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WILFRED OWEN (1893 - 1918) |
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Wilfred Owen was born near Oswestry, Shropshire, where his father worked on the railway. He was educated at the Birkenhead Institute, Liverpool and Shrewsbury Technical College. He worked as a pupil-teacher in a poor country parish before a shortage of money forced him to drop his hopes of studying at the University of London and take up a teaching post in Bordeaux (1913). He was tutoring in the Pyrenees when war was declared and enlisted as shortly afterwards.
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In 1917 he suffered severe concussion and 'trench-fever' whilst fighting on the Somme and spent a period recuperating at Craiglockart War Hospital, near Edinburgh. It was he that he met Siegfried Sassoon who read his poems, suggested how they might be improved, and offered him much encouragement.
He was posted back to France in 1918 where he won the MC before being killed on the Sombre Canal a week before the Armistice was signed.
His poetry owes its beauty to a deep ingrained sense of compassion coupled with grim realism. Owen is also acknowledged as a technically accomplished poet and master of metrical variety.
Poems such as 'Dulce Decorum Est' and 'Anthem for doomed Youth' have done much to influence our attitudes towards war.
(Source: PoemHunter.com)
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In his poetry, Owen tried to express the gruesome suffering in the trenches on the Western Front.
One of the means to achieve this was his use of "pararhyme", i.e. the repetition of consonants, but with a different vowel in between, e.g. "hall - hell".
The effect of these pararhymes is to introduce an element of discordance, shock, failure and emptiness into his style.
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Owen had intended to incorporate the following lines into a preface to his war poems, but before he could do this he was killed. The war ended a week after his death.
These lines indicate and underline what Wilfred Owen aimed at in his poetry.
Preface
This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might,
majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.The Poetry is in the pity.Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful. If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives ‑survives Prussia‑ my ambition and those names will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders...
The following poem by Owen shows the impact of a gas attack on the soldiers and on one soldier in particular.
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In the first battle of Ypres (1914) the British lost about 50,000 men and more and more soldiers were killes in an effort to retain the 'Ypres Salient'.
In the second battle of Ypres (1915) the Germans used poison gas for the first time ans again tens of thousands lost their lives.
The third battle of Ypres (1917) meant four months of fighting in a sea of mud, resulting in an advance of four miles and about 240,000 casulaties
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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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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 flound'ring 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 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, 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.
Vertaling:  Dulce et decorum est
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Dulce et decorum est
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Dubbelgevouwen, als bejaarde bedelaars onder zakken,
met knikkende knieën, hoestend als oude wijven, vloekten wij ons door het slijk
tot wij het spokig geflits weer achter ons hadden,
sjokkend op weg naar ons verre rustverblijf.
Mannen marcheerden slapend. Veel waren hun schoenen kwijt
maar hinkten door, bloedgeschoeid. AIIemaal lam; blind;
van uitputting dronken, doof zelfs voor het gekrijs
van de gasgranaat die zacht achter ons neerkwam.
Gas! GAS! Jongens, vlug! - een extase van geftommel,
net op tijd de onhandige maskers opgezet,
maar iemand gilde het nog uit, spartelde en
struikelde als een man in het vuur of in een kalkbed;
vaag door het beslagen glas, het dikke groene licht,
als onder een groene zee, zag ik hem verdrinken.
In al mijn dromen zie ik hem voor mijn hulpeloze blik
op mij afduiken, rochelen, slikken, verdrinken.
Als, in verstikkende dromen, ook jij wellicht ging
achter die kar waarin we hem smeten
en de witte ogen kon zien draaien in zijn gezicht,
zijn hangende gezicht als van een duivel ziek van zonde;
als jij, bij elke schok, horen kon hoe het bloed
gorgelde uit de verrotte longen, bitter dan de korst
van smerige ongeneeslijke zweren op onschuldige tongen,
mijn vriend, je zou de oude Leugen niet zo geestdriftig
doorgeven aan kinderen, hongerend
naar wat wanhopige glorie: Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori*.
* Het is goed en zoet te sterven voor het vaderland
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Engels
