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Post by shan on Mar 25, 2012 13:34:02 GMT -6
In case people think I'm standing at the back of the classroom shouting 'Je Accuse, I'm more than happy to admit to loving a good fantasy western as much as anybody, and truth be told I can't get enough of those wonderful Victorian paintings of dashing daring do and valor, it's just that I think we all sometimes spend too much time trying to bend reality into those stereotypical images we all carry around in our heads, stereotypes that are often mistaken for the real thing.
Sadly, we have to beware of being fooled by almost everything, even the best of World War 1 poetry, poetry that seems to confirm what we've seen in countless newsreels, was partially made and constructed because the poet wanted to make a good poem as much as tell the truth.
Shan
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Post by clw on Mar 25, 2012 14:18:25 GMT -6
was partially made and constructed because the poet wanted to make a good poem as much as tell the truth. Shan I have to wonder if that applies to Whitman in his Death Sonnet for Custer, where he dwells so hard on glory and heroism and bravery. Yet Whitman knew all about the carnage from his Civil War service spent caring for the dead and dying. He's credited with being one of the writers that took us from transcendentalism to realism. But here I see none of the latter. From far Montana's cañons, Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lone- some stretch, the silence, Haply, to-day, a mournful wail—haply, a trumpet note for heroes. The battle-bulletin, The Indian ambuscade—the slaughter and environ- ment The cavalry companies fighting to the last—in stern- est, coolest, heroism. The fall of Custer, and all his officers and men. Continues yet the old, old legend of our race! The loftiest of life upheld by death! The ancient banner perfectly maintained! (O lesson opportune—O how I welcome thee!) As, sitting in dark days, Lone, sulky, through the time's thick murk looking in vain for light, for hope, From unsuspected parts, a fierce and momentary proof, (The sun there at the center, though concealed, Electric life forever at the center,) Breaks forth, a lightning flash. Thou of sunny, flowing hair, in battle, I erewhile saw, with erect head, pressing ever in front, bearing a bright sword in thy hand, Now ending well the splendid fever of thy deeds, (I bring no dirge for it or thee—I bring a glad, tri- umphal sonnet;) There in the far northwest, in struggle, charge, and saber-smite, Desperate and glorious—aye, in defeat most desper- ate, most glorious, After thy many battles, in which, never yielding up a gun or a color, Leaving behind thee a memory sweet to soldiers, Thou yieldest up thyself.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Mar 25, 2012 14:23:15 GMT -6
Wild's offering is the exact crap that was discarded. Written by a 'patriotic' woman who could have zero clue of what she spoke, it's like The Little Mother fabricated letter and the very worst of the propaganda poems. Wilfred Owens wrote "Dulce et Decorum est" as a slam against this particular crone and her like. BUT, that sort of stuff was the norm pre war and gone ever after in popular media and relegated to nostalgia and literary history. The working class went to war as cheerfully and for the same reasons as the upper class, and they were as thrilled by the prewar dreck as anyone, and were its financial underpinnings, be it said. Fussell gets it right on page 269. He discusses how one poet, Blunden chooses language not unlike the prewar romanticists and yet keeps it from saying what they say, which Fussell points out is a huge risk. Wild, for example, obviously doesn't get it. And no, he's not getting away with pretending to just being an incendiary. He doesn't get it. Anyway, here is Owen: www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/3303Whitman has never enchanted me as he has others, but by any standard that poem is garbage. It really sounds like something knocked off quick for newspaper cash.
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Post by clw on Mar 25, 2012 14:25:33 GMT -6
Fred~ What's your opinion on Lee's comment, "It is good that war is horrible lest we learn to love it so well".
I wish I'd asked my late husband that question.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Mar 25, 2012 14:39:16 GMT -6
.....too quick to condemn and I didn't realize that poem illustrates everything I've whined about and should use. Good choice, clw.
Better, Whitman says as much:
Continues yet the old, old legend of our race! The loftiest of life upheld by death! The ancient banner perfectly maintained! (O lesson opportune—O how I welcome thee!)
In short, it has to fit the template described, so it does.
In a piece using Custer and the LBH for illustrative purposes, I was struck by this:
"She saw men wading through heavy streams. Some were oath breakers, others had murdered, some had lured women to love.
There the serpent sucks on corpses, The Wolf rends dead men.
Seek you wisdom still?"
That's "Voluspa" from the Elder Edda, a Viking poem, 12th, 13th century from Iceland. But does it not describe the 7th at the LBH, say viewed by Moving Robe Woman?
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Post by wild on Mar 25, 2012 16:06:01 GMT -6
clw In the film The Charge of The Light Brigade they have Lord Raglan say something similar.He learns that Captain Nolan the messenger to the light brigade has written a book.He does not agree with officers writing books for as he says "If we become expert in this business of war it would become more like murder." And of course Wellingtons The only thing worse than a battle won is a battle lost.
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Post by fred on Mar 25, 2012 16:33:18 GMT -6
Fred~ What's your opinion on Lee's comment, "It is good that war is horrible lest we learn to love it so well". CLW, It is probably the most true thing anyone has ever said about war. I loved the army. The only reason I got out was because I was trying to adopt my step-daughter (who now lives in Vero Beach with her husband, her two gorgeous daughters and my two cute little great-granddaughters) and her real father had written President Johnson claiming I kidnapped the girl. When I produced German court papers giving me temporary custody I won a reprieve, but one more tour in Vietnam would have cost me the girl. I chose to resign. This may come as a horrendous shock, but my belief in what I said about Lee's comment is true... I loved Vietnam. It was exciting, exhilarating, challenging, and nothing before or since made my blood flow faster and give me such an incredible rush. Despite initial fear, I grew to challenge it and I am almost ashamed to say that was the only time I ever felt fear... and after the first several moments and knowing they zoned in on me, I almost sneered at their inability to hit me. (I will tell you, I got down damn quick after I found out where the bullets were coming from... so don't ever call me a hero... that appellation belongs to guys like my driver.) And despite handling billions of dollars in trades on Wall Street, I never had so much responsibility in my life... all at 26 years of age. You must also understand, I was never in the heavy-duty thick of things. I ran patrols into dense, unfriendly jungles, but never got into any of the furious firefights. Those guys are the heroes. We got ourselves ambushed and battled our way out, but we had the immediate support lined up to do it. But I loved it; I would have volunteered to go back had it not been for the girl; and I was good at it... and have the stuff to prove it. I was one of only a handful of people hand-picked by the division CG for the job; and I served with the very best: DePuy (4 stars); Joulwan (4); Haig (4); James Hollingsworth (3); Sydney Berry (3)... it doesn't get any better. Google them and you'll see. I was there from mid-1966 to the middle of 1967. Memories of men like that make war glorious to fools like me. It is easy to blab loudly now... because I made it and never saw the worst. I try to play it down... and am sort of proud of that. I believe lesser men would only prove Lee correct. And they would be far behind, waving the flags, wearing the lapel pins, while my friends died. Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by montrose on Mar 26, 2012 14:10:12 GMT -6
I find that each era spawns its own military motifs, themes, and prose. Vietnam has the myth of the broken Vets like Rambo et al. I strongly recommend reading the book Stolen Valor to see the mysths and reality of Nam.
The late 1800s was the age of yellow journalism and the dime novel. Look at Thompson. He deliberately copies prose and motifs from dime novels.
As a modern example, Bravo Two Zero is a fictitious acount of a failed mission in the first Gulf War. The survivors deliberately lied to make their story sexier. Check the book called The Truth Of Bravo 20. They used the motif of special operators being super soldiers, claiming they killed dozens, when in fact they never hit anyone. "Andy McNab" was caught hiding in a pipe by a lone peasant.
I won't go too far, but a blown mission in Afghanistan has been highly embellished. Read the book Operation Red Wing for details. A four man SEAL team got rolled up by 10 bad guys. There were no enemy casualties. Spin doctors claimed more enemy dead than total enemies at the fight. The bad guys video taped the fight, so eventually we know all the bad guys by name.
Bottom line: each era spawns a culture of military literature. The US accounts of LBH clearly show influence from the themes of there time. As time passes, the stories get more and more embellished both making the tellers more heroic, and in copying the dramatic language from newspapers and stories.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Mar 26, 2012 17:05:26 GMT -6
What Montrose says is true, and I'm only adding on here because it's different than Fussell's point.
Fussell points out that the equipment we have for memory - the words, the idiom, the rhetoric, the 'conventional wisdom' of the time and the literature (prose, poems, lyrics) limit how things are remembered. Just as Bush and I grew up with the Warner Bros. westerns on tv every night, people before WWI ONLY had poems, prose, lyrics of songs they had to hear in person, because there was no ability to record. So things changed slower, and what was popular in the 18th century or earlier was in the early 19th.
As another example, when Caesar wrote Veni, vidi, vici, it was pronounced "WHENEE, WIDDEE, WICKEE, as u's, v's, and w's hadn't separated yet. The Romans were social climbers and wanted to sound Greek, which had all hard syllables. People today pronounce it as if it were Italian, with the English v and, worse, pronounce vici as vichi. Wrong. It sounds far less impressive and as if it were to be followed by a "Yoo Hoo!" and not like the phrasing of one of the hardest conquerors ever. "Veni, vidi, vichi! Yoo Hoo!"
If people don't know this, if can affect how they view the guy and the Romans, who were no nonsense types. In the future, when people read "yeah, yeah, yeah" in our fiction and literature, it will seem moronic if they don't know about the Beatles and the popularity of that song and that therefore the character was making a reference to them. It may sound moronic anyway, but they won't get it. That's the sort of stuff we labor under trying to compose the intent of these written accounts.
They had Greater Truths to be honored, among other things. Fiction, in other words, was honored in place of truth. Still is, but we're more embarrassed by it. I hope.
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Post by wild on Mar 26, 2012 18:05:45 GMT -6
The repository of things remembered is in diaries,letters,memoirs,first hand accounts. Poems etc distort through decoration and the need to dramatise and entertain. Richard the first is an outstanding example of this.Shakespeares drama makes him a club footed hunch back murderer.A total distortion. Look at what Dickens and Shakespeare combined did for the Jewish image and Shelley for Castlereagh. Poetry is best left with the bards for it is far too unreliable for use as a memory tool.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Mar 26, 2012 18:54:19 GMT -6
See. You don't get it.
First off, Shakespeare doesn't mention Lion Heart except maybe in passing. You're thinking of Richard III, and Shakespeare was writing for the Tudors, so surprise! Henry VII is made to look good.
Dickens doesn't write poetry. They didn't do anything to the Jewish image beyond reflecting what the conventional wisdom of the time. A case can, and has, been made they were more compassionate and open minded than contemporaries. They were no worse, though. When Dickens was called on it, he changed the way he wrote about Jews. He was a businessman. Man, could he write, though.
Poetry evolved as a tool of memory when people could not write. Its function is to provide the linguistic checks to keep the story straight as long as possible.
But that isn't the point. Poetry was a very big deal UNTIL 1914, both in educated circles and not. All periodicals published poems and they were often the most popular thing in them. All that is gone now, and we can't obtain accuracy by comparing today's weird poetry and rare publications to what was the mindset of the world before 1914. Well, the Western World. Some places in the Third World are still like that.
There is no basis for assumption - and it's very naive to make the assumption - that "diaries, letters,memoirs, first hand accounts" are any more truthful or accurate than anything else. They appear long after and may not have been written, despite entry dates, in the year they say they were. Or the decade. First hand testimony subject to cross is far more valid. Godfrey's diary was not composed as the bullets flew or he was busy. After, when he'd learned how things turned out.
Fussell is saying that, as we get our idiom and expressions and methods of expressing expressions from modern media, up to 1914 educated people and less so only had live music and the language to entertain. It was insufficient to describe the Great War. The majority of poetry failed miserably and reads like sing-song children chants, much like the very one you offered yesterday. Very few poets had the ability to recreate a rhetoric and attendant mood that sufficed for the need. Previous wars had vets who would understand. Vets of the Mexican War weren't gobsmacked by the much bigger and worse Civil War, it was a question of degree and not much more.
Torpedoes, gas, planes, tanks were beyond imaginings in 1914 to most people. The Great War was totally new, for all intents. Stagnant trench warfare was unimaginable, nobody envisioned, much less prepared for it. There were no more Great Battles that ended the war. It just went on. And on. It's why Flander's Fields is so divisive, and why Rupert Brooke reads like a Tween Poet of his day, like the Twilight authoress. But he was a virile heart throb before. A whole new way of writing English was devised and instituted, and poetry essentially went away, perhaps to hell, because it has baggage of romance and the time before 1914 that cannot be imagined anymore.
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Post by El Crab on Mar 27, 2012 0:32:34 GMT -6
I've always liked Sherman's "War is Hell."
What does one make of Custer's take on combat, from a letter to a cousin (I believe):
"Oh, could you have but seen some of the charges we made! I never expect to see a prettier sight. While thinking of them I cannot but exclaim, 'Glorious War!'"
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Post by wild on Mar 27, 2012 6:41:26 GMT -6
Here we had a great tradition of story telling.These stories had a form all their own.The story always began with In my father's time.The phraseology was quaint and colourful.There was always a moral to it and the ending more unexpected than Rowal Dahl's best. It was folklore at it's finest.Stories being handed on from generation to generation. The stories were not factual but they were a time capsule containing traditions,culture,thought and the mannerisms of long past generations. One advantage they had over poetry was that they were a social form.Stories were shared in the telling. Maybe poetry can do the same thing?I don't know.I parted company with poetry during the iambic pentameter period when the teacher asked "can anyone explain what the poet is saying here"
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Post by Dark Cloud on Mar 27, 2012 8:16:47 GMT -6
Poetry was THE social form of exchange for millennia before writing, and it was easier to remember than what might be described as prose, was in fact designed to be easy to remember. The Iliad and Odessey were, you know, poems. Rather about war.
Hardy wasn't your friend after all, it seems. Chances are good the stories you heard were originally poems in nature, telling the same tale. Don't know what you mean by 'social form' which could be anything, but poetry aided memory and was at advantage over prose in this regard.
Like conz, when Wild is against the wall, the wall is presented as something else.
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Post by wild on Mar 28, 2012 9:36:55 GMT -6
Lice bugs bugs lice More bugs more lice Rats fleas gnats flies And bread-devouring mice
Dirt mud no soap Stench filth to cope No faith no hope In darkness we grope
Our beds bare planks Our mates sheer cranks Our dreams long ranks Of American tanks.
This little ditty written in a gulag for Polish soldiers.No imagery needed here,message loud and clear.
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