WEBVTT 00:12.050 --> 00:18.560 Professor Langdon Hammer: Let's turn to page 00:18.556 --> 00:26.356 527 in your anthology where you find a famous poem by Wilfred 00:26.364 --> 00:31.444 Owen called "Dulce et Decorum Est." 00:31.440 --> 00:37.700 And your footnote explains that that phrase is the beginning of 00:37.699 --> 00:42.709 a line from Horace, completed at the end of the 00:42.711 --> 00:47.641 poem – that is, in the last lines of the poem 00:47.636 --> 00:51.916 – "pro patria mori": translated as, 00:51.920 --> 00:56.630 "It is sweet and proper"; sweet and right, 00:56.628 --> 01:02.978 decorous – "to die for one's country." 01:02.979 --> 01:06.789 Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 01:06.790 --> 01:10.070 Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, 01:10.066 --> 01:14.416 we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we 01:14.420 --> 01:18.850 turned our backs And towards our distant rest 01:18.847 --> 01:24.947 began to trudge. Men marched asleep. 01:24.950 --> 01:30.840 Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. 01:30.840 --> 01:35.460 All went lame; all blind; 01:35.460 --> 01:38.510 Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots 01:38.510 --> 01:45.130 Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. 01:45.130 --> 01:49.190 Gas! Gas! 01:49.190 --> 01:54.400 Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling, 01:54.400 --> 01:57.860 Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; 01:57.860 --> 02:02.660 But someone still was yelling out and stumbling 02:02.659 --> 02:09.709 And floundering like a man in fire or lime… 02:09.710 --> 02:14.380 Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, 02:14.379 --> 02:19.389 As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. 02:19.389 --> 02:23.469 In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, 02:23.470 --> 02:28.000 He plunges at me, guttering, choking, 02:28.004 --> 02:32.064 drowning. If in some smothering dreams 02:32.064 --> 02:35.984 you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung 02:35.979 --> 02:38.629 him in, And watch the white eyes 02:38.632 --> 02:42.312 writhing in his face, His hanging face, 02:42.314 --> 02:46.714 like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, 02:46.714 --> 02:48.794 at every jolt, the blood 02:48.789 --> 02:52.629 Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 02:52.629 --> 02:55.139 Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud 02:55.139 --> 03:00.649 Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-- 03:00.650 --> 03:06.720 My friend, you would not tell with such high zest 03:06.719 --> 03:09.989 To children ardent for some desperate glory, 03:09.990 --> 03:13.750 The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est 03:13.750 --> 03:15.800 Pro patria mori. 03:15.800 --> 03:20.450 03:20.449 --> 03:26.419 Paul Fussell, a literary critic who wrote a 03:26.417 --> 03:33.947 brilliant book about the literature and culture of the 03:33.948 --> 03:39.818 First World War, speaks of irony as the 03:39.816 --> 03:46.826 essential trope or rhetorical figure of this body of 03:46.833 --> 03:51.533 literature, World War One poetry. 03:51.530 --> 03:56.760 Here is, in this poem, an example of irony, 03:56.759 --> 04:01.739 of a really comparatively simple kind. 04:01.740 --> 04:08.790 What are schoolboy lines from Horace, lines that Owen and many 04:08.791 --> 04:14.341 others would have learned in school to recite, 04:14.340 --> 04:22.380 to have memorized--that poetry is here held up as propaganda, 04:22.377 --> 04:29.877 as a kind of murderous lie: "it is sweet and right to die 04:29.878 --> 04:32.958 for one's country." 04:32.959 --> 04:39.769 You can feel it in the marvelous texture of this 04:39.766 --> 04:44.966 poetry. Against Horace's decorous and 04:44.967 --> 04:49.807 elegant Latin, there is placed Owen's 04:49.806 --> 04:58.106 Anglo-Saxon alliterative, inflected, strongly stressed 04:58.107 --> 05:07.017 language with its rough and actual vernacular diction. 05:07.019 --> 05:15.839 The power and authority, too, of Owen's writing is, 05:15.838 --> 05:20.598 well, certified, we feel, 05:20.600 --> 05:25.390 by that first person that speaks to us, 05:25.392 --> 05:30.692 that "I" who speaks as a witness to war, 05:30.689 --> 05:36.829 as a describer, as someone telling a reader 05:36.825 --> 05:45.435 elsewhere what he has seen and speaking specifically for one 05:45.444 --> 05:52.114 fallen soldier. The reception of Owen's poetry 05:52.105 --> 05:59.745 has always been attached to a sense of Owen as a soldier and 05:59.748 --> 06:05.838 witness to war, and indeed as a victim of war, 06:05.838 --> 06:10.598 who died a week before the Armistice. 06:10.600 --> 06:17.510 These poems that you see the cover for here, 06:17.510 --> 06:25.220 Poems by Wilfred Owen, originally appeared 06:25.224 --> 06:33.754 posthumously after Owen's death, introduced by Siegfried Sassoon 06:33.754 --> 06:36.064 – a comrade, fellow poet, 06:36.056 --> 06:40.276 fellow soldier. And as you can see, 06:40.280 --> 06:44.570 in addition to the introduction, 06:44.573 --> 06:52.053 the cover advertises also a portrait of the author. 06:52.050 --> 06:58.140 And there is Owen, in uniform, a handsome young 06:58.144 --> 07:00.304 man. This is all, 07:00.296 --> 07:07.416 as I say, very much part of the transmission of Owen's poetry. 07:07.420 --> 07:14.170 "Dulce et Decorum Est" is a great poem but the kind of irony 07:14.172 --> 07:19.782 that it puts forward is, I think, a simple one. 07:19.780 --> 07:23.140 It is, well, it's a great poem. 07:23.139 --> 07:27.669 There are lots of them that when I first started teaching 07:27.671 --> 07:30.991 this course I decided I wouldn't teach. 07:30.990 --> 07:37.090 And for a number of reasons including the sense that, 07:37.086 --> 07:42.946 gee, Yeats, Stevens, Eliot – these are hard poets 07:42.947 --> 07:50.447 and we need as much time on them as we can in order to read their 07:50.450 --> 07:55.060 work. And this poem seemed like one 07:55.058 --> 07:59.978 you might find and be able to read yourself, 07:59.979 --> 08:03.869 without me there to explain it. 08:03.870 --> 08:07.700 It also is the case that probably many of you have 08:07.700 --> 08:12.310 already read it and possibly studied it in school and talked 08:12.313 --> 08:14.713 about it. So, at any rate, 08:14.710 --> 08:19.200 this seemed to me to be, when I started teaching this 08:19.199 --> 08:22.219 course, reasons not to teach it. 08:22.220 --> 08:28.990 Besides, well, I think the first time I taught 08:28.989 --> 08:35.909 this course was a few years after the Gulf War, 08:35.909 --> 08:43.099 the first Gulf War; and it seemed to me, 08:43.096 --> 08:53.156 in my historical innocence, that the irony that Owen is 08:53.157 --> 08:59.397 playing upon here, that he's putting forward to 08:59.404 --> 09:03.664 us, was not one that I would need to talk about in a 09:03.656 --> 09:07.486 classroom. It seemed to me as though no 09:07.487 --> 09:13.177 one would ever quote Horace again, as anything but a lie. 09:13.180 --> 09:16.110 Of course that's not the case. 09:16.110 --> 09:24.430 You know, as our present war has gone on, how many times have 09:24.427 --> 09:31.357 we heard people in many different forms speaking of 09:31.358 --> 09:39.258 justifications for the deaths of young men and women, 09:39.260 --> 09:42.640 on behalf of the nation? 09:42.639 --> 09:51.659 Well, as we watch our President's approval ratings for 09:51.661 --> 09:58.471 his conduct of the war drop, one wonders: 09:58.469 --> 10:06.639 could any of us really be surprised by this? 10:06.639 --> 10:11.299 And certainly Wilfred Owen would not have been, 10:11.300 --> 10:17.480 and it seemed to me as though in fact it was important to read 10:17.480 --> 10:23.050 Wilfred Owen and to go on thinking and talking about his 10:23.052 --> 10:26.742 poetry. And not only Owen, 10:26.742 --> 10:33.462 of course, but really the extraordinary rich body of 10:33.463 --> 10:39.133 British World War One poetry as a whole, 10:39.129 --> 10:43.789 writing that is not by any means all about battle, 10:43.789 --> 10:48.639 though much of it is, like that poem I just read. 10:48.639 --> 10:55.899 Today what I want to do is give you some sense of this body of 10:55.899 --> 10:59.149 writing. And unlike the last few 10:59.149 --> 11:04.609 lectures where I've concentrated on a single poet and tried to 11:04.612 --> 11:09.272 make arguments about that poet and have a thesis, 11:09.269 --> 11:13.359 today what I want to do is really just show you different 11:13.363 --> 11:21.193 poems and different poets, a range of brilliant writing. 11:21.190 --> 11:27.460 In addition to an opportunity to think about poetry and war, 11:27.456 --> 11:33.926 it's also a good opportunity to start to fill out a little bit 11:33.934 --> 11:38.824 our sense of what modern poetry is or was, 11:38.820 --> 11:47.170 what it is or was; also, what it did not become. 11:47.169 --> 11:53.069 World War One destroyed an English generation. 11:53.070 --> 11:57.470 11:57.470 --> 12:01.900 Modern poetry, as we study it in this class 12:01.904 --> 12:05.494 and, I think, as you see it in this 12:05.493 --> 12:10.353 anthology, is an international phenomenon. 12:10.350 --> 12:15.760 It's not--Well, we don't have a lot of English 12:15.762 --> 12:18.772 poets on this syllabus. 12:18.769 --> 12:23.419 There's T.S. Eliot, the only great English 12:23.420 --> 12:26.030 poet born in America. 12:26.029 --> 12:31.899 There's W.H. Auden, an English-born poet who 12:31.904 --> 12:34.504 moved to America. 12:34.500 --> 12:39.310 Most of the figures that we study are in fact Americans. 12:39.310 --> 12:41.690 There's Yeats, too. 12:41.690 --> 12:45.240 All of them are in a sense internationals. 12:45.240 --> 12:51.290 And there's a range of important cultural reasons for 12:51.294 --> 12:54.164 this. But there's also the simple 12:54.159 --> 12:58.779 fact of the war. Arguably, the great modern 12:58.781 --> 13:06.471 English poets died in the teens, in France in 1915 or 1917, 13:06.470 --> 13:13.600 or they survived – like Ivor Gurney, whom you have some 13:13.602 --> 13:19.972 samples from – in a wounded and injured state. 13:19.970 --> 13:27.810 I also think it's important for us to think about the war as an 13:27.807 --> 13:35.137 important context when we go on to read Pound and Eliot, 13:35.139 --> 13:42.829 when we encounter in their poetry a sense of apocalyptic 13:42.833 --> 13:47.873 change, of civilization in crisis, 13:47.870 --> 13:51.030 which can seem pretty vague sometimes. 13:51.029 --> 13:55.449 Well, and this is true for the Yeats poems that we've been 13:55.449 --> 13:57.309 talking about as well. 13:57.309 --> 14:01.829 Yeats is obviously writing in the context of an Irish civil 14:01.830 --> 14:06.590 war, but it's also the case that he's writing in the shadow of 14:06.585 --> 14:09.075 the First World War as well. 14:09.080 --> 14:19.130 On July 1,1916, more than 57,000 English troops 14:19.126 --> 14:24.146 were wounded or dead. 14:24.149 --> 14:31.759 I think almost 20,000 on that day died, and in the Battle of 14:31.760 --> 14:37.700 the Somme, as it unfolded, there were a million 14:37.695 --> 14:42.975 casualties. This is a scale of human 14:42.976 --> 14:49.386 suffering and a kind of, well, a scale of human 14:49.390 --> 14:56.780 suffering that is enormous and hard to comprehend, 14:56.779 --> 15:01.829 and leaves its shadow across the writing that we will be 15:01.831 --> 15:05.801 reading. All the poets we will be 15:05.802 --> 15:11.762 talking about today are men; not quite all soldiers, 15:11.756 --> 15:13.526 but most of them. 15:13.529 --> 15:18.859 I've given you some quotes from Virginia Woolf, 15:18.858 --> 15:26.038 partly to remind us that the war did not only exist for men, 15:26.039 --> 15:32.469 or soldiers, and that it existed in England 15:32.471 --> 15:38.751 as much as it existed on the continent. 15:38.750 --> 15:46.780 Well, with all that said by preparation, let me show you 15:46.778 --> 15:53.198 some more poems, beginning with Thomas Hardy, 15:53.200 --> 15:55.390 on page 51. 15:55.390 --> 16:02.320 16:02.320 --> 16:12.170 This is a little pamphlet of war poems Hardy published in 16:12.172 --> 16:20.092 1917 and that you can find in the Beinecke. 16:20.090 --> 16:24.420 Hardy, arguably the greatest English poet, 16:24.416 --> 16:29.586 modern English poet, is a figure we don't study in 16:29.586 --> 16:32.326 this course otherwise. 16:32.330 --> 16:35.580 He is a poet from another century. 16:35.580 --> 16:38.650 He's born, in fact, twenty years before the 16:38.653 --> 16:40.193 American Civil War. 16:40.190 --> 16:43.480 16:43.480 --> 16:48.740 When World War One began he was seventy-four. 16:48.740 --> 16:56.310 He wrote his poems from the perspective of rural England. 16:56.309 --> 16:59.989 It was the setting for almost all of his novels, 16:59.993 --> 17:02.113 almost all of his poetry. 17:02.110 --> 17:06.870 And "Channel Firing," on the bottom of 51, 17:06.872 --> 17:11.172 is also set in the west of England, 17:11.170 --> 17:17.820 Hardy's home country, and is set right on the verge 17:17.816 --> 17:21.136 of the First World War. 17:21.140 --> 17:23.680 It's a poem about gunnery practice. 17:23.680 --> 17:32.030 Yes, it's a dramatic monologue spoken by one of the dead, 17:32.034 --> 17:36.084 in a graveyard: That night your great 17:36.076 --> 17:39.666 guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, 17:39.670 --> 17:41.670 And broke the chancel window-squares, 17:41.670 --> 17:44.740 We thought it was the Judgment-day 17:44.740 --> 17:46.040 And sat upright. 17:46.040 --> 17:49.770 17:49.769 --> 17:57.519 [Hardy has various gothic and supernatural fancies that 17:57.519 --> 18:01.909 he asks us to imagine in vivid, homely terms.] 18:01.905 --> 18:06.385 While drearisome Arose the howl of wakened 18:06.394 --> 18:12.304 hounds: [This is all this wonderful, observed detail of 18:12.299 --> 18:15.479 rural life.] The mouse let fall the 18:15.480 --> 18:18.510 altar-crumb, The worms drew back into the 18:18.505 --> 18:22.205 mounds, The glebe cow drooled. 18:22.210 --> 18:28.550 Till God called, 'No; It's gunnery practice out at 18:28.548 --> 18:31.508 sea. Just as before you went below; 18:31.509 --> 18:36.069 The world is as it used to be: [This is not "The Second 18:36.074 --> 18:39.044 Coming." Kind of a reply to Yeats, 18:39.035 --> 18:42.585 although Yeats has written his poem yet.] 18:42.589 --> 18:45.069 'All nations striving strong to make 18:45.070 --> 18:47.260 Red war yet redder. 18:47.260 --> 18:49.970 Mad as hatters They do no more for Christés 18:49.974 --> 18:53.284 sake Than you who are helpless in 18:53.279 --> 18:55.589 such matters. 'That this is not the 18:55.592 --> 18:58.222 judgment-hour For some of them's a blessed 18:58.220 --> 19:00.440 thing, For if it were they'd have to 19:00.438 --> 19:02.538 scour Hell's floor for so much 19:02.541 --> 19:07.741 threatening…. 'Ha, ha. 19:07.740 --> 19:10.940 [Hardy's God laughs like that. 19:10.944 --> 19:14.474 Frost would have understood it.] 19:14.470 --> 19:18.600 It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed 19:18.600 --> 19:20.060 I ever do; for you are men, 19:20.060 --> 19:22.590 And rest eternal sorely need).' 19:22.589 --> 19:26.369 [This is God, so cruel that he will not 19:26.372 --> 19:31.352 deliver the Second Coming, the Day of Judgment.] 19:31.350 --> 19:34.450 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 19:40.020 --> 19:43.330 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 19:53.763 --> 19:57.213 and beer.' Again the guns disturbed the 19:57.207 --> 19:59.757 hour, Roaring their readiness to 19:59.756 --> 20:03.266 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 20:38.447 --> 20:43.037 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 21:54.875 --> 21:59.445 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 25:00.115 --> 25:03.085 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.