INTRODUCTION
Through this paper, which deals with the poetry from the World War I, I
am going to analyse the work by Edward Thomas. What I want to reflect here are
the feelings and all the thoughts that can come to a soldier’s mind during this
kind of conflict. First, I am going to look carefully to the context (the
events during the time his poem “This
is no case of petty right or wrong” was written), which I think is very
important to understand the poetry of this time. Later, we’ll focus on the main
characteristics and particular features of the poem trying to compare it with
other contemporary works.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
During the eleven months between August 1914 and July 1915 Thomas was
indecisive about whether to take his family to
His poem “This is no case of
petty right or wrong” was written on 26th December 1915. Throughout 1915, the British Empire and
ANALYSIS
Edward Thomas wrote this poem after a blazing row with his father who
was a conventional patriot who demonised the Germans.
This
is no case of petty right or wrong
That politicians or philosophers
Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.
Beside my hate for one fat patriot
My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:–
A kind of god he is, banging a gong.
But I have not to choose between the two,
Or between justice and injustice. Dinned
With war and argument I read no more
Than in the storm smoking along the wind
Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar.
From one the weather shall rise clear and gay;
Out of the other an
And like her mother that died yesterday.
Little
I know or care if, being dull,
I shall miss something that historians
Can rake out of the ashes when perchance
The phoenix broods serene above their ken.
But with the best and meanest Englishmen
I am one in crying, God save
We lose what never slaves and cattle blessed.
The ages made her that made us from dust:
She is all we know and live by, and we trust
She is good and must endure, loving her so:
And as we love ourselves we hate our foe.
Through this poem, which is truly patriotic, Thomas disdains the sort of populist hate of
Germans and love of
The first stanza begins with an
irony making reference to what people consider what is right or what is wrong
and which he considers trivial issues, judged by politicians or philosophers
for their own interests. His love to his country goes far from those problems.
This way, he introduces his poem arguing that it will not deal with a petty
case of morality and, along the poem, he will give the reasons that support his
patriotism, which he considers a personal feeling far away from polemics.
On the other hand, the loathing of Germans that English newspapers proclaim
at that time is absolutely normal as they are being battle enemies (
Then he makes a comparison between his feelings towards
But he doesn’t want to take a decision of whether to hate or not Germans,
or whether what is right or what is not in the middle of the “storm”. He will
decide it far from the war, in calmness. He won’t read any more newspapers that
tell him who to hate or love, so he will do it just far away from arguments.
He compares, in a metaphor of witches’ cauldrons, his feelings of
patriotism and other patriot’s feelings. Outside one cauldron, there is his
patriotism which goes beyond this hatred, so he loves the English countryside
with a weather that “shall rise clear and
gay”. On the other cauldron there are other traditional patriots like his
father, who love
In the second stanza, he
declares himself a simple Englishman who doesn’t care what historians will say
about
He asks God to save
CONCLUSION
In “This is no case of petty
right or wrong”, we have seen a non conventional patriotism capturing
the love of the English countryside unlike any other. This love to English
nature is also similarly noticed in the poem by Rupert Brooke “The soldier”.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.[3]
As a soldier, Edward had to fight against his enemies and defend his
country, but he tried to escape from any sort of established patriotism, so
this poem constitutes one of the most noted and original pieces from the genre,
what makes Edward Thomas one of the most influential authors of the 20th
Century. This way, Thomas was greatly admired by W H Auden, Dylan
Thomas, Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes. Many of today’s best known poets
acknowledge the influence of his writing on their own, and his reputation is
still growing.[4]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Counter-Attack. First World War
literature. Edward Thomas. Michèle Fry, 1999. Visited on 21st March 2007.
Edward Thomas. HTML Markup Paul
Edward Thomas. This is no case of
petty Right or Wrong. HTML Markup Paul Grooves. Visited on 20th
March 2007.
Rupert Brooke. The soldier. HTML
Markup Paul
War poetry. Edward Thomas. Poet of
the First World War. Saxon Books 2006.
Visited on 20th March 2007.
Wikipedia.
Academic year 2006/2007
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Sandra Gisbert Sánchez
sangis@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press