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Nice overview

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World War I, the war that was originally expected to be "over by Christmas," dragged on for four years with grim brutality brought on by the dawn of trench warfare and advanced weapons, including chemical weapons. The horrors of that conflict altered the world for decades-and writers reflected that shifted outlook in their work.

As Virginia Woolf would later write, "Then suddenly, like a chasm in a smooth road, the war came."

Early Works Glorified the War

Among the first to document the "chasm" of the war were soldiers themselves. At first, idealism persisted as leaders glorified young soldiers marching off for the good of the country.

English poet Rupert Brooke, after enlisting in Britain's Royal Navy, wrote a series of patriotic sonnets, including "The Soldier," which read:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

Brooke, after being deployed in the Allied invasion of Gallipoli, would die of blood poisoning in 1915.

The same year, Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, upon seeing how red poppies grew in the fields that had been ravaged by bombs and littered with bodies, wrote "In Flanders Fields." The poem, memorializing the death of his friend and fellow soldier, would later be used by Allied militaries to recruit soldiers and raise money in selling war bonds:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Literary Tone Shifts After Grueling WWI Combat

While both Brooke's and McCrae's works lent patriotic tones to the sacrifices of war early in the conflict, as time wore on, the war's relentless horrors spawned darker reflections. Some, like English poet Wilfred Owen, saw it their duty to reflect the grim reality of the war in their work.

As Owen would write, "All a poet today can do is warn. That is why the true poet must be truthful." In "Anthem for the Doomed Youth," Owen describes soldiers who "die as cattle" and the "monstrous anger of the guns."

Owen's fellow army officer, Siegfried Sassoon, writes of corpses "face downward, in the sucking mud, wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled" in his 1918 poem, "Counter-Attack."

From the opposite side of the firing lines, German writer Erich Maria Remarque also experienced the grim day-to-day life of a soldier. Later, in 1929, he published an unflinching account in his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Among other prominent works reflecting the horrific realities of war was the four-part tome, Parade's End, by English novelist Ford Madox Ford, and from the Eastern Front, Dr. Zhivago by Soviet Russian writer Boris Pasternak, in which the main character describes grotesque injuries inflicted on the war's battlefields.

Ernest Hemingway Pens 'A Farewell to Arms'

In one of the most famous works set during the "Great War," American writer Ernest Hemingway offers a gripping love story between a soldier and a nurse set against the chaotic, stark backdrop of World War I.

A Farewell to Arms is among the writer's most autobiographical: Hemingway himself served as an ambulance driver during the war, was severely wounded on the Austro-Italian front and had been sent to a hospital in Milan, where he fell in love with a nurse.

Virginia Woolf Writes on War's Impact on Society

The literary response to World War I was not only to portray its horrors at the front but also the reverberations of the war throughout society.

Virginia Woolf, who had been a close friend of the fallen poet Rupert Brooke, wove profound references to the war's effects throughout her works.

In the setting of her acclaimed novel Mrs. Dalloway, the war has ended, but everyone remains deeply affected by it, including one of the novel's main characters, a veteran with severe shell shock (now known as PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder).

Modernism Emerges in Works by Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot

The disillusionment that grew out of the war contributed to the emergence of modernism, a genre that broke with traditional ways of writing, discarded romantic views of nature and focused on the interior world of characters.

Woolf's novels reflected this emerging tone, as did the works of Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness) and James Joyce ( Ulysses). T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," considered to be one of the most significant poems of the 20th century, presents a haunting vision of postwar society, with the opening lines:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World questions once-accepted social and moral notions in presenting a nightmarish vision of the future.

World War I devastated continents, leaving some 10 million soldiers and 7 million civilians dead. But writers responded with profound and groundbreaking work as they and the rest of the world grappled with the war's upheaval.

As Remarque wrote in All Quiet on the Western Front: "All these things that now, while we are still in the war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death."

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How World War I Changed Literature | HISTORY

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World War I altered the world for decades, and writers and poets reflected that shift in literature, novels and poetry.

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History.com owns this UK version of its site. It has too many stupid ads but it's an ok source. :-/

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Delving into the poetry and poets at the time of WWI

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Robert Graves was the son of a British father and a German mother. He won a classical scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, in 1914, but instead obtained a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He was sent to France in May 1915, where he took part in the Battle of Loos.

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If you want to use this great collection - You could look at Popular music in general - notice an obvious theme!) and contrast it with either a poem or piece of art, or a piece of the classical compositions.

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Sheet music covers from the era with songs meant to inspire action, entertain, or comfort. World War I Centennial ... Learn more

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The front line on a bright winter morning. A soldier has recently died though we don't know precisely how or when. Owen appears to have known him and something of his background and he ponders nature's power to create life, setting it against the futility of extinction.

Only five of his poems were published in Wilfred Owen's lifetime. FUTILITY was one of them. It appeared, together with HOSPITAL BARGE, in "The Nation" on 15th June 1918, shortly after being written - at Ripon probably - although Scarborough is a possibility. At about this time Owen categorised his poems, FUTILITY coming under the heading "Grief".

It takes the form of a short elegiac lyric the length of a sonnet though not structured as one, being divided into seven-line stanzas. Owen uses the sun as a metaphorical framework on which to hang his thoughts.

The sun wakes us (lines 2 & 4), stimulates us to activity (3), holds the key of knowledge (7), gives life to the soil (8), gave life from the beginning, yet (13) in the end the "fatuous" sunbeams are powerless.

"Move him into the sun". "Move" is an inexact word yet we feel the movement has to be gentle, just as the command has been quietly spoken. (What a contrast with the body "flung" into the wagon in DULCE ET DECORUM EST.) Of course, we may have been influenced by "gently" in line 2 which reinforces the previous impression, while "touch" again not quite an exact word, is surely light, reverent even.

A similar tone characterises line 3 with "whispering", so soft a sound. "Fields half-sown" ("unknown" in an earlier version) has its literal sense of work on the farm that this man will never now complete, and a metaphorical one as well, suggesting the wider tragedy of life left unfulfilled.

"Even in France" (line 4). No fields here to speak of, no seeds to grow on ground devastated by war. Does the mention of snow startle? Sun, sowing, may have put a different picture in our minds.

Line 7 "kind old sun" again suggests the softer emotions, "old" being literally true of the sun but again, as used here, a term of affection.

Stanza 1, then, seems tender, almost unchallenging. Stanza 2 is very different.

"Awoke", "woke", "rouse". This poem is about their opposite. In stanza 2 Owen invites us to share his thoughts, and soon a note of bewilderment is struck that becomes near despair. The questions he asks, prompted by the sight of his dead comrade, seem direct and rhetorical at the same time. So much has gone into the making of a man ("so dear achieved"), how can the sun that has done all this in the end do so little? Line 12's "Was it for this the clay grew tall?" has life, in man, reaching its peak merely to come to nothing, and the poem ends, fittingly, in ambiguity:

- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's peace at all?

Why ever did the sun do anything so fatuous is one question, while another is - what was the cause of the sun behaving in this way? Depending whether the stress falls on "what" or "made" in line 13. A clever end to Owen's set of imponderables.

Notice the simplicity of the diction which together with the use of so many words of one syllable accords with the elegiac, deeply felt mood. Owen is careful, however, to avoid smoothness. The first and last lines of each stanza are shorter than the rest. Some lines begin with the stress on the first syllable (trochee), some on the second (iamb). He makes much use of his favourite pararhyme (half rhyme): sun-sown, once-France, seeds-sides, star-stir, tall-toil, snow-now; which also helps to disturb the natural rhythm.

The problem Owen faces in FUTILITY is how to reconcile the miracle of creation with the evil of that creation laid waste, which intimates futility in two senses, first the futility behind the paradox of life made death, and second the futility of trying to find an answer. Where Owen stood at that time in relation to his practice as a Christian is impossible for us to know. At least the bitterness of ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH and DULCE ET DECORUM EST, in FUTILITY gives place to the pity that characterises his finest work, and manages, I think, to transcend the pessimism and the bleakness.

Copyright : Kenneth Simcox , 2000
Students can join the Wilfred Owen Association from just £8!

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The front line on a bright winter morning. A soldier has recently died though we don't know precisely how or when. Owen appears to have known him and something of his background and he ponders nature's power to create life, setting it against the futility of extinction.

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Wilfred Owen, who wrote some of the best British poetry on World War I, composed nearly all of his poems in slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918. In November 1918 he was killed in action at the age of 25, one week before the Armistice. Only five poems were published in his…

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Born in Guelph, Ontario, Canadian poet, soldier, and physician John McCrae earned his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Toronto, where he received the Gold Medal. As a physician, he worked at Toronto General Hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital, McGill University, the Royal…

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Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

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Andrew has a keen interest in all aspects of poetry and writes extensively on the subject. His poems are published online and in print.

Wilfred Owen And A Summary of "Dulce et Decorum Est"

"Dulce et Decorum Est" is a poem Wilfred Owen wrote following his experiences fighting in the trenches in northern France during World War I.

"Here is a gas poem ... done yesterday," he wrote to his mother from the recovery hospital in Craiglockhart, Scotland, in 1917. He was 24 years old. A year later he was killed in action, just one week before the Armistice of 11 November 1918 was signed to signal the end of hostilities.

The poem was published posthumously in a 1920 book simply called Poems. Wilfred Owen's preface reads: "This book is not about heroes ... My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, which is a line taken from the latin odes of the Roman poet Horace, means it is sweet and proper to die for one's country. Wilfred Owen takes the opposite stance.

In the poem he is, in effect, saying that it is anything but sweet and proper to die for one's country in a hideous war that eventually took the lives of over 17 million people.

This poem, written by a young soldier recovering from his wounds who was brave enough to return to the battlefield, still resonates today with its brutal language and imagery.

"Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Own

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 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.

Stanza By Stanza Analysis of Dulce et Decorum Est

First Stanza

The first line takes the reader straight into the ranks of the soldiers, an unusual opening, only we're told they resemble "old beggars" and "hags" (note the similes)by the speaker, who is actually in amongst this sick and motley crew.

The initial rhythm is slightly broken iambic pentameter until line five when commas and semi-colons and other punctuation reflect the disjointed efforts of the men to keep pace.

Also note the term "blood-shod" which suggests a parallel with horses, and the fact that many are lame, drunk, blind and deaf. The trauma of war has intoxicated the soldiers.

Second Stanza

Suddenly the call goes up: "Gas!" We delve deeper into the scene as chemical warfare raises its ugly head and one man gets caught and left behind. He's too slow to don his gas mask and helmet, which would have saved his life by filtering out the toxins.

"An ecstasy of fumbling," the poet writes.Theecstasy is used here in the sense of a trance-like frenzy as the men hurriedly put on their helmets. It has nothing to do with happiness.

Here the poem becomes personal and metaphorical. The speaker sees the man consumed by gas as a drowning man, as if he were underwater. Misty panes add an unreal element to this traumatic scene, as though the speaker is looking through a window.

Third Stanza

Only two lines long, this stanza brings home the personal effect of the scene on the speaker. The image sears through and scars despite the dream-like atmosphere created by the green gas and the floundering soldier.

Owen chose the word "guttering" to describe the tears streaming down the face of the unfortunate man, a symptom of inhaling toxic gas.

Fourth Stanza

The speaker widens the issue by confronting the reader (and especially the people at home, far away from the war), suggesting that if they too could experience what he had witnessed, they would not be so quick to praise those who die in action.

They would be lying to future generations if they thought that death on the battlefield was sweet. Owen does not hold back. His vivid imagery is quite shocking, his message direct and his conclusion sincere.

The last four lines are thought to have been addressed to a Jessie Pope, a children's writer and journalist at the time, whose published book Jessie Pope's War Poems included a poem titled , an encouragement for young men to enlist and fight in the war.

What Is the Main Theme of "Dulce et Decorum Est?"

"Dulce et Decorum Est" does not have one theme, but many. Still, each of the themes centre around war and the antiquated notions associated with it. The main themes of this poem are listed below:

War

One of the main themes of this poem is war. It deals with a soldier's experience in World War I, and contrasts the realities of war with the glorified notion of what serving in a war is like.

Propaganda

This poem takes aim at the idea of war presented by war-supporting propaganda. During World War I, propaganda came in the form of books, poems, posters, movies, radio and more, and presented an idea of war full of glory and pride rather than of death and destruction.

Politics

Politics are often the cause war, yet it is the men who have nothing to do with politics who are recruited to fight it. This poem underlines the wrongness of this dynamic.

Hero Worship

Everyone wants to be the hero. In reality, it is the man who keeps his head down is he who survives the longest.

Patriotism

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," means it is sweet and proper to die for one's country. This idea of patriotism fueled the hopes and dreams of many young soldiers who entered World War I. Once they realised the horrors that awaited them, however, this ideal patriotism was rightly viewed as ridiculous.

Lessons Learned From the Past

Owen highlights this Latin phrase to show how antiquated and wrong it is when applied to the modern age. Through his work, which entirely destroys the idea that it is sweet and proper to die for one's country, he hopes to make readers realise that times have changed - that while war may have once been glorious, now, war is hell.

What Is the Structure of "Dulce et Decorum Est?"

"Dulce et Decorum Est" might have started out as a double sonnet (there are 28 lines in total) and many lines are in iambic pentameter, with end rhymes. Owen must have decided against it as he worked on the draft, ending up with four unequal stanzas.

How Is Language and Diction Used in "Dulce et Decorum Est?"

"Dulce et Decorum Est" surprises the reader from the start. The opening lines contain words such as bent, beggars, sacks, hags, cursed, haunting, trudge. This is the language of poverty and deprivation, hardly suitable for the glory of the battlefield where heroes are said to be found.

Yet this is precisely what the poet intended. Figurative language fights with literal language. This is no ordinary march. Most seem asleep, from exhaustion no doubt, suggesting that a dream world isn't too far distant-a dream world very unlike the resting place they're headed for.

The second stanza's first line brings the reader directly in touch with the unfolding drama and, although these are soldiers, men (as well as old beggars and hags), the simple word "boys" seems to put everything into perspective.

What Are the Poetic Devices Used in "Dulce et Decorum Est?"

Wilfred Owen makes use of numerous poetic devices in this poem. Aside from the the structure, which is discussed above, Owen strategically uses assonance, alliteration, and iambic pentameter to transmit the dirty and dark feelings felt on the battlefield.

Assonance

It is important to note the poet's use of internal, line-by-line assonance. For example:

double / under / cursed / sludge / haunting /turned / trudge.

And again with:

drunk / fumbling / clumsy / stumbling / under / plunges / guttering / flung / corrupted / lungs / cud / dulce

Throughout the poem this is almost like the background rumbling of distant explosions.

Alliteration

Alliteration also occurs in lines five, eleven and nineteen:

Line 5: Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

Line 11: But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

Line 19: And watch the white eyes writhing in his face

More Than Iambic Pentameter

The iambic pentameter is dominant, but quite a few lines break with this rhythm, such as line five in the first stanza. This inconsistency reflects the strangeness of the situation. An opening spondee (two stressed syllables) and a trochee (stress followed by unstressed syllable) add power to the iambic feet that follow :

This refers to the exhaustion of the men and the fact that marching through thick sludge led to some losing their boots.

This is line 20. Note the alliteration and the simile, plus another spondee and pyrrhic (no stressed syllable.) Whatever you think a devil looks like, this is one that has gone beyond the pale.
bitter as the cud
This is a term used in farming, where cud is the half digested food of ruminants which is chewed again to make it digestible. The suggestion is that the blood coming up from the lungs has to be chewed by the poor dying man. A sobering image.

This line is very similar to the first line of Owen's poem "Anthem For Doomed Youth," which reads, "What passing bells for these who die as cattle?"

The Latin ending is perhaps a gentle reminder of many a slogan, many a motto and maxim held dear by clubs, military units, teams and families as an expression of belief and ideals. These are often displayed in Latin which was, of course, the language of the ancient Romans.

What Is the Tone and Mood of "Dulce et Decorum Est?"

From the start of this poem you are immersed in the atmosphere of war. These are the trenches of WWI, full of mud and death. Once optimistic, healthy soldiers have now been reduced to a miserable, exhausted gang who have little left to give.

It's a shocking environment into which the reader is taken-one that is oppressive, dangerous and without any real hope.

The poet wants the reader to know that warfare is anything but glorious, so he paints a gloomy, realistic, human picture of life at the frontline. He leaves us no doubt about his feelings.

The tone and mood is also set by language such as "misty panes and thick green light." From the start we feel that the world has been turned upside down, and that all things having to do with happiness and vitality have been cast away. This is not a lively green, but a thick green. The window is not clear, but misty. This is the land of the walking dead, of the sickly-a world cold, muddy and metallic.

By the end of the poem, it appears the reader has been moved away from the "haunting" battlefield, and the setting becomes internal. Here, the mood is less gruesome, but no less pitiful. In one sense, to see the way these scenes of death and violence have affected the poet's mind is just as disturbing as the scenes themselves.

How Is Imagery Used in "Dulce et Decorum Est?"

This poem is packed full of vivid images forged in the heat of battle, skillfully drawn by the young, keenly observant poet.

The opening scene is one of a group of soldiers making their weary way from the frontline "towards our distant rest" as bombs drop and lethal gas is released. Details are intimate and immediate, taking the reader right into the thick of trench war.

These men appear old, but that is only an illusion. War has twisted reality which gradually turns surreal as the poem progresses. The speaker evokes a dream-like scenario, the green of the enveloping gas turning his mind to another element, that of water, and the cruel sea in which a man is drowning.

The descriptions become more intense as the drowning man is disposed of on a cart. All the speaker can do is compare the suffering to a disease with no known cure. The final image - sores on a tongue - hints at what the dying soldier himself might have said about the war and the idea of a glorious death.

What Are the Symbols Used in "Dulce et Decorum Est?"

While Owen utilizes figurative language, similes, and assonance to combat the illusion that war is glorious, he also uses symbols to underline his message. There are three overarching symbols that strengthen the impact of "Dulce et Decorum Est."

Disfiguration

Owen focuses on the way war disfigures and warps all things that come into contact with it. Primarily, he focuses on the human body and the way it is slowly damaged and changed before ultimately being destroyed. We see the symbol of disfiguration in the first stanza, when the poet reports on the state of his fellow men:

Lines 1-3 Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Lines 5-7 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
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

By looking closely at the language used in the above lines, the symbol of disfiguration becomes clear. The men are no longer the men the used to be. They are shadows of their former selves: dead men walking.

Allusion

As we can see by the title and last line of this poem, one of the main symbols is allusion (in this instance, an allusion to Horace's Latin phrase). The allusion points to the idea that fighting and dying for your country is glorious. After making this allusion, the poet devotes all of his efforts to proving it wrong.

The devil is also alluded to in line 20, indicating the badness of the battlefield.

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

Nightmares

Another symbol that pervades this poem is the idea of the nightmare. Owen presents the scenes of war as a nightmare with their greenish color and mistiness. Also, the terrifying imagery adds to the feeling of a bad dream.

This symbol indicates that the horrors of war are almost too hard to comprehend. This must be a nightmare, mustn't it? The reality is that it is not a nightmare: These are real atrocities that happened to real people. The fact that the poet presents the poem as a sort of nightmare makes it all the more terrible.

Sources

Norton Anthology of Poetry, 2005, Norton.

Poetry handbook, 2005, John Lennard, Oxford.

The Poetry of World War 1 www.poetryfoundation.org
© 2016 Andrew Spacey
Just someone else on February 03, 2020:

I'm amazed by the amount of effort put into this poem. I'm totally recommending this to my friends, and my teacher specifically told us to visit this site, and i am so glad i did. thank you so much for this in-depth analysis, you have no idea how useful this is. thank you again!

Andrew Spacey (author) from Near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire,UK on August 15, 2019:

Dulce Et Decorum Est is a powerful poem. So glad you found the analysis useful.

Jacob Sebastian on August 15, 2019:

As an A-level student in the island Trinidad about to complete upper 6, this in-depth explanation was very helpful and precise to my understanding and also to the understanding of my classmates. Amazing work lad. Cheers.

Andrew Spacey (author) from Near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire,UK on April 29, 2018:

Many thanks, appreciate the visit and comment on this Wilfred Owen poem.

K Fakhry on April 28, 2018:

Hi I really liked your analysis. Extremely in-depth. Thanks

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Analysis of Poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen

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Andrew has a keen interest in all aspects of poetry and writes extensively on the subject. His poems are published online and in print. "Dulce et Decorum Est" is a poem Wilfred Owen wrote following his experiences fighting in the trenches in northern France during World War I.

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6 Stunning First World War Artworks By Women War Artists (You could choose any of these to contrast)

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6 Stunning First World War Artworks By Women War Artists (You could choose any of these to contrast)

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6 Stunning First World War Artworks By Women War Artists

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The first British official war artists’ scheme was set up by the government in 1916. Although several female artists were approached either by the British War Memorials Committee or the Ministry of Information, none of them completed commissions for the official schemes.

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Christian Host from Mystical Images of War - Natalia Goncharova

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Christian Host from Mystical Images of War - Natalia Goncharova

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Natalia Goncharova | Christian Host from Mystical Images of War | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Goncharova portrays a row of protective angels guiding a faceless group of Russian soldiers into battle. The serenity of the scene frames the battle as much as a religious mission-a fight between good and evil-as a contemporary battle between nations.

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The German Painter Who Fought In The Trenches - Otto Dix I WHO DID WHAT IN WW 1

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Otto Dix was a German artist known for his unforgiving depiction of the Great War and the society of Weimar Republic. His works in the series Der Krieg (The War) are among the most well known depictions of the horrors of war.

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The First World War, especially the Western Front, was dominated by artillery. Counter-battery work was essential in order to suppress enemy barrages and this painting illustrates the deadly effect of precise German bombardment. The three gunners in the foreground calmly observe the devastation before them; stylised figures struggle through the cratered landscape and distorted columns of smoke rise above the battery position. The serenity of the gunners in the face of immediate chaos reflects a fatalism and detachment perhaps derived from their distanced and impersonal mode of warfare. In style and content this painting was one of the most controversial to come out of the First World War.

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A Battery Shelled - Lewis, Percy Wyndham - Google Arts & Culture

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The First World War, especially the Western Front, was dominated by artillery. Counter-battery work was essential in order to suppress enemy barrages and this painting illustrates the deadly effect of precise German bombardment. The three gunners in the foreground calmly observe the devastation before them; stylised figures struggle through the cratered landscape and distorted columns of smoke rise above the battery position.

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In 1914 the Germans, trying to break the stalemate of trench warfare, exploded mines under British positions at Festubert, in Belgium, inflicting terrible casualties. The British responded, recruiting professional miners, and by summer 1916 they had 33 companies of tunnellers at the Western Front.The tunnel at St Eloi was 1,650 feet long and 125 feet deep. It was used to explode the largest mine of the war. This was one of 19 mines exploded at the launch of the Messines offensive in June 1917 and helped the British 41st Division to capture the village.In 1918 David Bomberg, who had served in the Royal Engineers, was commissioned by the Canadian Government to paint the operation. Bomberg was a major figure in the London avant-garde, influenced by Cubism and Futurism. He reduced his subjects to geometric forms, full of tension and kinetic energy. The Canadians, however, asked him to avoid abstraction, and rejected his first painting as too Futurist. This work is a preparatory sketch for a second version, now in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, in which Bomberg compromised and produced a more representational work. The tension and geometry that interested Bomberg are still evident in the complex rhythm of the beams against the curved tunnel walls and in the figures' poses, but the bright colour and bold abstraction of the first work have disappeared. Bomberg has included himself in the foreground of the picture carrying a heavy beam to show his feeling of being burdened by this task.

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Sappers at Work : Canadian Tunnelling Company, R14, St Eloi - Bomberg, David - Google Arts & Culture

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In 1914 the Germans, trying to break the stalemate of trench warfare, exploded mines under British positions at Festubert, in Belgium, inflicting terrible casualties. The British responded, recruiting professional miners, and by summer 1916 they had 33 companies of tunnellers at the Western Front.The tunnel at St Eloi was 1,650 feet long and 125 feet deep.

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Gassed by John Singer Sargent is currently not on display at IWM London. It toured to various institutions in North America and was displayed at IWM North in late 2018. image: A side on view of a line of soldiers being led along a duckboard by a medical orderly. Their eyes are bandaged as a result of exposure to gas and each man holds on to the shoulder of the man in front. One of the line has his leg raised in an exaggerated posture as though walking up a step, and another veers out of the line with his back to the viewer. There is another line of temporarily blinded soldiers in the background, one soldier leaning over vomiting onto the ground. More gas-affected men lie in the foreground, one of them drinking from a water-bottle. The crowd of wounded soldiers continues on the far side of the duckboard, and the tent ropes of a dressing station are visible in the right of the composition. A football match is being played in the background, lit by the evening sun.

The scene is the aftermath of a mustard gas attack on the Western Front in August 1918 as witnessed by the artist. Mustard gas was an indiscriminate weapon causing widespread injury and burns, as well as affecting the eyes. The painting gives clues about the management of the victims, their relative lack of protective clothing, the impact and extent of the gas attack as well as its routine nature - the football match goes on regardless. The canvas is lightly painted with great skill. Sargent draws the viewer into the tactile relationships between the blinded men. There is a suggestion of redemption as the men are led off to the medical tents, but the overall impression is of loss and suffering, emphasised by the expressions of the men standing in line. In sharp contrast to the victims, the football players are physically and visually co-ordinated and have full kit. Sargent travelled to France with artist, Henry Tonks in July 1918. Tonks describes the context for this work in a letter to Alfred Yockney on 19 March 1920: 'After tea we heard that on the Doullens Road at the Corps dressing station at le Bac-du-sud there were a good many gassed cases, so we went there. The dressing station was situated on the road and consisted of a number of huts and a few tents. Gassed cases kept coming in, lead along in parties of about six just as Sargent has depicted them, by an orderly. They sat or lay down on the grass, there must have been several hundred, evidently suffering a great deal, chiefly I fancy from their eyes which were covered up by a piece of lint... Sargent was very struck by the scene and immediately made a lot of notes.' Sargent was commissioned by the British Government to contribute the central painting for a Hall of Remembrance for World War One. He was given the theme of 'Anglo-American co-operation' but was unable to find suitable subject matter and chose this scene instead. ' The further forward one goes', he wrote 'the more scattered and meagre everything is. The nearer to danger, the fewer and more hidden the men - the more dramatic the situation the more it becomes and empty landscape. The Ministry of Information expects an epic - and how can one do an epic without masses of men?'

Ministry of Information commission, 1918

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Gassed by John Singer Sargent is currently not on display at IWM London. It toured to various institutions in North America and was displayed at IWM North in late 2018.image: A side on view of a line of soldiers being led along a duckboard by a medical orderly.

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Cylinder

Fernand Léger begins working in a cubist style under the influence of Cézanne and later Picasso and Braque. However, much more emphatically than his examples, he depicts figures and objects in volumes, such as the cone, the sphere and the cylinder. The cylinder appears so often in his work that a French critic even called him a 'tubist' instead of a cubist.

World War I

In August 1914, at the start of the World War I, Léger is conscripted and deployed to the front for the construction of trenches. During his time at the front, he makes many drawings that he later develops into paintings. Soldiers playing cards was created during his convalescence in Paris after a poison gas attack.

Robots

In this painting Léger combines cubism with the aesthetic of the machine. The soldiers are not people of flesh and blood, but look more like robots with their robust, geometric shapes and their arms like steel forged pipes. The recurring elements are reminiscent of the machinery of war. The alternation of small and larger areas of colour also lends the painting dynamism.

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Cylinder Fernand Léger begins working in a cubist style under the influence of Cézanne and later Picasso and Braque. However, much more emphatically than his examples, he depicts figures and objects in volumes, such as the cone, the sphere and the cylinder.

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Horse- Raymond Duchamp-Villon  (video so you can see all the sides)

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Horse- Raymond Duchamp-Villon  (video so you can see all the sides)

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Otto Dix | Der Krieg (The War) | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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In accordance with New York City mandate, all visitors age 12 and older must be vaccinated against Covid-19. Masks are required for all visitors.

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image: The view over a desolate landscape with shattered trees, the earth a mass of shell holes. The sun hangs high in the sky, beams of light shining down through heavy, earth-coloured clouds.

This work, based on the drawing, 'Sunrise. Inverness Copse', is one of the most memorable images of the First World War. The title mocks the ambitions of the war, as the sun rises on a scene of the total desolation. The landscape has become un- navigable, unrecognisable and utterly barren. The mounds of earth act almost as gravestones amongst the death and desolation. Nash was looking for a new kind of symbolism divorced from the more traditional Symbolist principles. He realised that the ideas he had been presenting in a figurative way before the war could be more meaningful in pure landscape form.

This work, based on the drawing 'Sunrise: Inverness Copse', is one of the most memorable images of the First World War. The title mocks any ambitions of war, as the sun rises on a scene of total destruction. The landscape has become un-navigable, unrecognisable and utterly barren; the mounds of earth are gravestones to a recently departed world.

Note: This artwork was relocated in August 1939 to a less vulnerable site outside London when the museum activated its evacuation plan.

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image: The view over a desolate landscape with shattered trees, the earth a mass of shell holes. The sun hangs high in thesky, beams of light shining down through heavy, earth-coloured clouds.

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1st Artists' Rifles at Marcoing, "Over the Top" - John Nash

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1st Artists' Rifles at Marcoing, "Over the Top" - John Nash

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image: a landscape in the snow. On the left, a red earth trench lined with duckboards stretches away from the viewer. A group of soldiers clamber from the trench, going 'over the top'. Two lie dead in the trench and another has fallen lying face down in the snow. Those who have survived plod forward towards the right without looking back. They walk beneath a grey, stormy sky, with clouds from shell and gunfire in the distance.

'Over the Top' is one of very few officially commissioned works depicting a specific and clearly identifiable action. The painting commemorates the 1st Artists' Rifles involvement in an attack on the morning of 30th December, 1917, at Welsh Ridge, near Marcoing (south west of Cambrai). The unit was recalled from 'rest' in response to a German attack and hastily committed to action. The consequences were disastrous and the Artists' Rifles suffered heavy casualties. In a sense this action was typical of the hastily arranged and badly planned local counter-attack. Nash's soldier figures climbing out of the trench, shoulders hunched over, walking out into the snow seem resigned to their fate. This battle experience profoundly affected the artist and his painting. The simplicity and directness of this image is a valuable visual complement to the historical accounts of the event to be found in the unit history and battalion war diary.

Ministry of Information Commission, Scheme 2

Note: This artwork was relocated in August 1939 to a less vulnerable site outside London when the museum activated its evacuation plan.

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'Over The Top'. 1st Artists' Rifles at Marcoing, 30th December 1917

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image: a landscape in the snow. On the left, a red earth trench lined with duckboards stretches away from the viewer. Agroup of soldiers clamber from the trench, going 'over the top'. Two lie dead in the trench and another has fallen lying face down in thesnow.

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Watercolorist Claggett Wilson (Smithsonian Museum of American Art)

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Watercolorist Claggett Wilson (Smithsonian Museum of American Art)

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The Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery are now open to the public, with separate timed-entry passes required for both buildings. All public programs are online only, on-site public tours and events are currently suspended.

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Did Artists Forsee the First World War (Guardian)

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Did Artists Forsee the First World War (Guardian)

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Did artists foresee the first world war_ _ Art and design _ The Guardian

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The United States entered the First World War when it declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. The government promptly established a Committee on Public Information to coordinate propaganda for the war effort. The committee's Division of Pictorial Publicity soon began planning to provide the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) with official artists. This was an unprecedented move, inspired by the official war art programs of Britain and France. Never before the First World War had any government sponsored artists to record a war in progress, although newspaper and magazine artists had begun doing so by the mid-1800s. The Division selected eight American artists, all of them experienced illustrators. The US Army commissioned them as captains and assigned them to record the wide-ranging activities of the AEF for posterity, as well as to help shape popular understanding of the war at home.

By spring 1918 the artists were in France, busy at work. Both the American and French high commands gave the artists carte blanche to travel where they would in the war zone and to draw whatever they saw. They took full advantage of their freedom to create images of men, machines, and landscapes from the ports of debarkation to the front lines. Ultimately they produced more than 700 sketches, drawings, and paintings. Their work fell into four broad categories: warscapes, which depicted devastated landscapes and damaged buildings, usually with little or no human presence; soldier life and activities, both at work and at rest behind the lines; military technology and engineering, with particular attention to such novelties as tanks, planes, and motor vehicles, as well as the AEF's logistical underpinnings; and combat.

The War Department transferred approximately 500 of the artists' works to the Smithsonian Institution immediately after the war. They were on display in the National Museum throughout the 1920s, along with a host of other war relics. But since then, most of the art has never left storage. The Division of Armed Forces History in the National Museum of American History now holds this collection of official AEF art from World War I. This object group, featuring high-resolution digitized images of the artwork, makes the entire collection available to the public for the first time since it was taken off exhibition in the late 1920's and allows visitors to see for themselves what World War I was like for the people who experienced it and the artists charged with drawing it.

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Picturing World War I: America's First Official War Artists, 1918-1919

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The United States entered the First World War when it declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. The government promptly established a Committee on Public Information to coordinate propaganda for the war effort. The committee's Division of Pictorial Publicity soon began planning to provide the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) with official artists.

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You can choose trench art but probably what you want to do is write generally about it as a category, and choose 1 or 2 pieces to use as examples / evidence to back up your argument.

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Useful websites and books for further research

Beauty from the battlefield: 10 pieces of trench art (IWM)
Examples of trench art

Wikipedia
Wikipedia entry giving a good overview of the subject.
Books
Copies of all these books can be freely consulted from open shelves at the Explore History Centre at IWM London.

Trench Art: A Brief History and Guide, 1914- 1939 by Dr Nicholas Saunders
(Pen and Sword Military, Barnsley, 2nd revised edition, 2011)
The main easily-found source, combines both historical introduction and a collectables guide; includes a list of other relevant websites.

Trench Art: An Illustrated History by Jane Kimball
(Silverpenny Press, Davis, California, 2004)
Large encyclopaedic volume - the only one.

Tommy's War: British Military Memorabilia, 1914- 1918 by Peter Doyle
(The Crowood Press Ltd, Marlborough, Wiltshire, 2008)
Illustrated examples, in a wide-ranging book.

Military Collectables: An international directory of twentieth-century militaria by Richard O'Neill Joe Lyndhurst
(Salamander Books Ltd, London, 1983)
Illustrates trench art, and much else besides.

The Collector and Researchers Guide to the Great War, Vol. 2: Small Arms, Munitions, Militaria by Howard Williamson
(Anne Williamson, Harwich, Essex, 2003)
Contains details on the markings typically stamped on fuse heads, shell charge cases, bullet cases and grenades, from UK, France and Germany, often incorporated into 'trench art'; p1-94.

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Trench Art is a misleading term given today to a wide variety of decorative items, sometimes also functional, produced during or soon after the First World War (though the term is also applied to products of both earlier and more recent wars).

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Trench Art (art made in the trenches by soldiers)

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Trench Art (art made in the trenches by soldiers)

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Beauty From The Battlefield: 10 Pieces Of Trench Art

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‘Trench art’ is a term used to describe objects made from the debris and by-products of modern warfare. Trench Art is usually associated with the First World War, although similar items have been produced in other conflicts too.

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Artist Soldiers: Artistic Expression in the First World War

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Artist Soldiers: Artistic Expression in the First World War

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Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

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Artist Soldiers: Artistic Expression in the First World War

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Capturing the Horrors - The Art of World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special

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Maurice Ravel: Piano concerto for the left hand

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Maurice Ravel: Piano concerto for the left hand

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This piece was commissioned by the concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein who lost his right arm in 1914 while serving with the German Army on the Eastern Front.

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Ravel: Piano concerto for the left hand | Hélène Tysman

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F S Kelly: Elegy for Strings: "In Memoriam Rupert Brooke"

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F S Kelly: Elegy for Strings: "In Memoriam Rupert Brooke"

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F S Kelly: Elegy for Strings: "In Memoriam Rupert Brooke"

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Anthem for Doomed Youth (& others by Wilfred Owen)

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Anthem for Doomed Youth (& others by Wilfred Owen)

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Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen | Poetry Foundation

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What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

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Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 3 'Pastoral'

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Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 3 'Pastoral'

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Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 3 'Pastoral'

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If I should die, think only this of me:

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.

Poetry Out Loud Note: This poem has had two titles: "The Soldier" and "Nineteen-Fourteen: The Soldier". The student may give either title during the recitation.

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The Soldier by Rupert Brooke | Poetry Magazine

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If I should die, think only this of me: 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.

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The darkness crumbles away.

It is the same old druid Time as ever,

Only a live thing leaps my hand,

As I pull the parapet's poppy

To stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life,

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the shrieking iron and flame

Hurled through still heavens?

What quaver-what heart aghast?

Poppies whose roots are in man's veins

Drop, and are ever dropping;

But mine in my ear is safe-

Just a little white with the dust.

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Break of Day in the Trenches by Isaac Rosenberg | Poetry Magazine

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The darkness crumbles away. It is the same old druid Time as ever, Only a live thing leaps my hand, As I pull the parapet's poppy To stick behind my ear. Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

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© 2000-2021 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

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Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen | Poetry Foundation

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Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

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In Flanders Fields by John McCrae | Poetry Foundation

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Beckmann served in the medical services in eastern Prussia, then in Flanders and at Strasbourg. He was a witness to the first mustard gas attacks around Ypres. At Courtrai, he was present at operations that surgeons attempted on the wounded and made detailed drawings of them. His self portrait is built around three elements: the eye that scrutinises, the hand that draws, and the red cross. There is hardly any colour. A few months later, Beckmann was sent home to Germany after suffering a serious mental breakdown. He sought refuge in Frankfurt where he slowly took up painting again.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Artillerymen, 1915

Despite Kirchner's artistic success during the Berlin years, a crisis of identity was brewing within the troubled artist. His neurosis was largely burdened by the impending war, which he had viewed with a tragic sense of foreboding and fear from the outset. In a state of nervous anxiety, and fearing that he would get called up, Kirchner began to drink absinthe and developed an increasing dependency on sleeping pills and morphine. In an effort to avoid conscription into the infantry, he signed on as an artillery driver - "an involuntary volunteer" - and was billeted to Halle.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Self-Portrait as a Soldier, 1915

Kirchner found military service very distressing and, suffering a nervous breakdown, was admitted to a sanatorium at Königstein im Taunus. He would return here twice more over the next year as his condition failed to improve. In September 1916, Kirchner wrote to Gustav Schiefler: "I am half dead from mental and physical torments, and have placed myself in the care of a neurologist here, since I am unable to do anything but work." His torments of that time can be seen in his terrifying work Self-Portrait as a Soldier (above). Here, Kirchner imagines himself in military uniform with his hand severed, unable to paint.

Marcel Gromaire, La guerre (War), 1925

Have you forgotten yet?...

Conrad Felixmüller, Soldat im Irrenhaus [Soldier in the Madhouse], 1918

Lovis Corinth, Portrait of Hermann Struck, 1915

In 1915, Struck was thirty-nine. A painter, engraver and art critic, he posed for his friend Corinth (1858-1925) wearing the uniform of the officer he had become. Neither the subject nor the painter give in to the exalted belligerency of the moment. Despite the fact that Corinth paints with emphatic touches, he keeps his distance from all forms of expressionism, in order, more simply, to depict the worry, the melancholy and the unease of the artist in his soldier's garb. After the war, Struck left Europe where life had become too distressing for him, and settled in Palestine.

Oskar Kokoschka, Self-Portrait as a Warrior, 1909

Walter Gramatté, Self-Portrait as Soldier (Detail), 1917

Otto Dix, Self-Portrait, 1914

When the First World War erupted in 1914, Dix enthusiastically volunteered for the German Army. He was assigned to a field artillery regiment in Dresden. In the fall of 1915 he was assigned as a non-commissioned officer of a machine-gun unit in the Western front and took part of the Battle of the Somme. He was seriously wounded several times. In 1917, his unit was transferred to the Eastern front until the end of hostilities with Russia. Back to the western front in 1918, he fought in the German Spring offensive. He earned the Iron Cross (second class) and reached the rank of vice-sergeant-major.

Otto Dix, Stormtroopers during a Gas Attack, 1924

Dix was profoundly affected by the sights of the war, and would later describe a recurring nightmare in which he crawled through destroyed houses. He represented his traumatic experiences in many subsequent works, including his famous portfolio of fifty etchings called Der Krieg (The War), published in 1924 by Karl Nierendorf. You can see the whole series on the website of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Otto Dix, Machine Gunners Advancing, 1924

"We are unfeeling dead who, through some dangerous trick of magic, are still able to run and kill. A young Frenchman falls behind; they catch up with him and he puts his hands up; in one of them he is still holding his revolver; we cannot tell whether he wants to shoot or to surrender. A stroke with a shovel splits his face in two. Another seeing this tries to escape, but a bayonet whistles into his back. He jumps in the air and, arms outstretched, stumbles screaming as the bayonet moves up and down in his spine." (Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front)

Ernst Barlach, The Avenger, 1914

Adolf Erbslöh, Destroyed Forest near Verdun, 1916

Georges Leroux, Hell, 1917

"A great movement of earth and sky through our burning eyelids, wet and cold; things you find in the pale dawn, one after another and all of them; nobody killed in the darkness, nobody even buried despite the relentless shell attack, the same earth and the same corpses, all this flesh that trembles as if from internal spasms, which dances, deep and hot, and hurts; no more pictures even, just this burning fatigue frozen skin-deep by the rain; another day dawning over the ridge while the Boche's batteries carry on firing on it and on what remains of us up there, mixed with the mud, the bodies, with the once fertile field, now polluted with poison, dead flesh, incurably affected by our hellish torture." (Maurice Genevoix, Ceux de 14 (The Men of 1914), Paris, Flammarion, 1950)

Paul Nash, The Menin Road, 1919

The battle around Ypres lasted as long as the war itself. This appalling blood-bath was for the Commonwealth troops like Verdun for the French: an endless carnage in a marshy landscape where the wounded were swallowed up in the mud.

William Roberts, Gunners pulling cannons at Ypres, c. 1918

"We gingerly crossed the valley of Paddebeek through a hail of bullets, hiding behind the foliage of black poplar trees felled in the bombardment, and using their trunks as bridges. From time to time one of us disappeared up to their waist in the mud, and if our comrades had not come to their rescue, holding out their rifle butt, they would certainly have gone under. We ran along the rims of the shell-holes as if we were on the thin edge of a honeycomb. Traces of blood on the surface of some heavy shell-holes told us that several men had already been swallowed up." (Ernst Jünger, Storms of Steel)

John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1918

NACHKLANG by ROLAND LEIGHTON

Down the long white road we walked together
Down between the grey hills and the heather,
Where the tawny-crested
Plover cries.

You seemed all brown and soft, just like a linnet,
Your errant hair had shadowed sunbeams in it,
And there shone all April
In your eyes.

With your golden voice of tears and laughter
Softened ... Read moreinto song 'Does aught come after Life,' you asked 'When life is
Laboured through?

What is God and all for which we're striving?'
'Sweetest sceptic, we were born for living;
Life is Love, and Love is---
You, dear, you.'

Eric Kennington, Gassed and Wounded, 1918

(Henri Barbusse, Le Feu)

Romaine Brooks, La France Croisée, 1914

George Bellows, Edith Cavell, 1918

Gino Severini, Armored Train, 1915

BLAST Magazine, UK, July 1915

Vorticism was a short-lived but radical movement that emerged in London immediately before the First World War. 'The vortex is the point of maximum energy', wrote the American poet Ezra Pound, who co-founded the Vorticist journal Blast with Wyndham Lewis in June 1914. The journal opened with the 'Blast' and 'Bless' manifestos, which celebrate the machine age and Britain as the first industrialised nation. Lewis's painting Workshop epitomises Vorticism's aims, using sharp angles and shifting diagonals to suggest the geometry of modern buildings. Its harsh colours and lines echo the discordant vitality of the modern city in an 'attack on traditional harmony'. The group's aggressive rhetoric, angular style and focus on the energy of modern life linked it to Italian Futurism, though it did not share the latter's emphasis on speed and dynamism. Artists associated with Vorticism included William Roberts, Edward Wadsworth, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, CRW Nevinson and David Bomberg. The First World War demonstrated the devastating reality of pitting men against machines and Lewis's attempts to revive the movement in 1919 came to nothing.

C. R. W. Nevinson, Machine-gun, 1915

Apollinaire praised Nevinson as being one who "translates the mechanical aspect of modern warfare where man and machine combine to form a single force of nature. His painting Machine-gun conveys this idea exactly. Nevinson belongs to the school of the English avant-garde influenced by both the young Italian and French schools."

Percy Wyndham Lewis, A Battery Shelled, 1919

"I am here (in the firing line) since yesterday. Battery split up, and I have come as reinforcements. Whizzing, banging and swishing and thudding completely surround me, and I almost jog up and down on my camp bed as though I were riding in a country wagon or a dilapidated taxi. I am in short, my dear colleague, in the midst of an unusually noisy battle." (Percy Wyndham Lewis, letter to Ezra Pound (6th June, 1917):

David Bomberg, Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunelling Company, first version, 1918-1919

Bomberg (1890-1957) was one of the major artists of the London avant-garde scene, one of those whose Cubo-Futurist approach led them to invent geometrical signs verging on abstraction. In 1917, he was commissioned by the Canadian authorities to do a painting celebrating an operation in which the sappers successfully blew up a salient of the German defences at Saint-Eloi near Arras. He was told to steer clear of Cubism. Despite this warning, the first version of his painting shows a mixed style in which figurative elements are caught up in a composition dominated by non-imitative colours and the powerfully dynamic rhythms of oblique lines in blue and purple. The painting was rejected by the emissary of the Canadian committee, who criticised Bomberg's 'Futurism' which he found unacceptable.

David Bomberg, Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunelling Company, 1919

"There were coal seams everywhere under our positions and the French took advantage of this. Not a single day went by without a section of trench blowing up followed by an attack on the still-smoking crater, while we still had mud up to our necks. The first one to the bottom won. We stayed night and day at our posts listening intently in the galleries with our explosives within arm's reach. We often heard the enemy's pick-axes right close to us, and then, within a split second, the race was on to see who would be blown to pieces, them or us. How many times have I stood crouching in a hole with an earpiece listening out for the moment when they would stop digging and start dragging over their cases of dynamite." (Ernst Jünger, Lieutenant Sturm)

John Nash, Over the Top, c. 1918

The archetype of the battle scene, Over the Top depicts the attack during which the First Artist Rifles left their trenches and pushed towards Marcoing near Cambrai. Of the eighty men, sixty-eight were killed or wounded during the first few minutes. John Nash (1893-1977) was one of the twelve spared by the shellfire.

C.R.W. Nevinson, c. 1918

Russian Litograph, 1914

Colin Gill, The Captive, 1918

An Immorality
by Ezra Pound

To pass all men's believing.

William Orpen, Dead Germans in a Trench, 1918

Vigil
by Giuseppe Ungaretti

A whole night long
crouched close
to one of our men
butchered
with his clenched
mouth
grinning at the full moon
with the congestion
of his hands
thrust right
into my silence
I've written
letters filled with love

I have never been
so
coupled to life

Georges Paul Leroux, Soldats enterrant leurs camarades au clair de lune, 1915

April night 1915
by Apollinaire

The sky is starlit with the Boche's shells
The marvellous forest where I live is giving a ball
The machine-gun plays a demisemiquaver tune
Do you have the word
Oh yes! the fateful word
To the breach To the breach Leave the picks there

Like a bewildered star looking for its seasons
Heart exploded shell you whistled your romance
And your thousand suns have emptied the caissons
That the gods of my eyes fill in silence

Albin Egger-Lienz, Finale, 1918

Amos Nattini, Inferno, Canto III, 1919

Dix worked on this large-format (78 x 98") painting from 1934 to 1936. By that point, the National Socialists had already dismissed him from his professorial position at the Dresden Art Academy, and he was living in Randegg bei Singen. The painting shows a field in Flanders where three devastating battles were fought. In contrast to war-time propaganda images, Dix's canvas introduces war in the form of a battlefield where corpses and mud predominate, the one rotting and merging into the other. With this nightmarish tableau, Dix commemorated the victims of one World War in the hopes of preventing another.

Otto Dix, Transplantation, 1924

We finally halted, after how many hours? our exhausted flesh, drained of blood, shaken about in other people's arms. I had to comb my fingers over my face as sticky traces stiffened my skin as they dried. I'm going to be a fine sight by the time they get to me, those two slow-moving nurses walking along the foot of the stretchers and bending for a moment over each wounded man. A hand stuck my new Verdun képi on my head, my velvety blue 'flower pot'. How I looked like Pierrot, so pale and blood-smeared in my beautiful new képi! There is a nauseating smell, of coal-tar, bleach and the sickly smell of blood. "A lieutenant from the 106ths, doctor." They touched me and another needle pricked me. I could see the dark tunic of the major between two white nurses. They were talking to me. I answered "Yes, yes...". And the doctor's voice said, "Can't be evacuated. Military hospital." (Maurice Genevoix, Ceux de 14 (The Men of 1914), Paris, Flammarion, 1950)

Max Beckmann, The Hell, 1919

Marc Chagall, Wounded Soldier, 1914

Otto Griebel, Sunday Afternoon, 1920

George Grosz, The Survivor, 1936

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Beckmann served in the medical services in eastern Prussia, then in Flanders and at Strasbourg. He was a witness to the first mustard gas attacks around Ypres. At Courtrai, he was present at operations that surgeons attempted on the wounded and made detailed drawings of them.

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Poetry Foundation Collection of WWI poetry

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Poetry Foundation Collection of WWI poetry

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Roughly 10 million soldiers lost their lives in World War I, along with seven million civilians. The horror of the war and its aftermath altered the world for decades, and poets responded to the brutalities and losses in new ways. Just months before his death in 1918, English poet Wilfred Owen famously wrote:

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War.

To mark the WWI centenary, we've put together a sampling of poems written in English by both soldiers and civilians, chosen from our archive of over 250 poems from WWI. We've also compiled a collection showcasing the poets who served and volunteered in World War I.

While many of these poems do not address a particular war event, we've listed them by year, along with a selection of historical markers, to contextualize the poems historically. You may notice that more poems in 1914 and 1915 extoll the old virtues of honor, duty, heroism, and glory, while many later poems after 1915 approach these lofty abstractions with far greater skepticism and moral subtlety through realism and bitter irony. Though horrific depictions of battle in poetry date back to Homer's Iliad, the later poems of WWI mark a substantial shift in how we view war and sacrifice.

1914
Archduke Ferdinand assassinated. Outbreak of war in July/August. Germany invades Belgium. First Battle of the Marne, First Battle of Ypres. United States remains neutral. Trench warfare begins. The Siege of Antwerp. The Christmas truce.

" Channel Firing" by Thomas Hardy
" On Receiving News of the War" by Isaac Rosenberg
" Peace" by Rupert Brooke (published in Poetry)
" The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke (published in Poetry)
" The Dead" by Rupert Brooke
" Joining the Colours" by Katherine Tynan
" Men Who March Away" by Thomas Hardy
" War Girls" by Jessie Pope
" On Heaven" by Ford Madox Ford (published in Poetry)
" To Germany" by Charles Sorley
" For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon
" Phases" by Wallace Stevens (published in Poetry)
" Iron" by Carl Sandburg (published in Poetry)
" The Bombardment" by Amy Lowell (published in Poetry)
" War Yawp" by Richard Aldington (published in Poetry)
" Fallen" by Alice Corbin Henderson (published in Poetry)
" August 1914" by Mary Wedderburn Cannan
" August 1914" by Isaac Rosenberg
" August, 1914 " by Vera Mary Brittain

1915
Germans sink RMS Lusitania. The Dardenelles campaign. Battle of Gallipoli. Second Battle of Ypres. First use of poison gas.

" In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae
" Absolution" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Home" by Edward Thomas
" Champagne, 1914-15" by Alan Seeger
" Belgium" by Edith Wharton
" Before Marching and After" by Thomas Hardy
" In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)" by Edward Thomas
" The Owl" by Edward Thomas
" A Lament" by Katherine Tynan
" The Spring in War-Time" by Sara Teasdale
" Into Battle" by Julian Grenfell
" On Being Asked for a War Poem" by William Butler Yeats
" Rouen" by Mary Wedderburn Cannan
" Marching" by Isaac Rosenberg (published in Poetry)
" Such, Such is Death" by Charles Sorley
" The Falling Leaves" by Margaret Postgate Cole
" When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead" by Charles Sorley
" This is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong " by Edward Thomas

1916
Battle of Verdun, Battle of the Somme. President Wilson re-elected with campaign slogan, "He kept us out of the war." Rasputin is murdered.

" Rain" by Edward Thomas
" Break of Day in the Trenches" by Isaac Rosenberg (published in Poetry)
" The Troop Ship" by Isaac Rosenberg
" The Kiss" by Siegfried Sassoon
" The Poet as Hero" by Siegfried Sassoon
" As the Team's Head Brass" by Edward Thomas
" Sonnet 9: On Returning to the Front after Leave" by Alan Seeger
" In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" by Thomas Hardy
" Easter, 1916" by William Butler Yeats
" The Trumpet" by Edward Thomas
" The Messages" by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
" The Death Bed" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Lights Out" by Edward Thomas
" The Night Patrol" by Arthur Graeme West
" The War Films" by Henry Newbolt
" The Twins" by Robert Service
" Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France" by Alan Seeger
" At the Movies " by Florence Ripley Mastin

1917
Germans issue Zimmerman Telegram to Mexico, United States declares war on Germany, draft begins. U.S. troops land in France. Third Battle of Ypres. Bolshevik uprising in Russia, led by Lenin, headed by Trotsky.

" Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen
" I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger
" Blighters" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Two Fusiliers" by Robert Graves
" Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen
" Returning, We Hear the Larks" by Isaac Rosenberg
" The Dead Kings" by Francis Ledwidge
" Servitude" by Ivor Gurney
"from Battle of the Somme: The Song of the Mud" by Mary Borden
" Dead Man's Dump" by Isaac Rosenberg
" Counter-Attack" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Sergeant-Major Money" by Robert Graves
" The Work" by Gertrude Stein
" To His Love" by Ivor Gurney
" After the War" by Mary Wedderburn Cannan
" To Any Dead Officer" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Photographs" by Ivor Gurney
" Breakfast " by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

1918
U.S. President Wilson issues Fourteen Points to peace. Germany launches Spring Offensive, bombs Paris. United States launches attacks at Belleau Wood and Argonne Forest. Bolsheviks murder Tsar Nicholas II and Romanov family. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates, Germany signs armistice on November 11. Paris Peace Conference.

" Strange Meeting" by Wilfred Owen
" Futility" by Wilfred Owen
" Attack" by Siegfried Sassoon
" The Veteran" by Margaret Postgate Cole (published in Poetry)
" Repression of War Experience" by Siegfried Sassoon
" Grass" by Carl Sandburg
" Dawn on the Somme" by Robert Nichols
" God! How I hate you, you young cheerful men " by Arthur Graeme West
" Lettres d'un Soldat" by Wallace Stevens (published in Poetry)
" Ypres" by Laurence Binyon
" Spring Offensive " by Wilfred Owen
" Epitaph On My Days in Hospital" by Vera Mary Brittain
" Roundel" by Vera Mary Brittain
" War Mothers" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
" Glory of Women" by Sigfried Sassoon
" Smile, Smile, Smile" by Wilfred Owen
" S. I. W." by Wilfred Owen
" And There Was a Great Calm" by Thomas Hardy

1919 and After
Armies demobilize, return home. Peace Treaty of Versailles ratified by Germany; U.S. Senate votes to reject treaty and refuses to join League of Nations. Proposal and constitution for League of Nations. The Cenotaph unveiled in London. Treaty of Sevres in 1920 ends war on Eastern Front.

" January 1919" by Christopher Middleton (1919)
" Everyone Sang" by Siegfried Sassoon (1919)
" The Cenotaph" by Charlotte Mew (1919)
" First Time In" by Ivor Gurney (1919)
"from Epitaphs of the War, 1914-18 " by Rudyard Kipling (1919)
" Gethsemane" by Rudyard Kipling (1919)
" Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Part I)" by Ezra Pound (1920)
" A.E.F." by Carl Sandburg (1920)
" To E.T." by Robert Frost (1920)
" In Memory of George Calderon" by Laurence Binyon (1920)
" War and Peace" by Edgell Rickword (1921)
" Trench Poets" by Edgell Rickword (1921)
"Soldier-Poet" by Hervey Allen (1921)
" For a War Memorial" by G.K. Chesterton (1921)
" Festubert, 1916" by Edmund Blunden (1921)
" Elegy in a Country Churchyard" by G.K. Chesterton (1922)
" Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries" by A.E. Housman (1922)
" Soldier from the wars returning" by A.E. Housman (1922)
" I Saw England - July Night" by Ivor Gurney (1922)
" Champs d'Honneur" by Ernest Hemingway (1923) (published in Poetry)
" Laventie" by Ivor Gurney (1925)
" A War Bride" by Jessie St. John (1928) (published in Poetry)

Read more poets who served or volunteered in WWI

Browse more War Poems
AUDIO
Poet's Choice: Of Love and War: D.A. Powell reads poems from Rupert Brooke and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Anything But Sweet: Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and modern warfare.
ARTICLES
"100 Years of Poetry: The Magazine and War": A historical look at the role of poetry in wartime.

"How Should We Write About War and Trauma?": Tom Sleigh Looks to David Jones

" Now Online: Siegfried Sassoon's War Diaries "

" Poetry in the First World War" from Poetry magazine (1940)
ONLINE WWI RESOURCES
PBS: The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
Oxford University: The First World War Poetry Digital Archive U.S. National WWI Museum The Telegraph: Life on the Eve of War

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World War I: Poetry by Year by The Editors | Poetry Foundation

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Roughly 10 million soldiers lost their lives in World War I, along with seven million civilians. The horror of the war and its aftermath altered the world for decades, and poets responded to the brutalities and losses in new ways. Just months before his death in 1918, English poet Wilfred Owen famously wrote: This book is not about heroes.

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Pierre Boulez : Variations pour orchestre opus 31 d’Arnold Schoenberg

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Pierre Boulez : Variations pour orchestre opus 31 d’Arnold Schoenberg

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Pierre Boulez : Variations pour orchestre opus 31 d’Arnold Schoenberg

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Pierre Boulez dirige l'Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France qui interprète les Variations pour orchestre opus 31 d'Arnold Schoenberg. Concert enregistré à la Salle Pleyel le 20 février 2009.

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George Butterworth: The Banks of Green Willow.

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George Butterworth: The Banks of Green Willow.

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George Butterworth: The Banks of Green Willow.

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Maurice Ravel : Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917) 

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Maurice Ravel : Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917) 

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Maurice Ravel : Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914-1917) - Kun-Woo Paik

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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Douglas D. Schumann Library & Learning Commons: ENGL 2200: The First World War: Art, Music, and Poetry