The First World War and the English War Poets: From Thomas Hardy to Issac Rosenberg(4) Wilfred Owen(1893-1918)

摘要

Unlike other young men who eagerly rushed to the Western Front with patriotic idealism and naive heroism after the outbreak of the War, Wilfred Owen was at first skeptical about the meaning of the war. He refused to see the war as basically just a struggle between the peace-loving powers--Britain and France--and the greedy and bellicose forces of Prussian militarism.However, in October, 1915, fourteen months later after the out-break of the War, Owen joined the Artist's Rifles because he felt it his duty to enlist, and served bravely in France until he experienced the terrors and horrors of the Somme Offensive in 1917. Disillusioned and heavily shell-shocked, he was sent home to Craiglockhart War Hospital in June, 1917. There he fortuitously met Siegfried Sassoon, an already-distinguished poet, who greatly helped Owen see the war neither as glorious nor romantic but instead as obscene, inhuman, and wasteful. Under the influence and encouragement of the older poet, Owen, an "injustice collector," began to produce a series of anti-war poems derived from his trench experiences. As a soldier/pacifist, he pursued the theme of "the pity of war," writing more eloquently than other war poets of of his generation the tragedy of young soldiers suffering and dying in battle.On the other hand, he also wrote poems in an angry and indignant tone against the war-mongering generals, journalists, clerics and civilians at home. His humane view of young soldiers as both killers/victims is quite convincing, but he fails to see the other participants of the war in a fair-minded way, only attacking and condemning them. This naturally hinders him from evaluating the war at a more distant, objective, and wider perspective. These limitations impede him from developing war poety of universal worth.