48.910 --> 20:53.460
archaic dictions and fancies.

20:53.460 --> 20:59.320
The dead are raising their
objections here to guns that

20:59.323 --> 21:04.213
will be used very shortly in the
Great War.

21:04.210 --> 21:07.820
God reassures them,
though, of course,

21:07.821 --> 21:11.531
what he says here is not
reassuring.

21:11.529 --> 21:15.969
He says that although "red war"
is getting redder,

21:15.968 --> 21:19.228
it's really as it always has
been.

21:19.230 --> 21:24.160
This is not the end of the
world that it appears to be.

21:24.160 --> 21:30.770
He's not about to let mankind
off the hook with Judgment Day.

21:30.769 --> 21:37.189
The speaker-narrator lies back
and wonders if the world will

21:37.189 --> 21:41.389
ever be saner.
His neighbor says,

21:41.391 --> 21:44.811
"Well, I don't think so.

21:44.809 --> 21:54.879
I wish I had pleasured myself
rather than serving that wicked

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God."
In the last stanza then there

21:59.450 --> 22:04.610
is that extraordinary shift of
perspective.

22:04.609 --> 22:12.249
The sound of the guns carries
inland, into the heart of

22:12.250 --> 22:19.890
England, and as it does it
carries back also in time to

22:19.890 --> 22:25.550
Camelot and to "starlit
Stonehenge."

22:25.550 --> 22:29.100
What happens when that happens?

22:29.099 --> 22:35.369
What is the meaning of this –
the power of the sound of the

22:35.372 --> 22:38.302
guns to echo back in time?

22:38.299 --> 22:46.349
As Hardy evokes Camelot and
Stonehenge, you might read this,

22:46.354 --> 22:50.044
understand this as,
what?

22:50.039 --> 22:58.129
As dignifying and legitimating
the present firing,

22:58.131 --> 23:01.931
the present conflict?

23:01.930 --> 23:05.560
Or in some sense does it do
just the opposite?

23:05.559 --> 23:14.379
Does it suggest that England's
history and its heritage and its

23:14.376 --> 23:17.786
honor are in jeopardy?

23:17.789 --> 23:24.949
Does it in some sense
demythologize the past,

23:24.953 --> 23:30.823
demystify it,
make us see Camelot and

23:30.815 --> 23:40.415
Stonehenge as part of a barbaric
history such as is about to

23:40.420 --> 23:46.870
unfold in 1914?
There are a couple of other

23:46.865 --> 23:53.025
Hardy poems in your anthology,
memorable and powerful,

23:53.029 --> 23:57.789
that are war poems,
including on page 59,

23:57.792 --> 24:03.152
"In The Time of 'the Breaking
of Nations,'"

24:03.150 --> 24:10.790
and then on the next page,
"I Looked Up From My Writing."

24:10.789 --> 24:14.259
Interesting to look at these
together.

24:14.259 --> 24:21.639
In this first poem Hardy
affirms the endurance of rural

24:21.641 --> 24:26.701
life and its cycles:
I

24:26.700 --> 24:32.140
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk

24:32.140 --> 24:35.520
With an old horse that stumbles
and nods

24:35.519 --> 24:38.569
Half asleep as they stalk.

24:38.567 --> 24:43.757
II
Only thin smoke without flame

24:43.760 --> 24:49.730
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same

24:49.730 --> 24:51.810
Though Dynasties pass.

24:51.809 --> 24:56.349
III
Yonder a maid and her wight

24:56.350 --> 25:00.120
Come whispering by:
War's annals will fade into

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night
Ere their story die.

25:03.089 --> 25:09.649
Rural life, including rituals
of love and courtship,

25:09.653 --> 25:16.733
here are represented as
poetry's truest subject and as a

25:16.731 --> 25:23.811
kind of enduring source of
social life and meaning.

25:23.809 --> 25:29.859
You could compare this poem to
the poem placed last in Yeats's

25:29.864 --> 25:35.824
last poems called "Politics"
that might seem to say something

25:35.819 --> 25:38.279
similar.
In Hardy here,

25:38.284 --> 25:41.844
and in other poems,
there's this sort of

25:41.836 --> 25:46.386
wonderfully, self-consciously
archaic language.

25:46.390 --> 25:51.910
Hardy wants to use really old
dialect words,

25:51.913 --> 25:57.183
when he can,
and there's power in that.

25:57.180 --> 26:01.010
And this is a poem composed in
1915.

26:01.009 --> 26:03.189
When we read "The Love Song of
J.

26:03.185 --> 26:07.055
Alfred Prufrock," when we read
Pound's first Canto,

26:07.060 --> 26:11.000
remember that those poems are
written and published at just

26:11.002 --> 26:14.132
the same time this poem's being
written;

26:14.130 --> 26:22.180
poems with very different ways
of proceeding and different

26:22.184 --> 26:25.014
kinds of language.

26:25.009 --> 26:28.639
In the second poem here,
"I Looked Up From My Writing,"

26:28.635 --> 26:32.255
the poet, the first person,
is being interrupted at his

26:32.261 --> 26:37.831
desk at night.
He is startled to see:

26:37.829 --> 26:40.459
…The moon's full gaze
on me.

26:40.460 --> 26:44.120
Her meditative misty head
Was spectral in its air,

26:44.120 --> 26:47.880
And I involuntarily said,
'What are you doing there?'

26:47.880 --> 26:52.590
[Hardy works in these song
forms that, well,

26:52.586 --> 26:58.166
they sound like popular
ballads, and he wants you to

26:58.168 --> 27:02.708
hear them as
part of almost a kind of folk

27:02.711 --> 27:05.601
literature, which he draws on.

27:05.599 --> 27:10.269
The moon says to him:]
'Oh, I've been scanning pond

27:10.271 --> 27:12.921
and hole
And waterway hereabout

27:12.920 --> 27:15.370
For the body of one with a
sunken soul

27:15.370 --> 27:17.970
Who has put his life-light out.

27:17.970 --> 27:21.190
'Did you hear his frenzied
tattle?

27:21.190 --> 27:26.920
It was sorrow for his son
Who is slain in brutish battle,

27:26.920 --> 27:29.980
Though he has injured none.

27:29.980 --> 27:35.500
'And now [the moon says]
I am curious to look

27:35.500 --> 27:38.380
Into the blinkered mind [the
poet's]

27:38.380 --> 27:43.180
Of one who wants to write a book
In a world of such a kind.'

27:43.180 --> 27:48.370
Her temper [the poet then says]
overwrought me,

27:48.369 --> 27:53.039
And I edged to shun her view
[to get out of the moonlight]

27:53.039 --> 27:54.649
For I felt assured she thought
me

27:54.650 --> 27:58.670
One who should drown him
too.

27:58.670 --> 28:04.330
Here, a neighbor father,
crazed with grief at the death

28:04.333 --> 28:09.763
of his son, has drowned himself,
killed himself,

28:09.759 --> 28:17.069
and the moon implies in its
gaze that the poet should do so,

28:17.072 --> 28:20.772
too.
In such a world it seems

28:20.766 --> 28:26.886
writing poems is a kind
of--well, even surviving is a

28:26.891 --> 28:30.191
kind of guilty privilege.

28:30.190 --> 28:34.720
You could compare with this
poem Kipling's poem;

28:34.720 --> 28:38.760
Kipling, one of the great
apologists of empire,

28:38.760 --> 28:44.030
saying on page 153 of your book
in the voice of a soldier,

28:44.029 --> 28:48.879
"If any question why we died,
/ tell them,

28:48.877 --> 28:56.087
because our fathers lied" – a
statement that is poignant,

28:56.089 --> 29:01.819
poignant and powerful in part
because Kipling's own son died

29:01.820 --> 29:03.180
in the war .

29:03.180 --> 29:10.120


29:10.119 --> 29:16.949
This is a volume of poems
published in 1917 by Edward

29:16.952 --> 29:23.952
Thomas and a portrait of Thomas,
another soldier poet,

29:23.947 --> 29:28.877
not represented however as a
soldier here:

29:28.881 --> 29:35.261
represented rather as an
English citizen in tweed,

29:35.260 --> 29:40.650
a man out in and of nature.

29:40.650 --> 29:48.560
Thomas was born in 1878,
so he was thirty-six when the

29:48.559 --> 29:53.039
war began.
He began, almost at the same

29:53.041 --> 29:56.791
time as the war began,
to write poems.

29:56.789 --> 30:02.969
He begins writing under the
influence of his friend,

30:02.971 --> 30:07.481
Robert Frost.
Frost and Thomas have a

30:07.475 --> 30:13.425
fascinating relationship,
an important transatlantic

30:13.429 --> 30:16.929
exchange.
Frost's famous poem,

30:16.926 --> 30:22.376
"The Road Not Taken," he
sometimes described as being

30:22.375 --> 30:28.555
about Thomas and Thomas's own
sense of regret and hesitation

30:28.559 --> 30:34.019
and indirection,
to which Frost contrasted

30:34.024 --> 30:38.994
himself.
Frost became in England a poet

30:38.988 --> 30:46.818
of New England whom Thomas was
reading at that moment in such a

30:46.817 --> 30:54.827
way as to help enable him,
Thomas, to become a great poet

30:54.833 --> 31:02.963
of England and of England's
landscape and countryside and

31:02.958 --> 31:08.518
nature.
There's a good selection from

31:08.522 --> 31:12.212
Thomas in your anthology.

31:12.210 --> 31:20.430
I will read my favorite poem by
Thomas, which is the first one,

31:20.429 --> 31:25.069
called "Adlestrop," on page
231:

31:25.070 --> 31:36.330


31:36.329 --> 31:40.559
Yes, I remember
Adlestrop--

31:40.560 --> 31:46.800
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew

31:46.800 --> 31:49.380
up there
Unwontedly.

31:49.380 --> 31:51.650
It was late June.

31:51.650 --> 31:54.140
The steam hissed.

31:54.140 --> 31:57.560
Someone cleared his throat.

31:57.560 --> 32:04.440
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform.

32:04.440 --> 32:11.000
What I saw
Was Adlestrop--only the name

32:11.000 --> 32:14.060
And willows,
willow-herb,

32:14.059 --> 32:17.519
and grass,
And meadowsweet,

32:17.519 --> 32:23.309
and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely

32:23.306 --> 32:27.126
fair
Than the high cloudlets in the

32:27.127 --> 32:31.407
sky.
And for that minute a blackbird

32:31.405 --> 32:35.345
sang
Close by, and round him,

32:35.348 --> 32:38.988
mistier,
Farther and farther,

32:38.994 --> 32:41.974
all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and

32:41.969 --> 32:43.629
Gloucestershire.

32:43.630 --> 32:46.770


32:46.769 --> 32:52.989
It's a wonderful poem in its
simplicity, modesty,

32:52.985 --> 33:01.005
directness, and reticence which
yet provides the most expansive

33:01.014 --> 33:08.404
and exhilarating sense of the
English landscape and of the

33:08.396 --> 33:15.646
power of a moment in time to
enlarge and be pregnant with

33:15.648 --> 33:22.458
meaning.
Notice Thomas's really superb

33:22.456 --> 33:29.966
nonchalance and offhandedness
and simplicity.

33:29.970 --> 33:31.970
"It was late June."

33:31.970 --> 33:34.180
"The steam hissed."

33:34.180 --> 33:40.220
There's a kind of colloquial
clarity and confidence,

33:40.221 --> 33:46.851
quite different from the
vernacular language in the Hardy

33:46.854 --> 33:52.984
poems I was just reading,
which are also poems of the

33:52.983 --> 33:55.813
countryside.
Here the name,

33:55.812 --> 34:00.412
the odd name "Adlestrop,"
prompts a memory,

34:00.408 --> 34:06.758
prompts a memory in such a way
that a moment in time stands

34:06.755 --> 34:10.495
out,
separated from other moments;

34:10.500 --> 34:15.310
just as the odd,
unpoetic, unbeautiful name

34:15.310 --> 34:19.090
"Adlestrop" seems to stand out.

34:19.090 --> 34:22.260
There's a kind of poignant
tension between the

34:22.264 --> 34:25.584
unbeautifulness of the name,
the awkwardness,

34:25.579 --> 34:31.459
and yet the dignity of the
name, and the sense of natural

34:31.463 --> 34:35.143
beauty that the poem will
unfold.

34:35.139 --> 34:40.609
Here, the stopping of the train
is like the interruption by

34:40.611 --> 34:46.461
memory of normal consciousness
that's the basis of the poem.

34:46.460 --> 34:52.610
There's a sense that in this
memory the poet somehow saw the

34:52.609 --> 34:56.729
name--presumably,
I suppose, saw it on a

34:56.732 --> 35:01.902
signboard in the station,
as you roll into the station

35:01.895 --> 35:04.715
and you see where you are.

35:04.719 --> 35:10.329
But there's more suggestion in
it than that.

35:10.329 --> 35:16.369
It's as if this moment were one
in which the name and the place,

35:16.365 --> 35:20.925
the word and the thing,
fully coincided,

35:20.929 --> 35:27.299
fully coincided in an
experience of presence and

35:27.300 --> 35:34.350
immediacy where the world is all
there and named,

35:34.350 --> 35:41.570
located, placed.
The figure, the metaphor for

35:41.570 --> 35:47.440
this semiotic unity of word and
thing is bird-song.

35:47.440 --> 35:50.690
Here bird-song is a kind of
natural language,

35:50.690 --> 35:53.350
a language in which nature
speaks,

35:53.349 --> 35:59.819
and speaks in such a way that
the particular voice carries the

35:59.819 --> 36:03.849
import and authority of the
general,

36:03.849 --> 36:08.989
just as the one bird seems to
sing with many bird-songs by the

36:08.992 --> 36:12.842
end of the poem.
And so Adlestrop itself

36:12.837 --> 36:18.607
suddenly seems to signify more,
calling to mind in kind of

36:18.605 --> 36:23.255
rippling and radiating circles
Oxfordshire,

36:23.260 --> 36:29.800
Gloucestershire,
England – all of it,

36:29.801 --> 36:34.711
the poet's home.
At the same time it's also

36:34.713 --> 36:38.413
clear that this epiphany is a
remembered experience.

36:38.410 --> 36:41.890
It's recalled.
The poet's first word,

36:41.894 --> 36:46.074
"yes" – a wonderful
affirmation – situates the

36:46.069 --> 36:50.329
poem in a dialogue as if someone
had just said,

36:50.329 --> 36:53.779
"Have you ever been to
Adlestrop?"

36:53.780 --> 36:59.680
Whether this dialogue is actual
or internal, it doesn't really

36:59.679 --> 37:03.799
matter.
Part of the poem's force

37:03.803 --> 37:12.213
derives from the status of this
moment as something remembered,

37:12.208 --> 37:19.798
and remembered within the
context of a nation at war.

37:19.800 --> 37:24.920
Although I believe Thomas wrote
the poem the year he enlisted

37:24.918 --> 37:28.158
but, I think,
before his enlistment,

37:28.159 --> 37:34.739
you might feel as though Thomas
is already on the train for

37:34.739 --> 37:38.709
France.
There's a way in which the

37:38.707 --> 37:43.697
context of the war,
too, shadows the poem and

37:43.695 --> 37:46.525
remains present in it.

37:46.530 --> 37:52.930
Don't you feel it in certain
details: the eerie lack of

37:52.925 --> 37:55.645
people in this place?

37:55.650 --> 37:59.090
"No one left and no one came."

37:59.090 --> 38:03.680
In a sense it is an image of
the English countryside at a

38:03.678 --> 38:07.118
moment in which it is being
emptied out,

38:07.119 --> 38:13.759
its young men sent to France to
die, a kind of no man's land

38:13.763 --> 38:14.893
already.

38:14.890 --> 38:20.760


38:20.760 --> 38:27.050
This is Siegfried Sassoon in
uniform in 1916.

38:27.050 --> 38:35.400
Sassoon's poetry centers on
hallucinatory overlays of

38:35.395 --> 38:40.205
home-front and battle-front.

38:40.210 --> 38:55.560
Let's look at "'Blighters'" on
page 389, a wonderfully angry

38:55.558 --> 39:00.708
poem;
a poem that is situated in a

39:00.709 --> 39:06.059
music hall, presumably a London
music hall:

39:06.060 --> 39:09.060


39:09.060 --> 39:15.420
The House is crammed;
tier beyond tier they grin

39:15.420 --> 39:19.760
And cackle at the Show,
while prancing ranks

39:19.760 --> 39:23.610
Of harlots shrill the chorus,
drunk with din;

39:23.610 --> 39:27.170
'We're sure the Kaiser loves
the dear old Tanks!'

39:27.170 --> 39:31.890
I'd like to see a Tank come
down the stalls,

39:31.889 --> 39:35.859
Lurching to rag-time tunes,
or 'Home, sweet Home',

39:35.860 --> 39:39.480
And there'd be no more jokes in
Music-halls

39:39.480 --> 39:42.220
To mock the riddled corpses
round Bapaume.

39:42.220 --> 39:46.110


39:46.110 --> 39:51.690
Here, there's an analogy
between the music hall and the

39:51.692 --> 39:57.242
theater of war.
It's as if the English populace

39:57.237 --> 40:03.467
were spectators only,
consuming as entertainment war

40:03.469 --> 40:09.089
propaganda, which makes the poet
hate them.

40:09.090 --> 40:13.300
He imagines here the eruption
of the real into this

40:13.299 --> 40:17.589
representational space,
and imagines it as a kind of

40:17.592 --> 40:22.642
attack on the working and middle
class audiences of the music

40:22.643 --> 40:25.583
hall.
The soldier becomes,

40:25.583 --> 40:28.603
in fantasy here,
the spectator,

40:28.603 --> 40:34.343
as the war turns around and
comes back, reversed by a kind

40:34.342 --> 40:38.472
of evil charm or spell,
coming home.

40:38.469 --> 40:45.849
And "home" is here made to
rhyme with "Bapaume," bringing

40:45.846 --> 40:52.296
battlefront and home front
together as a rhyme.

40:52.300 --> 40:56.750
There's an aggression towards
the urban crowd here that

40:56.752 --> 41:01.702
recalls and exaggerates Yeats's
attitude at the same time,

41:01.699 --> 41:07.689
really in the same years,
in poems like "A Coat" or "The

41:07.685 --> 41:11.695
Fisherman."
In other Sassoon poems,

41:11.702 --> 41:15.552
the war comes home in other
ways.

41:15.550 --> 41:22.800
For example,
in "The Rear-Guard," just down

41:22.798 --> 41:29.078
the page here;
or "Repression of War

41:29.078 --> 41:39.128
Experience," which is about
traumatic repetition of battle;

41:39.130 --> 41:46.320
or in "Dreamers," where there
is, again, a kind of juxtaposing

41:46.320 --> 41:51.860
of life in the trenches and life
in the city.

41:51.860 --> 41:55.700


41:55.699 --> 42:01.089
Rather than dwell longer on
them though, and to make sure I

42:01.088 --> 42:04.338
get time for a couple more
poems,

42:04.340 --> 42:10.310
I want to move on and
consider--Here is a collection

42:10.309 --> 42:15.459
of Sassoon's poems,
Counter-Attack,

42:15.460 --> 42:20.490
and this is The Poetry of
Isaac Rosenberg.

42:20.489 --> 42:29.969
Here's a frontispiece with
Rosenberg in a military coat.

42:29.969 --> 42:36.499
Rosenberg, besides a poet,
was also an artist and created

42:36.498 --> 42:39.178
these self-portraits.

42:39.180 --> 42:42.520


42:42.520 --> 42:47.600
"Self-Portrait in France, 1915."

42:47.599 --> 42:53.949
Rosenberg, in contrast to
Sassoon, was poor,

42:53.952 --> 43:01.932
Jewish, and writes a rather
different kind of poem from

43:01.930 --> 43:07.840
those we have been looking at
today.

43:07.840 --> 43:13.260
One of the most famous and
extraordinary is "Louse

43:13.263 --> 43:19.093
Hunting," on page 506;
a little bit further on in your

43:19.085 --> 43:19.795
book:

43:19.800 --> 43:23.130


43:23.130 --> 43:28.140
Nudes--stark and
glistening,

43:28.140 --> 43:29.860
Yelling in lurid glee.

43:29.860 --> 43:32.310
Grinning faces
And raging limbs

43:32.310 --> 43:35.490
Whirl over the floor one fire.

43:35.490 --> 43:40.390
For a shirt verminously busy
Yon soldier tore from his

43:40.388 --> 43:44.578
throat, with oaths
Godhead might shrink at,

43:44.578 --> 43:46.608
but not the lice.

43:46.610 --> 43:51.370
And soon the shirt was aflare
Over the candle he'd lit while

43:51.366 --> 43:55.546
we lay.
Then we all sprang up and stript

43:55.550 --> 43:59.960
To hunt the verminous brood.

43:59.960 --> 44:04.190
[Here the soldiers are
stripping their

44:04.190 --> 44:10.020
clothes off and attacking the
lice that are attacking them.]

44:10.020 --> 44:16.210
Soon like a demons' pantomime
The place was raging.

44:16.210 --> 44:21.210
[It's nighttime and the candles
and flares are throwing

44:21.211 --> 44:24.171
shadows.]
See the silhouettes agape,

44:24.170 --> 44:28.000
See the gibbering shadows
Mixed with the battled arms on

44:28.002 --> 44:31.202
the wall.
See gargantuan hooked fingers

44:31.200 --> 44:37.460
Pluck in supreme flesh
To smutch supreme littleness.

44:37.460 --> 44:41.130
See the merry limbs in hot
Highland fling

44:41.130 --> 44:44.500
Because some wizard vermin
Charmed from the quiet this

44:44.502 --> 44:48.342
revel
When our ears were half lulled

44:48.340 --> 44:53.380
By the dark music
Blown from Sleep's

44:53.379 --> 44:58.529
trumpet.
A strange place for this poem

44:58.531 --> 45:02.751
to end.
"Nudes," the poem begins.

45:02.750 --> 45:10.470
It's shocking and comic and
pleasurable to see the armored

45:10.473 --> 45:18.063
men, uniformed men suddenly
exposed – just naked bodies

45:18.061 --> 45:26.191
– to see them here bedeviled
not by a gas attack or machine

45:26.191 --> 45:29.851
guns but lice,
fleas.

45:29.849 --> 45:37.169
Rosenberg is writing not in
those little crafted stanzas of

45:37.168 --> 45:42.088
Hardy or, for that matter,
of Thomas.

45:42.090 --> 45:47.070
He's writing in a kind of
strongly stressed free verse

45:47.073 --> 45:53.543
with variable line lengths,
lots of--well there's a sense

45:53.537 --> 46:01.267
in which the poetry itself is
exuberant and naked and full of

46:01.270 --> 46:05.880
life and vital;
and naturalistic,

46:05.883 --> 46:11.013
you could say,
in its representation.

46:11.010 --> 46:16.590
Rosenberg is giving us an
anecdote from the trenches,

46:16.592 --> 46:22.392
and yet it slips very quickly
into a sense of fable.

46:22.389 --> 46:27.249
The louse hunting,
where these big men hunt these

46:27.249 --> 46:29.879
little things,
these fleas:

46:29.881 --> 46:35.251
it becomes – when it's thrown
by shadow as a kind of

46:35.247 --> 46:40.307
flickering image on the tent or
trench wall,

46:40.309 --> 46:44.829
when it becomes represented,
so to speak – it becomes a

46:44.827 --> 46:48.777
battle scene where gigantic
forces "smutch supreme

46:48.779 --> 46:52.509
littleness."
We are put in mind of how men

46:52.506 --> 46:55.276
are to the Gods as flies to men.

46:55.280 --> 46:59.490
This is an analogy as old as,
and found in,

46:59.488 --> 47:02.858
Homer.
We are also put in mind of how

47:02.861 --> 47:06.381
the war is, in fact,
anything but a revel,

47:06.375 --> 47:09.785
though it,
too, may have been provoked by

47:09.792 --> 47:14.172
a cause as insignificant and
hard to trace as "some wizard

47:14.165 --> 47:17.095
vermin."
Those last lines,

47:17.099 --> 47:21.279
then, are so ominous and
strange.

47:21.280 --> 47:26.570
Though these men have been
brought to life from sleep,

47:26.567 --> 47:31.657
there's a sense that the
trumpet will sound for them

47:31.656 --> 47:37.536
again and they will enter a dark
sleep from which they won't

47:37.542 --> 47:41.832
wake,
which is just the point of the

47:41.829 --> 47:46.399
next poem, "Returning,
We Hear the Larks."

47:46.400 --> 47:51.810
I won't take time to read it,
though, or talk about it,

47:51.811 --> 47:57.221
but instead I'd like to
conclude--This is another great

47:57.222 --> 48:03.422
poet of the war who survived,
though in, as I say,

48:03.415 --> 48:09.615
a wounded condition mentally,
Ivor Gurney.

48:09.619 --> 48:15.809
I want to conclude with a poem
by Owen.

48:15.810 --> 48:19.780


48:19.780 --> 48:28.860
Let's see, this is page 528,
just following "Dulce et

48:28.861 --> 48:34.801
Decorum Est," "Strange Meeting."

48:34.800 --> 48:43.180
This is a poem that--well,
if the first poem demystifies

48:43.181 --> 48:48.821
one crucial thread of war
ideology,

48:48.820 --> 48:54.120
that it is right and good to
die for the country,

48:54.120 --> 49:00.420
this poem takes on another
crucial element of war ideology

49:00.415 --> 49:06.705
that the enemy is an "other":
the enemy is unlike me.

49:06.710 --> 49:12.270
Like Rosenberg,
like Rosenberg's poem,

49:12.267 --> 49:20.677
this one comes out of and
returns eventually to sleep.

49:20.679 --> 49:30.649
It is a kind of dream vision,
Dantesque in its mode,

49:30.649 --> 49:38.859
and full of powerful iambic
pentameter:

49:38.860 --> 49:41.470
It seemed that out of
battle I escaped

49:41.469 --> 49:46.399
Down some profound dull tunnel,
long since scooped

49:46.400 --> 49:53.230
Through granites which titanic
wars had groined.

49:53.230 --> 49:57.500
Yet also there encumbered
sleepers groaned,

49:57.500 --> 50:02.670
Too fast in thought or death to
be bestirred.

50:02.670 --> 50:08.510
Then, as I probed them,
one sprang up,

50:08.514 --> 50:12.834
and stared
With piteous recognition in

50:12.833 --> 50:17.973
fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands,

50:17.970 --> 50:21.650
as if to bless.
And by his smile,

50:21.652 --> 50:26.752
I knew that sullen hall,--
By his dead smile I knew we

50:26.750 --> 50:30.460
stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains that

50:30.458 --> 50:34.588
vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from

50:34.594 --> 50:37.244
the upper ground,
And no guns thumped,

50:37.244 --> 50:39.284
or down the flues made moan.

50:39.280 --> 50:44.780
'Strange friend,' I said,
'here is no cause to mourn.'

50:44.780 --> 50:50.090
'None,' said the other,
'save the undone years,

50:50.090 --> 50:52.360
The hopelessness.

50:52.360 --> 50:57.110
Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also;

50:57.110 --> 51:01.480
I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the

51:01.476 --> 51:04.386
world,
Which lies not calm in eyes,

51:04.393 --> 51:08.273
or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of

51:08.271 --> 51:10.791
the hour,
And if it grieves,

51:10.793 --> 51:13.523
grieves richlier than here.

51:13.519 --> 51:17.389
For by my glee might many men
have laughed,

51:17.389 --> 51:20.159
And of my weeping something had
been left,

51:20.160 --> 51:22.700
Which must die now.

51:22.700 --> 51:26.510
I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war,

51:26.514 --> 51:28.864
the pity war distilled.

51:28.860 --> 51:32.570
Now men will go content with
what we spoiled,

51:32.570 --> 51:35.480
Or, discontent,
boil bloody,

51:35.484 --> 51:38.964
and be spilled.
They will be swift with

51:38.962 --> 51:40.822
swiftness of the tigress.

51:40.820 --> 51:44.500
None will break ranks,
tough nations trek from

51:44.500 --> 51:47.240
progress.
Courage was mine,

51:47.236 --> 51:50.666
and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine,

51:50.670 --> 51:54.110
and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this

51:54.113 --> 51:57.793
retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not

51:57.788 --> 52:00.708
walled.
Then, when much blood had

52:00.706 --> 52:05.466
clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them

52:05.472 --> 52:09.802
from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too

52:09.803 --> 52:14.043
deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit

52:14.039 --> 52:17.179
without stint
But not through wounds;

52:17.180 --> 52:20.160
not on the cess of war.

52:20.159 --> 52:24.069
Foreheads of men have bled
where no wounds were.

52:24.070 --> 52:29.360
'I am the enemy you killed,
my friend.

52:29.360 --> 52:33.790
I knew you in this dark:
for so you frowned

52:33.789 --> 52:39.389
Yesterday through me as you
jabbed and killed.

52:39.390 --> 52:44.560
I parried;
but my hands were loath and

52:44.564 --> 52:49.224
cold.
Let us sleep now….'

52:49.219 --> 52:57.629
So, we'll stop now and move on
to poems written during the same

52:57.626 --> 53:03.996
period and associated with
Imagism on Monday.