ELSA
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THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND LITERATURE
Does it Matter? by Siegfried Sassoon
Does it matter?—losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
…
Does it matter?—losing your sight?
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they matter?—those dreams from the pit?
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.
‘Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.’ – Horace
‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel – Dr. Samuel Johnson (April 7, 1775)
‘My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the Pity.’ –
Wilfred Owen
‘No bastard ever won a war by dying himself for his country. The war was won by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.’ – Patton
Piecing together the impact of World
War I, the ELSA meet was opened by Prof. Ghosh wherein he shared his intention
of bringing in such an immense topic for discussion. Highlighting the history
of Wars right from the ancient times to the present day he pointed out the
significance of War as a genre in literature, whose tone shifted just after years of grueling WWI combat. He pointed out how only a few years before
1914, war was seen by most Europeans as a glorious undertaking. But the profundity
of World War I was such that not only did it affect the general public but also poets, writers, playwrights, dramatists and
artists, who responded to it with deeply reflective and ground-breaking creativity
as they and the rest of the world grappled with the war’s unprecedented upheaval.
He explained that the literary response to World War I came not only to portray
its horrors at the front, but also as the reverberations and aftershocks of the
war throughout society.
It is not unknown that the
causes of World War I have been debated since it ended, but one of the
prominent one being assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was brought up by
Dr. Anand Shankar Polley who spoke on the topic ‘The Regicide which
Started the Great War’.
Thoughts of war
throughout history and in many civilizations have revolved around two
contradictory, though not necessarily mutually exclusive, sets of images: the
first postulating war as an elevating, heroic experience and the second being a site of destruction and
desolation. Dr Manju asserted the early enthusiasm for the
war by referring to the poem ‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brooke which captures and distils
a particular type of patriotism glorifying young
soldier marching off for the good of the country. But
it wasn’t too late to realise that patriotism at the front differed from the
rhetoric of the rear. No one was more aware of this than the soldiers
themselves.
Mr. Saurabh Agarwal gave us a first-hand
account of the disillusionment that
grew out of the war by discussing the experiences of a German veteran
soldier of World War I, Erich Maria Remarque, as depicted in his
novel All Quiet on the Western Front.
Among
the prominent works that reflected the horrific realities of war Dr. Ranjana Mehrotra discussed one
of Owen's most renowned works, ‘Dulce
et Decorum Est.’ the poem known for its horrific imagery and condemnation
of war. She highlighted the fact that, if one were to see first-hand the
reality of war, one might not repeat deceitful clichés like ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ which means it is sweet to die for
one’s own country. In line with Wilfred Owen, poets such as Siegfried Sassoon,
not only criticised the out- dated notion of war as glorious but also describes both the horrors of the trenches and
satirised the patriotic pretensions of those in power. In this light, Dr. Rajan Lal presented Siegfried Sassoon’s poem, ‘The Hero’.
Letters
and journals, perhaps are undeniably, the most personal texts, open and candid,
which contrasts with the highly conceptualized and self-protective language of
more "official" documents. Accentuating this Miss Dhruvi Sinha, put to life the published diaries, collections
of letters, and autobiographies of the war-participants providing a closer
glimpse of ‘at the moment of writing’ viewpoint, unmediated or intervened by
reflection or change in circumstance. To familiarise us with the more
unadulterated version of the truth of the war, photographers
have undeniably put
themselves on the front lines of violence around the world in a fight only to
bring us closer to the truth. In this light, Dr. Lisha Sinha took us on a heart-rending pictorial journey into World
War I showing how war evacuates, shatters, breaks apart, and levels
the built world. Indeed, the shock of such pictures could not fail to unite
people of good will to wage a war against war.
However, what little is known or talked about is the contribution of Indian soldiers
to World War I who provided 10 percent
of the British Empire’s total military strength. On
the eve of World War 1, the Indian Army expanded from 155,000 men to
around 1.27 million; of these, 827,000
served as combatants and more than 74,000 lost their lives. Prof. Ghosh and Dr. Santosh Gupta did not forget to remind us of the support and impact that Indian
Soldiers made to this Great War. The neglect that Indian soldiers suffered
during the great war was emphasized by Dr. Santosh Gupta who presented
Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Across the Black Waters, accentuating the plight of Indian
soldier whose story makes it harder to piece together the
impact the war had on India itself. On the other
hand, through the character of Lehna Singh in Chandra Dhar Sharma Guleri’s short
story ‘Usne Kaha Tha.’ Prof Ghosh
highlighted how Lehna Singh represents countless other soldiers in India, who
are an unfortunate pawn in the game of a larger political arena. At the same
time, he did not avoid mentioning the theme of pure love, sacrifice, and
valour, as the centrality of Indian experience and identity through Lehna Singh
as an ideal patriot in foreign and unfamiliar territory. Ms Anjali Singh’s ‘Narratives from the Battlefield: A Soldier’s Letter’
poignantly indicated the emotional connection between the trench and the
distant home.
By the end of the meet it was
evident that an imagery of military glory bore no relationship to the reality
of the battlefield. The Western Front has come to epitomize the notion of war
as a vast arena of victimhood. That all this sacrifice was in vain is
underlined by the aftermath of the war. We recall the broken promises and
despair, the soldiers who instead of returning to a "land fit for
heroes" were abandoned to unemployment, destitution, and physical and
mental decay. Prof. Ghosh reminded the members of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s
statement, ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.’ All members were
unanimous in agreeing that not withstanding our weakness to fall prey to
patriotic slogans in times of war, we must not forget our primary
responsibility to wage war not against peoples and nations but against
corruption, disease, exploitation, discrimination, hypocrisy, oppression and
inhumanity.
This ELSA meet served as a virtual
homage to millions of devoted, unquestioning, patriotic, young men who
were led to senseless slaughter and the pity of war.
Indian
Presence in World War I: Mulk Raj Anand’s
Across the Black Waters
Santosh Gupta
Mulk Raj Anand’s Across the Black
Waters (1939) depicts Indian soldiers who fought in the World War I on
behalf of Britain and its Allies in Europe, between the French and German
borders. This war was fought amongst the European imperial countries to
safeguard their colonial interests. More than one lac and thirty thousand Indian
soldiers were taken to Europe and other war locations from October 1914
onwards; about seventy thousand died in action and a large number wounded. It
was an ironic situation as these soldiers were fighting
for their colonisers, who had enslaved them at home. Yet the soldiers
showed utmost sincerity, loyalty and valour in performing their duty.
Commemorated by the British at the ‘India Gate’ in New Delhi, these soldiers,
also victims of the colonial rule, are almost forgotten by their own countrymen
and those who used them. Today they are history’s
orphans.
This novel is perhaps the only Indian English novel about these soldiers
and India’s significant contribution to the Allied forces’ victory in the war.
There are not many literary texts on this subject in the other Indian languages
also. In Hindi there is the classic short story Usne Kaha Tha (1915), written by Chandra Dhar
Sharma Guleri. Located in French trenches, it is a moving depiction of the
simplicity and romantic high idealism of the soldiers, specially
Anand dedicated the novel to his father Late Subedar Lal Chand Anand who
had fought in the war and was awarded medal. The graphic and realistic details of the battle
scenes and of other experiences must have been based on the father’s war
stories, specially about the trenches.
The soldiers, mostly from Punjab, initially experienced excitement, gradually becoming aware of
the war’s grimness and ugly
destructiveness. Anand believed that a novel must become “a weapon of humanism.”
This novel, in presenting the destructive-ness of the colonial system and futility of war, is a remarkable war novel.
Prof. Santosh Gupta, University of
Rajasthan, Jaipur
“Dulce Et Decorum
Est” by Wilfred Owen
Ranjana Mehrotra
War has been a constant factor in the history of the human race and as long as there has been war, there has been literature about war, both in poetry and prose. Earlier the literary part was mainly of the exploration of its valour, its glory and tales of bravery but it has also covered the brutality, the negligence, the uselessness of it and the cost both financial and human. The WW-I was no different as it gave birth to such great war poets as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke and Isaac Rosenberg etc. who wrote about their experiences that they had undergone first hand while fighting in the battle trenches. Some of these poets glorified the cause in a patriotic manner while many younger soldier poets displayed in their work the gruesome reality of the war.
Just months before his death in 1918 Wilfred Owen wrote “My subject is war and the pity of war. The Poetry is in the Pity”. Wilfred Owen was born on March 18, 1893 and died on November 4, 1918 at the young age of 25. He is renowned for the poems that he wrote displaying his anger at the cruelty of war and his compassion for the victims of war. Due to this he has often been accused of being a pacifist.
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” is one of his most famous poems that was written in 1917 when he was admitted to Craig Lockhart hospital. The title of the poem was taken from the poet Horace that was repeated in the last line that meant’ it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’ which Owen’s own experiences told him to be an old lie. Wilfred Owen is considered the quintessential anti-war poet and this poem is often known as the gas poem. He uses sound, sensory experiences and violent imagination to paint pictures that anyone would flinch from.
Today more than a century later this poem has moved beyond history into a kind of emotion all over the English speaking world. Many of his poems may have played a part in the protest marches in 2003 against the Iraq war. He remains one of the greatest poets to have combined realism and fantasy, protest and testimony with a combination of politics and aesthetics.
Dr. Ranjana Mehrotra, former HOD, BDK Mahavidyalya, AGRA
War and its Impact on
the Human Psyche:
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Saurabh
Agarwal
All Quiet on the Western
Front by Erich Maria
Remarque brings to us the horrors of the First World War from the viewpoint of
soldiers who are stationed on the battlefront. It is one of the most
influential anti-war novels which depict the grotesqueness of the Great War to
create a feeling of aversion. Remarque shows that the narrative of heroism
and romanticism associated with the war is short-lived as we see the war ends
up destroying the psyche of the soldiers fighting on either side. These soldiers
have been deployed in the prime of their youth. Leading their lives in
trenches, witnessing the death of friends all around they have lost their
ability to connect to the real world. Remarque says,
“We're no longer young men. We've lost any
desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves.
From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the
world and to love being in it, but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to
land went straight for our hearts.”
Remarque, through his young protagonist, has
revealed the agony that the frontline soldiers had undergone while those who
manipulated the strings stayed away from the bloody scenes.
All the main themes of the
novel may be summarized as follows: the senselessness of war; the collapse of
the old value system of Western culture and its inability to prevent war; the
involvement of the older generation in allowing the war to happen and driving
the younger generation into war; the soldiers’ fear with regard to the time
spent in the war since they do not know what will become of them later; their
fear of not being able to adjust to a normal life, to find their place in
society in times of peace since all they know are death and killing. The themes
of pacifism, of the senselessness of all wars, and of the lost generation
are thus combined without any clear transition.
Saurabh Agarwal, Freelance writer & Poet
Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier”: Connecting the Disconnected
Manju
When we think of war, the few things that come to our
mind are death and devastation but Rupert Brooke has associated war with immortality.
He is known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War.
The most famous is ‘The Soldier’. The poem begins by presenting the soldier’s
possible death but the manner it discovers death is not what we might expect.
Indeed it is not so much a horrific death in the battle field or in a trench, a
very common theme in the First World War Poetry. It presents Brooke as it is
idyllic after life that soldiers will get to experience when they die. To die
in the battle field for one’s country is dignified, lofty and even honorable in
‘The Soldier’.
The poem elevates the heroism of English soldiers who
fought in World War One. This war is not the war which is decided by the
government and the soldiers have to fight rather here is a bigger canvas to consider
and comprehend. This is a popular literary piece that is read in Memorial
service of the soldiers even today. During World War I, so many soldiers died
and it was quite difficult to identify the dead bodies of the soldiers and
performing proper funeral rites so the dead bodies were buried at national
symmetry with white crosses along with the names of the soldiers though it was
also doubtful that the correct name matches with the correct body. So he says
that the grave of an English soldier will be England herself even if he is
buried in a foreign land as it contains an English body. It should remind the listeners of England
when they see the grave. Brooke concludes that only life is the appropriate
gift to be given to one’s motherland for all the beautiful things one gets from
his motherland. The soldier-speaker of the poem seeks to find redemption
through sacrifice in the name of the country.
Dr Manju, UILAH, Chandigarh University, Punjab
Narratives from the Battlefield: A Soldier’s Letter
Anjali Singh
A
soldier’s dilemma is best summed up in the Catch – 22 situations. Here is a
letter from a soldier, wounded in Trench warfare.
“…My
wounds are getting on all right and they have discovered eleven in all. It is
hard not to be able to get up, but I suppose a month will soon be slip by…. You
ought to see my face. They cannot shave me because I have scraps of shell
sticking in, and as I had not had a shave for about a week before I was
wounded, I look a pretty picture. Well old chap, I am glad I am wounded to get
out of that hell, and if you ever meet a chap that says he wants to go back
call him a liar…”
The
letter has an element of integrity, as much as that of bravery when the soldier
compares trenches as a synonym of hell. ‘I look a pretty picture’ echoes the
shining optimism and high morale. The wound is a blessing in disguise.
Nothing can justify death and destruction, war causes.
What if the ‘decision-makers’ had to spend time in the trenches (Hell of the
World War I), would the decision ordering a strike remain unchanged? The
heroism eulogized by those sitting on the fence, is unreal as reflected from
the front line.
When one is fighting to defend, it
seems as the only alternative; one must fight well. However, it is the soldiers of the warring sides who are
caught up in the ‘banality of evil’ – ‘the idea that evil acts are not
necessarily perpetrated by evil people. Instead, they can simply be the result
of bureaucrats dutifully obeying orders’.
Thus, it is an eternal struggle between
individual and institution. I would like to
close with another similar voice:
The
call was short, the blow severe
I
little know that death was near
Only
those who have lost are able to tell
The
pain that I felt at not saying farewell.
Anjali Singh, Ph.D. Research Scholar
First
World War Poetry and Siegfried Sassoon
Rajan
Lal
Most
literature is autobiographical and even objective literature is not fully
objective. Personality of the author gets visible in the work concerned in some
way or the other, howsoever detached an observer he/she may be. Some blurred
glimpses of the author are traceable by reading between the lines if required
in objective literature since literature, in my own view, is experiential,
instinctual and psychic reflection. And as regards the First World War Poetry, it is mostly autobiographical if not as a
whole.
The
title ‘the First World War Poets’ was
bestowed primarily on a number of writers who ‘soldiered’ in various capacities
during the First World War and who
recorded very memorably their feelings about their experiences. Some seventy
British poets wrote about that war and more than fifty of them were actively
engaged in it. Not a few of them were killed. A handful (e. g. Rupert Brooke
and Julian Grenfell) expressed patriotic and quasi-romantic views. But the
majority expressed varying degrees of disgust,
disenchantment, cynicism, revulsion, anger and horror of war. It was often
poetry of protest and it deglamorized war forever. The war sucked the youth
of England from homes, colleges, farms, factories and streets into the dark and
filthy trenches to reveal a totally new dimension of life. It was a war which
ended in nobody’s victory, but devastated millions of homes and dissolved the
comfortable notion of life’s unruffled placid pace. Mankind had not seen so
much of materialistic accomplishments being put to the service of manslaughter
on such a large scale. Without distinction, England’s manhood was picked up and
sent to the war which dealt terrible blows to them. Everyone suffered
immensely, and many of them fought and died in the prime of their youth or were crippled for life. And
those who returned home physically intact but mentally devastated and
shell-shocked as much as those who remained at home to see the life changing
suddenly and waiting to hear the worst news.
If
we have a glance over the poetic piece “The Hero,” one of the War Poems composed by Siegfried Sassoon,
it, in my opinion, deplores the futility and pseudo-nationalism of War and it
also satirizes the fake façade of heroism.
Dr.
Rajan Lal, Hindu College, Amroha
Chandradhar
Sharma Guleri’s Usne Kaha Tha and World War I
Nibir
K. Ghosh
One among many Hindi
short stories that I had the opportunity to read in school is “Usne Kaha Tha”
by Chandradhar Sharma Guleri. I was attracted to the story because of its powerful
romantic aura that emerges from a chance encounter between a 12-year old boy
and a girl of 8 in a locality of Amritsar. When the boy learns that the girl is
engaged to be married, they part. Through constant flashbacks and flash
forwards, the narrative takes us to the battlefront in World War I where the
boy, Lehna Singh, is a part of a British regiment that has been assigned the
task of countering a German offensive. In the same regiment are the husband and
son of the girl we met at the beginning of the story in Amritsar. In the battle
Lehna succumbs to the wounds but not before he has ensured the safety of the
father and the son.
What then to me was a
simple story of love and valour began to have much wider connotations when I
decided to re-read the story in the light of the theme of the ELSA meet. Being
fully aware of the deluge of literature of World War I, I can say with
confidence that Usne Kaha Tha, written in 1915, can easily be taken as a
precursor of the genre of both War Poetry and Fiction. The mood of unredeemed
pessimism as reflected in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western
Front, Wilfred Owen’s poems and his unforgettable statement, “My subject is
War and the Pity of War. The Poetry is in the Pity” is quite evident in Usne
Kaha Tha. Yet, what makes the story haunt one’s memory is the sacrifice and
commitment shown by a soldier in the trenches to give his very life to carry
out what ‘she had said’ while he had gone to accompany the father and son to
the battlefront. Another distinguishing mark of the story is the way it
anticipates the stream of consciousness technique that emerged on to the
literary scene with the arrival of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf and others.
Nibir K. Ghosh, UGC Emeritus Professor
Note: For those interested in experiencing the feel of the horrors of World War II, here's a link to the conversation between Dr. Bernice Lerner and Robin Lindley for History News Network
http://www.hnn.us/blog/154420
