The First World War reflected in English literature

Over a thousand years ago, the world was plunged into a deep war, the First World War. The cities were being destroyed, people were left without homes, jobs or family and only sadness, hatred, and anger was felt. The United Kingdom was present in this war, being on the side of the Allies, and sometimes, when people wanted to escape the sound of gunshots and the harsh reality that surrounded them, they decided to pour this suffering into writing. Thanks to this decision, today we have war literature that has allowed us to better understand the war, and how those who were involved in it felt. Poetry was the genre that was most cultivated during the years of war.

“There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers” – Ernest Hemingway, in “Men at War”

Since poetry was the predominant genre, we will focus on the poets, their circumstances and their work.

Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen

Siegfried Sassoon was one of the most famous poets of this era. He became widely known for his anti-war poetry, such as The Old Huntsman and Counterattack and his public stance against the war. Initially, his anti-war sentiments were attributed to shell shock, leading to his confinement in a sanatorium. His history was atypical because during this time, he met and influenced another pacifist soldier-poet, Wilfred Owen, and they were rumored to be dating. There is no clear evidence of this, but the later letters for Sassoon were too affectionate.

“In effect it is this: that I love you, dispassionately, so much, so very much, dear Fellow, that the blasting little smile you wear on reading this can’t hurt me in the least. … “You have fixed my Life—however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me.”

However, Owen was killed at the front and Sassoon ended publishing Owen's works.

Taking back the war and its atrocities, one of the most emotional Siegfried’s poems is “Suicide in the trenches”. 

"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go."

In this poem, he expresses the crushing consequences that war leaves on soldiers, some of them taking suicide as the best option. In this excerpt of the poem, he criticizes people who cheer for young soldiers to go to war. 

Regarding Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is one of the best known. 

“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons."

He compares “cattle” with the young war victims because they did not have a funeral or a decent farewell, “only the monstrous anger of the guns”. He always tried to illustrate the horror that they lived in the trenches. 

Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg is one of the most famous war poets in the world. He was born in Bristol, England, in 1890. His parents had recently immigrated from Russia and established their home in the Jewish neighborhood of London. He served as a soldier during the war and his experiences were reflected in his evocative poems. Some of his best known poems are: “Break of day in the trenches”, “Dead’s man dump” or “Louse Hunting”.  

This is the beginning of his poem “Dead’s man dump”

“Rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons."

“Rifles’ rapid rattle” refers to the start of the fight in the trenchers, and he refers to the fact that not even prayers helped the soldiers. He always showed himself very pessimistic about war and he described the disasters of this as they were. 

Vera Brittain

Vera Brittain was born in Staffordshire, in 1893. Studying on her own, she managed to enter the university in 1914, however, that same year, the war broke out. She decided to leave university in order to become a voluntary nurse. 

In 1933, Vera published her most significant and enduring work, Testament of Youth, which is a memoir chronicling her wartime experiences. It serves as a literary tribute to her brother, fiancé, and their companions who were affected by the war.

Regarding her poems, she wrote some of them, for example, “To My Brother”, “Perhaps” or “Hospital Sanctuary”. In these she describes how hard the war was for a nurse, as she had to take care of injured people, at the same time that she was losing some of her loved ones because of the war. Nevertheless, Testament of Youth was her most famous work. 

There were many more well-known poets and writers, such as Edward Thomas, Ivor Gurney or Rupert Brooke and we encourage you to read some of their works if you are interested in this topic. 

It is incredible to us that people who had to live through the tragedies of war chose to write. We think writing was an escape for them, but they also did it with a purpose. The Spanish writer Cervantes expressed with his phrase, “people who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it”, and surely those who lived through the war thought about that. We are quite certain that they constantly thought about when the moment would come to put down the weapon and pick up the pen, they thought and wished that none of this would happen again, they thought daily about peace for future generations. Because hope for the future was all they had left, as the present was impossible to make worse. Today, we must be thankful to those who tried to make us see the atrocities committed in the war. Even though it seems like humans do not learn from their mistakes, many of us are aware of these thanks to them. 

Bibliography

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Freeman, G. 10 Siegfried Sassoon Poems Everyone Should Read. Interesting Literature. https://interestingliterature.com/2016/09/10-siegfried-sassoon-poems-everyone-should-read/

Collins, T. (2022, April 16). Lewis, Hemingway, & Tolkien: Three Authors of the Great War. The Collector. https://www.thecollector.com/great-authors-of-world-war-1/

W.N. Hodgson. Discover War Poets. https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/poets-and-poetry/w-n-hodgson/

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica (2023, April 19). Georgian Poetry. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Georgian-poetry-British-literary-group

Isaac Rosenberg. Poets.org. https://poets.org/poet/isaac-rosenberg 

Hoare, L. (2014, November 10). Britain’s Gay War Poets. Slate. https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/11/siegfried-sassoon-and-wilfred-owen-the-best-poems-of-the-great-war-are-by-two-gay-men.html

Miller, A. The Vera Brittain Collection. The First World War Poetry Digital Archive. http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/brittain 

Vera Brittain: Poems, Books, Family & Biography. StudySmarter UK. https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/english-literature/non-fiction-authors/vera-brittain/

["The Last of the Battalion," by Jules Monge]. (2018, May 22). [Illustration]. ThoughtCo. https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thoughtco.com%2Fthmb%2FZKU8EKAgunztcn3kDbMQLGYRjg0%3D%2F1500x0%2Ffilters%3Ano_upscale()%3Amax_bytes(150000)%3Astrip_icc()%2FLast-of-the-Battalion-Getty89858511-5ade97bdc0647100370aec62.jpg&tbnid=IjKDhLQI4nP2zM&vet=12ahUKEwidieaU2_eBAxVxrEwKHYaSAfIQMygZegUIARCGAQ..i&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thoughtco.com%2Fgreat-war-poems-4163585&docid=zFeOPHtPwDz4GM&w=1500&h=976&q=poetry%20%20war&ved=2ahUKEwidieaU2_eBAxVxrEwKHYaSAfIQMygZegUIARCGAQ 

[Wilfred Owen, 1893 – 1918 and Siegfried Sassoon, 1886 – 1967]. (2023, June 29). [Illustration]. Tatler. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT2nwIz3LZZYEJ6m1fGGiCTc5tscNYbroQT-g&usqp=CAU 

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[Photograph]. The Vera Brittain Estate. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT2p5P5WTSTx7yyyXK5jpnYZVuo5jtR74H-2w&usqp=CAU