Siegfried Sassoon

Before WWI

• Born on September 8th 1886 under Anglo-Jewish parents
• Sassoon was educated at Marlborough College Clare College, and Cambridge University but never graduated.
• Was encouraged by Edward Marsh to write poetry
• Moved to London in July 1914
• Sassoon enlisted in the war on August 2nd 1914

War

“ I saw his (my brother’s) death as a sacrifice in a noble cause, not as the Moloch of murdered youth that it became.”

Moloch: anything conceived of as requiring appalling sacrifice

• Given a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (May 1915) and as a 2nd Lieutenant.
• Brother died at Gallipoli in November 1915 and a good friend, David Thomas died in March 1916
• Late June 1916, he was awarded the Military Cross.
• Began writing poems undermining his senior officers expecting to be punished- sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland for shell shock

Hospital And After War

• Met Wilfred Owen (another poet) and pushed him to keep writing.
• After 4 months in Craiglockhart, Sassoon was able to return to active duty.
• Sent to front lines In France- still reckless
• July 13 1918 Bad head wound put him on a permanent sick leave from active duty.
• March 1919, resigned from the army.
• After the war, Sassoon spent a great deal of time writing his autobiography.
• He died on September 1st 1967.

"The Dreamers"

“The Dreamers” uses the sonnet both to experiment with a new, violent form of expression and to stubbornly force the present into the framework of the past.

"Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,

Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows."

"The octave’s liberal use of alliteration captures the sense of stopped time on the front...soldiers seemed trapped in a stagnant and nonregenerative world"

OCTAVE: a verse form consisting of eight lines of iambic pentameter (in English)

DIVIDEND: a number to be divided by another number

“They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives./I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats.”

"Sassoon uses the first person at the turn, immediately interrupting the dreamy lyricism of the octave and bringing the violence of the war to poem"

Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,

Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.

In the great hour of destiny they stand,

Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win

Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,

And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,

Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,

And mocked by hopeless longing to regain

Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,

And going to the office in the train.

“mocked by hopeless longing”

"...the very return to the theme of the octave in the sestet hints at the possibility of the soldier’s return to the old order. The War’s violent diction of dug-outs and rats remains, but its interruption stops short of destroying the structure of the poem as a whole"

SESTET: six lines of poetry forming a stanza

"Suicide in the Trenches"

On every side of a war there are two types of people, the soldiers and the spectators. Sassoon is displaying the astonishing disconnect between the two through strong imagery that reveals the complicated nature of war.

We first discover an AA BB rhyme scheme used consistently throughout the poem.

Mood change from stanza 1-2

Crumps- sound that your shoe makes when you walk across snow but it is also the sound of an exploding shell.

“Lice were a never-ending problem, breeding in the seams of filthy clothing and causing men to itch unceasingly.”

Cowed: cause (someone) to submit to one's wishes by intimidation.

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried

Sassoon

Sources:

Kindling eye- People who lived during the war were living with the constant hope of winning it.

Who cheer when soldier lads march by- Soldiers remind these people of a fight that will save their country, not a fight that will kill millions.

"No one spoke of him again."

Since a lot of people died in the trenches they were just forgotten

https://www.diigo.com/user/ejonesedash

1889-1967

Siegfried Sassoon: The War Poet