Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen War poetry | |
---|---|
Military career | |
Service/ | British Army |
Years of service | 1915–1918 |
Rank | Lieutenant |
Unit | |
Battles/wars | First World War |
Awards | Military Cross |
Website | |
www |
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen
Early life
Owen was born on 18 March 1893 at Plas Wilmot, a house in Weston Lane, near Oswestry in Shropshire. He was the eldest of Thomas and (Harriett) Susan Owen (née Shaw)'s four children; his siblings were Mary Millard, (William) Harold, and Colin Shaw Owen. When Wilfred was born, his parents lived in a comfortable house owned by his grandfather, Edward Shaw.
After Edward's death in January 1897, and the house's sale in March,[1] the family lodged in the back streets of Birkenhead. There Thomas Owen temporarily worked in the town employed by a railway company. Thomas transferred to Shrewsbury in April 1897 where the family lived with Thomas' parents in Canon Street.[2]
Thomas Owen transferred back to Birkenhead in 1898 when he became stationmaster at Woodside station.[2] The family lived with him at three successive homes in the Tranmere district area of the town.[3] They then moved back to Shrewsbury in 1907.[4] Wilfred Owen was educated at the Birkenhead Institute[5] and at Shrewsbury Technical School (later known as the Wakeman School).
Owen discovered his poetic vocation in about 1904
Owen's last two years of formal education saw him as a pupil-teacher at the Wyle Cop school in Shrewsbury.
In return for free lodging, and some tuition for the entrance exam (this has been questioned[
From 1913 he worked as a private tutor teaching English and French at the
War service
On 21 October 1915, he enlisted in the
Whilst at Craiglockhart he made friends in Edinburgh's artistic and literary circles, and did some teaching at the
Owen returned in July 1918, to active service in France, although he might have stayed on home-duty indefinitely. His decision to return was probably the result of Sassoon's being sent back to England, after being shot in the head in an apparent "friendly fire" incident, and put on sick-leave for the remaining duration of the war. Owen saw it as his duty to add his voice to that of Sassoon, that the horrific realities of the war might continue to be told. Sassoon was violently opposed to the idea of Owen returning to the trenches, threatening to "stab [him] in the leg" if he tried it. Aware of his attitude, Owen did not inform him of his action until he was once again in France.
At the very end of August 1918, Owen returned to the front line – perhaps imitating Sassoon's example. On 1 October 1918, Owen led units of the Second Manchesters to storm a number of enemy strong points near the village of
2nd Lt, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 5th Bn. Manch. R., T.F., attd. 2nd Bn. For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on October 1st/2nd, 1918. On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.[18]
Death
Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice which ended the war, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day, as the church bells in Shrewsbury were ringing out in celebration.[9][19] Owen is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery, Ors, in northern France.[20] The inscription on his gravestone, chosen by his mother Susan, is a quotation from his poetry: "SHALL LIFE RENEW THESE BODIES? OF A TRUTH ALL DEATH WILL HE ANNUL" W.O.[20][21]
Poetry
Owen is regarded by many as the greatest poet of the First World War,[22] known for his verse about the horrors of trench and gas warfare. He had been writing poetry for some years before the war, himself dating his poetic beginnings to a stay at Broxton by the Hill when he was ten years old.[23]
The poetry of
The Romantic poets Keats and Shelley influenced much of his early writing and poetry. His great friend, the poet Siegfried Sassoon, later had a profound effect on his poetic voice, and Owen's most famous poems ("Dulce et Decorum est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth") show direct results of Sassoon's influence. Manuscript copies of the poems survive, annotated in Sassoon's handwriting. Owen's poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor. While his use of pararhyme with heavy reliance on assonance was innovative, he was not the only poet at the time to use these particular techniques. He was, however, one of the first to experiment with it extensively.[25]
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.
1920[26]
His poetry itself underwent significant changes in 1917. As a part of his therapy at Craiglockhart, Owen's doctor, Arthur Brock, encouraged Owen to translate his experiences, specifically the experiences he relived in his dreams, into poetry. Sassoon, who was becoming influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, aided him here, showing Owen through example what poetry could do. Sassoon's use of satire influenced Owen, who tried his hand at writing "in Sassoon's style". Further, the content of Owen's verse was undeniably changed by his work with Sassoon. Sassoon's emphasis on realism and "writing from experience" was contrary to Owen's hitherto romantic-influenced style, as seen in his earlier sonnets. Owen was to take both Sassoon's gritty realism and his own romantic notions and create a poetic synthesis that was both potent and sympathetic, as summarised by his famous phrase "the pity of war". In this way, Owen's poetry is quite distinctive, and he is, by many, considered a greater poet than Sassoon. Nonetheless, Sassoon contributed to Owen's popularity by his strong promotion of his poetry, both before and after Owen's death, and his editing was instrumental in the making of Owen as a poet.
Owen's poems had the benefit of strong patronage, and it was a combination of Sassoon's influence, support from Edith Sitwell, and the preparation of a new and fuller edition of the poems in 1931 by Edmund Blunden that ensured his popularity, coupled with a revival of interest in his poetry in the 1960s which plucked him out of a relatively exclusive readership into the public eye.[9] Though he had plans for a volume of verse, for which he had written a "Preface", he never saw his own work published apart from those poems he included in The Hydra, the magazine he edited at Craiglockhart War Hospital, and "Miners", which was published in The Nation.
There were many other influences on Owen's poetry, including his mother. His letters to her provide an insight into Owen's life at the front, and the development of his philosophy regarding the war. Graphic details of the horror Owen witnessed were never spared. Owen's experiences with religion also heavily influenced his poetry, notably in poems such as "Anthem for Doomed Youth", in which the ceremony of a funeral is re-enacted not in a church, but on the battlefield itself, and "
Only five of Owen's poems were published before his death, one in fragmentary form. His best known poems include "
Owen's full unexpurgated opus is in the academic two-volume work The Complete Poems and Fragments (1994) by Jon Stallworthy. Many of his poems have never been published in popular form.
In 1975 Mrs. Harold Owen, Wilfred's sister-in-law, donated all of the manuscripts, photographs and letters which her late husband had owned to the University of Oxford's English Faculty Library. As well as the personal artifacts, this also includes all of Owen's personal library and an almost complete set of The Hydra – the magazine of Craiglockhart War Hospital. These can be accessed by any member of the public on application in advance to the English Faculty librarian.
The
Sexuality
Though it has been suggested that Owen hoped to marry Albertina Dauthieu, at the time living in
Throughout Owen's lifetime and for decades after, homosexual activity between men was a punishable offence throughout the United Kingdom, and the account of Owen's sexual development has been somewhat obscured because his brother Harold removed what he considered discreditable passages in Owen's letters and diaries after the death of their mother.[38] Andrew Motion wrote of Owen's relationship with Sassoon: "On the one hand, Sassoon's wealth, posh connections and aristocratic manner appealed to the snob in Owen: on the other, Sassoon's homosexuality admitted Owen to a style of living and thinking that he found naturally sympathetic."[39] Sassoon, by his own account, was not actively homosexual at this time, but began his first love affair just after the war ended, in November 1918.[40]
An important turning point in Owen scholarship occurred in 1987 when the New Statesman published the polemic "The Truth Untold" by Jonathan Cutbill,[41] the literary executor of Edward Carpenter, which attacked the academic suppression of Owen as a poet of homosexual experience.[42][43] Amongst the article's contentions was that the poem "Shadwell Stair", previously alleged to be mysterious, was a straightforward elegy to homosexual soliciting in an area of the London docks once renowned for it. In June 2022 the poem was included in the anthology, "100 Queer Poems", compiled by Andrew McMillan and Mary Jean Chan.[44]
Relationship with Sassoon
Owen held
Sassoon and Owen kept in touch through correspondence, and after Sassoon was shot in the head in July 1918 and sent back to the UK to recover, they met in August and spent what Sassoon described as "the whole of a hot cloudless afternoon together."[47] They never saw each other again. About three weeks later, Owen wrote to bid Sassoon farewell, as he was on the way back to France, and they continued to communicate. After the Armistice, Sassoon waited in vain for word from Owen, only to be told of his death several months later. The loss grieved Sassoon greatly, and he was never "able to accept that disappearance philosophically."[48] Many years later, he is said, snobbishly, to have told Stephen Spender that he found Owen's grammar school accent "embarrassing".[49] However, in his own account of his friendship with Owen, which appeared in his 1945 autobiography, Siegfried's Journey, Sassoon writes that Owen's death created "a chasm in my private existence",[50] Sassoon expressed regret at what he regarded as his "slowness in discovering that [Owen] was to be of high significance for me, both as a poet and friend...and there was much comfort in his companionship".[51]
Memory
There are memorials to Owen at Gailly,[52] Ors,[53] Oswestry,[54] Birkenhead (Central Library) and Shrewsbury.[55]
On 11 November 1985, Owen was one of sixteen Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in
The forester's house in Ors where Owen spent his last night, Maison forestière de l'Ermitage, has been transformed by Turner Prize nominee Simon Patterson into an art installation and permanent memorial to Owen and his poetry. It opened to the public on 1 October 2011.[59]
In November 2015, actor Jason Isaacs unveiled a tribute to Owen at the former Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh where Owen was treated for shell shock during WWI.[60]
Susan Owen's letter to Rabindranath Tagore marked, Shrewsbury, 1 August 1920, reads: "I have been trying to find courage to write to you ever since I heard that you were in London – but the desire to tell you something is finding its way into this letter today. The letter may never reach you, for I do not know how to address it, tho' I feel sure your name upon the envelope will be sufficient. It is nearly two years ago, that my dear eldest son went out to the War for the last time and the day he said goodbye to me – we were looking together across the sun-glorified sea – looking towards France, with breaking hearts – when he, my poet son, said those wonderful words of yours – beginning at 'When I go from hence, let this be my parting word' – and when his pocket book came back to me – I found these words written in his dear writing – with your name beneath."[61]
Wilfred Owen Association
To commemorate Wilfred's life and poetry, The Wilfred Owen Association was formed in 1989.
Depictions in popular culture
In literature and films
Stephen MacDonald's play, Not About Heroes, first performed in 1982, takes as its subject matter the friendship between Owen and Sassoon, and begins with their meeting at Craiglockhart during World War I.[70]
Pat Barker's historical novel, Regeneration (1991), describes the meeting and relationship between Sassoon and Owen,[71] acknowledging that, from Sassoon's perspective, the meeting had a profoundly significant effect on Owen. Owen's treatment with his own doctor, Arthur Brock, is also touched upon briefly. Owen's death is described in the third book of Barker's Regeneration trilogy, The Ghost Road (1995).[72] In the 1997 film Regeneration, Stuart Bunce played Owen.[73]
Owen is the subject of the BBC docudrama Wilfred Owen: A Remembrance Tale (2007), in which he is played by Samuel Barnett.[74]
Owen was mentioned as a source of inspiration for one of the correspondents in the epistolary novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008), by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.[75]
In
The Burying Party (2018), depicts Owen's final year, from his time at Craiglockhart Hospital up to the Battle of the Sambre (1918). Matthew Staite stars as Owen and Joyce Branagh as his mother Susan.[76][77][78]
Owen, portrayed by Matthew Tennyson, and his friendship with Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden), are depicted in Benediction, a 2021 biographical-drama film, directed by Terence Davies.
In music
His poetry has been reworked into various formats. For example, Benjamin Britten incorporated eight of Owen's poems into his War Requiem, along with words from the Latin Mass for the Dead (Missa pro Defunctis). The Requiem was commissioned for the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral and first performed there on 30 May 1962.[79] Derek Jarman adapted it for the screen in 1988, with the 1963 recording as the soundtrack.[80]
The Ravishing Beauties recorded Owen's poem "Futility" in an April 1982 John Peel session.[81]
Also in 1982,
Additionally in 1982, singer Virginia Astley set the poem "Futility" to music she had composed.[82]
In 1992, Anathema released The Crestfallen EP, with the song "They Die" quoting lines from Owen's poem "The End", which also formed the epitaph on his grave in Ors.
Rudimentary Peni issued their single "Wilfred Owen the Chances" in 2009. The lyrics are from Owen's poem, "The Chances".[83]
Wirral musician Dean Johnson created the musical Bullets and Daffodils, based on music set to Owen's poetry, in 2010.[84]
In 2010 Canadian indie pop band, The High Dials, released an album Anthems for Doomed Youth, the title referencing Owen's poem "Anthem for Doomed Youth".[85]
In 2015, the British
His poetry is sampled multiple times on the 2000 Jedi Mind Tricks album Violent by Design.[87][88] Producer Stoupe the Enemy of Mankind has been widely acclaimed[citation needed] for his sampling on the album, and inclusion of Owen's poetry.
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-2117199.
- ^ a b Wilfred Owen, A Biography. p. 13.
- ^ Wilfred Owen, A Biography. pp. 13–14.
- ^ Wilfred Owen, A Biography. pp. 35–36.
- ^ "Wilfred Owen – Spirit of Birkenhead Institute". Freewebs.com. Retrieved 25 July 2012.
- Independent.co.uk. 10 November 2006.
- ^ Sandra M. Gilbert. "'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and 'Dulce et Decorum Est': tracing the influence of John Keats". British Library. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
- ISBN 978-0-903802-37-6.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-571-20725-1.
- ^ McDowell, Margaret B. "Wilfred Owen (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918)." British Poets, 1914–1945, edited by Donald E. Stanford, vol. 20, Gale, 1983, p. 259. Dictionary of Literary Biography Main Series.
- ^ "History of Wilfred Owen in Dunsden researched". Henleystandard.co.uk.
- ^ Sitwell, Osbert, Noble Essences, London: Macmillan, 1950, pp. 93–4.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37828. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "No. 29617". The London Gazette (Supplement). 6 June 1916. p. 5726.
- ^ "Ox.ac.uk". Oucs.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
- ^ Welcome to Ripon Cathedral Archived 3 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "No. 31183". The London Gazette (Supplement). 14 February 1919. p. 2378.
- ^ "No. 31480". The London Gazette (Supplement). 29 July 1919. p. 9761.
- The Ringing World. 13 December 1918. p. 397 (189 of online pdf). Archived(PDF) from the original on 21 October 2017. Retrieved 20 October 2017.
- ^ a b "Casualty Details: Owen, Wilfred Edward Salter". Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
- ^ "The End". The Wilfred Owen Society. Retrieved 4 February 2018.
- ^ "BBC – Poetry Season – Poets – Wilfred Owen". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
- ^ Sitwell, O. op. cit. p. 93.
- ISBN 9781438115801.
- ^ Helen McPhail; Philip Guest (1998). Wilfred Owen. Leo Cooper. p. 18.
- ^ "Poetry Season – Poems – Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen". BBC. Retrieved 2 April 2012.
- ^ "The war poet and the attractions of Milnathort". BBC News. 14 November 2021. Retrieved 14 November 2021.
- ^ Graves, Robert, Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography, London, 1929 ("Owen was an idealistic homosexual"); 1st edn only: quote subsequently excised. See: Cohen, Joseph Conspiracy of Silence, New York Review of Books, Vol. 22, No. 19.
- ^ Hibberd, Dominic, Wilfred Owen: A New Biography, p. 513.
- ISBN 0-297-82945-9, p. xxii.
- ISBN 0-19-513331-5, p. 286.
- ISBN 0-393-01830-X
- ISBN 0-7190-3834-0, pp. 1–256.
- ^ Hibberd, ibid. pp. 337, 375.
- ISBN 1-55970-423-3, p. 24.
- ^ Hibberd, p. 155.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-2174-9.
- ^ Hibberd (2002), p. 20.
- ISBN 978-0-5712-2365-7.
- ISBN 0415967139.
- ^ Cutbill, Jonathan (16 January 1987). "The Truth Untold". The New Statesman.
- ^ Featherstone, Simon (1995). War Poetry: An Introductory Reader. Routledge. p. 126.
- ^ Andrew Lumsden, 'Jonathan Cutbill obituary', The Guardian, 14 August 2019 [1]
- ^ Shaffi, Sarah (15 June 2022). "'Landmark' anthology 100 Queer Poems published for Pride month". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 October 2022.
- ^ Sassoon, Siegfried: "Siegfried's Journey" p. 58, Faber and Faber, first published in 1946.
- ^ Sassoon, Siegfried: "Siegfried's Journey", p. 61, Faber and Faber, 1946.
- ^ Sassoon, Siegfried: "Siegfried's Journey", p. 71, Faber and Faber, 1946.
- ^ Sassoon, Siegfried: "Siegfried's Journey", p. 72, Faber and Faber, 1946.
- Independent.co.uk. Retrieved 3 January 2022.
- ^ Sassoon, Siegfried (1983). Siegfried's Journey (2nd ed.). London: Faber and Faber. p. 72.
- ^ Ibid. p. 63.
- ^ Memorial at Gailly, 1914–18.co.uk. Accessed 5 December 2008.
- ^ Memorial at Ors, 1914–18.co.uk. Accessed 5 December 2008
- ^ Memorial at Oswestry, 1914–18.co.uk. Accessed 5 December 2008.
- ^ Memorial at Shrewsbury, 1914–18.co.uk. Accessed 5 December 2008.
- ^ Writers and Literature of The Great War, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Accessed 5 December 2008.
- ^ "Wilfred Owen: Preface to Edition". Poets of the Great War. Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
- ^ "War Poets Collection". Edinburgh Napier University. Retrieved 6 October 2022.
- ^ "Simon Patterson / La Maison Forestière". artconnexion. Archived from the original on 4 September 2011. Retrieved 10 April 2012.
- ^ "War poet honoured at hospital site". Bbc.co.uk. 30 November 2015. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
- ^ "Latest News, India, Bengal News, Breaking News, Opinion, Bollywood News, Cricket, Football". The Statesman. 4 March 2018. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
- ^ "BBC Bitesize - KS2 History - Wilfred Owen's inspiration for his poems". Archived from the original on 20 June 2017. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
- ^ "The Wilfred Owen Association". Centenarynews.com. Archived from the original on 21 December 2018. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
- ^ "Peter Owen". Wilfred Owen Association. 31 July 2018.
- ^ Stewart, Stephen (27 June 2017). "Legendary war poet returns from WW1 killing fields to meet today's veterans". Dailyrecord.co.uk. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
- ^ "The Wilfred Owen Association". Wilfredowen.org.uk. Retrieved 18 October 2021.
- ^ "Wilfred Owen Poetry Award". Wilfred Owen Association. 1 September 2018.
- ^ "Sir Andrew Motion awarded the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award at the British Academy". The British Academy. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
- ^ "The Wilfred Owen Association". Wilfredowen.org.uk. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
- ISBN 978-1-904303-47-3.
- ^ "The War Poets at Craiglockhart". Sites.scran.ac.uk. Retrieved 5 December 2008.
- ISBN 978-1-57003-570-8.
- IMDb
- IMDb
- ISBN 978-0-385-34099-1.
- ^ "The Burying Party". The Burying Party. Retrieved 5 September 2022.
- ^ Jones, Lauren. "New Wilfred Owen film 'The Burying Party' on the hunt for filming locations". Wirral Globe.
- ^ "The Burying Party". IMDb.com. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
- ^ Behroozi, Cyrus; Niday, Thomas. "the War Requiem". Benjamin Britten Page, Caltech. Retrieved 5 December 2008.
- ISBN 978-0-521-44089-9.
- ^ "Peel Sessions: The Ravishing Beauties". BBC Radio 1. 14 April 1982. Retrieved 5 December 2008.
- ^ "Virginia Astley Discography | Compilations". Virginiaastley.com. Archived from the original on 25 April 2012. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
- ^ "Rudimentary Peni Discography". discogs.com.
- ^ Welsh Daily Post (17 February 2012). "Bullet Points" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2012.
- ^ "Song by Song: Recording "Anthems for Doomed Youth" – The High Dials Official Website". Retrieved 5 January 2024.
- ^ theindiependent (27 August 2015). "Track Review: Anthem For Doomed Youth // The Libertines". The Indiependent. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
- ^ "Jedi Mind Tricks – Muerte". Genius.com.
- ^ "Jedi Mind Tricks – Violent by Design (album review)". Sputnikmusic.com.
External links
This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. (March 2019) |
- Poems (1920), the posthumous collection by Wilfred Owen with an introduction by Siegfried Sassoon at Internet Archive
- Works by Wilfred Owen in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by Wilfred Owen at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Wilfred Owen at Internet Archive
- Works by Wilfred Owen at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Wilfred Owen profile and poems at Poets.org
- The Wilfred Owen Collection Archived 9 January 2010 at the Oxford University
- The Wilfred Owen resource page at warpoetry.co.uk
- Wilfred Owen at BBC Poetry Season
- Wilfred Owen Association
- the Dunsden Owen Association, including a trail app
- Wilfred Owen at the British Library
- Finding aid to Wilfred Owen papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.