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




First of all, I am going to analyse the title “To Germany”. According to the title, we can suppose who the addressee is. In my opinion, the title makes us think that the poem is a kind of letter which should be read by this country, by all the inhabitants who live in Germany or at least by those who are Germans.


As we have studied in class, Charles Sorley is a poet who wrote about the WWI and this is the topic which appears throughout his poetry. This poem is not an exception. 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. (Spartacus, FWWsorley)

Through this detail of his biography, we know that Ch. Sorley wrote about his own experience during his last years of life which were spent fighting in the western front.

As we can see in the poem, 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. Another interpretation that I can give is that 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 there 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 will is produced because he spent one year of his life in Germany, as I said before. During this period, I think, he established relationships with them and now, during the war, he feels bad of fighting with those, who in some period of his life, were his friends and now, they have become the enemy.

Another interpretation I can give to the whole poem is that the author is telling the German: why are we fighting? What is the real reason of being here? We come from different countries but we are equal. If we finish with this war, we will leave in peace and without any problem. It’s a kind of reflection.


In order to understand better what the poem is about, we should know more about the context. In which situation was the poem written. If we see the composition date, we realize that 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.( García and Gatell, 110).The Western Front consisted of 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. (Spartacus, FWWwestern)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. ( spartacus, FWWsorley)

In my opinion the structure of the poem is clearly defined as a sonnet. We can differentiate two parts: the first one are the 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. Along the poem, we can find visual and phonetic rhyme: designed-confined-mind-blind.; form-storm-war.

Sorley's sole work was published posthumously in January 1916, and immediately became a critical success, with six editions printed that year. (wikipedia)



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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWsorley.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWwestern.htm

Vicens Vives. Barcelona. España.2001

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_front

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sorley