De André tesina

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. (The Soldier,1914)

So here is a poet who reflects about his own death and that, proud of his values, does not hesitate to

represent himself in his own land saying that his sacrifice will bring benefits to his motherland,

because ‘that there’s some corner of a foreign field/that is for ever England’, so other than

physically he will spiritually enrich the soil anywhere he dies. Although, in fact, it’s a terrible

argument, the poet manages to draw a veil of sentiment, confidence and hope in the eternal

gratitude to a country that has created him and to which he is going to offer his body and his soul as

extreme gratitude. “ And think , this heart, all evil shed away,/ a pulse in the eternal mind, no less/

gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given”-“and gentleness, in hearts at peace , under

an English heaven”. A dream of hope and dedication to a country that will collapse miserably under

the bursts of bombs and poison gas, described with a rawness and an impressive realism , in the

vain attempt to communicate a message to future generation by W. Owen in “Dulce et decorum

est”, a poem based on the experience of the poet himself about the horrors of a trench’s war that

has spared no one. However the ability of these so-called “war poets” lies in being able to combine

perfectly an elegant classicism of their works with a message so cruel and abominable. Owen, in

fact, taking the famous verses of Horace, shows the disillusionment of a war, whose propaganda

had been led to believe in great messages and ideals but which, in the end, had proved an

unnecessary carnage.

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; 8

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines 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 flound'ring 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. (Dulce et decorum est, 1918)

The crude description of the war, of the terrible acts, reveals the great disappointment of the poet,

and of many other like him, to have been taken for a ride by the power that with his “Old Lie” has

convinced them of his good intentions e sent them to die without any interest about it. “Dove sono i

generali/che si fregiano nelle battaglie/con cimiteri di croci sul petto,/dove i figli della

guerra/partiti per un ideale/ per una truffa, per un amore finito male:/ hanno rimandato a casa/le

loro spoglie nelle bandiere/legate strette perché sembrassero intere” is the desperate cry that Faber

throws against an unjust power, opportunistic and stupid.

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go. (Suicide in trenches, 1918) 9

Wrote S. Sassoon,swept as the others by the the horros of a silly and aimless war. It was 1918 and

the war was on its way to end. But Sassoon does not limit himself in describing bitterly the life

before, during and after the I World War, but he throws himself fiercely against a public opinion that

ignorantly, perhaps deliberately, in front of what is really happening, has approved and celebrated

the departure of thousands of people to their deaths. And those giggly and happy faces for the

departure of their loved ones become the symbol, the emblem of a population which does not want

to know, which refuses to take its responsibilities for the cruel actions made and that takes refuge in

the dullness and blindness, leaving on their own destiny the soldiers who, had left “per fare la

guerra, per dare il suo aiuto alla sua terra” but did never come back or, probably even worst, had

survived after that massacre that they would never forget the taste. With this three poems it is

possible to reconstruct what was the story of the I World War , how young people and old people

have lived it; of the initial euphoria that soon turned into a sad omen of death and that found its

realization in trenches. The flower of a youth fallen under the arms for a country that “ora che è

morto/si gloria di un altro eroe/ alla memoria” ma “lei che lo amava/ aspetta il ritorno/ d’un

soldato vivo,/ d’un eroe morto/che ne farà?/ Se accanto , nel letto, /le è rimasta la gloria/d’una

medaglia/alla memoria”, crushed by the blind desire of domination and strength of an absurd and

mean power that, instead of honor and glory promised so much, left behind it only a long trail of

death, destruction and sufferance. And as these poets, De Andrè follows this slim thread, starting

from the famous work of E. L. Masters, where it seems that from that hill populated by deads there

is a language of a truth that living cannot express and in which the author has, with a lucidity also

chronicler and prophetic, given a voice to the thousands of skeletons that the society of their time,

and of today, hides in its closets, representing up to break into modernity too, with this melodies,

the sincere mind of those who gone to fight , as the only reward received “le mostrine e le stelle/ e

il consiglio di vendere / cara la pelle”.

STORIA – ‘d’un soldato vivo, d’un eroe morto’

Ma ciò che a noi rimane scritto, quasi incredibile per la sua atrocità, avvenne davvero. E davvero il

soldato “troppo lontano / si spinse a cercare/ la verità”, “partito per fare la guerra,/ per dare il suo

aiuto alla sua terra”. Era il 28 giugno 1914 e lo studente serbo Gavrilo Princip uccise con due colpi

di pistola l’arciduca Francesco Ferdinando, erede al trono asburgico, fornendo il casus belli della

Prima Guerra Mondiale. Solamente un mese dopo, infatti, l’Austria dichiarava guerra alla Serbia,

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innescando una rapida reazione a catena di atti e di decisioni che ebbe come sbocco inevitabile un

conflitto armato dalle inedite proporzioni. Una guerra eccezionale sotto molti punti di vista, tra cui

l’inattesa dimensione planetaria che assunse. La combinazione esplosiva tra pressione economica,

affermazione selvaggia delle società imperiali e tensioni nazionalistiche all’interno dei vari stati

europei fu la causa reale che portò allo scoppio della grande guerra, che assunse un carattere

talmente epocale da definirsi non solo come spartiacque tra Ottocento e Novecento ma soprattutto

da essere considerata l’inizio dell’età contemporanea. Fu necessario però trovare una causa concreta

per giustificare quello che alla fine era stato il raggiungimento massimo di tensioni da molto

presenti, e quando la Serbia rifiutò parte dell’ultimatum durissimo inviatogli dall’Austria a seguito

dell’assassinio, gli austriaci colsero l’occasione per dichiarare guerra alla Serbia e iniziarono il

bombardamento di Belgrado. All’inizio di agosto del 1914 si erano già formati i due blocchi di

nazioni che si erano venuti definendo agli inizi del Novecento: la Triplice Intesa (Francia, Gran

Bretagna, Russia) contro Germania e Autro-Ungheria, seguiti poi da Giappone alleato con i primi e

Impero Ottomano con i secondi. Il piano militare tedesco prevedeva l’invasione della Francia

attraverso il Belgio neutrale in modo da compiere una “guerra-lampo”. Non accadde però ciò che

era stato previsto e la resistenza belga e francese bloccò le spedizioni tedesche trasformando il

conflitto in una logorante guerra di trincea. Questa situazione di stallo definì quasi fino alla fine del

conflitto quello che venne chiamato “fronte occidentale”. Su quello orientale si era subito aperto un

altro fronte che vedeva scontrarsi l’esercito russo con quello austro-tedesco in Prussia. Dopo una

serie di battaglie disastrose per i russi questi ultimi conseguirono migliori risultati in Galizia, ma le

loro capacità aggressive si stavano già esaurendo non essendo essi in grado di competere dal punto

di vista industriale ed economico. Già nel 1915 , infatti, si verificarono i primi scioperi che resero la

già critica situazione russa ancora peggiore, obbligandola nel ’17, a seguito della rivoluzione

bolscevica, a ritirarsi nel tentativo di ripristinare un ordine interno. Intanto però, sul fronte

occidentale, la guerra continuava ad imperversare e dopo il blocco economico del ’15 attuato dalla

Gran Bretagna, a cui la Germani rispose con una guerra sottomarina (ed affondamento del

Lusitania), e l’entrata in guerra di altre nazioni come Portogallo e Italia a fianco dell’Intesa e

Bulgaria con gli imperi centrali si verificarono alcune svolte. Verso la metà del 1916 però la guerra

si impantanò nuovamente nelle trincee, dopo la spedizione punitiva austriaca nei confronti

dell’esercito italiano guidato da Luigi Cadorna e la conquista da parte di quest’ ultimo della Gorizia

e le battaglie di Verdun, in cui comparirono per la prima volta i carri armati, e dello Jutland. Già

dopo pochi mesi dal suo inizio la guerra aveva mostrato d