Take, for instance, the magnificent
'To Any Dead Officer', written just before America
entered the war. Many reading this poem would think
Great Britain was going to cease fighting. But nothing
of the sort. One must always remember that bitter
as these imprecations are against those who mismanaged
certain episodes in the war, the ultimate foe
is not they but the German Junkers who planned this
war for forty years, who have given the lovely earth
over to hideous defilement and the youths of all nations
to carnage...
Sometimes in this book Sassoon fails to express himself
properly. This fact is, I think, a tribute to his
sincerity. For his earlier work very clearly displays
his technical proficiency. But here what can he do?
Indignation chokes and strangles him. He claws often
enough at unsatisfactory words, dislocates his
sentences, tumbles out his images as if he would pulp the
makers of war beneath them. Very rarely does he
attain to the poignant simplicity of 'The Hawthorn
Tree' or the detached irony of 'Does it Matter?'
Can he then see nothing else in war? I remember
him once turning to me and saying suddenly apropos
of certain exalte poems in my 'Ardours and
Endurances': 'Yes, I see all that and I agree with
you, Robert. War has made me. I think I am a man now
as well as a poet. You have said the things well
enough. Now let us nevermore say another word of
whatever little may be good in war for the individual
who has a heart to be steeled.
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