Wilfred Owen

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Wilfred Owen
Born:	March 18, 1893 Oswestry, Shropshire
Died:	November 4, 1918, aged 25 Sambre-Oise Canal
Occupation:	Soldier
Nationality:	British
Genres:	War poem
Influences:	Siegfried Sassoon, John Keats

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, MC (March 18, 1893 – November 4, 1918) was an English poet and soldier, regarded by some as the leading poet of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Some of his best-known works - most of which remained unpublished until after his death - include Dulce Et Decorum Est, Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility, and Strange Meeting. His preface intended for a book of poems to be published in 1919 contains numerous well-known phrases, especially 'War, and the pity of War', and 'the Poetry is in the pity'.

He is perhaps just as well-known for having been killed in action at the Sambre-Oise Canal just a week before the war ended, causing news of his death to reach home as the town's church bells declared peace.

Contents 1 Early life 2 War service 3 Poetry 4 Relationship with Sassoon 5 Death 6 Literary output 7 References in popular culture 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Early life

Owen was born the eldest of four children at Plas Wilmot, a house near Oswestry in Shropshire on 18 March 1893 of mixed English and Welsh ancestry. At that time, his parents, Tom and Susan Owen, lived in a comfortable house owned by his grandfather, but, on his death in 1897, the family was forced to move to lodgings in the back streets of Birkenhead. He was educated at the Birkenhead Institute and at Shrewsbury Technical School, and discovered his vocation in 1903 or 1904 during a holiday spent in Cheshire. Owen was raised as an Anglican of the evangelical school. His early influences included John Keats, and, as with many other writers of the time, the Bible.

Shortly after leaving school in 1911, Owen passed the matriculation exam for the University of London, but not with the first-class honours needed for a scholarship (his studies suffered as Owen mourned the loss of his Uncle and role model, Edgar Hilton, to a hunting accident). In return for free lodging and some tuition for the entrance exam, Owen worked as lay assistant to the Vicar of Dunsden and as a pupil-teacher at Wyle Cop School. He then attended botany and - later, at the urging of the head of the English Department - free Old English classes at University College, Reading (now the University of Reading), and later failed to win a scholarship she also urged him to sit there. Prior to the outbreak of World War I, he worked as a private tutor teaching English and French at the Berlitz School of Languages in Bordeaux, France.

[edit] War service

On 21 October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles. For the next seven months, he was in training at Hare Hall Camp in Essex. In January 1917 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant with The Manchester Regiment. After some traumatic experiences, which included leading his platoon into battle and getting trapped for 3 days in a shell-hole, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. It was whilst recuperating at Craiglockhart that he was to meet fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, an encounter which was to transform Owen's life for the better.

After returning to the front, Owen led units of the Second Manchesters on 1 October 1918 to storm a number of enemy strongpoints near the village of Joncourt. Owen was killed in action on 4th November 1918, only one week before the end of the war. For his courage and leadership in the Joncourt action, he was posthumously awarded the Military Cross.

[edit] Poetry

Owen is regarded by some as the leading poet of the First World War, known for his war poetry on the horrors of trench and gas warfare. His great friend, the contemporary poet Siegfried Sassoon had a profound effect on Owen's poetic voice, and Owen's most famous poems (Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for Doomed Youth) show direct results of Sassoon's influence. Manuscript copies of the poems survive, annotated in Sassoon's handwriting. Owen's poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor. While his use of pararhyme, with its heavy reliance on consonance, was both innovative and, in some of his works, quite brilliant, he was not the only poet at the time to utilize these particular techniques. He was, however, one of the first to experiment with it extensively.

As for his poetry itself, it underwent significant changes in 1917. As a part of his therapy at Craiglockhart, Owen's doctor, Arthur Brock, encouraged Owen to translate his experiences, specifically the experiences he relived in his dreams, into poetry. Sassoon, who was becoming influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, aided him here, showing Owen through example what poetry could do. Sassoon's use of satire influenced Owen, who tried his hand at writing "in Sassoon's style." Further, the content of Owen's verse was undeniably changed by his work with Sassoon. Sassoon's emphasis on realism and 'writing from experience' was not exactly unheard of to Owen, but it was not a style of which he had previously made use--his earlier body of work consists primarily of light-hearted sonnets. Sassoon himself contributed to this growth in Owen by his strong promotion of Owen's poetry, both before and after Owen's death: Sassoon was one of Owen's first editors. Nevertheless, Owen's poetry is quite distinctive, and he is generally considered a greater poet than Sassoon.

Thousands of poems were published during the war, but very few of them had the benefit of such strong patronage, and it is as a result of Sassoon's influence, as well as support from Edith Sitwell and the editing of his poems into a new anthology in 1931 by Edmund Blunden that ensured his popularity, coupled with a revival of interest in his poetry in the 1960s which plucked him out of a relatively exclusive readership into the public eye.

Though he had plans for a volume of verse, for which he had written a "Preface," few realize that he never saw his own work published, apart from those poems he included in The Hydra, the magazine he edited at the Craiglockhart War Hospital.

[edit] Relationship with Sassoon

Owen held Sassoon in an esteem not far from hero-worship, remarking to his mother about Sassoon that he was "not worthy to light his pipe". Wilfred Owen was devastated by Sassoon's decision to return to the front, though he left Craiglockhart before Sassoon did. He was stationed in Scarborough on home-duty for several months, during which time he associated with members of the artistic circle into which Sassoon had introduced him, including Robert Ross and Robert Graves. He also met H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett and it was during this period he developed the stylistic voice for which he is now recognized.

Homoeroticism is a central element in much of Owen's poetry.

^{[citation needed]} Through Sassoon, Owen was introduced to a sophisticated homosexual literary circle which included Oscar Wilde's friend Robbie Ross, writer and poet Osbert Sitwell, and C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, the translator of Proust. This contact undoubtedly broadened Owen's outlook, and increased his confidence in incorporating homoerotic elements into his work.

The account of Owen's sexual development has been somewhat obscured because his brother, Harold Owen, removed what he considered discreditable passages in Owen's letters and diaries after the death of their mother (Hibberd). (Harold was also responsible for changing the commendation of Wilfred's Owen's Military Cross so that it looked less bloodthirsty and more in keeping with the popular perception of the sensitive officer poet.) Owen also requested that his mother burn a sack of his personal papers in the event of his death, which she faithfully did. Owen's early biographers continued the public suppression of his sexuality.

[edit] Death

In July of 1918, Owen returned to active service in France, although he might have stayed on home-duty indefinitely. His decision was almost wholly the result of Sassoon's being sent back to England. Sassoon, who had been shot in the head in a so-called friendly fire incident, was put on sick-leave for the remaining duration of the war. Owen saw it as his patriotic duty to take Sassoon's place at the front, that the horrific realities of the war might continue to be told. Sassoon was violently opposed to the idea of Owen returning to the trenches, threatening to "stab [him] in the leg" if he tried it. Aware of his attitude, Owen did not inform him of his action until he was once again in France.

Owen was killed in action on 4th November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day, as the church bells were ringing out in celebration. 'Though he is dead, his memory lives on.' - Quoted from the Prayer book of Woodcock. He is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery. There are memorials to Wilfred Owen at Gailly, Ors, Oswestry and Shrewsbury.

There is also a small museum dedicated to Owen and his close friend Sassoon at the Craiglockhart War Hospital, now a Napier University building.

[edit] Literary output

Only five of Owen's poems had been published before his death, one of which was in fragmentary form. His best known poems include Anthem for Doomed Youth, Dulce Et Decorum Est, The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, and Strange Meeting. Some of his poems feature in Benjamin Britten's War Requiem.

Owen's full unexpurgated opus is in the academic two-volume work The Complete Poems and Fragments (1994) by Jon Stallworthy. Many of his poems have never been published in popular form.

In 1975 Mrs. Harold Owen, Wilfred's sister-in-law, donated all of the manuscripts, photographs and letters which her late husband had owned to the University of Oxford's English Faculty Library. As well as the personal artifacts this also includes all of Wilfred's personal library and an almost complete set of The Hydra - the magazine of Craiglockhart War Hospital. These can be accessed by any member of the public on application in advance to the English Faculty librarian.

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin holds a large collection of Wilfred Owen's family correspondence.

[edit] References in popular culture

• Though centered primarily on Sassoon and his doctor W. H. R. Rivers, Pat Barker's 1991 historical novel Regeneration, describes the meeting and relationship between Sassoon and Owen, acknowledging truthfully, from Sassoon's perspective, that the meeting had a profoundly significant effect on Owen. Owen's treatment with his own doctor, Arthur Brock, is also touched upon briefly.

• The play Not About Heroes by Stephen MacDonald takes as it subject matter the friendship between Owen and Sassoon, and begins with their meeting at Craiglockhart during WWI.

• Owen is the assumed narrator of the song "Owen's Lament" by Australian band Augie March.

• The first verse of "Anthem for Doomed Youth" is recited by Bruce Dickinson as an introduction to the live performance of "Paschendale" on the Iron Maiden live album Death on the Road.

• Susan Hill's novel Strange Meeting takes its name from a poem by Owen of the same name.

• The title of Sarah McLachlan's album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy is taken from a line in Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." ("Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling").

• Razorlight have a song named Wilfred Owen.

• The band 10,000 Maniacs recorded the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" as a song called "The Latin One" on their 1983 album "Secrets of the I Ching".

• The rap group Jedi Mind Tricks samples a reading of "Greater Love" at the end of their song "Muerte" from their album "Violent by Design" released in 2000.

• In David Hare's play "The Vertical Hour" (2006), the character Oliver (played by Bill Nighy on Broadway), extols Wilfred Owen as one of the few legitimate sources of British patriotism. The Sex Pistols is another.

• In Kasabian's video for "Empire" the quote "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" is used in the final shot.

[edit] References

• Wilfred Owen - The Last Year, 1917–18. Dominic Hibberd. 1992.
• Wilfred Owen: A New Biography. Dominic Hibberd. 2003.
• Wilfred Owen. Jon Stallworthy. 1974.
• Meredith Martin, "Therapeutic Measures: The Hydra and Wilfred Owen at Craiglockhart War Hospital" in Modernism/Modernity 14.1 (January 2007), 35-54.

[edit] External links

• Works by Wilfred Owen at Project Gutenberg
• Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive, at Oxford University
• Freepedia Biography of Wilfred Owen
• The Wilfred Owen resource page at warpoetry.co.uk
• Selected Poems at Poetseers
• Wilfred Owen Association
• Details of Wilfred Owen's burial place (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
• Gay Great - Wilfred Owen