Today, when asked to sum up the horrors of the Great War or attempt to encapsulate the emotions of a soldier in the trenches, our minds are often cast to the works of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon. Despite the remoteness the First World War, the poetry it inspired seems to provide a specially sensitive register of what a tragedy it was. I am far from alone in finding “Dulce Et Decorum Est” the most arresting of all these poems. It still serves as a clarion call to the anti-war movement, its title plastered on posters at anti-war demos; a warning to those who would take the matter of war lightly. it portrays the helplessness of the ordinary soldier, his detachment from those who order him over the top.
On YouTube there are numerous videos with recitals of “Dulce Et Decorum Est” whilst images of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld flashing across the screen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vllKoRAjCio
How interesting that almost 100 years later, this one poem is still seen as the best example of the horrors of war.
But while the poem does a brilliant job of encapsulating the brutality of men slaughtering each other on the battlefield, the most important element of the writing is the last stanza. The last 12 lines are a stinging chastisement of those who encouraged young boys to volunteer for fighting with tales of heroism and glory.
Owen never directly criticizes war in this poem, nor the tactics being used. The gory, vivid depictions of death in the trenches are not particularly directed to those at home, less still the commanders during the war. It is directed at the jingoistic propagandists who spoke of war as a game, who exploited boyish sentiments to serve their own purposes, without ever realizing the reality of the place they were sending them off to.
Thus any comparison with George Bush or Iraq, although affective in its message, is misdirected for it misinterprets the vital message of the poem.
in the original draft of “Dulce,” Owen dedicated it “To Jessie Pope etc.” this backs up my point, for Jessie Pope was a well known jingoistic poet and propagandist. One poem called “Who’s for the game?” opens with the lines:
“Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,
The red crashing game of a fight?”
Whether the Iraq war was right or wrong, the vernaculars of the Great War and the Iraq War are very different. As Owen demonstrated, he was fighting against people who trivialized war, who thought it was a game.
The prevalent lighthearted approach was brilliantly satirized in Blackadder, with the dim-witted public schoolboy George stating "I joined up straight away - 10th August 1914. What a day that was. Myself and the fellows leap-frogging down to the Cambridge recruiting office, then playing tiddlywinks in the queue”.
How about this recruitment poster, the perfect example of war being seen as a game, a sport, another excursion on the rugby pitch:
Contrast this with a post-2001 world, in which the rhetoric used to describe Afghanistan and Iraq was literally a battle of good versus evil, a fight to the death, one so serious that it was impossible to make fun of:
George Bush, September 16 2001: “This crusade - this war on terrorism”
Tony Blair, March 5 2004: “Here were terrorists prepared to bring about Armageddon”
Thus the propaganda to recruit soldiers in 1914 was presented in entirely different terms to that of post 9/11, so it is unfair to compare the two. The lack of clarity as to the war aims is demonstrated in the propaganda which only asks for recruits, but never says why or what the purpose of war is. This confusion is brilliantly presented again in Blackadder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk37TD_08eA
Whether it was Iraq or Afghanistan, the vernacular of the war was always about saving civilization, defending Western values – very clear and defined messages, a very powerful pull, and not one that in any way made light of the situation.
So although understand why the individual in the first video placed Owen’s poem over the top of modern images of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he is confusing two completely different things. Though he might believe as many do, that all three wars were unnecessary, Owen’s actual message in “Dulce” was not anti-war per se, rather anti the trivialization of war. And in a post-9/11 world, the biggest hawks never once trivialized the situation. In fact, quite the opposite. The language of ‘Armageddon’ and ‘crusade’ show the seriousness with which the war was presented to the public.
No comments:
Post a Comment