Associate Professor, Department of English, Theater, Cinema & Media, University of Manitoba
Mark Libin does not, does not advise, does not own parts, does not receive funds from any organization that might benefit from this article, and has not declared any affiliation other than his research organization
Remembrance Day commemorates the end of World War I on November 11, 1918, and the poppy is the permanent symbol of Remembrance Day in Britain and Commonwealth countries, including Canada
The poppy has been associated with the memory of war in various ways But
as many who attended elementary school in Canada remember, the iconic popularity of the poppy is often attributed to the poem by Canadian physician and poet John McCrae, « In Flanders Fields »
I would like to submit for consideration a different poem as a more appropriate and ultimately more resonant poem to guide our reflections on this Remembrance Day: « Dulce and Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen »
« In Flanders Fields » begins with a haunting evocation of poppies growing between graves marked with war dead in Belgium, a description given by these very dead In Canada and elsewhere, the poem has become a traditional literary representation of all wars and victims remembered on Remembrance Day
I have always found McCrae’s poem inappropriate for commemorating war or Remembrance Day Its appeal can be attributed to its melancholy focus on the makeshift graves of the dead and its serious attempt to create an empathetic connection with the reader:
What flows from this moving memory of being alive, however, is an order to « Return to our quarrel with the enemy » and a warning that these dead will not sleep until we, the readers, avenge not their death on the battlefield
The directive to continue the war until the enemy is defeated is contrary to the spirit of Remembrance Day as I understand it It is also contrary to the finest British poetry of the First World War, including the one written by Wilfrid Owen
Owen’s « Dulce and Decorum Est » has an unambiguous anti-war message, and it works deftly to immerse the reader in a subsumed and visceral representation of the lived experience of the frontline soldier.
Unlike McCrae, Owen never identifies « the enemy » as the German soldiers in their trenches, but instead directs his anger against those on the home front who perpetuate or simply believe in the propaganda glorifying war The same can be said of the writer and compatriot friend of Owen, Siegfried Sassoon
Read also:
Owen, Sassoon and Graves: How a golf club in Scotland became the melting pot of the greatest war poetry
Sassoon and Owen – who met in 1916 as they were both recovering from shell shock at the Craiglockhart Medical Hospital in Edinburgh – felt young men like them had been betrayed as objects of worship of heroes by their country
The title “Dulce et Decorum Est” is taken from Horace’s epigrammatic line “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country), which is still inscribed on many monuments to the dead At the end, the poem expresses this motto as « the old lie »
Owen’s poem is an angry rebuke to the jingo poets of her time, like Jessie Pope, whose war poems were aimed at rallying and attracting new recruits and raising « war girls »
In 28 lines, Owen strives to convey, as accurately and brutally as possible, the daily horror experienced by frontline soldiers.His poem is both conventional – adhering to the iambic pentameter and a system of Strict rhymes – and very innovative Its language is designed to provoke emotion in the reader, as we see in the first four lines:
The comparisons comparing soldiers to « beggars » and « witches » are striking, but so is the use of the first person plural to describe soldiers
The words « sludge » and « trudge » are distinguished in this stanza for being distinctly vulgar in context, while illustrating the onomatopoeic language Owen uses to help us sense soldier fatigue. The sound of the elongated vowel – « uh » – perfectly mimics the tired trail of soldiers’ feet as they « sink » into the mud
The lethargic pace of the front lines quickly accelerates when soldiers are subjected to a gas attack:
The reader should speed up their reading pace and maybe even experience an increased heart rate alongside the soldiers
The rest of the poem focuses on the lonely man who failed to secure his helmet in time and whom the narrator is forced to watch enter the agony of death:
These lines are thick with active verbs; the suffix « ing » dominates the description of the gas attack, and the following lines conclude the poem:
In these last twelve lines of the poem, the « we » transforms into « you », when Owen attacks the notion of glorifying war without any direct experience. The « you » can be both a direct reference to the pope and to the type of audience she sought to capture: Owen originally dedicated the poem in her original manuscript « To Jessie Pope, etc. », Then in another version » To a certain poetess «
The biggest shock produced by « Dulce and Decorum Est », however, is when we realize that the victim is still alive at the end of the poem – or, still dying
Owen does not allow this man to slip into the ruminative afterlife experienced by McCrae’s war dead He keeps his victim suspended in the act of dying in order to preserve the loaded message of the poem He does there is no peace for this man, until « you » the reader reject the « old lie » and fight to end the war
Owen’s « Dulce and Decorum Est » is a meticulously crafted poem of shock and haunting It might do us good to feel so obsessive, so shocked 11
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News from the world – CA – World War I poet Wilfred Owen, treated for shell shock, transported readers to the horror of war
SOURCE: https://www.w24news.com