{"id":966,"date":"2015-11-11T08:41:15","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T13:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/?p=966"},"modified":"2015-11-11T08:41:57","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T13:41:57","slug":"remembrance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/?p=966","title":{"rendered":"Remembrance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image_pdf\"<\/a>\"image_print\"<\/a><\/div>

The onset of World War I brought into question the very idea of European civilization. Mankind\u2019s ongoing progress<\/a> to a better world appeared no longer pre-ordained. Promises of future peace and plenty were forever broken. Henry James wrote in a letter to Howard Sturgis on August 5, the day after Britain declared war of Germany.<\/p>\n

The plunge of civilization into the abyss of blood and darkness by the wanton fiat of those two infamous autocrats is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we had supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning<\/em> is too tragic for my words. (James, 1920, p 398)<\/p>\n

(The \u201cautocrats\u201d were Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Franz Josef I of Austria.) The complex sentence is typical of James, the master of convoluted qualification. Rudyard Kipling later said the same in fewer words in his Common Form<\/em> for the Epitaphs of the War<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

If any question why we died,
\nTell them, because our fathers lied.<\/p>\n

However, at the beginning of the war, the general population had no such reservations. People rallied to support their King and Empire. Young men thronged enthusiastically to the recruiting centres.<\/p>\n

\"recruitingXb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On looking at photographs of these happy volunteers, Philip Larkin wrote in 1960 a poem called MCMXIV<\/em><\/p>\n

Those long uneven lines
\nStanding as patiently
\nAs if they were stretched outside
\nThe Oval or Villa Park,
\nThe crowns of hats, the sun
\nOn moustached archaic faces
\nGrinning as if it were all
\nAn August Bank Holiday lark;<\/p>\n

And the shut shops, the bleached
\nEstablished names on the sunblinds,
\nThe farthings and sovereigns,
\nAnd dark-clothed children at play
\nCalled after kings and queens,
\nThe tin advertisements
\nFor cocoa and twist, and the pubs
\nWide open all day;<\/p>\n

And the countryside not caring:
\nThe place-names all hazed over
\nWith flowering grasses, and fields
\nShadowing Domesday lines
\nUnder wheat’s restless silence;
\nThe differently-dressed servants
\nWith tiny rooms in huge houses,
\nThe dust behind limousines;<\/p>\n

Never such innocence,
\nNever before or since,
\nAs changed itself to past
\nWithout a word \u2013 the men
\nLeaving the gardens tidy,
\nThe thousands of marriages
\nLasting a little while longer:
\nNever such innocence again.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Larkin-MCMXIV.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

The title gives \u201c1914\u201d in Roman numerals, the way dates are written on the war memorials. The crowds lined up as if for a sporting event \u2013 cricket at the Oval or soccer at Villa Park. The innocence of England went back to medieval times when the country was surveyed for the Domesday Book of 1086. It was a land of simple pleasures, of hot cocoa steaming in a mug and pipe-tobacco sold in a \u201ctwist.\u201d It was a society, where everyone from lord to maid knew their place.<\/p>\n

Over the next four years, everything changed. The pubs that had once been open all day became restricted in their hours so that workers did not become too inebriated to produce munitions. Servants fought alongside their betters and began to wonder about why they were different. In the years that followed the war, the British Empire began slowly to unravel. The war etched itself into modern memory through poetry, photographs, painting and music (Silkin, 1972; Fusell, 1975; Malvern, 2004).<\/p>\n

The bravado of the war’s first months soon ceded to harsh reality. Young men in their thousands marched to their deaths; trenches were dug like graves in the once-fertile land; the instruments and engines of war grew more efficient and terrible; form and sound became incomprehensible in the exploding shells; death came even in the air that soldiers breathed.<\/p>\n

\"tank<\/a><\/p>\n

Siegfried Sassoon described trench warfare in his 1917 poem Attack:<\/em><\/p>\n

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
\nIn the wild purple of the glow’ring sun,
\nSmouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
\nThe menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
\nTanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
\nThe barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
\nWith bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
\nMen jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
\nLines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
\nThey leave their trenches, going over the top,
\nWhile time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
\nAnd hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
\nFlounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Sassoon-Attack.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\"Broodseinde,<\/a>

Broodseinde, 1917<\/p><\/div>\n

Sassoon was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery. He often went out on his own to engage the German lines, and was called \u201cMad Jack\u201d for these near-suicidal exploits. Deeply disillusioned by the conduct of the war and the waste of life, in 1917 he wrote to his commanding officer a letter entitled Finished with the War: A Soldier\u2019s Declaration<\/a><\/em>, and forwarded a copy of this to the press. Rather than prosecuting him for treason, the military authorities sent him to Craiglockhart Hospital to be treated for neurasthenia or \u201cshell shock.\u201d At the hospital, Sassoon met and encouraged another soldier-poet, Wilfred Owen.<\/p>\n

The Great War altered forever the way that we see the world. More than in any previous war, the public was able to see what actually happened from photographs of soldiers in action. These were strictly censored. Nevertheless, the published photographs showed clearly both the isolation of the soldiers and the desolation of the land.<\/p>\n

\"Ypres,<\/a>

Ypres, 1917<\/p><\/div>\n

Paintings no longer portrayed romance and courage but horror and fear. Paul Nash was a war-artist who served with the British Army at Ypres in 1917. He wrote to his wife<\/p>\n

Sunset and sunrise are blasphemous, they are mockeries to man, only the black rain out of the bruised and swollen clouds all though the bitter black night is fit atmosphere in such a land. The rain drives on, the stinking mud becomes more evilly yellow, the shell holes fill up with green-white water, the roads and tracks are covered in inches of slime, the black dying trees ooze and sweat and the shells never cease. They alone plunge overhead, tearing away the rotting tree stumps, breaking the plank roads, striking down horses and mules, annihilating, maiming, maddening, they plunge into the grave which is this land; one huge grave, and cast up on it the poor dead. It is unspeakable, godless, hopeless. I am no longer an artist interested and curious, I am a messenger who will bring back word from the men who are fighting to those who want the war to go on for ever. Feeble, inarticulate, will be my message, but it will have a bitter truth, and may it burn their lousy souls. (quoted by Haycock, 2009, p. 278)<\/p>\n

His impressions formed the basis for his painting The Menin Road: <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Nash,_Paul_-_The_Menin_Road_-_Google_Art_Project\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After the Allies broke through their defences in 2018, Germany sued for peace. Negotiations began in October and the war was finally ended by an armistice between the Allies and Germany signed on November 11 at 5 am in a railway carriage in the forest of Compi\u00e8gne. Hostilities were to cease at 11 am that day \u201cthe eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.\u201d At that time each year since then, we have paused to remember those who died in battle.<\/p>\n

Wilfred Owen was killed in action at the crossing of the Sambre-Oise canal on November 4, a brief week before the war ended. One of his last poems imagined what might happen when he died. The slant rhymes underline the uneasiness of his Strange Meeting<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
\nDown some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
\nThrough granites which titanic wars had groined.
\nYet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
\nToo fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
\nThen, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
\nWith piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
\nLifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
\nAnd by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, \u2013
\nBy his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
\nWith a thousand pains that vision’s face was grained;
\nYet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
\nAnd no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
\n‘Strange friend,’ I said, ‘here is no cause to mourn.’
\n‘None,’ said that other, ‘save the undone years,
\nThe hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
\nWas my life also; I went hunting wild
\nAfter the wildest beauty in the world,
\nWhich lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
\nBut mocks the steady running of the hour,
\nAnd if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
\nFor by my glee might many men have laughed,
\nAnd of my weeping something had been left,
\nWhich must die now. I mean the truth untold,
\nThe pity of war, the pity war distilled.
\nNow men will go content with what we spoiled,
\nOr, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
\nThey will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
\nNone will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
\nCourage was mine, and I had mystery,
\nWisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
\nTo miss the march of this retreating world
\nInto vain citadels that are not walled.
\nThen, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
\nI would go up and wash them from sweet wells
\nEven with truths that lie too deep for taint.
\nI would have poured my spirit without stint
\nBut not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
\nForeheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
\n‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
\nI knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
\nYesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
\nI parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
\nLet us sleep now . . .’<\/p>\n

The dead soldier\u2019s description of the life that might have been, the laughter and the tears cut short, portrays \u201cthe pity war distilled.\u201d Strange Meeting<\/em> was one of several poems by Owen that were set to music by Benjamin Britten in the War Requiem,<\/em> composed for the 1962 consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral. The old cathedral had been destroyed by bombing in World War II, which began only twenty-one years after the end of the \u201cwar to end all wars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britten used as an epigraph to the score a quotation from the draft preface that Owen had written to a planned book of his poems on the war:<\/p>\n

My subject is War, and the pity of War.
\n<\/em>The Poetry is in the pity …
\n<\/em>All a poet can do today is warn.<\/p>\n

Owen\u2019s words and Britten\u2019s music provide context for today\u2019s Remembrance. The following clip provides the ending to the War Requiem<\/em>. The final lines of Owen\u2019s poem, beginning with \u201cI am the enemy you killed,\u201d lead into the final section of the mass, initially sung by the two male soloists and a boys\u2019 choir, before ending with the full chorus.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Britten-War-Requiem-VI-ending.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

In paradisum deducant te angeli
\nIn tu adventu suscipiant te martyres
\net perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.
\nChorus angelorum te suscipiat et cum Lazaro
\nquondam pauper aeternam habeas requiem.
\nRequiem aeternam dona eis, Domine:
\net lux perpetua luceat eis.
\nRequiescant in pace. <\/em><\/p>\n

(May the angels lead you into paradise and at your arrival may the martyrs receive you and bring you into the holy city of Jerusalem. May the choir of angels receive you and may you have eternal rest together with Lazarus who once was poor. Lord, grant them eternal rest and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.)<\/p>\n

References\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Fussell, P. (1975). The Great War and modern memory<\/em>. New York: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

Haycock, D. B. (2009). A crisis of brilliance: Five young British artists and the Great War<\/em>. London: Old Street.<\/p>\n

Holmes, R. (2001). The First World War in photographs<\/em>. London: Carlton Book.<\/p>\n

James, H (edited by P. Lubbock, 1920). Letters<\/em>.<\/a> London: Macmillan.<\/p>\n

Larkin, P. (edited and annotated by Burnett, A., 2012). The complete poems of Philip Larkin<\/em>. London: Faber & Faber.<\/p>\n

Malvern, S. (2004). Modern art, Britain, and the Great War: Witnessing, testimony, and remembrance<\/em>. New Haven: Yale University Press.<\/p>\n

Owen, W. (edited and annotated by Stallworthy, J., 1963). The poems of Wilfred Owen<\/em>. London: Chatto & Windus<\/p>\n

Sassoon, S. (1961). Collected poems, 1908-1956<\/em>. London: Faber & Faber.<\/p>\n

Silkin, J. (1972). Out of battle: The poetry of the Great War<\/em>. London: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The onset of World War I brought into question the very idea of European civilization. Mankind\u2019s ongoing progress to a better world appeared no longer pre-ordained. Promises of future peace and plenty were forever broken. Henry James wrote in a letter to Howard Sturgis on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":38,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,13,4,118],"tags":[172,176,171,173,174,175,170],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-history","category-literature","category-music","category-photography","tag-henry-james","tag-paul-nash","tag-philip-larkin","tag-rudyard-kipling","tag-siegfried-sassoon","tag-wilfred-owen","tag-world-war-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":977,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creatureandcreator.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}