Passive suffering?
Stace
'scribblings' - much appreciated.
And now I'm 'seriously scribbling'... 'That' comment by Yeats about
'passive suffering'. I've always had problem with it. Does he mean
that as a poet, Owen should have kept his views to himself, or, as
readers we cannot have any inkling of what actually happened so we
should leave well alone?
I'm dabbling a bit with the idea of war poetry/photography as being
somewhat voyeuristic, with the aim of questioning the 'value' of
reading/viewing war poetry or photographs.
And this is where Yeats can be proven 'wrong'. If we can return to the
fact that Owen is a poet then perhaps it will be possible that his
work will not be held up as 'anti-war' poetry and more as an account
of what happened in the First World War.
I could go on for hours, but will stop here - ideas?
Stace
DJ
I'll start with Yeats .
I think that he was attempting to apply theories (18th.c & counting)
of the 'sublime' in poetry to Owen et al
Here's a fuller version of the quote;
" I have rejected these poems for the same reason that made Arnold
withdraw his "Empedocles on Etna" from circulation; passive suffering
is not a theme for poetry. In all the great tragedies, tragedy is a
joy to the man who dies; in Greece the tragic chorus danced (From the
"Introduction," p. xxxiv). "
Note the reference to Arnold? And to Greek tragedy?
Implicit in Yeats' remark is that the War poets, as such, should have
either stood aside from what they saw, or entered fully into it.
It will be argued that, by joining up, they did this. But there is
someting more in the remark. What I think Yeats is suggesting is a
lack of 'inspiration' in the verse.
Or as Longinus puts it;
"I feel almost absolved from the necessity of premising at any length
that sublimity is a certain distinction and excellence in expression,
and that it is from no other source than this that the greatest poets
and writers have derived their eminence and gained an immortality of
renown."
Trans W Rhys Roberts, I.3
http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/longinus/desub001.htm#i3
Now...is the poetry we define as anti-war, really that?
Or is it our reaction to it, that is anti-war?
There was plenty of poetry opposing the war...but hardly any of
reached the anthologies
All the best
scampo
Yeats' position, especially when Owen can write such as:
"I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now......"
Steve C.
On Mar 11, 8:47 pm, DJ <DJDJ...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> You raise a few nutty ones here..
>
> I'll start with Yeats .
>
> I think that he was attempting to apply theories (18th.c & counting)
> of the 'sublime' in poetry to Owen et al
>
> Here's a fuller version of the quote;
>
> " I have rejected these poems for the same reason that made Arnold
> withdraw his "Empedocles on Etna" from circulation; passive suffering
> is not a theme for poetry. In all the great tragedies, tragedy is a
> joy to the man who dies; in Greece the tragic chorus danced (From the
> "Introduction," p. xxxiv). "
>
> Note the reference to Arnold? And to Greek tragedy?
>
> Implicit in Yeats' remark is that the War poets, as such, should have
> either stood aside from what they saw, or entered fully into it.
>
> It will be argued that, by joining up, they did this. But there is
> someting more in the remark. What I think Yeats is suggesting is a
> lack of 'inspiration' in the verse.
>
> Or as Longinus puts it;
>
> "I feel almost absolved from the necessity of premising at any length
> that sublimity is a certain distinction and excellence in expression,
> and that it is from no other source than this that the greatest poets
> and writers have derived their eminence and gained an immortality of
> renown."
> Now...is the poetry we define as anti-war, really that?
>
> Or is it our reaction to it, that is anti-war?
>
> There was plenty of poetry opposing the war...but hardly any of
> reached the anthologies
>
> All the best
>
> On Mar 10, 10:16 pm, Stace <st...@galnet.dk> wrote:
>
>
>
> > First - Thanks to everyone who gave advice about how to promote one's
> > 'scribblings' - much appreciated.
>
> > And now I'm 'seriously scribbling'... 'That' comment by Yeats about
> > 'passive suffering'. I've always had problem with it. Does he mean
> > that as a poet, Owen should have kept his views to himself, or, as
> > readers we cannot have any inkling of what actually happened so we
> > should leave well alone?
>
> > I'm dabbling a bit with the idea of war poetry/photography as being
> > somewhat voyeuristic, with the aim of questioning the 'value' of
> > reading/viewing war poetry or photographs.
>
> > And this is where Yeats can be proven 'wrong'. If we can return to the
> > fact that Owen is a poet then perhaps it will be possible that his
> > work will not be held up as 'anti-war' poetry and more as an account
> > of what happened in the First World War.
>
> > I could go on for hours, but will stop here - ideas?
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
Margaret Crane
and the way in which Owen is represented in it (this is the groundbreaking
anthology, the Faber Book of Modern Verse, published in 1936) that he had
not seriously read much of Owen's work.
This is perhaps partly the fault of the anthology, which begins the Owen
selection with the worse-than-mediocre "From My Diary, June 1914", and also
includes the only-slightly-better "Shadwell Stair". Quite what Michael
Roberts, who edited the Faber anthology, thought he was doing, given all the
inspired poems of Owen which he could have included, heaven only knows. But
certainly the anthology was generally identified with the political Left,
and Owen was perhaps being included as much on political grounds as on
poetic ones - not that Owen needs any such apologia, but in the climate of
1936 perhaps it seemed as though he did.
Yeats, of course, had no sympathy with the political Left - and perhaps his
reaction to the Faber anthology explains why he calls Owen "a revered
sandwich-board man of the revolution". Whether Owen, if he had lived, would
have become seriously identified with the political Left is something else.
In any case, I don't see how there can be any justification for the absurd
claim that "Passive suffering is not a theme for poetry". If Yeats did
bother to move beyond the second-rate examples which Roberts included,
perhaps he chose to focus on "Futility" or "Asleep", where we do indeed see
an unresisting corpse. But Owen himself is not "passive" - his cry of
protest is the most active thing a poet can achieve (as we can see from the
fact that these poems still live so vividly).
In "Easter 1916", Yeats makes the point that he is celebrating an active
gesture which he fears may have been useless: "Was it needless death after
all?" - but what did he think he was writing about in "Nineteen Hundred and
Nineteen" and "Meditations in Time of Civil War" where he repeatedly, and
brilliantly, talks of the victims of war and the helplessness of the
civilian? If ever anyone was living up to Owen's dictum that "All a poet can
do today is warn ... the Poetry is in the Pity" it was Yeats at this time.
How can this be called "passive"?
It would be easy to think that only Ireland's wars moved Yeats in this way:
as we know, he made a point of not writing about the Great War, except in
the intensely solipsistic and subjective "An Irish Airman Foresees His
Death" (written, in any case, some years after the event). Moreover -
although I believe that Yeats was without question the most brilliant poet
of the twentieth century to have written in English - no one ever accused
him of being a great thinker in the logical sense! His judgment of Owen
looks remarkably like envy, ignorance, and perhaps a sense of having lost
control of the way things were going? Thank heavens we don't have to
remember WBY for his literary criticism.
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