Professor David Peimer
WWI Poetry

Professor David Peimer - WWI Poetry

- Okay, so thank you so much again to Lauren, and to everybody. So welcome. And everybody around all the various countries of the world. I’m going to today focus on some World War I poetry, and for a couple of reasons. Obviously, we’ve been linking it to Habsburg and Vienna, and the early part of the 20th century, And then post the war, the First World War, Freud and many others in Vienna, and parts of Central Europe. And in terms of this, this is focusing on, I guess the artistic changes that happened, massive radical changes, that happened in the writing of poetry that emerged out of the First World War. I’m going to look at many poems today, and some of the poets, and one novel briefly. And next week, how films have tried to capture aspects of the First World War. Going to look also at some English, and some German poets. And interestingly, there are a couple of Jewish poets. One in particular, Isaac Rosenberg, who fought on the side of the English. And Franz Janowitz, who fought on the side of the Germans in the First World War, and both wrote poetry as well. And then of course, the great Wilfred Owen, the patriotic Rupert Brooke, and some of the others also. So just having a look at, to try and get a bit of a sense of a more complex, and nuanced perspective on these First World War poets. Not only the obvious great Wilfred Owen, the remarkable Wilfred Owen, although we are going to look at him today as well. Okay, what I’d like to do is just start with a couple of questions which is about war, and war literature and war poetry.

And then go on specifically to an aspect of Bob Dylan’s remarkable Nobel Prize-winning speech, where he talks about what the three great books that influenced him growing up, “Moby Dick,” “All Quiet On The Western Front,” which we all know is one of the great books of the First World War, and of all wars in literature. And thirdly, Homer’s “Odyssey,” another, a war poem in a way. Those three, he talks about in his lecture, in amazing depth, and detail and visually so poetically. And it’s interesting to get his sense of this particular book on the First World War. The question obviously is, before we dive in, you know, how do you write about war generally, and how do you write about the First World War? That’s almost clearer in a way, that war has been written about. I have a personal interest, and fascination, and passion for war literature and poetry. Because for me it’s something so profoundly fundamental in human nature, and in human condition. Going back over the thousands of years, are stories told with an heroic perspective? Romantic, idealistic? Did it change only really with the First World War? With the absolute horror, you know, the Conrad phrase, “The horror! The horror!”? I think of Goethe’s, you know, trinity of the human condition. War, piracy and trade. Think of the great phrase for which the British had in colonising Africa. The three Cs, Christianize, civilise, commercialise. I think of the one amazing, one of the best short stories in war that I ever read, by the American short story writer, Tim O'Brien. Where he was in Vietnam, but he’s talking about war in general, not just Vietnam. And how the craving for a heightened intensity of life so often lacking in ordinary, you know, humdrum of daily life in the West. That war is like a drug of love.

And it’s an interesting phrase to me. That he equates it with arousing the same passionate intensity as love. When I think of Brecht, great phrase from “Mother Courage,” his play. “War is business by other means.” We get the other whole side of it, you know, the societal profiteering side, and so on, and political aim possibly. I want to just before I dive into Dylan, on “All Quiet On The Western Front.” An comment from Hemingway who of course was so formed during that First World War, and obviously the Spanish Civil War afterwards and so on. When Hemingway wrote, “The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested quite as quickly as prose writers.” Now I think he’s being ironic, and provocative here intentionally, but it’s in his fascinating piece of called “Men At War.” Just to give us a perspective on the specifics of the First World War, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, which was the biggest battle of all, and it’s where the British military suffered the greatest losses that it had ever suffered in its entire history. In the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British Army had 57,000 casualties, and almost 20,000 dead. It’s an extraordinary number in one day, just slaughtered. The great phrase, as I’m sure many people know, that there were “lions who were led by donkeys” in London.

But I think more than that, what emerges in this poetry is we get the romantic works of Rupert Brooke and some of the others. The mixed work of romantic and unromantic of Kipling, and then of course the Wilfred Owen, which is a very different perspective, you know, which is savagely critical. Which shows the utter disregard for human life, and the utter disregard by the rulers for the ruled, where life is barely worth half a penny. And I think that’s what, so the shift in writing about war and war poetry, we go back to Homer and the “Odyssey,” and then look at all, you know, different, over the centuries. It’s a radical shift. It’s nothing heroic, nothing idealistic. The complete opposite. It’s just sheer brutal carnage. Okay, what I’d like to do is, this is from “All Quiet On The Western Front.” From this is a poster from the movie made of Remarque, forgive my translation, Remarque’s book published in 1928. It’s a remarkable film, and the movie was made so many decades ago, but it’s an incredible war film. It’s really, you know, it’s one of the all time greats, I think. And this is Dylan talking about, I’m going to get his, the moment we talked little bit in the beginning, this is his Nobel Prize lecture.

CLIP BEGINS

• [Bob] When I received the Nobel Prize for literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature. I wanted to reflect on it, and see where the connection was. I’m going to try to articulate that to you, and most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but I hope what I say will be worthwhile, and purposeful. If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I’d have to start with Buddy Holly.

• He started with Buddy Holly but I like his word, purposeful. That he was trying to really to see what was purposeful in this. And he, you know, and he talks about the three great pieces of literature, “Moby Dick,” Homer’s “Odyssey,” and “All Quiet On The Western Front.” And I want to just play the section where he only talks about “All Quiet On The Western Front.

• [Bob] Implies would work its way into more than a few of my songs. "All Quiet On The Western Front was another book that did. "All Quiet On The Western Front is a horror story. This is a book where you lose your childhood, your faith in a meaningful world, and you’re concerned for individuals. You’re stuck in a nightmare, sucked up into a mysterious whirlpool of death and pain. You’re defending yourself from elimination. You’re being wiped off the face of the map. Once upon a time you were an innocent youth with big dreams about being a concert pianist. Once you loved life and the world, and now you’re shooting it to pieces. Day after day, the hornets bite you, and worms lap your blood. You’re a cornered animal. You don’t fit anywhere. The falling rain is monotonous. There’s endless assaults, poison gas, nerve gas, morphine, burning streams of gasoline, scavenging, and scabbing for food, influenza, typhus, dysentery. Life is breaking down all around you, and the shells are whistling. This is the lower region of hell. Mud, barbed wire, rat-filled trenches, rats eating the intestines of dead men, trenches filled with filth, excrement. Someone shouts, "Hey, you there. Stand and fight.” Who knows how long this mess will go on? Warfare has no limits. You’re being annihilated, and that leg of yours is bleeding too much. You killed a man yesterday, and you spoke to his corpse. You told him after this is over, you’ll spend the rest of your life looking after his family. Who’s profiting here? The leaders and the generals gain fame, and many other profit financially. But you’re doing the dirty work. One of your comrades says, “Wait a minute, where are you going?” And you say, “Leave me alone. I’ll be back in a minute.” Then you walk out into the woods of death, hunting for a piece of sausage. You can’t see how anybody in civilian life has any kind of purpose at all. All their worries, all their desires, you can’t comprehend it.

More machine guns rattle, more parts of bodies hanging from wires, more pieces of arms and legs and skulls where butterflies perch on teeth. More hideous wounds, pus coming out of every pore, lung wounds, wounds too big for the body, gas-blowing cadavers, and dead bodies making retching noises. Death is everywhere. Nothing else is possible. Someone will kill you, and use your dead body for target practise. Boots too, they’re your prize possession, but soon they’ll be on somebody else’s feet. There’s Froggies coming through the trees, merciless bastards. Your shells are running out. “It’s not fair to come at us again so soon,” you say. One of your companions is laying in the dirt, and you want to take ‘em to the field hospital. Someone else says, “You might save yourself a trip.” “What do you mean?” “Turn 'em over? You’ll see what I mean.” You wait to hear the news. You don’t understand why the war isn’t over. The army is so that they’re drafting young boys who are of little military use, but they’re drafting them anyway because they’re running out of men. Sickness and humiliation have broken your heart. You were betrayed by your parents, your school masters, your ministers, and even your own government. The general with the slowly smoked cigar betrayed you too. Turned you into a thug and a murderer. If you could, you’d put a bullet in his face, the commander as well. You fantasise that if you had the money, you’d put up a reward for any man who would take his life by any means necessary. And if he should lose his life by doing that, then let the money go to his heirs. The colonel too, with his caviar and his coffee, he’s another one. Spends all his time in the officer’s brothel. You’d like to see him stone dead too. More Tommies and Johnnies with their whack fo’ me daddy-o, and their whiskey in the jars.

You’ll kill 20 of them, and 20 more will spring up in their place. It just stinks in your nostrils. You’ve come to despise that older generation that set you out into this madness, into this torture chamber. All around you, your comrades are dying. Dying from abdominal wounds, double amputations, shattered hip bones. And you think, “I’m only 20 years old, but I’m capable of killing anybody, even my father if he came at me.” Yesterday, you tried to save a wounded messenger dog, and somebody shouted, “Don’t be a fool.” One Froggie is laying gurgling at your feet. You stuck him with a dagger in his stomach, but the man still lives. You know, you should finish a job, but you can’t. You’re on the real iron cross, and a Roman soldier’s putting a sponge of vinegar to your lips. Months pass by, you go home on leave. You can’t communicate with your father. He said, “You’d be a coward if you don’t enlist.” Your mother too. On your way back out the door she says, “You be careful of those French girls now.” More madness. You fight for a week or a month, and you gain 10 yards, and then the next month it gets taken back. All that culture from 1,000 years ago, that philosophy, that wisdom, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, what happened to it? It should have prevented this. Your thoughts turned homeward. And once again, you’re a school boy walking through the tall, poplar trees. It’s a pleasant memory. More bombs dropping on you from blimps. You got to get it together now.

You can’t even look at anybody for fear of some miscalculable thing that might happen. The common grave. There are no other possibilities. Then you notice the cherry blossoms, and you see that nature is unaffected by all this. Poplar trees, the red butterflies, the fragile beauty of flowers, the sun. You see how nature is indifferent to it all. All the violence and suffering of mankind. Nature doesn’t even notice it. You’re so alone that a piece of shrapnel hits the side of your head, and you’re dead. You’ve been ruled out, crossed out. You’ve been exterminated. down and closed it up. I never wanted to read another war novel again, and I never did. Charlie Poole from North Carolina had a song that connected to all this. It’s called, you “Ain’t Talkin’ To Me.” And the lyrics go like this. “I saw a sign in the window walking uptown one day. Join the Army and see the world is what it had to say. You’ll see exciting places with a jolly crew. You’ll meet interesting people, and learn to kill them too. Oh, you ain’t talkin’ to me, you ain’t talkin’ to me. I may be crazy, and all that, but I got good sense you see. You ain’t talkin’ to me. You ain’t talkin’ to me. Killing with a gun don’t sound like fun. You ain’t talkin’ to me. The "Odyssey” is a great book whose themes have worked its way into the ballads of lot of songwriters, “Homeward Bound,” “Green, Green Grass Of Home,” “Home On The Range,” and my songs as well. The “Odyssey” is a strange adventurous tale of a grown man trying to get home after fighting in a war. He’s on that.

CLIP ENDS

• So I want you to focus on this at the beginning because I think without needing to show any film clips, the way Dylan writes, of course, as we all know, is so visceral, so poetic, and he’s never scared to go to the absolute roots, not only of the horror, but the emotional, and the physical and the, in a sense, painting a quick portrait. You know, he talks about 1,000 years ago, Plato, Aristotle, you know, what’s all that led to? Where’s it all gone? You know, the innocence of childhood, over. You get the feeling of that shattered, utterly broken spirit. Ultimately broken of the enlightenment, and the dreams and of the hopes, one can imagine, in this absolute slaughterhouse of nearly 20 million, mostly soldiers, in just over four years of war. So I think he really captures the utter shattering, and breaking of so many things that have gone before in the greatest trauma of, for me, the greatest trauma of history up until that point, obviously pre Second World War. One has to really get a grip of that, to get a sense of, this is a massive collective global trauma, which changes everything. Changes society, perceptions. It’s the end of epochs of history, and many, many other things for Europe, and for the world, I would argue. And I think it’s so vital to see its position in history. Together with the, you know, the majestic brilliance of what came after, the Roaring Twenties, Jazz, Freud, you know, and so many others, Einstein, et cetera. You know, so many other remarkable innovations.

In medicine, in technology, in flight, car, you know, all of this has to be seen together, always. The beauty with the curse. But I think Dylan captures it for me in his remarkable language. And he’s always got that slightly ironic tone. Paul Simon said he could never sing with Dylan, because he’s got a tone of innocence, of youth, Paul Simon. Whereas Dylan has the ironic, slightly detached, look-you-in-the-eye tone, in his voice, the quality of his voice, and that their tones would always clash. And that’s, they would talk about it. I mean, it’s why they never sang together. Coming back to this piece. And then he talks about Homer as a story about a guy going to war. And it’s an adventure, it’s heroic. It’s an entirely different story. And of course, courage and, and cunning in the best sense of the word, cunning. That is needed by Odysseus in order to get back after the Trojan War. So coming back to the First World War, we have the end of the Hapsburgs. We have the early 20th century. We have the age of… we have an incredibly, incredible, huge, euphoric, almost, explosion of nationalism at the early part of the war, well just before the war, and in the early few months of it. You know, with millions from all over Europe and the world flocking to fight. Thinking, of course, as we all know, it’ll over by Christmas. In our age of nationalism, of emerging nationalism in our times, I’m not saying it’s got anything to do with those times, it’s totally different historically, and causal, the causes are totally different. But the mere idea of rise of nationalism, I think is similar.

And together with that is a groomed ignorance of democracy. World War I also changed art forever. Not only surrealism, expressionism, coming in art, but literature and the writing of words. The aesthetics of trauma. And I don’t only mean it in a psychoanalytic sense. I mean it in a collective, profound, societal sense. That becomes so fundamental. And the mass psychosis of masses in a way, in groups. These things becoming, together with the individual perspective of the ordinary, the bottom of the rank and file soldier, writing. Wilfred Owen, and you know, many of the others, they were just ordinary privates, or ordinary or very low officers. They are taking, grasping the nettle, and they’re writing. The poetry is not left to those who have access to the fruits of a society only. These are the guys in the trenches, in the horror of it who are producing the work mostly. It’s the end of the flowery, not always, but the flowery legacy of Victorian language, blown apart. It’s replaced by a kind of a minimalist, a muscular, a wild and fragile, almost shell-shocked sense of civilization, and literary style. We know all the images of some of the great painters, and the etchings of, with nightmarish visions of society. We have the fiction of Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Dos Passos. The etchings of George Grosz, Otto Dix. As I said, you know, this the sense of the brutality.

And, in the beginning of the war, the seductive, the beginnings of a seductive mass psychosis, to use a contemporary phrase. We get an understanding of the use of real propaganda, and technology manipulated for that, and grandiose nationalism. Not only nationalism, but a nationalism for the early part of the 20th century, which I believe is feeding all the way through. Grandiosity of nationalism, but done using technology of the time. An extreme cynicism towards the ruling classes, the war planners, the profiteers. And an art which is very direct, gritty. It’s not embroidered language, not embroidered with rhetoric, and overuse of euphemism. Hemingway wrote in, “A Farewell To Arms,” “Abstract words such as, glory, honour, courage, or hallow were obscene, besides the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments, and the dates.” He gets it, I think. You’re able to understand the aesthetic that emerged in literature after this massive historical event. There’s an interesting book by a guy Paul Fussell called, “The Great War And Modern Memory.” And he argues that the rise of the ironic voice in literature really takes centre stage, and becomes a very dominant approach to a modern understanding, of how do you write about memory? In this case, memory of the First World War. And the rise of the ironic voice which takes centre stage, which has some irony, some cynicism, maybe moments of wit. And underneath the irony is the rage, and the fear. We obviously all know the remarkable technology, and machinery invented supposedly to serve humanity, but might also wipe it out.

We have the beginnings of science fiction in a way, where the perception of a dystopia replaces the notion of possible, hoped for utopia. What’s important is that when the war broke out in 1949, many artists were amongst the biggest cheerleaders, in Britain, France, Germany and Italy in particular, the main powers if you like, and Austria-Hungarian Empire. This is what Thomas Mann wrote in 1914. “War!,” exclamation mark. “We felt purified, liberated, we felt an enormous hope. War!” Took years before he renounced it, his support for the war. And then later with his, with his great novels, “Magic Mountain”, “Dr. Faustus.” That really shows for me, Europe gripped by this mass psychosis. Arnold Schoenberg wrote, ‘cause he enlisted, and well fought in the wars, I’m sure many people know. “When the First World War began, I was proud to be called to arms as a soldier. I did my whole duty enthusiastically, as a true believer in the house of Habsburg, in its wisdom of 800 years in the act of government, and in the consistency of a monarch’s lifetime as compared with a short lifetime of a republic.” And then Schoenberg also wrote in a letter, “Now comes the reckoning. Now we will throw these mediocre kitschmongers into slavery, and teach them to venerate the German spirit, and to worship the German God.” That’s an extraordinary phrase. And of course, you know, what he wrote afterwards in the music he’d compose is a complete reaction. This is right at the beginning of the war, 1914. I’m just trying to give some examples of some of the artistic figures, and how they were part of the cheerleading in the beginning.

And not only them but many, you know, the populations, and the leaders, et cetera,. Not having a real clue what was to come. Okay, I, we obviously know of, you know, going back in history war, I’m not going to go into King David, the Trojan War, you know, “The Book of Psalms,” and many others, but the Trojan War, the “Iliad,” and the “Odyssey.” It’s interesting, you know, that Homer actually was a blind poet who came from a region, which in modern day Turkey, anyway, and then Emerson’s 1837 poem “Concord Hymn,” which has that famous line, “They fired the shot that was heard around the world.” The Crimean war of the 19th century, Tennyson, “The Charge Of The Light Brigade,” heroically alluring despite the utter futility of the carnage in the charge. Interestingly, Kipling’s poem, 40 years later, “The Last Of The Light Brigade.” It’s in 1891, which shows the terrible hardships that the aged veterans of the Crimean War suffered 'cause they had no support. And he tried to lobby for support from the British government for the ageing wounded, injured victims. Interesting what Kipling wrote of the Boer War. Some of his poetry’s fascinating, because it’s, you know, the great phrase, “Strike England and strike home.” But he’s got a mixed attitude about killing, you know, the person just, you know, a couple of hundred yards away. So anyway, that’s just a little bit of a brief context if you like, and a bit about the past. I want to move on directly now into some of this First World War poetry. This is a guy, Isaac Rosenberg. You can see he died very young, in the last year of the war. And he’s Jewish. Lithuanian Jewish family who moved to Britain. In 1897 they lived in the East End of London. He had chronic bronchitis. And interestingly he went to South Africa in the beginning of 1914. He was hoping that the warm weather in Cape Town would cure him.

And that’s where his sister Mina lived, in Cape Town. He started to feel better, and then he returned to Britain to try and find a job. He returns to Britain in early 1915. To look for a job as an artist 'cause he wants to be an artist. This is a self-portrait of him on the left, which is in the National Portrait Gallery, and in the Tate. And he then, he couldn’t find a job as an artist. So he joined the British Army to fight in the war, because he needed the money, and the job. And he sent half his salary every month to his mother. He wrote in a letter, “I never joined the army for patriotic reasons.” Needed a job. He applies to transfer to one of the all-Jewish battalions, in what was then historically known as the Mesopotamian area. That documentation’s lost. Anyway, in 1819, in April, he’s killed on the Western Front. These self-portraits, as I said, hang, are in the Tate and in the National Portrait Gallery. In 1985, Rosenberg was amongst the 16 war poets who were commemorated on a stone in Westminster Abbey’s Poet Corner. And the inscription on the stone is by the great Wilfred Owen. And it reads, “My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.” It’s an amazing phrase, which I’ve always loved, of Wilfred Owen’s. And you can see it there in Westminster Abbey. Then Rosenberg wrote, in 1916 in a letter, “I’m determined that this war with all its power for devastation, utter brutality, shall not master my poetry. That is, if I’m lucky enough to maybe come through it all right.” He wrote that in 1916, two years later, dead. It’s just, it’s fascinating, and I want to show one of his poems here very briefly. “Break Of Day.” This is an extract from the poem. “A live thing leaps at my hand. A queer sardonic rat.” These are the rats in the trenches. “Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew your cosmopolitan sympathies. Now you have touched this English hand you will no doubt do the same to a German. Soon, no doubt, if it’d be your pleasure to cross the sleeping green between. It seems you inwardly grin as you pass.”

It’s a rat on his hand that he’s talking about, you know, coming to touch the English hand of his, you’ll do the same to a German. And you have an inwardly grin as you pass from the German, from the British line to the German line across the green. And I love this phrase, “They would shoot you if they knew your cosmopolitan sympathies.” He gets it in that line. The hope to get away from nationalism, into a cosmopolitan sense of the human mind, and human society. And that endless conflict between an inward-looking nationalism, and an outward looking cosmopolitan. Which is part of the nationalism, I think in the age of nationalism we are in today. I want to go on to, here. This is Franz Janowitz. Now he was German, and he fought on the side of the Germans, and Jewish. As you can see, dies very young. You know, 1917, the year before the end of the war. And his father had a factory, and he was called up for the army, et cetera. Now, what’s interesting about Janowitz is that he fought in the Eastern Front against the Imperial Russian army. And in 1917 he died of terrible wounds, terrible descriptions of the agony of his death. And then two years after his death, his war poems, “Out Of The Earth And Other Poems,” was published in Munich. He was born in the town, and I’m going to pronounce it badly, of Podĕbrad on the Elbe, and in the then Astro-Hungarian empire. He was the youngest of four children. What’s interesting is that Janowitz went to school in Prague. There he was part of the Prague literary scene, and he was good friends with Max Brod, Franz Werfel, Franz Kafka, and many of the other German-speaking writers, poets, literary figures of the Prague, shall we call it the Kafka Circle, or the Brod Circle. He knew them all.

In fact, Max Brod is the one who publishes his poems a couple of years after his death. So he has a fascinating life, and he’s fighting on the German side. He then, he had gone to university, to Leipzig University to study chemistry. But then he went to Vienna, to the university to study philosophy. And of course he’s called up in 1914 after two semesters studying in Vienna. And he’s in the German army, and he’s made an officer. And I want to just read briefly, this is also an extract from one of his poems. He wrote quite a few. “One day is, one day has gone, does anyone see around it? The world remains old and dumb. One day was, one day was given, who rose from the grave? With blind eyes and stony mouth to stare down God. One day will, one day will come. Who will recognise the daily guest when his old face suddenly speaks with his iron lips?” I love some of the words. You get, you know, with him and Rosenberg, this youthful sense of, they know that their life is pretty much going to be over. They’re writing almost in desperation, is a rage. But they’re trying in a youthful way of poetry and language to find the words to express what they’re feeling as ordinary soldiers. You know, in this massive terrible war. “With blind eyes and stony mouth to stare down God.” It’s an amazing phrase, for me. Simple but powerful. And then, “When his old face,” is a time, is a death. Who’s the daily guest? Could be either. “Speaks with iron lips.” It’s an unforgettable little image. You can see the beginnings of these guys, Rosenberg and Janowitz, the beginnings of really trying, God knows what could have happened if they had survived, in terms of writing poetry, and where they might have gone to. These are just a few of the many, many poets.

As Hemingway said, most of the literature was poetry. And it’s interesting that it comes from the poets, and these are just two. One Jewish on the English side, one Jewish on the German side. But we get back to this idea of the end of the flowery language of the late Victorian era. And we’re down to gritty realism, but it’s infused. There is a certain a yearning, a feeling of thinking, and trying to imagine hoping, but knowing it’s pretty hopeless. But they’re trying to find their words. The language, is the words are very one or two syllables. It’s a massive change in, you know, language, which is celebrating big words, many syllables, all the rest of it. Cuts to the chase. There’s a harsh reality here. You know, you can almost feel this writing from the trenches. Okay? I find these guys endlessly fascinating when you look at their work. One of the pieces that everybody knows very well, “In Flanders Fields,” John McRae. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow between the crosses, row on row, that mark our place. And in the sky, the larks still bravely singing, fly. Scarce heard amidst the guns below. We are the dead. Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow. Loved and were loved, and now we lie in Flanders fields.” So one of the great phrases of the war that we know, but again, we get that sense of almost very simple language, brief poems put together in very accessible, immediate, direct words. Like anybody can communicate. Anybody can get, and understand. It’s a huge change from Victorian poetry, and many, many of the writings that have gone before.

Not only in England, but in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. It’s a massive literary change, an artistic change, which is reflecting a shattered, brutalised, traumatic mindset of these very, very young, as Dylan said, 20 years old, 21, 22. You know, trying to find a way to express their feelings and caught up in this situation. So the perception of war through literature is utterly different to an adventurous, heroic story of Homer’s “Odyssey.” I love Homer’s “Odyssey,” and the “Iliad”, but nevertheless, we have to be honest about it, and look at totally different to Tennyson, to “Charge Of The Light Brigade.” You know, “Into the valley of Death they thundered.” You know, “On with the six hundred,” and, you know, you get this charge, and the horses, and there’s this alluring, seductive, romantic. We’re going to charge even though we’re going to die, you know, and of that poetry. Okay, we come to the great Wilfred Owen. Passed a week before Armistice is signed. For me the greatest poet of all, and I’m sure everybody has studied, you know, his poetry. But nevertheless, we cannot talk about First World War poetry without Wilfred Owen obviously. For me, one of the great poets of all time. “Dulce et Decorum Est,” we all know it. I’m not going to read everything, but just some extracts to try and get a sense of what he’s doing with language, and poetry to capture the zeitgeist. “Bent double like old beggars under sacks.” Look at that opening line. There’s hardly a poem up, until this year period, with that kind of an opening. It goes straight to the call. You know, it’s almost, it’s a slight reminder perhaps of a bit of William Blake, you know, dark satanic Mills, and so on. But Blake is even a bit more, finding a sensuality in the language. This is just direct. “Bent double like old beggars under sacks.” These are the soldiers, who are 20 years old.

They’re fit, they’re strong. “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge. Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs. And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots. But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame or all blind, drunk with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots of gas shells dropping softly behind. Gas! Gas” Quick boys! An ecstasy of fumbling.“ Look at that phrase. "Gas! Gas! Quick boys.” 20 year olds, we can imagine. 19 year olds grabbing their masks, the gas coming. “An ecstasy of fumbling.” Extraordinary play of language there. “Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time. But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, and floundering like a man in fire or lime. Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.” The green of vomit and horror, you know, of fluids from the human body. “In all my dreams before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace behind the waggon that we flung him in, and watch the white eyes writhing in his face. His hanging face like a devil’s sick of sin. If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs. Obscene as cancer.” It’s the obscene word again that Hemingway uses. You get it quite often with these writers of the First World War, the word, obscene. And to imagine it, if we can. Imagine going back in time to 1916, 17, 18, and the word obscene. It’s got a far more powerful connotation than it has today.

Moral, historical, philosophical. As Dylan says, what’s happened to the 2,000 years, Plato, Aristotle, that. The obscene is used often. “Obscene is cancer, bitter as the cud. Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues. My friend, you would not tell with such high zest of children ardent for some desperate glory. The old lie, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” As we all know, the translation from the Roman poet, Horace. “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” One of the most remarkable poems for me ever written. And he captures for me, not only the zeitgeist, but the total shift in war poetry, in writing about war, and in the First World War, and how it shattered the enlightenment, how it gave rise to a whole different pathway on modernism. And so much of what was to come in poetry, in Western civilization, and how much, so many things have changed. Because if that changes from Horace of the Roman empire, “Sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” 180 degree, total opposite. That’s a massive change. Not only in the writing about poetry, but the very perception of what war is, and what war will accomplish, and why go to war if you’re 19 or 20? And I love the way he writes it, “ My friend.” He tries to come in from the other perspective now. Not only his soldier perspective, thinking of a friend. “You would not tell with such high zest.” It’s a classic technique that poets use, of, you know, you may think John Lennon’s, “Imagine.” “You may think I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” Where they project into an imagined other, who may be critical of them. “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest,” You, the friend who does. “To children ardent for some desperate glory.” I love it. “To children ardent for some desperate glory.” It sums up so much of childhoods that Dylan mentioned at the beginning.

You know, it’s the end of childhood. “Desperate glory.” Young life is ahead, glory, ambition, hope, whatever kind. But this is the lie that is told. And that lie in one phrase is symbolic of so many of the other lies around war, and around what is civilization, what is modernity? All of these things that have so savagely changed. The “Anthem For Doomed Youth,” also by Wilfred Owen. We all know it, and the great phrase at the beginning. “What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?” In one sentence, he just gets it. This is the direct, gritty, realism that he brought, that he was massively influenced by Siegfried Sassoon. 'Cause you know, Wilfred Owen suffered from terrible shell-shock and he was injured, and was sent to Edinburgh. And that’s where he met his great mentor, the poet Siegfried Sassoon. And they had fantastic conversations, and the older Sassoon influenced, and helped his poetry, and gave him the title 'cause the original title was just “Doomed Youth,” and Sassoon suggests adding the word “anthem”. Anyway, the influence of Sassoon is to give him the confidence to go with the gritty hard reality of the trenches of the war. And, but combine it with this incredible rigour with these, the visceral language from the ordinary soldier’s perspective. Not the leader, not even the writer, or you know, the visitor journalist writer, but the more Hemingway figure, but the actual soldier himself. “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them. No prayers nor bells. Nor any voice of mourning, save the choirs. The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells.” Can never forget that line. “The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells.” And to go on, “What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.” And then it goes on the poem. Okay? I wanted you to choose just those two, which everybody knows, but I think are still so resonant, and cannot, you know, I think need to be read every now, and again quite often. Going back to Wilfred Owen he actually studied botany, and then gave it up at university, and went at studied at old English, at the suggestion of one of his professors. He was raised as an Anglican, and quite devout. A devout believer. And then of course got a very quick disillusionment with the church obviously. He taught English and French in Bordeaux. It’s interesting. He lived in France. When he was enlisted in 1915, he described his platoon as “expressionless lumps.” And what I said, when he had the shell-shock, and he went to Edinburgh for treatment as quite a lot of others did. And the first beginning, as we all know, of so-called post-traumatic stress syndrome called shell-shock at the time and so on. He was awarded the military cross. Now that’s important. It was important for Wilfred Owen to also be recognised by society as a courageous soldier.

He led a couple of units of the second Manchester company in attacks. Go over the top into the machine gun fire. He was killed on the 4th of November, 1918, exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice. One week, seven days. And the day that, and his mother was sent the telegram that he died, and she got it on the day that the Armistice was signed. Just to mention before going on to, this is a picture obviously of the very young Sassoon. Sassoon lives entirely different life, totally different. Dying in 1967. Couple of his phrases, from Sassoon. I’m not going to read the whole poems. “But death replied, I choose him. So he went, and there was silence in the summer night.” And then another one of, this is the phrase that I think I love the most of Siegfried Sassoon’s. It’s so simple. “And how at last he died, I know that he is lost among the stars. He was blown to small bits, and no one seemed to care except that lonely woman with white hair. He was blown to bits. And no one seemed to care except that lonely woman with white hair.” It’s just a mother, son relationship captured in two lines of, for me, unforgettable image. Benjamin Britten, as we all know it, incorporated eight of Wilfred Owen’s poems into his, his composition, “War Requiem.” In France, there was Apollinaire. There was Blaise Cendrars. Forgive my pronunciation. In Italy, there was D'Annunzio, forgive my translation. Germany, there was also George Trakl, August Stramm. These were other poets writing, you know, the times as well. Interestingly, George Trakl, who was killed in 1914, the age of 24, and he worked in the field hospital, and he worked with the so-called, at the time it was called the, in Germany, one of the phrases was the mentally collapsed. He tried to shoot himself to escape the screams of the wounded in the hospital. And he, a couple of his buddies got, saved him just before.

But then he was sent to an asylum, a mental asylum, where he took an overdose of cocaine. Then there’s another guy, Stramm, who also wrote from the German war poetry. He hated the war. You read some of his poems. It’s vitriolic in its hatred of the war, and what all these kids are going through. And he writes in a letter in 1915 to his parents, “I stand unsteady without a foundation. That is what our world has become, unsteady with no foundation. We are numb in the grimace of just our will, and stubbornness, but we are numb. Suddenly life and death are one. Death and the nightingale, are one. Fighting and living, fighting and laughing are one. They go together, swim like the sun and whirlpool. Only time goes forward. We don’t.” These are all young guys, young poets writing in their late teens, early twenties, thrown into this maelstrom, trying to find words. If we imagine ourselves at that age, thrown into that stage, and trying to find words to get a sense of what on earth has happened. They’re brought up with all the civilization, in the Dylan phrase, the 1,000 years of Plato, Aristotle. You know, what’s happened to it all? I mean in Schoenberg, 800 years, “I trusted the Habsburg and the monarchy,” et cetera. They imbued with all of that, and it gets shattered in a couple of moments. So quick and so brief. It’s quite extraordinary. And the speed with which it happened. And then as a big contrast, of course we get Rupert Brooke. Killed in 1915, dies very young as well. Very different kind of poet. And it’s important to show, which you all know, “The Soldier.” “If I should die, think only this of me. That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.

There shall be in 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. A pulse gives 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.” The word England is the obvious one, which is repeated so often. It’s, you know, “Think only this of me, that in some corner of foreign field that is forever England.” We get the complete, patriotic, romantic opposite. The heroic. Compared to the absolute disgust, and despair of the unheroic attitude. And it’s important, I’m not judging, it’s important to look at the contrast in not only war poetry, but in these very young guys writing at the time, trying to make sense of so much senselessness. Going in a way which is pretty traditional of great, heroic, romantic poetry, and writing in as good and, “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” “Think only this of me,” you know, the nationalism, and the spirit of it, and the belief in it as a primary value. It’s worth it. 19, 20, 24, you know, for your life. This is “For The Fallen” by Robert Laurence Binyon, which is also patriotic. “With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, fallen in the cause of the free. There is music in the midst of desolation, and a glory that shines upon our tears. The glory that shines upon our tears. They went with songs to the battle, they were young, straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end. They fell with their faces to the foe.” You get that very different sense of rhythm in the language. And it’s also pretty trying to cut to the bare bones of it, but trying to find this patriotic fervour, and the belief in it that there is a reason to die for it, the cause. We know all that the complicated possible causes in a sense of the First World War. So it’s important to get all these different perspectives as captured by these poets. And here of course, you know, this is almost, you can feel the march almost, the proud patriotism. “They were staunch to the end. They went with songs to the battle, they were…” you know, and so on. It’s a bit reminiscent of Tennyson, “Charge Of The Light Brigade.” This is “A Dead Boche” by Robert Graves. “To you who’d read my songs of War, and only hear of blood and fame. I’ll say, you’ve heard it said before, 'War’s hell!’ And if you doubt the same, today I found in Mametz’s Wood, a certain cure for lust of blood.” For me it’s got that sense of that ironic tone that I mentioned earlier. And I think you get it inside the anger of Wilfred Owen as well. There’s a hint of that ironic that is starting to emerge, in so much of the literature to come over the 20th century, into our times. And if I may end with jumping way past, the Second World War into the great Bertolt Brecht who obviously wrote many poems about the Second World War, and many, many other poems and plays. And it’s what I mentioned at the beginning in the context of colonialism as and the context of nationalism, sorry, of nationalism. And although it’s totally different in our times obviously, the way it is being expressed, and experienced, it’s as ancient as the Trojan War, as ancient as the Greeks, Romans, or whoever.

But when it starts to stir, we can see, we know what’s coming next in the society, which we’re all part of. The great phrase from Brecht. “This was the thing that nearly had us mastered. Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat you men! Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” Is he talking about Hitler? Is he talking about Germany? Is he talking about nationalism or a mixture of all of them? It’s open to interpretation. “But don’t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men! Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” You know, the echoes for our times, for me, are becoming more, and more sort of obvious in a way. And I’m not just talking about the Ukraine by the way, you know, but a much, much broader thing. What I love as well with Brecht is that he follows the tradition of Wilfred Owen, of Rosenberg, of Janowitz and all the others. This very direct use of language. Forget the flowery stuff, forget the embroidered rhetoric, forget the beautiful crafted, you know, three, four syllable words, all of that. It’s cut to the chase, it’s direct, it’s gritty, it’s realism. But the poetry is in how to create the image with as minimal words as possible. A total change in literature and poetry, for me, of what had gone before in certainly in the Victorian era before. Okay, I’ll stop there and thank you very much.

• [Lauren] David, did you want to take any questions? We’ve got a few if you have time.

• Yeah, sure with pleasure.

Q&A and Comments:

From Devra. Thank you for your comment. Okay, I appreciate. That’s very nice.

Okay, Hannah. Dylan’s second choice. Not sure what you mean. He spoke about some of the Buddy Holly, and some of the musicians that influenced him. And then the three books that influenced him in that lecture. The “Moby Dick,” Homer’s “Odyssey” as an adventure war poem and “All Quiet On The Western Front” Woman and war, you heard it. Absolutely. I mean, you know, there’s shone a few. There’s quite a few writers, and interestingly they wrote from the home front. They were writing in England saying goodbye to their young teenage boyfriends or fiances who were going off. Or when they heard they heard they’d been killed, or who’d gone to work. And that’s another whole area which would need another whole session at least. But it’s a great idea.

Q: Tom, what do you make to Shakespeare’s take on Troy, in “Troilus and Cressida”?

A: Well it’s fascinating. That’s another whole lecture, but you know, fantastic, what Shakespeare does there as well.

Esther, send this to Putin and to our generals . Yeah, well I think that these guys should have to read it every day, and they should have to read what the generals did when they had tea on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Knowing that there’d be 20,000 dead, and over 50,000 casualties just from the one side, from the English side in London. And they would discuss at tea, lunchtime, and afternoon tea, you know, how the figures had fitted. Huge change to the planning of D-Day, and the planning of the war in the Second World War where the numbers of casualties was huge, you know, and Eisenhower was fundamental in total, but Eisenhower in particular in leading that way of thinking.

Q: Elliot, how does Dylan qualify?

A: He’s not a world war poet. Absolutely. His English diction is very sloppy. Yeah, maybe he was a bit stoned when he wrote this, and when he read it. But I’m a great fan of Dylan’s. I mean, this guy’s done over 45 albums. The amount that he has produced is extraordinary. And I think his sheer contribution to poetry, to music, to literature, to trying to get a grasp of the consciousness of our age, not only war poetry. And it’s fascinating to me that he would spend seven, eight minutes of this Nobel lecture talking about one novel, which is the great novel of the First World War.

Dennis, my personal all time favourite is Wilfred Owen. “Dulce et Decorum est.” Absolutely. Yep.

The anger, the big lie. Carol. Thank you, so painful and yet we go war mongering. Well, I mean, I think we have to, for me, and one of the reasons I, you know, I study military history an enormous amount, I think it’s, you know, we are the only species who really engage in war, aren’t we? I mean, other species, you know, if they’re hungry, or if they feel threatened in their little territory, or their little turf, you know, the couple of yards of bush or whatever. But, you know, we are the only species that go to war to kill as many for different, all sorts of reasons. So it’s very much part of the human condition. And I don’t think we can deny it for a second.

There’s a fantastic phrase by Milan Kundera about Kafka, and that Kafka saw the fantastical dramatic possibilities in the office of war, hate, love, jealousy, conformity, kindness, compassion, all the human emotions played out. included war. Kundera’s phrase, in the fantastical situation of the banal, ordinary, bureaucratic office. So it’s a fascinating link for me of, you know, one doesn’t only have to be in the great battlefields, but one can see it in, through Milan Kundera’s eyes, that Kafka gets it in a totally different context, in a very contemporary way.

Q: Do you think war and subsequent creation are, as you suggest, linked by more than irony, perhaps necessity?

A: Yes. The only word use of irony came from that one very interesting book where the guy, the scholar, argues that it’s mainly, that the ironic in literature really took centre stage for much for a lot of the 20th century. You get it in Beckett, “Waiting For Godot” and so many others. The ironic attitude to life has always been obviously in all literature, but this guy anyway argues, and it’s an interesting idea, that the ironic voice became very central in literature, after the war.

Q: Martin, did Janowitz write in English?

A: No, German. These are all translations. And Max Brod published it, obviously in German.

Stan, war, Putin’s war.

Okay, yep. We can talk about that for the next few hours. Margaret, “In Flanders Fields” reminds me of “The Fallen” by Laurence Binyon, yes.

The loss of young life. Okay, absolutely. “They shall not grow old as we, that are left to grow old.” Absolutely. That’s the other great Binyon poem.

Esther, the Jewish poet, Shaul Tchernichovsky, that has also reflected times of war. Simple but intense. same as and Abraham Benisch, thank you for that. Paul, thank you for your comments.

Margaret, I don’t know the poetry of J. C. Squire, no. It’d be interesting to find out.

Judith, been reminded of my love of poetry. Thank you Judith. Sheila, thank you for your kind comment. Gail, thanks so much and hope you’re well in Joburg. Vera Brittain “Testament of Youth.” She quotes some amazing poetry by her fiance, Roland Leighton. Yes. Vera Brittain, very interesting. Susan, thank you. Okay, for your kind comment.

Q: Joan, why are there no young poets today?

A: Well, we can go into a whole lot of that, and how they are, I think the mental police, you know, from the right, and from the left are censoring in terrible ways. Paula, thank you.

Okay, thanks for your kind comments. Josie, Pat Barker’s trilogy.

Q: Yep. Okay, was Siegfried Sassoon, post World War I works affected?

A: Yeah, I think they all were affected by the war. Not necessarily that Sassoon wrote all the poems only about war afterwards. I mean, he lived into the late ‘60s, but absolutely affected. Sassoon was actually shot in the head, and it’s one of the reasons why he was in Edinburgh as well. You know, as that a centre of recovery.

Beverly, we learned these poems in Form 1 in King David Linksfield in Joburg. 1969, we were taken to the class to see the film of “Oh What a Lovely War.” Yeah, the fantastic Joan Littlewood play, and workshop production.

Yeah, I think we also studied it at school, if I remember, the Wilfred Owen anyway, in Durban. Marlene, thank you. Lorna, thank you.

Sherry, okay. Europe might be heading to… yeah, well that’s another whole discussion.

Okay. And then Joan, thanks. Yeah, Brecht sums it up. Tony, “Regeneration.” It’s a wonderful novel by Pat Barker. Yes, and in fact there’s a film, “Regeneration,” and there’s a very recent film on Wilfred Owen also, “The Burial.” “The Burying Land,” I think. I’ll check the title. Thanks, Hannah.

Okay, Devoro, Gary, ta. The phrase is, “I stand, unsteady and without foundation.” That’s the phrase from the German poet.

Okay, war is as ancient as testosterone , Sheila. Ukraine. Yep. Everyone. Thank you, Brecht.

Yeah. It’s also could be about antisemitism. I think Brecht is using, you know, poetry as a metaphor for all those things. It could be nationalism, it could be Germany, it could be anti-Semitism, it could be a Hitler, you know, et cetera. I know the music behind the Dylan speech is obscene Tony, I agree, but I couldn’t find one which only showed the Dylan speech without any sound behind. Thanks, Marian. Thanks there, okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Other people, Moana? Okay. Betty. Yeah, William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming.” I was going to, but I thought everybody knows that so well that I focused more, mostly as much as I could on those who’d actually been soldiers in the war. So to get from the ordinary young 19, 20, 22 year old, the ordinary private corporal, very low ranking private soldier. You know, who’s actually in the trench?

Okay, yeah, Sternum was the other. There were a lot of the German poets. And it’s very interesting 'cause one of the first things the Nazis did was ban all those German poets and their poetry, as soon as they got in, in '33. Rosenberg’s poem, “Dead Man’s Dump.” Yep. One of the great lines there as well. Sad and again. Thank you, Marlene Dietrich. Yeah, Irene. Okay, thank you. Iron Maiden. Yeah, that song as well. Margo, A. E. Housman. Yes, he wrote some wonderful poems also. Okay.

A good book, on Diane on woman at war, is “Roses of No Man’s Land” by Lyn MacDonald. Interesting. Thank you. About the nurses on the front line, and it’s non-fiction. Great. Thank you. Okay. I think that’s must be it. Okay.

• [Lauren] Thank you so much, David.

• Yeah, thank you so much again, Lauren. And thank you everybody. I hope you have a good rest of the weekend. And if I may say, it’s poetry, which is always inspiring regardless of the content. Thank you and take care.