Mendelson says in Early Auden that the original version of "September 1" said "the little points of light" instead of "Ironic points of light" (329). Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" and George HW. Bush's campaign speeches in 1988 may also refer to this line.
Sam Diener says that this line - and the revised line - may refer to a quote by Edward Grey, who, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, said "The lamps are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." (This quote was reportedly spoken while he looked out the window of his office over St. James's Park.)
Sam Diener says that this line - and the revised line - may refer to a quote by Edward Grey, who, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, said "The lamps are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." (This quote was reportedly spoken while he looked out the window of his office over St. James's Park.)
Diener says that "one of the lights extinguished was that of Wilfred Owen", the World War One poet who wrote "Dulce Et Decorum Est". That poem ends:
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori."
Diener says that Owen's poem shows "the horrors Auden is anticipating are about to be repeated".
"Dulce Et Decorum Est", like Auden's "September 1", speaks to a "lie" told to people. Auden says that the poet's voice can undo the "folded lie", and then proceeds to state what is true: "There is no such thing as the State/ And no one exists alone;/ Hunger allows no choice/ To the citizen or the police;/ We must love one another or die." Owen, on the other hand, states the lie itself - "Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori".
Yeats disliked Owen's poetry, and that of other World War One poets. Marjorie Perloff quotes him saying:
“The writers of these poems were invariably officers of exceptional courage and capacity . . . but felt bound . . . to plead the suffering of their men. In poems that had for a time considerable fame, written in the first person, they made that suffering their own. 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.”
The Poetry Foundation says this of Owen's idea of his own work:
"Owen regarded his poems not only as individual expressions of intense experience but also as part of a book that would give the reader a wide perspective on World War I...he expresses his belief in the cathartic function of poetry. For a man who had written sentimental or decorative verse before his war poems of 1917 and 1918, Owen’s preface reveals an unexpected strength of commitment and purpose as a writer, a commitment understandable enough in view of the overwhelming effects of the war upon him. In this preface Owen said the poetry in his book would express “the pity of War,” rather than the “glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power,” which war had acquired in the popular mind. He distinguished also between the pity he sought to awaken by his poems and that conventionally expressed by writers who felt less intensely opposed to war by this time than he did. As they wrote their historically oriented laments or elegies for those fallen in wars, they sought to comfort and inspire readers by placing the deaths and war itself in the context of sacrifice for a significant cause. But Owen’s message for his generation, he said, must be one of warning rather than of consolation. In his last declaration he appears to have heeded Sassoon’s advice to him that he begin to use an unmitigated realism in his description of events: “the true poet must be truthful.”"
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori."
Diener says that Owen's poem shows "the horrors Auden is anticipating are about to be repeated".
"Dulce Et Decorum Est", like Auden's "September 1", speaks to a "lie" told to people. Auden says that the poet's voice can undo the "folded lie", and then proceeds to state what is true: "There is no such thing as the State/ And no one exists alone;/ Hunger allows no choice/ To the citizen or the police;/ We must love one another or die." Owen, on the other hand, states the lie itself - "Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori".
Yeats disliked Owen's poetry, and that of other World War One poets. Marjorie Perloff quotes him saying:
“The writers of these poems were invariably officers of exceptional courage and capacity . . . but felt bound . . . to plead the suffering of their men. In poems that had for a time considerable fame, written in the first person, they made that suffering their own. 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.”
The Poetry Foundation says this of Owen's idea of his own work:
"Owen regarded his poems not only as individual expressions of intense experience but also as part of a book that would give the reader a wide perspective on World War I...he expresses his belief in the cathartic function of poetry. For a man who had written sentimental or decorative verse before his war poems of 1917 and 1918, Owen’s preface reveals an unexpected strength of commitment and purpose as a writer, a commitment understandable enough in view of the overwhelming effects of the war upon him. In this preface Owen said the poetry in his book would express “the pity of War,” rather than the “glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power,” which war had acquired in the popular mind. He distinguished also between the pity he sought to awaken by his poems and that conventionally expressed by writers who felt less intensely opposed to war by this time than he did. As they wrote their historically oriented laments or elegies for those fallen in wars, they sought to comfort and inspire readers by placing the deaths and war itself in the context of sacrifice for a significant cause. But Owen’s message for his generation, he said, must be one of warning rather than of consolation. In his last declaration he appears to have heeded Sassoon’s advice to him that he begin to use an unmitigated realism in his description of events: “the true poet must be truthful.”"
That comes from a short draft of a preface for what Owen intended to have published as a book of poetry before his death. Part of it reads:
"This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful."
Owen's emphasis on warning others is perhaps similar to what Thucydides and Larry Kramer seek to do in their work.
"This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful."
Owen's emphasis on warning others is perhaps similar to what Thucydides and Larry Kramer seek to do in their work.