Dulce Et Decorum Est
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Modernism and the World War: War Poets
Modernism is a movement that originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
World War I (1914- 1918) falls in this period. In England,
this period saw the origin of a substantial number of important poets who were
soldiers, writing about their experiences of war. A number of them died on the
battlefield, most famously Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg,
Wilfred Owen, and Charles Sorley. Others including Ivor Gurney and Siegfried
Sassoon survived but were scarred by their experiences, and this was reflected
in their poetry.
These poets came to be known as War Poets. A war poet is a
poet writing in time of and on the subject of war. The term is applied
especially to those in military service during World War I.
Visit website: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk
The Poet:
Wilfred Edward Salter
Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918)
From the age of nineteen Owen wanted to be a poet and immersed himself in poetry, being especially impressed by Keats and Shelley. He wrote almost no poetry of importance until he saw action in France in 1917.
He was deeply attached to his mother to whom most of his 664 letters are addressed. (She saved every one.) He was a committed Christian and became lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden near Reading 1911-1913 - teaching Bible classes and leading prayer meetings - as well as visiting parishioners and helping in other ways.
From 1913 to 1915 he worked as a language tutor in France.
He felt pressured by the propaganda to become a soldier and volunteered on 21st October 1915. He spent the last day of 1916 in a tent in France joining the Second Manchesters. He was full of boyish high spirits at being a soldier.
On 30th of December 1916 Wilfred Owen, having completed his military training, sailed for France.
No knowledge, imagination or training fully prepared Owen for the shock and suffering of front line experience. Within twelve days of arriving in France the easy-going chatter of his letters turned to a cry of anguish. By the 9th of January, 1917 he had joined the 2nd Manchesters on the Somme – at Bertrancourt near Amien. Here he took command of number 3 platoon, "A" Company.
He wrote home to his mother, "I can see no excuse for deceiving you about these last four days. I have suffered seventh hell. – I have not been at the front. – I have been in front of it. – I held an advanced post, that is, a "dug-out" in the middle of No Man's Land. We had a march of three miles over shelled road, then nearly three along a flooded trench. After that we came to where the trenches had been blown flat out and had to go over the top. It was of course dark, too dark, and the ground was not mud, not sloppy mud, but an octopus of sucking clay, three, four, and five feet deep, relieved only by craters full of water . . ."
Within a week he had been transported to the front line in a cattle wagon and was "sleeping" 70 or 80 yards from a heavy gun which fired every minute or so. He was soon wading miles along trenches two feet deep in water. Within a few days he was experiencing gas attacks and was horrified by the stench of the rotting dead; his sentry was blinded, his company then slept out in deep snow and intense frost till the end of January. That month was a profound shock for him: he now understood the meaning of war. "The people of England needn't hope. They must agitate," he wrote home. (See his poems The Sentry and Exposure.)
He escaped bullets until the last week of the war, but he saw a good deal of front-line action: he was blown up, concussed and suffered shell-shock. At Craiglockhart, the psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, he met Siegfried Sassoon who inspired him to develop his war poetry.
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| Craiglockhart Hospital |
He was sent back to the trenches in September, 1918 and in October won the Military Cross by seizing a German machine-gun and using it to kill a number of Germans.
On 4th November he was shot and killed near the village of Ors. The news of his death reached his parents home as the Armistice bells were ringing on 11 November.
Owen is widely accepted as the greatest writer of war poetry in the English language.
In May 1917 Owen was diagnosed with shell-shock
and sent to Craiglockhart hospital near Edinburgh to recover. While being there,
Owen became the editor of the hospital magazine, The Hydra. Here, the poet
meets Siegfried Sassoon, another war poet. Sassoon was to have a major impact
upon his life and work and to play a crucial role in the dissemination of
Owen’s poetry following Owen’s untimely death at 25. Owen wrote a number of his
most famous poems at Craiglockhart.
Only five of Owen's poems were published
in his lifetime. However, after his death, the manuscript drafts
were brought out in two different editions by Siegfried
Sassoon.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST was written in 1917, while Owen was at Craiglockhart hospital.
This was published posthumously in 1920.
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Click here to listen to a recital of the poem.
Three versions, with slight differences
in a pair of lines, are available. These are indicated below.
Bent double, like old
beggars under sacks,
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; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
Two variant readings: [ Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.] // [Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.]
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
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.
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 wagon 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, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Pronunciation: The pronunciation of Dulce is
DULKAY. The letter C in Latin was pronounced like the C in "car".
Notes on Dulce et Decorum Est
1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying
(taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often
quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and
right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria
mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a
wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country.
2. Flares - rockets which were sent up to burn with a
brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front
lines
3. Distant rest - a camp away from the front line where
exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer
4. Hoots - the noise made by the shells rushing through the
air
5. Outstripped - outpaced, the soldiers have struggled
beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they
struggle away from the scene of battle
6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells
7. Gas! - poison gas. From the symptoms it would
appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had
the same effects as when a person drowned
8. Helmets - the early name for gas masks
9. Lime - a white chalky substance which can burn live
tissue
10. Panes - the glass in the eyepieces of the gas
masks
11. Guttering - Owen probably meant flickering out like a
candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds
in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering
and partly like gurgling
12. Cud - normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew
usually green and bubbling. Here a similar looking material was issuing from
the soldier's mouth
13. (a) Jessie Pope (18 March 1868 – 14 December 1941)
was an English poet, writer and journalist, who remains best known for her
patriotic motivational poems published during World War I. Wilfred Owen directed
his 1917 poem Dulce et Decorum Est at Pope, whose
literary reputation has faded into relative obscurity as those of war poets such
as Owen and Siegfried Sassoon have grown.
13 (b) High zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the
rightness of the idea
14. ardent - keen
15. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - see note 1 above.
Prepared by Jacob Eapen Kunnath
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