Cheers to Those Lucky Enough to Die
Osbert Sitwell
"Peace Celebration" by Osbert Sitwell
Now
we can say of those who died unsung,
Unwept
for, torn, ‘Thank God they were not blind
Or
mad! They’ve perished strong and young,
Missing
the misery we elders find
In
missing them.’ With such a platitude
We
try to cheer ourselves. And for each life
Laid
down for us, with duty well-imbued,
With
song-on-lip, in splendid soldier strife –
For
sailors, too, who willingly were sunk –
We’ll
shout ‘Hooray!’ –
And
get a little drunk.
“Peace
Celebration” by Osbert Sitwell is – in my opinion – an odd poem. The title of
the poem is fitting, because the poem describes the celebration of the war’s
end, but what is shocking is that the poem seems to be a celebration of death
more than the celebration of an end to years of suffering. Sitwell says that it
is better to die “strong” and “young” than to live as he and other “elders” must
and experience the “misery” of being left behind. Sitwell says that those who
are dead are “missing the misery we elders find / In missing them.” The repetition
of “miss” in these two lines causes the sentiment within the lines to seem simple
– almost as if Sitwell is a child, stuck on the idea of missing something he
will never see again – yet it encompasses the reason Sitwell thinks that the
men who died in their prime should be thankful.
Sitwell’s belief that these men are
lucky to have died in the war shows that he thinks that life as a survivor of
the war is a hell of its own. Though I do not believe that Sitwell suffered
severe physical injuries during the war, in his poem, Sitwell writes “thank God
they were not blind / Or mad!” “They” seems to be referring to the war dead. This
particular piece of the poem makes me think of soldiers who were irreparably
damaged by the war. Sitwell acknowledges that there are both mental and physical
wounds caused by the war, and that the dead should be thankful that they did
not have to return home with such wounds.
Osbert Sitwell was born in London in
1892, and in 1914, he joined the army, fighting in “the trenches of France near
Ypres in Belgium.” (Though it does not pertain to his poem “Peace Celebration,”
I thought it was too cool not to mention that Sitwell was also a member of The
Ghost Club, and members would meet to tell stories of the paranormal). Sitwell
wrote his first poem while in the French trenches, and – as his poem indicates –
he survived the war, dying at the age of 76 in 1969. Sitwell was a survivor of
the war, so his poem “Peace Celebration” is likely a description of his own experience
of surviving the war when many around him died.
In the middle of the poem, I began to
wonder though if Sitwell is attempting to convince himself of what he is saying.
Sitwell says “With such a platitude / We try to cheer ourselves.” These lines make
me think that Sitwell clings to the idea that the dead are better off, but he
also understands that many survivors of war tell themselves this in order to
cope with survivor’s guilt. If you think that your friends are better off dead,
then it seems to become easier to think of remember them and sing for those “who
died unsung.” I do not know for sure why Sitwell chose to write that those who died
in the war were “unsung,” but my best guess is that Sitwell is saying that many
grief for the dead when they should be telling themselves “such a platitude,”
and celebrating that those who died are living a better life than the
survivors.
It is hard to imagine that anyone who is not cruel would “shout ‘Hooray’ – / And get a little drunk,” at the idea of others’ deaths. I think this is why the end of the poem is so chilling. The poem depicts people celebrating, but it seems that this celebration is stated blatantly and crudely at the end of the poem. But Sitwell’s previous stanzas show his feelings toward his fallen comrades, and – though I would have thought this absurd before reading the poem – allowed me to believe that these soldiers may have been better off having died in the war.
I thought the idea of people celebrating soldiers’ deaths by shouting “Hooray” and getting “a little drunk” was also hard to understand in this poem. When you wrote that Sitwell blatantly and crudely includes this celebration at the end of the poem, I was reminded of Edith Sitwell’s “The Dancers.” Sitwell conveys a sense of celebration as she describes a room full of people dancing. However, similar to Osbert Sitwell, Edith Sitwell is obviously condemning the idea of celebrating the death of others when she writes: “For those who die hourly for us-/ We can still dance, each night.” I interpret this as Edith Sitwell’s way of mocking those who celebrate the war and are ignorant to the thousands of men that have died. While there might not be a form of celebration that exists that is appropriate to commemorate the thousands of soldiers that died, Edith Sitwell argues that dancing definitely is not one of them in her poem.
ReplyDeleteIronically, I also learned that these poems are not the only thing that connects these two authors. Edith Sitwell and Osbert Sitwell are brother and sister. Edith was the oldest sibling and her two younger brothers were Osbert and Sacheverell. The Sitwell siblings all became distinguished authors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Sitwell
Hi Danielle,
ReplyDeleteI loved this poem and I enjoyed your analysis of it. Your point on Sitwell thinking that it was better to die young and strong than to live a life of misery of being left behind reminds me of Survivor's Guilt, and that's how I interpreted the poem. Like you said, it seemed like he was trying to convince himself of what he was saying. It was almost like he was trying to suppress all of the negative emotions of surviving and trying to play it off by celebrating the dead. Alcohol was used a lot in the trenches and as Fussell wrote in one of his chapters, soldiers often took shots before they went into battle. It seems only fitting that they would get drunk in order to truly celebrate their fallen comrades.
- Vic
I also did this poem, and I am glad to see that you have a similar interpretation of it as myself. I would like to highlight that the celebration that is described in the poem is not blatant, but hollow. The whole world (maybe minus the central powers) had legitimate reason to be celebrating the stop of what had become four years of pointless killing. What is sad is that the celebration is just another reminder of everything that was lost during the war. This is why I think that Sitwell really wanted to push onto his readers, the fact that nothing really will be truly happy again because of the millions of broken pieces the war left scattered on the fields of France. There is a chilling quote that goes very well with this poem, "Only the dead have seen the end of war". It's true. The most bittersweet result of participating in a war is to die. You don't have to remember, or live with pieces and limbs missing. You're unchained, unworried, and free.
ReplyDeleteI commented on Mitchell’s post about this poem, too, and I had a slightly different take. Reading a second post about it, I’m not sure it really holds water in relation to the poem, but I think it’s an interesting possibility to discuss, anyway: while the surviving soldiers are explicitly shown to be celebrating, I read the poem as a general celebration, with non-combatants as well. If that’s the case, that the civilians were grateful that their men had not come back injured or “mad,” how would that have affected the surviving soldiers? I can see how, with their injuries both internal and external, survivors might envy the peace of being dead, thinking that this is no way to live, but what if that idea is being perpetuated by civilians? I think it’s possible that a weeping mother would announce “he’s in a better place now,” thankful that her son had not come back unrecognizably worse off, and I imagine this would have also been disheartening to the survivors. Moreover, how much of this survivor's envy is based on feeling like a burden to those that have to care for him now? Again, after reading a second post and having to think it over again, I’m not sure how relevant civilian celebrations about this idea really are, but I often stray far from the topic at hand, and sometimes I land somewhere interesting, and I hope that’s the case, here.
ReplyDelete