Comparison of selected WWI & WWII Poetry

First coming into widespread use during the Great War, the term “war poet” has become an integral part of the English lexicon, with many works of war poets being similarly as important in the literary canon of English history. The work of arguably the most renowned Great War poet, Wilfred Owen, has become synonymous with studies of the war and planted war poetry in the consciousness of the public, leading to a clamour to see similar works during the Second World War. In 1940 the Times Literary Supplement ran an editorial titled, “To the Poets of 1940”, wondering why there had been far fewer poets than in the Great War. Of course, reasons for this often came down the evolution of warfare, with soldier’s routines being different from what they had been in the Great War. However, there were still poets, with Alun Lewis and Keith Douglas being two of the most prominent. I intend on comparing the works of one Great War poet, Wilfred Owen, to assorted poetry from the Second World War, and discovering whether the horror of war throws up similarities between the two eras of poetry, or whether the differing nature of the wars gave poets other outlooks for them to transmit to the page.

The earliest Great War poetry, from poets such as Rupert Brooke was of an upbeat, jingoistic fashion, mirroring public perception of the war in its early stages. Wilfred Owen however, sharing the attitude of many of his contemporary war poets who actually saw combat, had a starkly contrasting view of war. Inspired by this, much of his war-time work is dedicated to portraying the actual reality of war, directly opposing the propaganda viewed by the public back home. Possibly the most famous of his poems encompassing these sentiments is Dulce et Decorum Est, with its closing lines “the old lie, dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori. Translated as “it is sweet and right to die for your country”, it is a clear indictment of the war he was fighting in. Furthermore to this, the poem was written with Jessie Pope, a civilian propagandist and poet of the war, in mind. Whilst the final draft contains no reference to her, early versions of the poem include the words “to Jessie Pope etc” highlighting the bitterness he felt towards those at home extolling the values of going off to fight in war as the honourable and right thing for men to do. Indeed, her poetry included lines such as:

“Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,
The red crashing game of a fight?
Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid?
And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?”

It is easy to see why poets such as Owen felt the raging desire to condemn these jingoistic, blissfully ignorant words, as it has the potential to rile the reader, decades on, without having ever been close to being in the situation these war poets were. I suspect many readers would land on Owen’s side of the issue, and not just because his poetry is of a far better standard.

Continuing on this theme, I believe it worth looking at Mental Cases, as not only does it contain shockingly explicit descriptions of the shellshocked soldiers, it also serves as a damning condemnation of those who brought about the war. The tone of poem is accusatory, from the first questioning lines of “Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?” to the poem’s conclusion in “Snatching after us who smote them, brother, Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.” The reader is forced to contemplate feelings of guilt, especially considering Owen’s use of “us”, and it is testament to his bitterness against those who advocated the war that it still resonates now with the reader, impossible not to think about the poor, tormented soldiers.

As the war went on, many at home and in the trenches became severely disillusioned, with the astonishing number casualties coupled with there being no end in sight providing stark realisation for many people. It is therefore easy to understand why these feelings, coupled with being on the front line and experiencing the horrors first hand with each of their sense, led many soldier poets to emphasise their sentiments in blunt terms, as Owen did above. In contrast to this, the Second World War was more a war out of necessity, hence lacking widespread resentment to Britain’s involvement. It was a time when the country needed men to stand up and fight, and most did not need asking twice. Of course, when in combat soldiers again realised the horrors it entailed, and this was the basis for much of the poetry in this era, but opposition to involvement in the war in poetry at the time was practically non-existent.

As hinted at above, a universal theme throughout all war literature of any era and location is the horror and destruction. Owen deals heavily in the frank, graphic depictions of what happens in battle, exampled by “the white eyes writhing in his face”, and “gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” of Dulce et Decorum Est, forcing us to acknowledge the horror of gas warfare. These first hand horrors indelibly scarred onto his minds’ eye are given dramatic commentary, as if being replayed as he writes and henceforth every time it is read. The drama of “And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping and splashing in the flood, deluging muck” and onomatopoeic licence of the make one wince at the horrid suffering in The Sentry. With a real gift for imagery, throughout his work, Owen transmits all five sensory perceptions in warfare to the page, and subsequently into our imagination. Explicit images of war were not unique to Owen or the First World War, and renowned Second World War poet Keith Douglass is no stranger to this technique. In Vergissmeinnicht he tells of returning to the scene of a battle weeks later, and is confronted with the corpse of a soldier he shot then. “See today, how on his skin the swart flies move; the dust upon the paper eye, and the burst stomach like a cave.” Extremely forthright and to the point, Douglas, like Owen, uses simile and metaphor to give the visual the importance it deserves. Yet at the same time, these techniques do not always require extravagant wording, “Like a cave” is a simple comparison yet just as powerful as Owen’s more intricate “froth-corrupted lungs”. I have begun to wonder whether the colourful imagery found in much poetry of the World Wars is product of nurture or nature. Poets such as Owen, Sassoon, Graves, Lewis and Douglas were of course wonderfully skilled at poetry, but given the horrors they were confronted with, is it more these horrors speaking for themselves in the poetry, or the poet’s own talent? Such is the nature of the sights in warfare that simple straight forward descriptions often have the same power of an exorbitant metaphor or simile, and therefore striking war poetry is surely able to be found emanating from the poet’s of any war.

Similar to the use of imagery described above, a large part of the reasoning behind this poetry is simply honesty. To analyse Owen’s poetry, one must look at his stint at Craiglockhart and his subsequent relationship with Siegfried Sassoon. A poet he already admired, Sassoon became mentor for the young Owen and one of the most important exchanges between the two came when Owen wrote to Sassoon in 1918, “I don’t want to write anything to which a soldier would say No compris!” Having been in combat, encountering ghastly horrors and finding himself sidelined for a stint at the mental hospital, the reality of war was of paramount importance to him. How could he possibly write anything that did not fully encapsulate the horrid truths found in battle? In the following world war however, the horrors of war were deeply ingrained into the minds’ of those who served and civilians back home alike, and it is possibly for this reason that there was somewhat a lack of poetry from the same school as Owen, Sassoon, Graves and company. The First World War was the groundbreaking event, the underestimated tragedy, and phony war in the minds of many, that led to an outpouring of emotion and desire to simply tell of what happened. The next war however, was more out of necessity than the first, and technological advancements meant that warfare had changed. Whilst much poetry from the first war was borne out of the unmitigated horror of first hand combat, much of the next war was fought far more remotely. It is because of this that some poetry was then focused on the bombings and air warfare, such as Alun Lewis’s Air Raids. While there is still scope for graphic imagery, the nature of the attacks in this war lent itself to a broader, more philosophical tone, as found here. Beginning “Softly the civilised Centuries fall, Paper on paper, Peter on Paul”, acknowledging the depressing realisation of an uncivilised world descending further into chaos. Furthermore, the “fall” addresses not only the civilisation, but the literal falling of the thousands of bombs dropped over the course of the war.


Going back to Douglas’s Second World War poem Vergissmeinnicht again, I believe it is possible to draw parallels with Owen’s Insensibility. From the title and immediately in its first lines, it becomes apparent the crux of the poem is exploring the notion of the desensitization of some in the trenches. As Welland says, Owen “half envies those ‘who lose imagination’” (1974 :64), suggesting that becoming immune to the sights, sounds and inevitabilities of war is the most effective way to deal with them in the short-term. “Dullness best solves, the tease and doubt of shelling” in the second stanza hints that by dulling your senses to the chaos around you, you can find some peace with the lottery of life and death. Such removal from emotion does not affect solely your attitude towards your own mortality, Owen tells us, as the soldiers “Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned”, indicating how soldiers can confront the imperative job of becoming a murderer. It is this specific sentiment that Douglas also deals with, signifying to us that whilst war advances technologically, and that the causes and aims change, face to face combat still presents soldiers with timeless traumas. Owen somewhat extols the opportunity to become impervious to the atmosphere of war, and Douglas approaches the idea of sensitivity from the view of a distressed soldier returning to view the corpse of a soldier he killed weeks previous, enhancing the concept further. Whilst Owen’s emotionally cleansed soldiers can “laugh” surrounded by slain foes, Douglas does not at all, instead lending the poem a tone of distress and angst at the truth behind what he has done; taking a life, and causing a lifetime of grief for the soldier’s loved ones. He concludes the poem with the stanza:

“For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.”

It is clear to see here that what he has done haunts him and will continue to do so, and therefore finds it impossible to remove himself from the reality of it. The inclusion of the soldier’s love, back home in civilian life, only serves to strengthen the agony he feels, due to the agony he has caused. It could be difficult to understand the desensitization found in Owen’s Insensibility after reading Vergissmeinnicht, yet we must not forget how Owen’s poem ends. “But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns, That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they”. So whilst Owen proposes to us the benefits and reasoning behind becoming so cold in the face of mass tragedy, ultimately he believes it to be the refuge of the wrong. This concluding damnation of the ice cold killer furthers our realisation of the confusion and chaos of war, and in conjunction poetry like Douglas’s above, underlines the mental anguish found in all corners of war, regardless of what war of it is.

As I’ve touched on already, the differences in wars lend themselves to a difference in poetry, and we can see this through Alun Lewis’s poems on India and Burma. In poems such as The Peasants he focuses on the natives, such was the nature of the war that troops on foreign duty often passed through towns and villages, mingling with the locals. This is more pronounced in The Peasants as India was an allied force. Therefore this new phenomenon to soldiers, often being exposed to previously completely unknown cultures and lifestyles, meant that understandably, it became the subject of poetry. Furthermore, it captured the imagination of those reading, given a firsthand account of these exotic locations only otherwise heard about in newspapers and on the radio. This is a view furthered by author and war poet himself, R. N. Currey, when he says “no other writer has caught so exactly and sympathetically the grace and dignity and will-to-live of peasants, in mediaeval conditions as dangerous as those of modern war” (1967: 24). It is the vivid picture he paints in lines such as “The women breaking stones upon the highway, Walking erect with burdens on their heads, One body growing in another body, Creation touching verminous straw beds”, that grabbed the attention of readers like Currey. Whilst World War One poetry focused on the unforeseen horror and mass casualties of the trenches, the theatre of war from 1939 to 1945 was found elsewhere, with foreign sights and sounds impacting on the soldiers just as much as the ghastly sights and sounds of death from the first war.

Returning to focus on World War One and Wilfred Owen again, I believe it is worth looking at the emergence of what became known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Called shellshock originally, it was tragically misunderstood and this is best viewed when you look at Craiglockhart, the military psychiatric hospital. With one of the themes most prevalent in Owen’s work being the effect of war on soldiers, it is unsurprising to see mental health addressed in his work, with the perfect example of course being Mental Cases. He had a stint at Craiglockhart after being diagnosed as suffering from shellshock, and it was after this period of convalescence that he wrote the poem. Owen captures the inescapable torment and anguish of the soldiers through the ubiquitous repetition of time; “Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black; Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.” Such was the horror that the images are burned into their memories, transferring themselves onto every other every day image such as the sunlight and darkness included here. That this was a new phenomenon, with mental breakdowns on this scale having not been seen before meant that poets such as Owen expressed it in such stark terms. The realisation that this war could do such things to a person’s mental state was beyond shocking. By World War Two however, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was more understood, with the horrendous treatments such as electrotherapy had given way to more reasonable treatments. As with other themes discussed already, World War One was the backdrop to this phenomenon being discovered, meaning that again desire to tell of it was great.

What I have discovered here is that both wars naturally lent themselves to an outpouring of emotion. By its very nature of course, war is emotive for anyone, let alone those who actually see combat. For this reason, whatever the war, there was a need for many to tell of their experiences, but what did change sometimes was the reason. As I have discussed, the First World War left many soldiers bitter at the ignorant authorities and war advocates back home, with much poetry taken on the tone of a protest. The majority of the poetry however is not unique to any war, with the despair and horrific sights being ever present. In this way, First and Second World War poets have a great deal in common and the only reason for the First featuring more poets being that it was, simply, the first. The devastation was completely unforeseen and changed the mood of a nation. Something so powerful could never not produce such emotion, and coupled with the time many soldiers had on their hands, it led to one of the most significant waves of poetry in British history.

Bibliography
Welland, D. 1978. Wilfred Owen: A Critical Study. London: Chatto & Windus.
Currey, R. N. 1967. Writer’s & their Work: Poets of the 1939-1945 War. London: Longmans Green & Co.