Riassunti letteratura inglese: Modernism + War Poets

Modernism

Modernism is not only an English phenomenon or an Anglo-American movement, but there are plenty of modernists throughout Europe. It’s characterized by a self-conscious awareness on the part of the people who consider themselves as modernist and on the desire to “make things new” as Ezra Pound said.

Ezra Pound

Most known American poet; very important in revolutionizing English Poetry; a peculiar example of the artist divided into esthetical and political commitments.

Modernism is a period of transition, too. It seems that there’s no period of stability because every period is between two or even more different situations.

Modernism: early 20th century; new concepts enter in the popular consciousness of science and technology; positive inventions but at terrible costs (new weapons used in wars, e.g. World War I); hundred million people died because of Spanish flu; an incalculable number of people died in WWI and in the battle of Gallipoli.

New scientific concepts

• Theory of relativity
• Electron
• Unconscious
• Assembly line (a new faster way of producing piece by piece)
• Theory of evolution (idea of natural selection, everything evolves to help men’s survival and everything has a particular purpose)
• Religion rejected

Human nature changed (Virginia Woolf)

There’s something that has changed irrevocably and radically. Human consciousness and human perception of themselves changed: so artists must find a new language to express themselves.

Artists

Contemporaries didn’t really try new things and perpetuate the tradition, while modernists created a new language which was appropriate to the new conditions (Pound and Eliot, for example).

Crisis of values

During the Victorian Age and after the experience of WWI, all the social contradictions were brought to the surface.

Victorian Age: people knew there was something dark under the surface in which they lived, but they hid it because things would have gone better and they did! Some artists denounced those wrong values because they were aware of that society.

World War I: men went to war in the name of values that were no longer relevant (patria, honour and courage) and they experienced a hostile reality in which hundreds of people died anonymously.

Matthew Arnold

He talks about a society which is blocked between two blocks that do not exist: a dead one and an unborn yet one (new consciousness is coming!). He was religious, interested in culture and in society, in education. He’s aware of the role of culture. He anticipates the modernist themes.

Dover Beach

Title very important because it places the scene (Dover is in the nearest English city to France). Poem written in 1830s and probably the product of his honeymoon.

• I: Atmosphere calm, good, there’s peace and equilibrium; a nocturne landscape of the sea (moon, night mood, water) when the gleaming of the light goes. Tonight/night specify that there are two kinds of nights. Imperative tense (Calm) lets us know there is somebody else there and maybe is his new wife, who asks somebody, the author, to look out too. Sweet at the last line refers to tender (is the night) in the Ode to a Nightingale by Keats. The Lie can anticipate the “Old Lie” the war poets will write about, and so it can be related to the expression armies clash by night and the following ignorant: soldiers fight in the darkness without knowing who their enemy is (anonymity of WWI).
• II: The equilibrium is interrupted and it starts changing from the second line. Land indicates the beach, made of tiny stones. Grating indicates something unpleasant and a change of mood. The waves are imitated by the rhythm and by the sound of words and they represent a negative moment of tension. Sadness comes through the ears thanks to the sound of the waves.
• III: Reference to Sophocles and Antigone. The best thing should be not be born, but if you were born, die as soon as possible should be the best idea. The Sea is consequently a metaphor of life because it’s full of anxiety and pain (the ebb and flow of the sea remind us the redundant pains in our life). This reminds him of Sophocles, according to whom the sea is the metaphor for human misery. He anticipates us that something unpleasant is going to happen. SEA OF LIFE
• IV: A very different metaphor for the sea: SEA OF FAITH. There’s a very close reference to religion. It surrounds Earth and men like an ocean, protecting you from everything that can hurt you. Everybody feels protected, but now this kind of Sea is withdrawing like the sea outside and everyone is in danger. Why? Because we’re isolated on a shingle, a rocky beach, and we have no support at all!
• V: Pessimism everywhere, there’s no longer a faith nor a belief because we are alone and without that sea of faith supporting us... so what’s there? The writer gives us a solution: let us be true to one another, that’s the only thing we can do. He suggests us to have interpersonal relationships and cultivate affective/human values, as friendship and love, and esthetical values, as beauty and art in all its forms, because there are no external or economic values to believe in. Interpersonal values can be the only thing we have because the world is not as it seems and in this terrible world in which there’s no joy, no love, no light, no certitude, no peace, no help (...) those values can give us an illusion of salvation.

Rupert Brooke

He has a traditional idea of warfare: he welcomed war because he was bored of his life and war was something interesting in that so boring life. But he never saw war because he was killed by a mosquito and died of septicaemia. According to him and to other poets, war was beautiful and fighting for England was honourable, even if you died.

WWI: War in trenches

Nobody could go anywhere; each soldier had his enemy in front of him. Very bad conditions of the trenches and there was no humanity there, because soldiers lived in mud mixed with water and with rats.

Peace

Title in contrast with the entire poem: peace but he’s talking about war!

War is great (that’s why many men went fighting) and he thanks God for it. But why is it great? Because it caught our youth and wakened us from sleeping (now we wake up and fight), it makes us stronger and honourable (and so we’re no more sick hearts), it refills the emptiness of love (a possible reference to his unhappy relationships and war let him distract). The worst thing that could happen to you is Death, you die, but there you’ve found your peace.

The Soldier

It’s absolutely worth noting this perspective during the war era.