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World War Poets. Dr. Suzanne Wazzan. The Georgian poets and World War I.
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World War Poets Dr. Suzanne Wazzan
The Georgian poets and World War I • TheGeorgian poets were the first major grouping of the post-Victorian era. Their work appeared in a series of five anthologies called Georgian Poetry which were published by Harold Monro and edited by Edward Marsh. The poets featured included Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare and Siegfried Sassoon. • Their poetry represented something of a reaction to the decadence of the 1890s and tended towards the sentimental.
Brooke and Sassoon were to go on to win reputations as war poets and Lawrence quickly distanced himself from the group and was associated with the modernist movement. Other notable poets who wrote about the war include Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen, May Cannan and, from the home front, Hardy and Rudyard Kipling, whose inspirational poem If— is a national favourite. • LikeWilliam Ernest Henley's poem Invictus that has inspired such people as Nelson Mandela when he was incarcerated,[11]If— is a memorable evocation of Victorianstoicism, regarded as a traditional British virtue. Although many of these poets wrote socially-aware criticism of the war, most remained technically conservative and traditionalist.
Rupert Brooke • English poet Rupert Chawner Brooke was born in 1887. The son of the Rugby School's housemaster, Brooke excelled in both academics and athletics. He entered his father's school at the age of fourteen. A lover of verse since the age of nine, he won the school poetry prize in 1905.
Rupert Brooke A year later, he attended King's College, Cambridge, where he was known for his striking good looks, charm, and intellect. While at Cambridge, he developed an interest in acting and was president of the University Fabian Society. Brooke published his first poems in 1909; his first book, Poems, appeared in 1911. While working on his dissertation on John Webster and Elizabethan dramatists, he lived in the house that he made famous by his poem "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester.“
Popular in both literary and political circles, he befriended Winston Churchill, Henry James, and members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Virginia Woolf. Although he was popular, Brooke had a troubled love life. Between 1908 and 1912 he fell in love with three women: Noel Olivier, youngest daughter of the governor of Jamaica; Ka Cox, who preceded him as president of the Fabian Society; and Cathleen Nesbitt, a British actress. None of the relationships were long lasting. In 1912, after his third romance failed, Brooke left England to travel in France and Germany for several months.
Upon his return to England, Brooke received a fellowship at King's College and spent time in both Cambridge and London. In 1912 he compiled an anthology entitled Georgian Poetry, 1911-12, with Edward Marsh. The Georgian poets wrote in an anti-Victorian style, using rustic themes and subjects such as friendship and love. While critics viewed Brooke's poetry as too sentimental and lacking depth, they also considered his work a reflection of the mood in England during the years leading up to World War I.
After experiencing a mental breakdown in 1913, Brooke traveled again, spending several months in America, Canada, and the South Seas. During his trip, he wrote essays about his impressions for the Westminster Gazette, which were collected inLetters From America (1916). While in the South Seas, he wrote some of his best poems, including "Tiare Tahiti" and "The Great Lover."
He returned to England at the outbreak of World War I and enlisted in the Royal Naval Division. His most famous work, the sonnet sequence 1914 and Other Poems, appeared in 1915. Later that year, after taking part in the Antwerp Expedition, he died of blood poisoning from a mosquito bite while en route to Gallipoli with the Navy. He was buried on the island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea.
Following his death, Brooke, who was already famous, became a symbol in England of the tragic loss of talented youth during the war.
A Selected Bibliography • Poetry • Poems (1911)Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912 (1912)1914, and Other Poems (1915)The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (1915)The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke (1918)The Poetical Works of Rupert Brooke (1946)
“The Soldier” (1914) If I should die, think only this of me:That there’s some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. There shall beIn that rich earth a richer dust concealed;A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;A body of England’s, breathing English air,Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.And think, this heart, all evil shed away,A pulse in the eternal mind, no lessGives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
COMMENTARYOn "The Soldeir" • First of all, this commentary is going to focus on one of the most important works by Rupert Brooke; “The Soldier” which belongs to war works of this author since it focuses on the situation of a soldier in the war or before it. Apart of the typical analysis of the poem I am going to try to explain how Rupert Brooke shows World War I, especially, in this poem. • “The Soldier” is a poem in which only one person speaks and tells his feelings. The poem seems on the surface to be about a soldier that is far from home not yet disillusioned by the horrors of the war; he loves his country, England, and would do anything for it, even die for saving his England.
Rupert Brooke opens the poem in the first stanza saying: “If I should die, think only this of me:/ That there’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is for ever England. There shall be/ In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;/”. “Generations of school children would be taught these opening patriotic lines from “The soldier” They were used to reinforce their native land, where they were from.(Rupert Brooke- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). In these lines the speaker says that if he dies in an other place, not being England, there will always be a piece of his country. • During the course of the poem the author deals with two issues: death and love. Death because the speaker is a soldier, most of them die, and possibly he will die in the war; and love because the speaker shows us the love that he has for his native land, England. It seems that he was a true patriot.
I think that this poem “The soldier” could be divided into two parts, it is by means of its stanzas, but I mean: the first stanza refers to the physical part of people, in this case the soldier; and the second stanza would be the psychological part. In the physical part, the speaker uses words that refer to things that you can touch, more or less, or verbs as for example “bore, shaped, made”. In the second part, the psychological, the speaker refers to feelings or things that you can not touch, using words as for example “mind, thoughts, sounds, dreams”.
The meaning in the poem is straightforward; while you are reading you can understand what Rupert Brooke is talking about and referring to. I mean that “The Soldier” is not a very complex poem when talking about its language. The author of this poem uses clear connotations to refer to what he wants to mean. We can say that Rupert Brooke does not use an elaborate language. • The author dedicates the poem to death and love, as I have said some lines before, and Brooke explains the feelings that the soldier has when he becomes part of a war. The speaker, I mean, the soldier, in my opinion, represents all the soldiers, and what they feel when they are far away of their own country, in this case, England. Rupert Brooke is not, perhaps, glorifying war; he is only explaining what the soldiers, maybe, feel. Although I have to say that the author describes the situation of the soldier as if it was easy and beautiful.
“The Soldier” could be autobiographical since there are first person pronouns. We can observe: I (line 1) and me (line 1). Both pronouns refer to the speaker, he talks in first person and in both the first and the second stanza, the speaker is addressing somebody. For this reason it could be that the author was telling us his own story, a story that maybe could have been real. “His early poetry was classically inspired, with death as its most frequent theme throughout. Later, he wrote more from his personal experience gained in theSouth Seas and later in his brief military career. The shortness of his life added to his reputation, especially at a time when so many young men were being killed.” (Rupert Brooke- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
With regard to the length of the poem, “The Soldier” is fourteen lines long and it is written in a two stanza structure. The first stanza is eight lines long and the second, seven lines long. The rhyme scheme is –ababcdcd- in the first stanza and –abcabc- in the second. By means of its characteristics we could say that this is a sonnet. I think that the rhyme scheme is quite regular during the course of the poem. • It would be interesting to talk about the historical context of Rupert Brooke and his works. Now I am going to try to explain how Rupert Brooke shows World War I in this work. • “Robert Brooke was rather a pre-war poet. That is said because this author writes before the World War I since his life was not so long during the war, Brooke died only a year after this war. He died in 1915 off the island of Lemnos in the Aegean on his way to a battle at Gallipoli”. (Rupert Brooke- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). I think that Rupert Brooke showed in this poem the premonition of death, because he probably knows or imagines the disaster that the war could be.
The World War I was a world conflict that started in the year 1914 and ended in 1918. All started with the assassination of the GavriloPrincep. In this war a lot of people died. The soldiers fought for their country and the other people were killed by the enemies. They knew that somebody had been in a town because everything was destroyed. (World War I- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). “Families were altered by the departure of many men. With the death or absence of the primary wage earner, women were forced into the workforce in unprecedented numbers, at least in many of the Entente powers. At the same time, industry needed to replace the lost labourers sent to war. This aided the struggle for voting rights for women”.(World War I- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). • “The experiences of the war led to a sort of collective national trauma afterwards for all the participating countries. The optimism of 1900 was entirely gone and those who fought in the war became what is known as "the Lost Generation" because they never fully recovered from their experiences and because so many died”. (World War I- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
For all this reason that I have already quoted, I think that the poets started to write. They wanted to remember that important event in his life and especially he wants people to identify with his works. • In this poem that I have chosen, “The Soldier”, I think that a lot of people felt identified, especially soldiers and their families, they had their native land over all. Rupert Brooke immerses the reader in the theme and at the same time the poem makes you think about what it is saying, the war, the death for their country, the end of a life. This poem is a little sad, because you know that a lot of families were broken, but it is also beautiful. “The Soldier” is composed by simple words and especially has a simple theme. I think that there is nothing confusing or complex.
In this poem that I have chosen, “The Soldier”, I think that a lot of people felt identified, especially soldiers and their families, they had their native land over all. Rupert Brooke immerses the reader in the theme and at the same time the poem makes you think about what it is saying, the war, the death for their country, the end of a life. This poem is a little sad, because you know that a lot of families were broken, but it is also beautiful. “The Soldier” is composed by simple words and especially has a simple theme. I think that there is nothing confusing or complex.
