War Poets Research Articles

냉전의 시인들 -박인환과 김수영의 ‘전후’ 인식과 문학-

냉전의 시인들 -박인환과 김수영의 ‘전후’ 인식과 문학-

Appropriating Hafez’s ghazals for Shiite rites and rituals in the Islamic Republic of Iran

ABSTRACT The poetry of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) is commonly grafted to classical Persian topoi, imagery, metaphors. Several war poets use classical poetry to communicate with their audiences as this poetry is familiar and they can effortlessly convey their political and ideological message. This article investigates how modern amateur poets use classical poetry to create their own poems for political and religious use. I shall specifically analyse a few instances in which the poetry of the classical Persian poet Hafez of Shiraz (1315–1390) is integrated in various ideologically Shiite contexts. Some scholars have argued that Hafez’s ghazals have little cohesion, characterizing the poem’s couplets as ‘pearls at random strung’, but as we shall see these ghazals enjoy thematic coherence, even their ambiguity creates spaces for a modern appropriation and interpolation of couplets in his poetry, allowing the use of a poem as a commentary on religious and political events. While I shall give attention to Hafez’s art of poetry, my main focus will be upon the modern application of his poetry by professional Shiite singers (maddāḥs) who perform such poems to whet the emotions of their audiences, placing the poem in a purely Shiite or ideologically Islamist propaganda.

Echoes of War: Exploring War poets and their Continued Resonance

War poetry offers a very deep and personal perspective on the cruelty and destruction of war. Despite technological advancements in modern warfare since the World Wars, the fundamental miseries of armed conflict still exist. This essay examines the relevance of classic war poets like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Rupert Brooke in the modern context post WW I. Their evocative and authentic portrayal of life and death in the trenches and battlefields of WW I emphasize the necessity of peace and offer long lasting insights into the real consequences of conflict. Even though the vivid experiences of these poets were chronicled decades ago, their writings are still very relevant even today.

Contribution of Indian English Poets towards Indian Freedom Movement

The idea of independence has always captivated the minds of the poets. Poets all around the world have always supported the cause of freedom of different countries. They have even served in wars for the same purpose. English Romantic poets were inspired by the French Revolution. There were war poets who served in the world wars and filled the hearts of people with patriotism. Some fought for the liberation of Greece and Spain. India had also been colonized by the Britishers for over a century. Freedom for India was brought about by the supreme sacrifice of many brave souls. The contribution of poets was no less as they ignited the souls of the people through their fierce words. Many poets have dedicated poems to their mother land which in turn reminded people of their glorious past. Prominent pre-independence poet Henry Derozio pines for the country to return to its pristine glory. Poets like Toru Dutt have written on Indian themes. Sarojini Naidu, through her poems, has shown her hatred for all forms of tyranny and shows the wish of rejuvenation of her motherland. This paper is a humble attempt to show the contribution of different Indian English poets towards the Indian freedom struggle.

The Argonauts of the Western Front – Poets as Ethnographers of the Culture de Guerre in the First World War

For over a century, historians and literary critics appear to have been at odds regarding the poetry of the First World War. This schism owes itself to processes of canonization which restrict (in Britain) or completely ignore (in France) the full extent and diversity of wartime poetic practices. Investigating a new corpus of French poets of the First World War, and considering poetry as a social and cultural category and as a wartime practice whose functions go beyond literary value, this article argues that war poets can be read as ethnographers of wartime culture. In proposing this analogy, it aims to present the ethnographic conventions as a common ground where History and Poetics can establish a dialogue. For scholars aiming to investigate how cultural production shapes experiences of armed conflict, this ensures poets are seen as the producers of interpretive knowledge of war and poems as more than either transparent documents or hermetic lyrical creations.

THE POET AS PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL: TONY HARRISON’S WAR POETRY

ABSTRACT The poet Tony Harrison has created work for the stage and television, and even assumed the role of poet/journalist, writing newspaper reports in verse from war-torn Bosnia. His work is underpinned by a belief in the political nature of the act of writing. He has generally attracted a non-working-class readership; nevertheless, he has never abandoned his quest for a ‘democratic’ poetry. Much of his work has taken the form of a poetry of immediate response to current events. He has also been insistent, at times, on where his poetry should be published. When he wrote ‘Initial Illumination’ for The Guardian, for example, he argued it should not appear in the ‘literary’ section, but on the news pages. Harrison sees himself as a ‘war poet. He uses his position as a public intellectual to engage in a struggle against dominant discourses and ways of seeing and to bring audiences to confront the horror of war. The article focuses in particular on his Gulf War poem, ‘A Cold Coming’, in which he uses strategies such as ekphrasis, to position the reader as a kind of ‘secondary witness’ of a war that had been turned by the media into a distant, anaesthetised spectacle.

The Analysis of the Soldier from Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspectives

The Soldier is a sonnet written in 1914 by Rupert Brook, a British war poet. The paper aims at analyzing the poem by applying M.A.K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as a theoretical framework. The study mainly adopts a qualitative methodology to analyze the text by text linguistics. However, the quantitative methodology is also used to calculate the proportions of each metafunctional process in this poem. The main findings of this paper are: 1) Topic theme: the themes of the poem are I, dust, England, this heart, et., which show the soldie'’s love and gratefulness for England; 2) The focus of tense: The Soldier starts with a conditional clause and then uses present and past tense to create a context as if he was depicting a real external world instead of an imagination from the inner world. 3) Patterning and re-patterning: The patterning analysis shows the soldier in the poem emphasizes his motivation for sacrificing and spreading the precious things in England who had brought him up. The paper concludes that The Soldier shows a strong sense of patriotism, which might be an approval for the former literary studies of this poem from linguistic aspects.

Mehmet Akif Ersoy’s "To the Martyrs of Dardanelles": Turkish View of the First World War in Comparison to the English War Poets

This paper is concerned with the Turkish view of the First World War as reflected through Mehmet Akif Ersoy’s ‘Çanakkale Şehitleri’ (To the Martyrs of Dardanelles) in comparison to the English war poets and argues that the Turkish attitude to the First World War is very different from that of the English war poets in terms of patriotism and sacrifice for one’s country. The most important feature of the English war poets who wrote during the First World War is that all of them, except Rupert Brooke, who died of malaria, participated in the war personally and reflected their personal war experiences and perspectives in their poems. The Ottoman Empire, which participated in the First World War as an ally of Germany, fought with the British in Çanakkale. There are many poems written by professional poets about the Dardanelles wars, in which the Turks won a decisive victory, but there is no known soldier-poet in Turkish poetry who participated in this war. Considering the poems written on the battles of Çanakkale, the first ones that come to mind are ""To the Martyrs of Dardanelles”, and Mehmet Akif Ersoy. The epic poem "To the Martyrs of Dardanelles", written by Mehmet Akif for the heroic martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the salvation of their country, is the poem that best reflects the Turks' perspective on this war. This article focuses on the difference between the Turkish side's view of the war, which is reflected in Mehmet Akif Ersoy's poem "To the Martyrs of Dardanelles”, from the British war poets in terms of patriotism and self-sacrifice ideas for the homeland. The perspective reflected by the English war poets was initially treated as a romantic ideal adorned with the propaganda of democracy, freedom and protection of Western civilization. However, after it was understood that the war had nothing to do with national security for England, it was just an environment of hell where millions of young politicians died in vain for the power struggle, it gave way to protest and disappointment. For the Turks, since this war meant the occupation of their lands in case of defeat, they defended their lands at the cost of their lives and did not allow Gallipoli passed by.

Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells and the Twentieth Century by Sarah Cole

<i>Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells and the Twentieth Century</i> by Sarah Cole

Jonathan Swift and the Nature of Modern Violence

Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels have been read as participating in a wider debate, the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, and as critiques of the rise of the New Sciences and the study of the "Book of Nature." The essay argues that Swift viewed the Modern preoccupation with nature as emblematic of the desire to return to a pre-cultural state of chaos and violence. Far from being an attempt to step into nature as a way of arriving at empirical truth, thus, these works hint at Swift's notion that the Modern return to nature represented dissolution of human culture. In addition, the essay discusses the afterlife of Swift's notions of the Modern as inherently anti-cultural through the work of Great War poet David Jones and his postwar masterpiece In Parenthesis.

On an ‘unannounced polemic’ that lasted a quarter of a century. The K — K mystification

E. Berkovich writes about the polemic around one of the most famous poems about the Great Patriotic War — ‘Felt boots’ [‘Valenki’], more recognisable by its first line (‘My comrade, in death throes…’ [‘Moy tovarishch, v smertelnoy agonii…’]). Krasikov published a posthumous collection of poems Black diamond. Poems [ Chyorniy almaz. Stikhotvoreniya] by the war veteran and poet A. Korenev in 1994, including the poem ‘Blizzard. Night…’ [‘Viuga. Noch…’], which had never been published in Korenev’s lifetime and which echoes almost completely ‘Felt boots,’ penned by I. Degen. Ever since then, a number of people, including Korenev’s daughters, have argued that the poem is authored by Korenev alone and was misattributed to Degen, whereas in reality it was Korenev who happened on a handwritten copy of ‘Felt boots,’ passed from hand to hand during the war, and decided to appropriate what hethought an unclaimed poem. Berkovich retraces the history of the argument around ‘Felt boots,’ incorporating into his article extracts from publications by L. Lazarev, who knew Degen well, and his own correspondence with the author of the mystification Krasikov and the journalist Rakhlin, and confirms the poem’s attribution to Degen.

Midcentury Suspension: Literature and Feeling in the Wake of World War IIby Claire Seiler

<i>Midcentury Suspension: Literature and Feeling in the Wake of World War II</i>by Claire Seiler

British Art for Australia, 1860-1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries, by Matthew C. Potter

Reviewed by: British Art for Australia, 1860–1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries by Matthew C. Potter Sarah Scott (bio) British Art for Australia, 1860–1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries, by Matthew C. Potter; pp. x + 254. London and New York: Routledge, 2019, £120.00, $160.00. British Art for Australia, 1860–1953: The Acquisition of Artworks from the United Kingdom by Australian National Galleries by Matthew C. Potter provides a detailed study into the acquisitions of the Australian national galleries in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Adelaide, an area of study that has not previously been covered in any detail. In so doing it gives insight into British-Australian relations more broadly and challenges the assumption that "British art was forced on Australia as cast offs" (227). Instead, Potter suggests that the acquisition of works required "complex transcultural negotiations" that led to "the Australian colonists freely taking inspiration from U. K. examples in order to establish their own identities" (42). British models were central not only to the shape of the collections but also to the establishment of governing structures and the architectural and curatorial approaches of the national galleries themselves. Potter identifies when and how the national galleries were established and gives a brief history of the relevant bequests to the galleries, looking into how these shaped the opportunities available to, and the collections formed by, these institutions. The book is divided into two sections. In the first part, Potter looks at "structural and contextual themes" and examines how British values were reflected in the acquisitions of works for the national galleries, in addition to the impact and constraints of the global market on the purchase of British artworks for Australia (10). The book is most engaging when it pursues the ideologies behind the purchases of pictures for the national galleries. [End Page 277] For this reason, I found the second thematic part of the book more interesting than the first. Here Potter examines the acquisitions of British Old Masters and landscape painting, Pre-Raphaelite art, and British modernism by the national galleries. The dominance of British art within the collections, Potter suggests, was not so much due to a desire by British advisors and buyers to "dump" second rate art on the dominions but because Australians saw themselves as British-Australians (5). As British immigrants or first generation Australians, the population still had a strong sentimental attachment to Britain, even if this diminished over the course of the time under investigation in this volume. Many of the works acquired, such as the first Pre-Raphaelite work to enter an Australian collection, Chaucer at the Court of Edward III (1847–51) by Ford Maddox Brown, were seen to be of educational value, illustrating in this case "the birth of the English language in the person of Chaucer" (176). Civic humanism was also an ideology that supported the acquisition of British art. Gallery acquisitions of British art reflected changing attitudes toward what it meant to be British and the nature of Britishness. The debates surrounding identity came to the fore around the attempted acquisition of works like Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50) by John Everett Millais. Frank Rinder, the selector for the Felton Bequest, was particularly influential given that the Bequest of £378,033 to the National Gallery of Victoria allowed the gallery to purchase works of art that were not within the budget of other, less wealthy Australian galleries. He argued that British paintings such as Christ in the House of his Parents would be capable of promoting a "spiritual entente" between the center and the Antipodes of the Empire (186). Rinder also argued that Australians' sacrifices during the First World War made Australia eligible for the picture. Ultimately, though, the National Art Collections Fund and the Tate Gallery opposed the NGV's attempts to acquire the picture. The war poet Siegfried Sassoon and other celebrities supported this stance, with Sassoon arguing, "It would indeed be a great pity if the picture were allowed to go out of England" (qtd. in Potter 187). The volume summarizes an enormous amount...

‘We Are the Dead’: The War Poets, metal music and chaos control

During the course of the First World War, the generation of British authors known collectively as the War Poets revolutionized the popular culture of their time. Due to their changing attitudes towards armed conflict, their portrayal of war chaos included realist descriptions of life in the trenches, unusual choices of subject matter and an eventual challenge to the political and religious establishment of their time. Metal music, a genre with an inherent lyrical and musical concern about chaos and control, has crafted several songs inspired on the First World War poetry. This specific relationship has not been studied before. Based on Weinstein’s and Walser’s insights on chaos and control in metal music, the aim of this article is to evaluate the ability of metal music to either transmit or refute the War Poets’ discourse on chaos, and to study the textual and musical resources metal bands use to relay and control said discourse. For this purpose, I perform a comparative analysis of nine metal music adaptations and appropriations of six different First World War poems they are based on. A chronological path of the evolution of the First World War poetry is followed. The study concludes that, besides effectively transmitting or contesting the War Poets’ discourse on chaos, metal music exerts chaos control through its use of musical resources, especially in the case of extreme metal subgenres.

‘A small, fierce being’: Jon Silkin, Isaac Rosenberg, and the definition of the Anglo-Jewish poet

ABSTRACT Despite being ‘one of the most distinctive and distinguished of those British poets who began to publish in the 1950s’, the writer, editor, critic, and translator Jon Silkin remains a largely forgotten figure in contemporary poetry. However, with the publication his Complete Poems in 2015 and the availability of his archive, there has been a renewed critical interest in the charismatic, prolific, and contentious poet. Drawing heavily from Silkin’s unpublished correspondence, this article contributes to this revival by exploring his place within the post-1945 Anglo-Jewish community and his relationship to his Jewish identity and cultural heritage. In particular, it investigates how the First World War poet (and fellow Anglo-Jew) Isaac Rosenberg became a vital means through which Silkin articulated his poetic identity as one caught between two hyphenated cultures and histories and defined his relationship with his Anglo-Jewish contemporaries.

Making Sense of Wilfred Owen’s Keatsian Heritage: “Exposure” and “Ode to a Nightingale”

En lisant l’œuvre de Wilfred Owen, on s’accorde souvent à dire que son admiration pour John Keats s’est estompée pendant la guerre ; sa poésie se serait alors retournée contre celle de Keats. C’est pourquoi les premiers vers de « Exposure », qui paraphrasent l’ouverture de « Ode to a Nightingale », ont été perçus comme un rejet de l’ode. Cet article soutient qu’on peut lire le poème d’Owen comme une version inversée et radicalisée de l’ode. Bien que « Exposure » soit plus violent et politique que « Ode to a Nightingale », le poème ne rejette pas la conception keatsienne de la souffrance humaine et de la nature. Au contraire, il s’appuie sur la brève description de l’humanité présentée dans « Ode to a Nightingale » et la développe. On trouve également dans « Exposure » des échos aux sombres descriptions de l’hiver qui apparaissent dans des poèmes moins connus de Keats, ce qui permet à la fois de donner un nouvel éclairage à la lecture de « Ode to a Nightingale » et de faire du poème d’Owen la triste conclusion de l’ode.

The Civil War Dead and American ModernityBattle Lines: Poetry and Mass Media in the U.S. Civil WarI Remain Yours: Common Lives in Civil War LettersThe Literature of Reconstruction: Not in Plain Black and White

The Civil War Dead and American ModernityBattle Lines: Poetry and Mass Media in the U.S. Civil WarI Remain Yours: Common Lives in Civil War LettersThe Literature of Reconstruction: Not in Plain Black and White

«Ведь был бы мир другим»: тема войны в поэзии Эдварда Томаса

The British poet Edward Thomas who was killed on the Western Front discovered his poetical talent during the First Word War. According to some critics, it’s mostly due to the war he was inspired to write 142 poems in the space of 2 years. The paper tries to answer the question whether it would be appropriate to consider Thomas a “war poet”, and if yes, in what sense. The article examines influence of the war on Thomas’s poetry and considers representation of the war theme in his poetical works. Scientific originality of the research is conditioned by absence of studies on Thomas’s creative work in domestic literary criticism; his name is almost unknown in Russia. The following conclusions are justified: though Thomas couldn’t be considered a “trench poet”, the war theme, often implicitly, through nature images, appears in many of his poems, becoming a leitmotif of his poetry.

David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet, by Thomas Dilworth, David Jones: A Christian Modernist?, ed. by Jamie Callison, Paul S. Fiddes, Anna Johnson, and Erik Tonning

David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet, by Thomas Dilworth, David Jones: A Christian Modernist?, ed. by Jamie Callison, Paul S. Fiddes, Anna Johnson, and Erik Tonning

Cynic and Lyric Balanced

The war poet Keith Douglas wrote in 1943 that he sought a “balanced style” where “cynic and lyric” might meet. In focusing on a set of four poems that he had written in May and June of that year—“Vergissmeinnicht,” “Aristocrats,” “How to Kill,” and “Enfidaville”—I propose that the cynic and lyric met for Douglas as two forms of special knowing, the “combat gnosticism” of war poetry, and a parallel gnosticism in love lyric. Each proposes that a special experience can utterly transform a subject: the soldier’s kind of knowing transformed by battle experience, and the lover’s by the experience of a beloved’s body. Douglas’s poetry arrives at the balancing of cynic and lyric, then, by confusing and conflating these special gnostic conditions, and its resonant image is the battlefield corpse conflated with the lover in repose.