The Great War and All That in A Hundred Doors by Michael Longley

Abstract

Who can bring peace to people who are not civilised? All of these people, alive or dead, are civilised. (Michael Longley, The Weather in Japan) In an interview granted in 2011, on occasion of publication of A Hundred Doors, Michael Longley expressed wish that work would ultimately look like four really long poems, a very long love poem, a very long meditation on and death, a very long nature poem and a playful poem on art of Using plant image, he wanted the strands both to entwine with each other, and every now and again to emerge as separate (Moore). Indeed, if nature, love and life are major aspects which intertwine sometimes inextricably so, in a kind of Noah's ark (Brown 2002: 92), violence and have also pervaded poetry since he began writing. As he himself acknowledged, the two World Wars were part of [his] family's history before they became part of [his] imaginative landscape (Brown: 94). approach is underlined by fact that everything is interconnected and this, to quote Elmer Kennedy-Andrews, is what characterizes Longley's aesthetic expressed through his use of metaphor, techniques of fusion, juxtaposition and parallelism, fluid handling of time, place and identity, self-conscious intertextuality (Kennedy-Andrews 2000: 74-75). The collection published under title A Hundred in 2011, is composed of sixtysix poems ranging from two lines up to fortyfour. The title of book refers to Our Lady of a Hundred Doors on island of Paros, considered to be oldest Byzantine Church in Greece, which poet had visited during sojourns in that part of Aegean Sea, and which he calls muse (15) in an eponymous poem contained in collection. This paper aims at showing that while A Hundred contains most of characteristics of earlier poetry it evinces a somewhat lighter utterance. If tone has become simpler and maybe insouciant, there is still a deep awareness of fragility of nature and life. My analysis will follow three main themes that in fact are interlinked and echo each other: and particularly First World War, then life and its corollary death in shape of poet's human environment and finally context of nature which poet has found in west of Ireland. I. The No Man's Land of War Michael father is a recurring figure in poetry and many of son's poems celebrate courage in trenches during First World War. These poems are often associated with evocations of poets such as Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, so-called war poets, who fought in Northern France and some of whom died in action there. Moreover, two World Wars and reading of poets framed view of Troubles in native country, in so far as they have given him a perspective on violence which generally pervades poetry. In 2013, Longley edited a selection of poems by Robert Graves. The phrase included in title of this article (and all that) partly refers to Graves's autobiography, Good-Bye to All That, published in 1929. In this work, its author relates memories of World War I, precisely battle of Loos and Battle of Somme in which he took part as an officer in Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and during which he had mistakenly been declared as killed in action. As a matter of fact, Graves, more than was case with other poets, did not make an indictment of but, to quote Longley, professed an open-faced, almost naive regimental loyalty. Graves's poetry has been an important source of inspiration and a model, confining to veneration as Longley recalled in same introduction: Graves lays down law majestically [...]. Yet line is flexible, at times improvisatory, jazzy even. Michael Longley acknowledges importance of Graves's prose work previously mentioned on own evolution and also fact that Graves's portrayal of the psychic quagmire of trenches echoed what he remembered of father's infrequent recollections. …