To Germany (Charles Hamilton Sorley, 1914)
You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each other's dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.
When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1953.html
INTRODUCTION
According to the title, we can suppose who the addressee is. I think the
title makes us feel that the poem is like a letter which should be
read by all the inhabitants who live in Germany or at least by those who
are Germans.
Charles Sorley is a poet who wrote about the WWI so I chose him to do my
third paper because he was a very important writer, and because I was looking
for a poet who wrote about this epoch(he did it in almost all of his works).
And this poem is not an exception.
Secondly, I am going to talk briefly about him:
In 1913, Charles Sorley decided to study in Germany, there he spent one
year of his life, but in 1914, the war was declared and as a consequence
of this he came back to England in order to enlist in the British Army.
So we know that Ch. Sorley wrote about his own experience during his
last years of life which were spent fighting in the western front.
Sorley's sole work was published posthumously in January 1916, and immediately
became a critical success, with six editions printed that year.
Thirdly, THE POEM:
An interpretation of the poem is that there is a great use of the second
personal pronoun throughout the first stanza which means the desire of the
poet to speak to the German people. As we can see too, this poem is showing
the thought that the author had when he was fighting. He is making a comparison
between German soldiers and British soldiers. The author is telling them
that they fight without knowing which their final destiny is. They fight in
order to achieve pride and honour and to obtain the interest of their respective
nation, but they are “blind”. They follow the instructions of their captains,
who lie to them to believe that when the war finishes, better times will
come. When the author says “the blind fight the blind” he is telling us that
none of them knows what the real reason of being is.
The second stanza shows the desire of peace. The author is enumerating
some situations that can take place when the war will finish. “When it
is peace, then we may view again” In this stanza we can find adjectives,
which create a relaxed atmosphere, where everything stays in calm and everyone
lives in peace “loving-kind and warm, laugh at the old pain”. We can interpret
the 10th verse “With new-won eyes each other's truer form” as the author’s
will of having a good relationship with the German people. Maybe this is
produced because he spent one year of his life in Germany. I think during
this period, he established relationships with them and now, during the
war, he feels bad of fighting with them, because in a period of his life
they were his friends, and now they have become the enemy.
But on the other hand I think he could tell the German: "why are we fighting?
What is the real reason of being here?" they come from different countries
but they are equal. Maybe he thought that if they finished with that
war, they will leave in peace and without any problem.
But furthermore, if we want to understand better what the poem is about,
we should know more about the context.
The poem was written in August, 1914. In this date, the WWI began and
Ch. Sorley was sent to the Western Front. 32 countries participated in this
War. 28 of them were called “the allied powers” led by France, Italy, Britain,
Russia, and the United States. This group fought against “the Central Powers”,
led by the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.The Western
Front consisted of a relatively static line of trench systems which stretched
from the coast of the North Sea southwards to the Swiss border. On the 3rd
August, 1914, German troops crossed the Belgian border in the narrow gap
between Holland and France. The French commander-in-chief ordered his Fifth
Army and the British Expeditionary Force to meet the German advance. The
German defeated the French at the battles of Sambre and Mons. By the end
of August the Allied armies were in retreat and General Alexander von Kluck
and the German First Army began to head for Paris. What was left of the French
Army and the BEF crossed the River Marne on 2nd September. Sorley arrived
in France in May 1915 and after three months was promoted to captain. The
war did not finish until 1918, but Ch. Sorley was not there to see the end
of that war. He was killed at the Battle of Loos on 13th October, 1915.
With the structure of the poem we can see it is a sonnet. There are two
different parts: the first one consists of 8 first verses. Here, the author
is making a comparison between the British and German army. The rhyme in
that first part is A-B-A-B B-A-B-A. The second part are the 6 last verses,
where we can find the desire of peace. The rhyme is C-D-D C-D-C. During the
poem, we can find visual and phonetic rhyme: designed-confined-mind-blind.;
form-storm-war...
CONCLUSION
I think this poem is quite different to the others I read. Maybe is because
the theme here is the War, but for me, when one author decide to write a poem,
he has a very important responsibility, I mean, all people who are going
to read his poem are going to learn about he too. What he did in his life,
and why he wrote it. And in this case, Sorley was so brave and humble at
the same time. He was in this war, but he thought too that people who fought
against him were once his friends. So he wanted the peace between them, and
I like to see how a very important poet nowadays could be before (in his
epoch) a good person as well as a good writer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
• Spartacus: Spartacus Educational. 20.03.07
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWsorley.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWwestern.htm
• García, Margaríta and Cristina Gatell.
Historia del mundo contemporáneo. pag 110 24.03.07
Vicens Vives. Barcelona. España.2001
• wikipedia: wikipedia: the Free Encliclopedia. Western
Front. 20.03.07
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_front
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sorley