Poetry as political critique:
Well, rhymed couplets make great chants at protests (as well as catchy internal anthems, repeating the message over and over).
And then there's the real thing.
When this came out, it was still widely believed that war was a valiant and beautiful expression of nationhood; tragic, sure, but still a worthwhile endeavor.
The poet was a veteran who, in fact, died in the trenches after writing this piece.
It helped define the birth of the madness of the 20th Century, a world driven insane by war and the horrible false promise of technology.
quote:Wilfred Owen
Dulce Et Decorum Est
-----
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Here's a link to the a non-ironic use of the same famous line -- it's from Horace, and means "Sweet and proper it is to die for one's country."
My favorite line is "an ecstasy of fumbling" -- that's so expressive of terror and hope and despair inside that literal movement, trying to get the damn gas mask on before the mustard gas turns your lungs into cooked sausage.
Then there's this one. More of a social commentary, I first read it on this board many, many reboots ago. The more I read it, the more I like it.
The idea of living cities is sort of inherent in it, and the social commentary is still very, very relevant.
It's named for the date Hitler invaded Poland.
quote: September 1, 1939
W. H. Auden
-----
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Some of the echoes in the poem:
Madness.
Nijinsky and Diaghelev were the lead dancer and choreographer in Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' -- both were famously hard to get along with. Nijinsky was also famously insane.
German nationalism:
"From Luther until now..." as Luther freed Germany from the Pope...
"Find what occurred at Linz,"
According to, of all things, an episode guide to Gene Roddenberry's "Andromeda," this line refers to a famous school visit by Hitler in 1938, in which Austria was annexed to Germany.
"Exiled Thucydides" was a disgraced Athenian general who wrote a critical account of the Peleponnesian Wars. According to my just-now-looked-up research, he viewed the regime which booted him up as a bit... totalitarian.
Here's some more on him, a bit dry, but concise enough and well linked.
"The lights must never go out," quotes the 1914 British government statement "The lamps are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
And here's the thing -- if you really just sit and read the poem, you don't need to know all that. It still hits right in the chest.
And, unlike a lot of social commentary, it has the foresight and good grace to end on an up note. To show a direction for the future, even. |
