The Dead Live On
My final paper analyzes poems in which the poet
addresses the dead. I wanted to discover what purpose poets had in showing the
living speaking to the dead through poetry. I utilized the poems “Haunted,” by
Robert Graves, “Strange Meeting,” by Wilfred Owen, “When You See Millions of
the Mouthless Dead” by Charles Hamilton Sorley, and Youth in Arms IV: Carrion.
Thanks to helpful comments on my last blog and
from Dr. Ruzich, I came to the realization that communicating with the dead
during WWI could also be seen in the rise of spiritualism. This contributed to
the evidence that many had a need to speak to those they had lost during the
war. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
and Sir Oliver Lodge were both advocates for spiritualism. Lodge said that he
was able to “communicate with his son, Raymond, who was killed in Ypres in 1915.”
He said that Raymond lived in a place called “Summerland” and enjoyed “a life
without the cares those on Earth experienced.”
Throughout my paper, I evaluated the differences in the ways these poets depicted the dead. In Graves’ poem “Haunted” the dead is a mass of fallen soldiers who will not leave him, despite the fact that he is alive, showing his guilt over surviving the war. In “Strange Meeting,” Wilfred Owen’s depiction of himself and an enemy soldier in hell shows that Owen believes that no one who participated in war is without guilt. In “When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead,” Charles Hamilton Sorley is speaking to all of the fallen who “Death has made all his.” Sorley speaks to the dead to show the living that “Their blind eyes see not your tears flow” because death is permanent. In “Youth in Arms IV: Carrion,” Monro is addressing a single dead man whose body the speaker finds on the battlefield. Monro seems to write his poem in order to say that he will remember the dead and to tell the dead man that “Earth will not fall on you from the spade with a slam, / But will fold and enclose you slowly, you living dead.”
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| A living soldier and a dead soldier after the Battle of the Somme. |
The gentle nature of death can be seen in “Youth in Arms IV: Carrion” and “Strange Meeting.” Because Monro and Owen can find peace in death, it stands to reason that they would carry less psychological damage caused by survivor’s guilt than Graves who seems to believe that the dead are not at rest. This is likely the reason that Sir Oliver Lodge needed to believe that his son was happy in a place called Summerland.
Poetry of the First World War often centers around death, but certain poets felt it necessary to directly speak to the dead. While those killed in the war have physically left the land of the living, the dead live through the survivors who remember them through poetry. Poets who saw those they cared for die during the war felt the need to show the trauma of war and the way the living chose to cope with the tragedies. Though poets seem to have varying reasons for using poetry to speak to the dead, their poems commemorate the dead and the countless lives lost during the First World War and show traumatic and lasting effect that war has for those who live after their comrades have been killed.
Hi Danielle,
ReplyDeleteI loved the poems and topic you chose for this paper! It is so interesting to see how people communicated with the dead and why they chose to do so. Like you mentioned, spiritualism was a huge movement during this time. It reminds me of the "Mutiny" episode of The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century. In this episode, they talked about how Robert Graves stayed with Siegfried Sassoon and heard Sassoon's mother performing a seance in the middle of the night in order to communicate with her dead son.
I know we discussed briefly in class about survivor's guilt and I think it is interesting to see how speaking to the dead could communicate that guilt. Like you said, Graves' and Owen's poems both are rooted in this. I thought it was really interesting when you said that Owen and Monro were able to find peace in death which would mean that they carried less psychological damage caused by survivor's guilt. I can definitely see this and in one of my blog posts on Graves, I mentioned his book "Goodbye to All That" that discussed his psychological adjustment from the horrors he experienced in war. It would appear that through his poem and his book that he definitely had a hard time dealing with the war and surviving when so many others didn't.
I love what you did with your paper! It was so interesting and I wish we all had the chance to read each others.
- Vic
I wrote about something similar in my paper about the description of the bodies themselves, but I must admit I'm a little jealous that I didn't think to do a topic like this. I did not know much about the spiritualism movement that was a result of the First World War, but it makes sense that published conversations with dead soldiers might prompt that sort of trend. I wonder how much of the conversations written by trench poets to the dead were literally meant compared to those that were intended to be satirical. Desensitization was a very common theme that we mentioned in class numerous times, and I think that it would be rather amusing to think that an entire movement like spiritualism would be caused by something satirical.
ReplyDeleteAll theories aside, I really do think your topic was well chosen and I can only assume your paper matches the quality of the amazing blog post!
-Mitch
Man, Summerland sounds nice. I think it's very interesting that Sir Lodge would take greater comfort in the idea of Summerland than of in Heaven. Google tells me he was a physicist who held the patent for the radio, and moreover, that he was a Christian Spiritualist, which for me, again begs the question: then why not Heaven? Maybe that questions to heavily the validity of his conversations with Raymond, because I'm implying that those weren't legitimate, which feels rude, but still, I'm interested in the choice of Summerland.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, "Strange Meeting" in particular was one of my favorite poems we read this semester, at least by Owen. I really like the acknowledgement that no matter who you've fought for, if you've fought in this war, you'll land beside your enemies in Hell. This, surely, is a view Sir Lodge would not have taken kindly to, nor most soldiers' families, I imagine. But still, I like it because it shows a very realistic view of the war, and a rather bleak one: No one is any better than their enemies, as they all fight the same fight.
Danielle,
ReplyDeleteThis is so interesting! What stuck out to me most was your explanation that poets talk to the Dead for different reasons. I really hadn't thought about that. I automatically tend to assume they do it as a way to comfort themselves, but you're right, it is so much more nuanced than that. The poems you chose are perfect to illustrate the commemoration of the dead in a positive way.
This make me think about "In Flanders Fields" as a poem that invokes the Dead in a different way. After reading your post, I felt like that poem is somewhat disrespectful since it speaks for the dead, some of whom probably would rather see the war end. I wonder what the dead would think if they knew that voice was being given to them.
Like Olivia, I also really like Strange Meeting! It's interesting how you describe Death as being gentle, though I certainly agree with it. I wonder how helpful it actually was for soldiers to speak to the dead. Did it ever become maladaptive? I guess for people like Sassoon's mother (was that it?) it might have been, but I'd be interested to see just how extreme spiritualism and communication with the dead could become.
Danielle,
ReplyDeleteI love the idea that you mention regarding how the dead are able to live on through the memories of survivors’ poetry. This is what I believe makes the poetry of the First World War so powerful--our ability to feel the loss and the genuine experience of those who survived the war. I thought the poems you chose to support this concept were extremely fitting. A poem that immediately came to my mind after reading how you mention that poets feel the necessity to use their literature to speak to the dead was “Lamplight” by Mary Wedderburn Cannan. While this does not necessarily represent the idea of spiritualism that you discuss, I also think it is an example of how poetry can be used to mourn the loss of what could have been and the plans that soldiers had made with their loved ones that never occurred.
I think the theme you chose for your paper was an important one. Eight million soldiers would never return to their families at the conclusion of the Great War, and I believe that writing to the dead as a form of commemorating their lives was therapeutic and healing for the families that experienced these losses.
I love this topic so much. Spiritualism and survivor's guilt definitely seem to go hand in hand during the war, and like you said, these poems show how traumatic it really was for these men to watch people they've grown to care about die. The fact that they not only saw their friends die, but oftentimes had to watch them decay, is such a tragedy that highlights how terrible this war really was. Rickword's "Trench Poets" portrays this, but the poems you've chosen work perfectly within this topic. I would love to read your full paper!
ReplyDelete