Ezra Pound and War.
What did he think about that?
“Pound's
immediate concern was the war in Europe--"this war on youth--on a
generation" which he described as the natural result of the "age of
the chief war pimps. “He hated the very idea that Americans were being
primed for war, and on the very day of Pearl Harbor he denounced the idea that
American boys should soon be marching off to war: "I do not want my
compatriots from the ages of 20 to 40 to go get slaughtered to keep up the
Sassoon and other British Jew rackets in Singapore and in Shanghai. That is not
my idea of American patriotism," he added” (1)
“There was
no reason for U.S. intervention abroad, he said: "The place to defend the
American heritage is on the American continent. And no man who had any part in
helping [Franklin] Delano Roosevelt get the United States into [the war] has
enough sense to win anything . . .” (2)
“Of FDR's interventionism, he declared: "To send boys from Omaha to Singapore to die for British monopoly and brutality is not the act of an American patriot." However, Pound said: "Don't shoot the President. I dare say he deserves worse, but . . . [a]ssassination only makes more mess."” (3)
Commentary of the poem
After a
brief reading of the poem, we see the topic of it, the war, but not only this,
it also talks about the horribles and hair-raising consequences of the war,
either of them because all have the same ending.
Now, in a
second reading, we can see how the poem is turning into a lament, the horrible
despair that devastates the war fields, the pain impregnated on the grass, the
signs of the loser’s history, the oblivion where we forget all of the soldiers
that fought for a country. This poem is a chant to the horror, to the unnecessary
afliction of the war, a chant of sorrow and resignation.
In this “
Lament of the frontier guard”, by Ezra Pound, the poet shows us the true face
of the war, the bitter reality of it. The consequences of a terrible act, of an
attempt to defend those things that are not our things. Thanks to the
terrifying images that the poem gives us, we can imagine the horrible damages
caused by the stupid necessity of conquering, of making us better in the
presence of the other’s eyes.
Going on
with the reading, we see the poem works about a desperate scream. The frontier
guard is waiting for the enemy who comes from the north, the enemy is colder
than death, a fearsome enemy.
“I climb the towers and towers/to
watch out the barbarous land:/Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert./There
is no wall left to this village.”
In this verse the poet manifests the anxiety of the protagonist, he is
waiting for the enemy but he only sees desolation, a desert full of the
disabled fellows that will be covered by the grass without the hope that
someone could do something to avoid that chaos. The wind blows and comes with
the stench of the dead bodies, bodies that before the war had a life. This
feeling of anxiety is opposed to resignation, he knows he will die, but he does
not want to sit down and wait for death knocking on his door.
In the following stanza:” Who
brought this to pass?/Who has brought the flaming imperial anger? /Who has
brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?”;
we see the protagonist who is thinking, and he asks himself who is
guilty in this war, but it’s stupid to think, there is nothing to be done, the
enemy is coming, the lookout is completely alone.
This verse: “A gracious spring,
turned to blood-ravenous autumn,”, gives us an example of one of the collateral
damages of the war. In it we can see how the war makes the community to jump
from the beautiful spring, that means the childhood, the adolescence, to a
horrible and bloody autumn, that can be identified with the old age. The poet
tries to talk to us about the soldier’s life, an unfinished life because there
is no space for the summer, where the fullness of life is manifested, and it is
the best time of our lives too. The combatants in a war are exposed to jump
from adolescence to old age but they will never have dreams, illusions, neither
memories.
“And sorrow, sorrow like
rain./Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning,”
The image that the poem shows in these two verses is devastating. The
sorrow that falls like rain, stronger than it, a rain that floods the
devastated fields. A sorrow that falls without stop upon the mutilated bodies
of the soldiers, a sorrow as the rain destroying the feelings and only leaving
pain in the grieved souls. This is one of the horrible consequences of a war, a
rain of tears and of horrifying damage.
“And no children of warfare upon
them,/No longer the men for offence and defence.”
These two verses give us a vision of future of these fields that were
devastated by fear. There is no future in this place, there isn’t neither
children who could work in these lands; nor men who could defend it. Death has
come to the most hidden place and in each step, it has sowed its devilish seed
of loneliness and uncertainty.
It’s hell on earth. Loneliness fills every corner of this place, and a
new feeling is born: desperation that grows up and it shows the horrifying
image of oblivion.
“Ah, how shall you know the
dreary sorrow at the North Gate,/With Rihoku's name forgotten,/And we guardsmen
fed to the tigers.”
In the last three verses, the poet manifests the pain of the soldier,
the pain of Rihoku (1), no one will know who Rihoku was, nobody will ever see
his sorrow. He will fall fighting for his country, but he won’t be remembered
neither as a hero nor as a villain. They, the soldiers, will be used to feed
the animals.
Here, we can see the unnecessary pain caused by the war, an act that can
break a lot of lives to maintain our supposed superiority. The stupidity of a
war, the impotence that covers our bodies everytime we see this bloody images.
The distress of the pain, the powerful who need to see the morbid images of
resignation, desperation and death.
Personal
Opinion.
I have chosen this poem because I think that it talks about a suitable
topic in the years we live. The poem reflects the innumerable damages that a war can cause. The images that the poem
gives us are completely understandable because we have them everytime we watch
television or when we read the newspapers. They show the holocaust, a hell
where some people live every day. They don’t have to convince us, we know how a
war can be. We don’t need more bloody acts like this.
Bibliography
1_http://www.barnesreview.org/ezrapound.htm
Dec. 1997 Barnes
Review. 10 May 2006 22:41
2_http://www.barnesreview.org/ezrapound.htm
Dec. 1997 Barnes
Review. 10 May 2006 22:41
3_ http://www.barnesreview.org/ezrapound.htm Dec. 1997 Barnes Review. 10 May 2006 22:41
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Lament of the Frontier Guard |
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By the North Gate, the wind blows full
of sand, |
Source : http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=259